Wagon Builder

When I first met Jim, I figured we came from two different worlds.  In a way, we had.  As an excited, college graduate I was beginning a three year ministry assignment as the new chaplain at Dollywood.  Jim was a Mennonite widower who built wagons at Dollywood’s wagon shop, played piano for the park’s Sunday worship service and cared for his mother at his home in the mountains. 

As the new chaplain, I came to the park dressed in khaki’s and golf shirts, still struggling to move out of my college wardrobe of shorts and t-shirts.  Jim came dressed in buttoned-up, blue jean overalls covered in wood shavings.  He wore a hand woven straw hat over his long white hair and carried a beard down to his navel. 

In spite of our differences Jim and I became fast friends.  I quickly learned to appreciate his piano abilities as we led worship together.  When Kenneth, our greeter at the old country church, began ringing the church bell, Jim casually strolled out of the wagon shop, up the aisle, passed the park guests, placed his straw hat on top of the piano, and sat down on the bench. 

Then, he began the prelude, a rousing mix of honky-tonk rhythms and gospel melodies.  When our music leader, a wonderful woman named Cricket, announced the hymn, Jim would give a run up the octaves as a lead in.  Unless, of course, the key he had chosen had too many broken strings.  He would stop his run, say, “hold on a minute” to Cricket, and then change keys and start over. 

Jim and I soon began long conversations around the wagon shop.  He told me about learning the wagon building trade as an apprentice to an Amish farmer in Middle Tennessee.  Jim had lost his young wife just a few years after marriage and needed something to give direction to his life.  This was also the time he began playing piano for several groups around the local honky-tonks.  Who could have ever imagined these two skills preparing someone for a career at a theme park?

During those talks in the wagon shop, I loved watching children come into the building.  You see, Jim looked just like Santa Claus.  Children walked in, jaws dropped and stared.  Jim would quietly invite them over and give them a candy cane out of his front, overall pocket with a quiet, knowing expression shared between them.  During the Christmas season, children would visit the park Santa, but always have their parents bring them by the wagon shop to see the “real” Santa. 

Eventually, Jim invited me to visit his mother in their home in the mountains.  The rustic house had farming equipment everywhere, a pasture in the back with a few livestock, and chairs on the front porch for sitting.  As we sat there, talking and listening, he told me about the copperhead snake that kissed his hand. 

Jim had been out in the shed pulling jars down for canning.  He reached up to the top shelf and felt this cold, wet sensation.  He silently removed his hand and watched the snake slither out the top, onto the roof, and back into the woods. I asked, “Jim, weren’t you afraid?”  “Nah,” he said with a mischievous smile, “she was just sayin’ hello!” 

A few years after we left Dollywood to attend Seminary, I heard the heart breaking news of Jim’s death.  I grieved with the rest of the Dollywood family over the world’s loss of this quiet, gentle follower of Jesus. 

These days, if you go into the wagon shop up in Craftsman Valley, you will find an old 8x10 picture in a rugged frame hanging on a wooden post.  Jim Franklin sits in his overalls, hat and long beard building a wagon wheel.  Thousands of guests pass it every day – never aware of the picture’s testimony to one man’s humble faith, gentle spirit, and profound grace.  I hope one day you and your family will find it and be reminded how one unassuming life given in service and faith to the world matters to God.