My paternal Grandfather, J Roy Carter, lived in Ruthton Minnesota. Family stories recounted and remembered the trip there from Jefferson County in Iowa during the dust bowl – oats in the tires of the model A truck instead of air – long before my time…but I knew the stories. We drove 1400 miles from Brooklyn New York to Ruthton Minnesota each summer for about 9 years in a row for vacations in my growing up years of the late 50s and early 60s. They were great vacations.

One summer at the end of that string, I didn’t go. It was 1965. I was working in a local Drug Store, stocking shelves, making deliveries and typing prescription labels with two fingers, earning money for college. My family went, but I didn’t.

He died that July. My Grandfather died. He was 73. I’ve heard they did the funeral in the old small town way. Everyone walked together from the church, following the casket, down the main street out of town to the cemetery. It was 1965. But I wasn’t there.

In 2001 I went back to Minnesota, this time with my son Ryan, 26. He had never seen Ruthton, but he had heard stories about my Uncle’s farm and the roll top desk in my Grandfathers insurance office in the back room of my Grandmother’s Dress Shop, there on Broadway, it’s what they call the main street in Ruthton, population 365. Ryan never met my Grandfather. But he’d heard the stories.

We looked at the main street. All changed. Changed utterly. Not much left. The Polar Club is still there, a serious drinking bar without windows that none of our family ever set foot in. But there was no South Side Café, no Lindy’s Lanes where we once ate home made donuts for breakfast every day for a week, no Gamble’s Department and Mail order Store where I bought a baseball glove one summer and fishing equipment another. All changed. All gone.

Ryan and I went looking for the cemetery. It wasn’t hard to find. I wanted to visit my Grandparents’ grave. But the road in front of the cemetery was under construction. I mean it was completely torn up. There were graders and dump trucks making that loud backing up sound they make. Our rental car was a 4 wheel drive Subaru Legacy and Ryan said “no problem Dad, just drive through”. But I didn’t. We parked in a field, and picked our way across the dirt and the mud and the construction rubble of an unimportant road down on its luck. I remember I was feeling exactly like that myself. Down on my luck.
We began to walk down the rows of headstones and markers, working separately in the warm afternoon sun. We knew it was an upright stone, we knew it said “Carter”. It took about 45 minutes, maybe 10. Then Ryan called out “Dad, here it is!” There it was. Carter. J. Roy 1892-1965, Lillie M. 1888 – 1979 and “in memory of Dale”… an Uncle I never had because he died so young.

Looking back toward the town I remembered anew my Grandmother’s long gone “Lily’s Dress Shop”, where the china German Shepherd dog came from that we use in worship with the children on Christmas Eve here. I remembered the long gone roll top desk and the smell of my Grandfather’s tobacco. And I remembered the South Side Café where my Grandfather would take me for his afternoon break. “Hey,” my Grandfather called to the man behind the counter, “bring some of that moose for my grandson from New York. He’s never tasted moose”. True enough. My most exotic meat story was going by myself to the Trunz butcher shop on Nostrand Avenue to get a pound of chuck chopped so my Mother could make hamburgers or meat loaf or some other cost effective, tasty meal.

But moose. It sounded amazing. It didn’t taste like chicken. It was dark and dense and pretty chewy. I don’t seek it out on menus these days. I don’t think I’ve even had it since. But that wonderful afternoon has never died. I remember it vividly, authentically, truly. The strange gaminess of the meat, the strength of his voice, the powerful sense that he was doing something amazing just for me. Just the two of us sitting there, and him calling out in such a way that everyone knew J. Roy was going to give his grandson something special. It never crossed my mind I wouldn’t like it. I trusted my Grandfather. I knew he loved me. I remember his garrulous gentle, strong love to this day.

“Remember” say the two young men in the cemetery. “Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”

Notice it is not a question. It is a statement. An imperative. Spoken out loud with authority, in such a way that everyone would know something very special is happening. “Remember!”

The women are told to remember, and they do. They remember Luke tells us, and they tell the eleven and the rest. But they did not believe them. The story seems to stutter in a barrage of buts. But they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb. And he went home amazed. But amazed is not believing. Are you amazed? It is not enough to be amazed.




There is more here than being amazed. Being amazed is fleeting. It has no legs, it can’t get past the construction outside the cemetery. We need a stronger word. The word “remember” had to catch up to Peter; the word “remember” has to find you and me. We try each Easter to let the word remember catch up with us – but too often we see it as a question, a test, a pop quiz we might fail- “do you remember?” Because we’re feeling down on our luck.

Easter is not a question. Easter is not about luck. Easter is grace. Easter is the answer you already know to what seems to others to be the hardest question.

Easter is the proclamation of the resurrection of the dead. And it starts in remembering. This is the word that characterizes the whole story. “Remember!” This word is not about what is gone, what is dead and buried in the past, but about what lives, is present and seeded with life here and now. Remember, in its most simple meaning is to “put back together” to “re-member”, as it was in the beginning. It is a word used in many cultures to begin the most important stories in a ritual way. It is much more powerful than “once upon a time”. “Remember how he told you he would be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise from the dead.” Remember is a word that reaches back and pulls all the past into the present moment and then summons the future to be imagined and made new in its light. Right here, right now. It is a long, long word reaching backward and forward. It is a word for the present, to summon hope for the future. A word for Easter, even in a cemetery. A word for good friends, to set them rejoicing. Remember! Happy Easter!

WSC 9 April, 2007