We were on
our way back to Fayetteville NC from Augusta, Georgia where we sang to about
700 people in the First Baptist Church when our old bus broke down along I-95
somewhere in South Carolina. Our piano player Earl Britt said,” the only thing
I know to do is to start praying.”
We are on
our knees when there is a knock on the side of the bus. Here is an elderly
gentleman with a straw hat, white shirt and bib overalls and a sports jacket.
He says you boys a quartet? Now we’ve
got letters on the side of the bus that
are three feet high that say Masters Quartet. I chuckled and said Yes Sir. He says would you boys be able to sing
tonight? I was just getting ready to
tell him no, when my younger brother Tommy jerked me out of the way and says.
“Yes sir we will but we can’t go, our bus broke down.”
He says,
“That’s no problem, I can be back in about 15 minutes with some trucks to take
you and your equipment to my house. In about twenty minutes he came back with
two Ford Stake trucks. a station wagon and a wrecker.I told the wrecker driver
that we didn’t have any money and to leave the bus be.
We all pile
in the trucks and station wagon and go to the preacher’s house which is out n the
country about 30 miles from the interstate. When we arrive his wife has dinner
ready for us. The food was set up on two long tables. We finish eating and
watch a little TV.
What we
didn’t know was that this preacher, his wife and two children all had separate
telephone lines and were calling people and telling them to be at the church at
6:30.
We learn
that Pastor Reed had been a preacher for an Assembly of God church in Indiana.
When his parents died he had come to South Carolina to live on their farm. When
the pastor of the local Presbyterian church died he was asked if he would fill
in. He’s been filling in for several years now.
When we get
to this old wooden church in the middle of a tobacco field it is packed. After
singing about five songs the preacher tells us to go back to where the
refreshments are as he is going to take up a love offering for us. After what
happened at the Baptist church I’m kind of leery and I stand by the door.
When the
ushers come forward with the plates he looks over the podium and says ,“that
ain’t goner work…these boys sang at a big Baptist church in Augusta and they
got $50…that ain’t happenin here. Now
I’m gonna send these ushers back out and when they come back if these plates
aren’t full I’m gonna tell what I know
and who I know it on.”
They finish
the collection and call us back out and we sing a little more and the last song
we did was Sinner Saved by Grace. We
use that at our altar call.
As the
preacher is praying this little blonde haired girl comes running down the aisle
to ask God to save her. She had run away from home and had been gone for some time
and had returned home and asked her mommy and daddy to forgive her and they
said if God has forgiven you we will. And that is why she was running to the
altar to ask God to forgive her and become her Savior.
After all
was said and done our piano player says to me, “Is that our bus I hear running
outside?” I look out the door and there
is the wrecker driver standing by our bus in greasy overalls with his hat in
his hand.
I say, “you
fixed it.” He says, “Yep.”
“ How much
do we owe you?” “You owe us nothing.”
“What do you
mean?”
He says,
“that little girl who just went to the altar is my daughter. She wouldn’t have
come if y’all hadn’t been here tonight.”
I asked him
what was wrong with our bus and he says all the bolts on the fly wheel had
fallen out and were laying in the dust pan.
“ Wait a
minute. I’m mechanic enough to know that bolts don’t fall out of a flywheel,
especially on a bus. They have locking caps on them and they don’t fall out,
you have to drill them out.”He says,
“Every one of them was laying in the pan and not a threat on anyone of
them was torn off. God backed the bolts
out of that flywheel so you would be here so my daughter would hear the singing
and your testimony that you brought here tonight.”
As we drove
home I opened the envelope containing our love offering. We counted out coins and small bills totaling
$ 1200. .
About four
months later we got a phone call from Preacher Reed who said they were trying
to raise money to build a new church. He wanted a gospel sing and would we
help. We got three and four other groups we knew and we drove to South Carolina
to sing in the middle of a football field standing on a flatbed trailer. That
night they raised over $100,000.
They built
the church and invited us back to sing at their first service . When we pulled
up in front of the church there was a big piece of marble block on the
Northeast corner of the building. Inscribed on that block was Masters Quartet
and they listed all ten names in our group, the four singers, the five
musicians, and our bus driver.
We kept in
touch over the years and we went back and sang at Preacher Reed’s funeral.
He had filled in for 15 years.
Lee Bissette
Fayetteville,
North Carolina
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