The Window

In the dark corner of a basement in a house in Wisconsin sits a long narrow storm window. Years ago, it was faithfully installed each autumn to protect against the cold winter winds to come. Then when spring warmed the earth and air, it was taken down again and in its place went a screen to let in the fresh breezes. The cycle repeated itself year after year until finally the owners bought new combination storm and screen windows that would never need changing.

Now the window sits, gathering dust so that the frame and glass are a uniform gray, blending into the dimness of the basement corner. Old and useless, it is an anachronism in a modern world of the quick and easy. Taking up space. Might just as well throw it away. Or give it away.

The church bulletin on Sunday says the youth group is going to Appalachia this summer to fix up homes for poor folks there. Asking for donations of money and tools and building materials – new or used.

Up from the basement comes the old storm window, oddly proportioned, skinny, not like the others. Loaded into a car and then transferred to a truck; stuffed in a corner again. Into the truck come more supplies; two-by-fours, plywood, new windows, trim stock, concrete block and paint. Then a long lurching journey; beginning on the broad interstate highway in Wisconsin and ending on a twisted, narrow mountain road in West Virginia. The supplies are unloaded, sorted and stacked; new stuff here, old stuff there. The old window now sits outside an old school that is temporary home to seventy teenagers and a few adults. Tomorrow work will begin.

Tomorrow comes and six Wisconsinites drive about a mile out of town, turn right to go over the bridge and then through the long narrow tunnel under the railroad tracks. The road is one lane, gravel, and it winds up the side of the mountain. Ten minutes later there’s a driveway that enters the road at a crazy angle. They have to back up the drive, over a rock to get the house – Homer’s house.

Homer, his wife Elizabeth, and James, their son, live on the side of a mountain. They can sit on the open front porch of their home and look out across the road and valley below to see the mountains on the other side. The mountains are tree covered and green; not jagged, but softly rounded. Back of the house, their mountain continues its rise. There’s a vegetable garden among the rocks and trees. Inside the house, there’s work to be done. The bedroom walls need to be framed out and insulated, and some windows need to be replaced. The floor in the corner is rotted out where the joists sit directly on the ground. And the back porch, closed in to contain the old washing machine, is falling down.

Wisconsin meets West Virginia on the porch.  “Mornin’.”  “Hi, I’m …” Names are exchanged, then smiles; some stare at the floor. A few questions are asked. Grade in school?  Age?  Siblings? And thoughts are whirling in the Midwesterners minds: (“How are we supposed to fix THAT!?”) “Well, we’d best get started…”

The crew wants to do everything right and to not intrude too much on the family.  (How do you not intrude when you’re ripping up the floor, knocking out windows and tearing down the entire back porch?) Can we make this twenty-eight inch window fit in a thirty inch opening? How will this seven foot high door fit in this six and a half foot high porch? What have we got that will brace up this floor. Where’s the square? Who’s got the pencil? Are we out of ice water already?

Days pass and the impossible gets done. The walls are insulated, new windows are in place and the floor is once again solid enough to walk on. The back porch is being framed in. It could use a window. “Homer, back at the school there’s this long skinny storm window.  How about we build it in right here, sideways, about so high?  You’ll be able to see the garden.”

“Whatever you-uns think is right. I surely appreciate it.”

So the window moves for the last time; up from the schoolhouse and into Homer’s back porch. Nailed in, caulked tight, and washed clean. The West Virginia sunlight streams in. You can see the beans and tomatoes out there in the garden

Homer smiles. God smiles.

“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

James 2:14-17 (ESV)

Appalachia Service Project, Summer 1987