A STORY WORTH TELLING
H “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” — Yogi Berra
The Center Noon Lions Club annual banquet rolled out a couple of weeks ago and lived up to its reputation for fun, fellowship and reminding folks the local civic club knows exactly where it is going.
The official motto of Lions Clubs International is, “We Serve.”
Awards were made, new officers installed and, like the old-time columnists used to say about church socials, “A good time was had by all.”
My Lions Club journey began in Mount Pleasant in the early 1970s. Since then, the only place I’ve missed being a Lion was in Boerne.
In town just a few days, a dutiful member of the Boerne Lions was recruiting me.
“Sounds great,” I said. “Usual time — noon Thursdays?”
“We meet Wednesday nights,” he said.
“Oh, that’s sadly not going to work, I said. “I attend Bible study on Wednesday nights.”
The fellow looked at me with a pause.
“Are you Episcopalian?” he asked.
His question makes more sense considering Kendall County’s cultural breakdown — it is a region settled by mid-19th-century German “Freethinkers.” Stats state that 59% of the county population is Catholic. Southern Baptists come in second at 19% and other factions claim tiny slices of the pie at 17% or less.
So, Boerne was not to be my opportunity for earning a Lions Club “Perfect Attendance” pin. The first and only remains as the year I served as president in Center. But even that was close.
Ferociously working on my attendance record that year, the message arriving from the newspaper’s home office in Fort Payne, Alabama, posed a problem.
“Annual review time,” it read. “Your appointed time is next Wednesday afternoon,” which meant in Alabama and 600 miles from Thursday’s Lion’s Club meeting at Center’s Lake Country Inn.
“It’s all right,” a friend consoled me. “You can make up with another club.”
“Not the same,” I growled. “As Yogi Berra said, ‘It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.’” Huddling with a travel agent, we mapped out a method. Fly Wednesday morning from Shreveport, Louisiana, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, connecting in Memphis. Hop a rental car and blast down to Fort Payne just in time for my Wednesday afternoon corporate interrogation. On Thursday, race back to Chattanooga and reverse the entire crazy course putting me in Shreveport at 10:45 a.m.
That would work if there were no hiccups to collapse the house of cards.
I made the meeting. Done. Headlights cut through the darkness toward Chattanooga at 5 a.m. Thursday, guiding me to the city’s Metropolitan Airport.
The Memphis connection went down as smooth as an Elvis Presley love song, and I watched Interstate 20 pass underneath the jet before it kissed the tarmac at Shreveport.
The Buncombe Road shortcut from the airport put me between Shreveport and Carthage, and the Tenaha city limit sign was in my rearview mirror at 11:46 a.m.
I slammed into a parking spot at the Lake Country Inn at high noon and walked into the meeting cool as a cucumber.
Just in time, I picked up the gavel at the podium, rang the bell calling the meeting to order, and asked, “Lion Joe Fomby, will you return thanks for our meal?”
During the prayer, I offered my personal silent appreciation for a safe trip home.
Then I smiled, thinking about yet another piece of Berra wisdom: “Make a game plan and stick to it. Unless it’s not working.”
Mine worked. I wound up where I wanted to be. And that is the story of my only Lions Club perfect attendance pin.
Contact Aldridge at leonaldridge@ gmail.com. Other Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge.com.
