Except for a steady breeze, the Hart County countryside was quiet Sunday. I made my way to the Airline community. Not much has changed. Airline Elementary School — a motley collection of brick buildings — was closed. A bigger elementary school nearby had long since swallowed up its students.

The white house with the yellow trim came into view just as I rounded a corner on a two-lane road. This was the home of my old friend, Talmadge Phillips, who died last week. I wrote a column about him, which appeared in this space seven days ago. I talked about what “Mr. Tal” meant to me.

What I did not write about, and what struck me at his funeral in a lovely country church, was the simplicity that marked this man’s life. It was a simplicity that has much to say about how we live today and about the difficult economic times we face.

Mr. Tal was born in 1913. He had many siblings, a wife, Drucilla, but no children. He was a farmer and a security guard. He was a member of Cross Roads Baptist Church, considered one of the most beautiful country churches in Georgia when it was built in the early 1900s.

At that church, Mr. Tal was a trustee and a member of the Jule Weldon Sunday school class. He almost never missed its meetings.

When he married Drucilla, he had $5 in his pocket. But he had his farm, which he made his living from. When first married, Mr. Tal and Drucilla gathered eggs from their hens and took them to a nearby store, where they received groceries in return.

The house that Mr. Tal and Drucilla lived in — the one with the white paint and yellow trim — measures all of 940 square feet. There are five rooms. A small front room, two small bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen.

Shade trees surround the home. A rose bush anchors one corner of the front porch, which is furnished with two metal chairs and a wide swing. A rubber “WECOME” mat rests at the front door.

When I visited the place Sunday, Mr. Tal’s truck was still parked in the woodshed. As was his four-wheeler, perhaps his only indulgence. As Mr. Tal got older, he used the vehicle to tour his farm. Sally, his dog, sat in a cardboard box Mr. Tal attached to the front of the four-wheeler.

By all accounts at Mr. Tal’s funeral, he went to his reward a contented man. He loved his wife and missed her. Mr. Tal loved his Lord and once told his pastor that the pine chair beside his bed was where Jesus sat when he talked to him.

Mr. Tal’s faith was the stuff of bedrock, and so was his life. He believed in the basics; he found happiness in the simple things.

What a fine lesson for us all. Especially these days.