The Shop

The moment you swing the door wide and hear the cheerful chime announce your arrival, warmth rushes towards you. It engulfs you like a cozy blanket on a chilly night. You breath it in and out and it consumes you until you overflow with peace. If it were possible, it would seem as if dripping from the ends of your hair and out the ends of your toes were drops of pure light. The smell of sawdust fills your nostrils, and you take it in as if it were air to your soul. At least that’s how I remember it.

What makes this place so magical..... you may ask. A venetian blind shop hardly holds any romance when compared to a fragrant bakery or quaint grocery, but the blinds themselves need hold no romance, for the beloved shop keepers hold more than the bakery and grocery combined. Two perfectly lovely characters, whose smile could melt even the hardest heart.

How vividly I recall Me-maw calling from the back of the shop, “Come on back here and see us,” and Pa-paw’s hearty laughter as he came out to greet us. You see they always knew when someone they loved had come in the door. As a member of our family you knew it was tradition to reach up and give the bell an extra ring or two or TEN to get their attention. Though they beckoned you to come to the back, they always met you halfway with a big smile and arms outstretched anticipating the enthusiastic embrace. As they wrapped they’re arms around you and smothered us with kisses, you would feel another wave of that warmth that hit you when you first came in the door.

Me-maw would always take care of first things first. “Are you hungry?,” she’d ask. Even if you weren’t she would tempt you with something sweet. She is the reason I am addicted to sugar!  Inevitably she would send me home with a whole bag of whatever she had given me to munch on. In that way, maybe the Shop was kind of like that quaint little grocery.

Most of the time you would go into the Shop just to say “Hi,” or maybe you really were hungry, but no matter what you came in for, you always left with something more. You see the Shop was a business for over 50 years, built from the ground up by my grandparents, but it never became a huge success. It kept a roof over their heads, food on the table and brought more than one Lincoln into their lives, but it wasn’t exactly a Fortune 500 company. I think the business was all just a front anyway. I think the Shop was more like one of those mob or gang kind of things. Ya know, where it’s a dry cleaners by day, but flip over the press, and turn over the steamer and you’ve got a fully operational gambling ring! Unbeknownst to most everyone… Lowrance Interiors was much more than just a blind shop.

It was a place to store things. All kinds of things. Dad’s stereo equipment, Julie’s bed, Aunt Linda’s mirror, Steven’s....well...I’m not really sure what that thing was. The Shop was a wood shop, an electrician service, a place where underage children were forced to do all sorts of ILLEGAL manual labor. Okay...okay...I suppose using Pa-paw’s tools to make crosses, boxes and other small but equally impressive projects… isn’t really labor. We thought we were really creating something special when we put together two pieces of wood with a nail and it made a cross. Of course there was more than one argument that broke out about that. I said it was a cross, my brother Jonathan said it was an X. It was a real battle.  Occasionally we were asked to answer the phone between our naps and episodes of CHIPS.  The Shop was a playground through which some of the wildest stick horses that roam the open range were wrangled and broken!

At one point, the Shop was even a church, which seems more appropriate than it does odd. You see more than all of these secret services, the Shop was a counselor’s office, a psychiatrist’s couch, and a prayer closet. It was a place of ministry even when it wasn’t a church. How many times did I experience myself and/or witness Me-maw on the phone pulling a promise from her precious box and with tears streaming down speak words of encouragement and wisdom to her friends, family, costumers and even a wrong number? How many family members walked through that door depressed, hopeless, broken, or hungry for more than something to chew on? Me-maw and Pa-paw didn’t run a gambling ring and they didn’t sell drugs...they sold Jesus. Not in the way that this world markets Christ, but with love and understanding they showed their world God’s love.

I often wish I could go back to that place. It saddens me that no one took the business that they worked so long and hard to keep alive, but I know that place is for my memory. It will never leave me. It goes where I go. It is a part of who I have become, and hopefully who I am still becoming. I have however realized that there is still a way to carry on the business in which my grandparents were most successful. To live life as they did. To love as they loved. To care about people, to reach out and to always offer the answer that I have found in my own life to those still searching for one. To always point to Jesus.

They did as the word commands..."Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Matt 5:16 I wonder how many lives were changed for eternity because of the light of love radiating from my grandparents?

“God, let their legacy live on through me.”

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