Odd Jobs

by Douglas J. Eboch

Hear the story read by the author

In the town of Normal, Pennsylvania, there’s a little church at the corner of Wilson and Elm. In this church, as in most churches, many of the odd jobs required to keep things running smoothly and keep the building from slowly decaying fall to volunteers from the congregation. And like any operation that relies on peoples’ generous natures, thing don’t always get done as promptly and effectively as might be desirable. Whenever Pastor Henry O’Donnell got frustrated at the lack of progress on some simple task, he reminded himself that volunteers are, well, volunteering. You must be grateful for what they give you and not begrudge them what they do not. Of course, as healthy as that attitude was, it meant that Pastor O’Donnell often ended up picking up the slack for these chores himself.

One of the most reliable volunteers at the church is Ralph Billings, husband to paid church secretary Tammy Billings. In addition to serving as head usher, Ralph is the unofficial church handyman. The Thursday after Christmas, Ralph went to the church to clean some leaves out of a rain gutter. He’d noticed the clog after the Christmas Eve service and wanted to take care of it right then. Ralph did not like to procrastinate -- if something needed done, best to just do it. But Tammy reminded him that he was wearing his good clothes, and besides, it was after midnight and she was tired.

So Ralph came back to do the chore Thursday afternoon a couple hours before Tammy finished work in the office. It took him a while to locate the church ladder because someone had left it in the back of the social hall instead of returning it to the storage closet where it belonged. But after that brief delay, Ralph was up on the ladder scooping out leaves and whistling “Jingle Bells.” Ralph found whistling happy tunes helped these little jobs go faster.

Pastor O‘Donnell happened by and spotted him. “Hi Ralph,” the pastor called up. “When you’re done with that, would you do me a favor? Since you’ve already got the ladder out, would you mind replacing the Advent banners behind the altar with the ‘Christ is Born’ banners? When the women’s group took down the Christmas decorations, they forgot to do that.”

“Sure,” Ralph said. “Where are the new banners?”

“With the seasonal items in the cellar under the social hall,” O’Donnell told him.

So when Ralph finished with the rain gutters, he put the ladder in the sanctuary and went to the cellar.

Unfortunately, when he flipped the switch at the top of the cellar stairs, the single fluorescent light failed to come on. Ralph knew the church had replacement fluorescent tubes, but they were stored, perhaps unwisely, in the cellar. The two thin windows in the cellar were caked with so much dirt that it was nearly cave dark down there without the overhead light. So Ralph went to get the flashlight from the kitchen off the social hall.

As he opened the door to the cupboard where the flashlight was kept, it wobbled and creaked. Ralph discovered the screws of the top hinge had worked their way well out of the wood. The hinge was on the verge of pulling loose. Not wanting to leave the door in such precarious shape, Ralph got his screwdriver from the car and tightened the screws, again whistling “Jingle Bells” as he worked.

That task finished, Ralph got the flashlight and headed back to the cellar. Unfortunately, he soon discovered the batteries were dead. He sighed, wondering what sin he had committed against light that it seemed to be conspiring against him. He went to the office and got replacement batteries from Tammy.

With the flashlight now operational, Ralph was able to descend into the dark, cluttered cellar with the ladder and locate the spare fluorescent tubes. He set the ladder up and replaced the tube in the overhead fixture, again whistling “Jingle Bells” but with a slightly less bouncy cadence. Ten minutes later, the cellar again had light.

Finishing another task restored Ralph’s spirits. He turned to where the boxes of seasonal items were kept. And his spirits sank. When the women’s group had un-decorated the church after Christmas, they apparently just piled all the decorations in a jumble on top of the boxes. Ralph could have just tossed the whole lot aside to get to the banner, but he knew that pile of lights, wreathes, fake holly boughs and bows would somehow morph over the next eleven months into a tangled mass that would induce headaches when it came time to decorate next Christmas.

So Ralph sorted the decorations and returned them to the empty boxes from which they came. He even relabeled the boxes to indicate which decorations were in each. It was a time consuming task, but “Jingle Bells” once again helped keep Ralph’s spirits up…though a passerby might have mistakenly identified the tune as a funeral dirge the way Ralph was now whistling.

Finally Ralph finished the job by taping the boxes securely shut and stacking them. And at that moment Tammy appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Ralph,” she said. “Could you give me a ride to the bank on the way home? I have to deposit the offering from Christmas Eve.”

“Sure,” Ralph responded. “Let me just hang this banner for the pastor.”

“It’s almost five,” Tammy said. “I want to get there before they close so the deposit goes in before the end of the year.”

“Okay,” Ralph said, though he was growing a little frustrated. “I guess the banner can wait until tomorrow.” So he returned the ladder to its proper location in the storage closet and took his wife to the bank.

Pastor Henry O’Donnell had been on the phone in his office with the door closed when Tammy left. She didn’t like to disturb him in that situation in case he was on a delicate call with a troubled or ill parishioner. As it happened, this time he was arguing with a customer support representative in India about the return of an ill fitting Christmas sweater he had purchased for his wife online. When he finally got the details of the transaction arranged, he emerged from the office to find Tammy gone.

Being the last one at the church that day, Henry made the rounds to lock up. When he went to lock the sanctuary, though, he was surprised to find the Advent banners still hanging behind the altar. “Ralph was supposed to change those,” he said to the empty room. But there they were, unchanged. So Henry got the ladder out of the storage closet, went to the cellar, clicked on the light, retrieved the replacement banners from the neatly organized boxes of seasonal decor, and hung them himself, grumbling the whole time. It only took a few minutes, but Henry was anxious to get home to watch a favorite TV show, so instead of returning the ladder to the storage closet he stuck it in a nook behind the sanctuary and tossed the Advent banners on top of the stack of boxes in the cellar.

“Was that so hard?” Pastor O’Donnell thought as he hurried to his car. “Why do I always have to do everything around here myself?” Then he reminded himself that Ralph was just a volunteer and Henry shouldn’t begrudge him the things he didn’t do.

(c) 2007 Douglas J. Eboch