Finding Beauly

Beauly, Virginia happened at a time in my life. A couple of times, actually.

Finding Beauly

I’d arrived in Beauly completely without fanfare. But everyone knew I was there. At the time there might have been 200-300 people living there. More if you counted the rural mailboxes and chickens.

I had just gotten a job with the railroad, but had been laid off shortly after my transfer to Beauly. It came as a shock. I don’t think I could have even scraped together enough money to fill the tank with gas and get back to Norfolk. I had an old Dodge Coronet, and it wasn’t exactly an economy car.

I had grown up over in Norfolk. I wasn’t making enough money working three jobs. I was making pizza at the Giant Open Air Market, selling Fuller Brush door-to-door, and working as night manager at the Burger Chef on 21st Street.

So, I moved to Pittsburgh at the invitation of a friend. I quickly got a job as a laundry boy at the Holiday Inn. Trust me; it was clear that I wasn’t stepping up.

Not long afterwards, in yet another futile attempt to ‘better myself’, I began a stint of a year or so working for a Christian organization that focused on college campus ministries. But I was being paid about $160 a month, which made life even leaner than sparse.

So when the Christians pulled me aside, and asked me to start raising my own annual salary by pitching my funding needs to churches, family and friends back home, I figured it was time to move on. I didn’t relish the idea of casting myself as some kind of clean-cut, urban, collegiate missionary, to be paid for by people who often struggled making their house payments. It felt too much like living on public assistance.

And the truth was, I had already had my campus missionary experiences, witnessing for Jesus. My spiritual mentors at the time had insisted that the way to change the world was by walking up cold-turkey to university students and chirping, “Excuse me, but have you ever heard of The Four Spiritual Laws?”

It was one of those trick questions that believers were so good at; you couldn’t win, no matter if you said yes or no. It was best to just ignore us and scurry away, however rude it might appear.

But anyway, moving on in Pittsburgh meant getting a job as a Pinkerton security guard. Pinkerton in Pittsburgh paid about 80 cents an hour. After a few months, I asked my lieutenant how I could make more money. He wasn’t much older than me, but already had five kids. He had two suggestions. He was a good guy.

“Easy,” he said quickly. “You can work more hours, like me. I’m making pretty good money.”

Compared to me, he was. But he was working 125 or more hours a week. At straight time. The dark circles under his eyes disturbed me.

The lieutenant got me a nickel an hour raise, and also suggested Plan B: that I carry a revolver, which would automatically qualify me for another five cents an hour. There wasn’t any high crime going on during the night shift in a steel mill, and since I had no desire to shoot people, I passed. I had no aspirations of becoming a trigger happy, 95-cents-an-hour rent-a-cop.

That’s why getting on at the railroad seemed like such a good piece of luck. It was going to be good pay, paid vacations and retirement.

But all that changed with a pink slip. So here I was, in a place so small it wasn’t even on the map. And no job.

I already had a year of Bible college under my belt. And a summer of living part-time on the street while I took a course in radio at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, simultaneously working there as a part-time school janitor. Attending both schools was the result of a persuasive church-going friend who was two years ahead of me. His family could afford his education. Mine couldn’t.

Looking back on Bible College, I never benefited from studying things like the Book of Galatians. Or being told by the Dean of Men on the first day of class in freshman Philosophy that, “Men, there IS victory from masturbation!”

You could hear an embarrassed pin drop. I quietly looked around at my new classmates, all of whom were red-blooded, 18–19 year old American boys. And I wondered why a 60-something married professor felt so strongly compelled to make this the very first sentence of his greeting to an entering class of freshmen. Did he plan this?

And then there was being reprimanded by the same Dean of Men who, upon a surprise inspection of my dorm room one morning at 6:30 AM, found me sound asleep on my knees, instead of on my knees in required prayer and devotion.

But, as it turned out, being a Bible college student ended up making a world of difference in Beauly.

You see, I had met evangelist Billy Graham’s nephew in Bible college. We never became close friends, but I thought the connection was strange. Because when my father was a young pastor, he had worked with a young, not-yet-famous Billy Graham in an organization called Youth for Christ. My dad had gone to Lake Forest College, and had somehow become a member of a small enthusiastic group of young ministers in the Chicago area.

Anyway, I only mention all this because of how it helped me get accepted into Beauly.

The start of it all

Looking back, I can now see that it wasn’t so much that outsiders weren’t accepted in Beauly. Instead, it was more like there were never any outsiders showing up in Beauly. Probably for good reasons.

Within a couple weeks of arriving in Beauly, I had met Joe McCormack one morning at the filling station, over a cup of Maxwell House instant coffee. After a little small talk, I introduced myself.

“I’m Tim Carter, Mr. McCormack,” I said, reaching out my hand.

“Just call me, Joe,” he replied. I never took him up on that. I’d been taught southern manners.

Mr. McCormack’s face was slightly weak-chinned, his hair neatly combed back and beginning to thin. He had a slender build, and a moderately firm handshake. His clothes were plain and his hands were soft, which was rare for a man in Beauly. The softness.

Over a refill, he told me he was chairman of the board of deacons at Beauly Baptist. He also mentioned he had retired from the plant.

“Do you have a church home, Tim?”

“No sir, not yet. I’ve only been here a couple weeks, and what with getting laid off, I’ve been scrambling to try and figure out what to do.”

That’s when he found out about me having been a preacher’s kid and all.

And just like that, a couple weeks later, I was being offered a job as a part time pastor, and a second, full time (paying) job, by another deacon. A job out at the gasket factory.

Editor’s Note: This series about Beauly, Virginia is autobiographical. Some names and places have been changed here and there, but some haven’t. Some events have been modified a bit, to keep things from becoming too personal. I’m playing the character of Tim Carter. I play other characters, too. Like J. Bob Thomas. I suppose we’re all characters, in a way. — Mark Walter