Meeting In The Air

by Bob Bilyeu, producer of Old Country Church

 
February 7, 2010 was, undoubtedly,  the most eventful day of  Earl Bradford’s life.  He got up in the morning and went fishing off South Padre Island.  After catching a bunch of fish, he went back home to get cleaned up so he and his wife, Oleta, could hear a big gospel singing concert.  When the concert was over he went back home, lay down in his bed and died.

When I heard the news the next morning, memories came flooding back.  The year was 1950, I was twelve years old and about ready to graduate from the eighth grade.  I went to church with Earl who had  just married Oleta while she was still in high school.  Earl had heard about a talent contest in the next town north and after hearing me sing and try to play a guitar in church, he decided that I should enter.

My folks didn’t have a car at the time, so Earl picked me up, lent me his guitar, and he, Oleta and I set off
for the Highlandville, Missouri, high school gymnasium. We were running late and Earl drove over ninety miles an hour on the way up.  My prayer life went into high gear. Somehow we made it there alive and when my turn came to sing, I stood up and in my best soprano voice sang “There’s a Red Light Ahead of You My Brother.”  When everyone had performed, three were called back for the final round and I was one of the three.  That was great, except I really didn’t know how to play any other song. 

 
Earl suggested that “Meeting in the Air” was really easy to play and that if I would sing really loud, nobody would notice any problems with the guitar.  So, I braved my way up, sang as loud as I could, missing several two-chords and a diminished chord that I had forgotten was there. 

Clearly, the best act there was the Mabe trio, later to be Branson’s Baldnobbers, but when the results came in I was announced as the winner.  To this day, I’m sure that Bob Mabe somehow engineered my winning the first prize of fifteen dollars.  My, that fifteen dollars was a lot of money.  When I put that with the money I had earned selling Grit papers, I was able to buy a new suit for my eighth grade graduation.

Earl, you were an encourager, a mentor, and a friend even if you did marry Oleta when you knew I had a crush on her.  I know she was five years older than I, but then you were a little older than she was.

When I heard the news about Earl’s home-going, I couldn’t help but remember the chorus of the song he suggested:

Oh there’s going to be a meeting in the air,

In that sweet, sweet bye and bye,

And oh, I want to meet you over there

In that land beyond the sky.

Such singing we will hear, never heard by mortal ear

Will be glorious, I do declare.

And God’s own son will be the leading one

At that meeting in the air.