A TRIBUTE TO MY GREAT UNCLE LARRY

I think often about the people in my family who have passed on, but who have left their mark on me and on their community. Among these was my great uncle, Larry Barrett. He left this life to meet his maker five years ago today, May 2, 2018. The town of Columbia will never be the same. When you live in a small town there is an atmosphere of everybody knows everybody. What I have come to discover is that it doesn't stay within one small town. It spills over into the neighboring towns as well. A lot of people knew Uncle Larry. He is missed by many.

Uncle Larry started Barrett's Garden Center in Columbia in the late 1970s. He had this business for three and a half decades. A while back I wrote about my great grandmother who I called Granny. She worked for him at his garden center. Like her, he also had a lot of knowledge when it came to plants. He knew them like the back of his hand. At his funeral he was described as being a "Walking Encyclopedia." That's just what he was. I remember going by the garden center as a small child. My interest was primarily in the fruit trees. My family bought a few fruit trees from his garden center while we were building our house in the early 2000s. My favorite fruit at the time was the peach. I don't know whether or not the peach is still my favorite fruit, but I love fresh fruit in general. Whenever we would stop by Uncle Larry's garden center, the fruit trees were always the first place I would go, because I wanted to see what was there.

For a long time Uncle Larry and Aunt Gloria lived right beside their garden center. Uncle Larry was a good man. He was a likeable person and he had a lot of friends. At the same time he had a ragging personality. He was very non pc and he didn't really care what people thought. What he especially enjoyed was making women blush.

Yet, if you knew Uncle Larry you would want for him to rag you. His ragging you was his way of telling you that he liked you. If he didn't rag you, then he probably didn't like you. He always had a good comeback for everybody. For example, not long after he and Aunt Gloria had moved into their house by the garden center, he was laying tile in his kitchen. He had the wheelbarrow in the kitchen with the concrete mix.

His aunt happened to be visiting while he was working on it and she asked him why he had that wheelbarrow in the kitchen. Uncle Larry replied that it was because he couldn't get the tractor into the kitchen. That's one of those classic Uncle Larry comebacks that we will always remember.

My Dad always enjoyed joking with Uncle Larry. Dad worked at the garden center sometimes as a teenager. Uncle Larry was a smoker. On one occasion he was burning some trash in a barrel and my Dad came up to him and said, "Hey Larry, why don't you stick your head in there and breathe in a bunch of that smoke? Instead of spending all that money on cigarettes, why don't you get a week's worth of it now?" Uncle Larry probably had a comeback, because he always did.

My Dad tells about a dream that he had about Uncle Larry one night. In the dream Dad was riding with Uncle Larry in an ATV in Africa Safari when they spotted this creature that was part mountain lion and part elk. It started to attack them and so Dad pulled out his gun and shot it in the head. Uncle Larry was upset with Dad because he had messed up the mount. When Dad told Uncle Larry about the dream later on, Uncle Larry said, "Well, why did you shoot it in the head?"

When I was a kid my parents invited Uncle Larry and Aunt Gloria to the house for a meal. At the meal I asked what all had cholesterol in it. Aunt Gloria started to name a few things, but Uncle Larry soon cut her off saying, "Anything that's good!"

One time he came home and told his daughter that he had bought her a 5 speed red convertible. He told her, "Here are the keys!" He handed them to her and told her that it was in the garage. When she went to the garage, she saw that it was a mower.

Uncle Larry kept this garden center for three and a half decades. In the spot where he opened his garden center there was once a drive in movie theater. Uncle Larry bought many of his plants in the Mobile area. He often said that the difference between having a plant nursery and being a dairy farmer was that a cow will go get water. When the Wal-Mart supercenter first opened in Columbia in 2003, Uncle Larry was not happy about it because it competed with his business. I remember Dad saying that it was a mistake to tell Uncle Larry, "Well, I gotta go! I gotta go to Wal-Mart!" You would be there for another hour because Uncle Larry was going to tell you how he felt about it.

Uncle Larry knew his plants, and he knew how to take good care of them. He finally sold his business and moved out to the Goss Community to a very nice location. In addition to his love for plants, Uncle Larry was also a very avid hunter. He was a skilled marksman and he enjoyed going on hunting trips in Africa. Uncle Larry was diagnosed with cancer, but the fact that he had cancer did not stop him from taking one last hunting trip to Africa in 2017. I was with him in the spring of 2018 just weeks before he died, when his zebra mount arrived. He was very proud of that mount. He also had a trophy room in his outside shop which was full of his mounts.

I sat with Uncle Larry some days while he was dying with cancer. Many days he was depressed. Yet, there were other days that he was in good spirits. I told him one day that he was looking good to which he retorted, "That was never the problem!"

Just a few months before his passing he confessed Jesus Christ as His Lord and Savior. Only a couple of weeks before Uncle Larry's death, his pastor, Brother Mark McArthur, wanted to reaffirm that Uncle Larry was, in fact, saved. Uncle Larry replied by telling Brother Mark that he was saved, but he then asked how he could be saved and yet still be so angry at certain politicians.

Laughing Brother Mark replied, "Well Mr. Larry, I think that's probably a pretty good indication that you are saved! I don't think that you would care if you weren't!"

Uncle Larry passed away on May 2, 2018. I remember going by his house after the funeral. The hospital bed which he had been confined to was out in the garage. I remember seeing that and feeling a sense of relief because I knew that he would never need that hospital bed again. He was more free than he had ever been. He's in Heaven. He's probably seen the creature that my Dad dreamed about, and this time he's going to get his mount! He's enjoying his mother's pies and biscuits once again! Most importantly, though, he is in the presence of His Savior for eternity. I will see him again one day!

I got a possession of Uncle Larry's after he died. It was a Civil War sword that he had gotten from his uncle out in Arizona. It is a Union sword. Part of the hilt is broken and the leather strap is burned away. While it needs some work done on it in order to be restored, to me it is a valuable antique. It was the shed at my great grandmother's place.

After Uncle Larry died, I asked Papaw, my grandfather, if it was still up there. I mainly asked out of curiosity, but he asked me if I wanted it. I told him that I wasn't going to stand in somebody else's way if they wanted it, but I would take it if nobody else wanted it. So I got it. It is a valuable antique, but it is that in part because it reminds me of Uncle Larry.

Uncle Larry is missed. I often visit his wife, Aunt Gloria. She tells me stories about him, Granny, and the garden center. It's never been the same without him there. Yet, I look forward to the day when I see him in glory in a place where there is no cancer or diabetes. He's probably got a great garden, great mounts, and he's enjoying his mother's biscuits and pies again. Most importantly, he is in the presence of his Savior. May 2 is the anniversary of his death. Therefore, I wanted to honor him this weekend.

In Christ