Tag: family

The Good Samaritans

“Jesus answered, “…a man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when robbers attacked him,…leaving him half dead….

But a Samaritan who was traveling that way…saw him, his heart was filled with pity. He went over to him, poured oil and wine on his wounds and bandaged them; then he put the man on his own animal and took him to an inn, where he took care of him.” Luke 10:30,33,34

Before I settled down to marry my husband and have my three girls, I was a restless young woman moving from place to place and job to job. I was in my early twenties during those years, and living in Atlanta GA.

I had moved there when I was nineteen to learn photography at an art school. It was located near Pershing Point, so my parents helped me find a nearby place. As it turned out I lived between where “Gone With The Wind” was written and Piedmont Park. l mention this because those two places were at opposite ends of polarizing cultures at that time if ever there was.

The book was written in a peaceful quiet neighborhood. Piedmont Park at that time, was ran over with dirty hippies that camped there, smoked dope, and dealt drugs out in the open. Small children ran around with little direction. That was the summer of 1971. About a year later the Atlanta police cracked down and cleared the Park out.

I bought dope there at the Park while finishing my year of study. After that I worked in photo labs around Atlanta and moved often to be closer to work. And I continued my habit of smoking dope. All that put me in the company of some people who didn’t have my nor their own best interests in mind.

By the Spring of 1975 I realized I could no longer continue in that lifestyle. I was seeking a new direction for my life. I began seeking God’s presence in my life like I had experienced in my childhood.

From that desire I found a local church that was warm and friendly from the start. During that same time, I also was trying to get into a branch of the military but had failed the first round of testing. My math skills were lacking to say the least.

On my life’s horizon came two women that were a great help to me during that time. The first was my sister Deena who had left a federal job in D.C. to move to Atlanta a year earlier. Deena was much more of a career person than I’ve ever been. She gave me advice and encouraged me to keep trying to join the military that year.

The other woman came out from a large crowd of friendly people at my church and showed an interest in me. We had little in common, but I appreciated her friendship. On a Sunday afternoon after having lunch together at my apartment she turned our conversation to the state of my spiritual life.

That’s when God used a sledgehammer to break the hardness of my heart. In between crying I made it clear enough that my whole life was still pretty much a mess. I was still smoking dope and being “on the fence” over everything in my life.

My friend allowed the Holy Spirit to guide her and I sensed that. Otherwise, I would’ve insisted she leave immediately. After all, I had a nice veneer of an organized Spiritual life going on. But that’s all it was, and I knew it. It was time to jump off the “fence” and make a commitment to be a Christ follower.

I flushed all the dope I had in my apt and then we prayed. After that we talked about my wanting to join the military. I knew my friend was a college student but hadn’t ask what her major was.

I had centered much of my life around me, myself, and I back then and showed little interest in getting to know others on an in-depth relationship.

It was that day when she told me she had left her steady job, worked a plan out with her mother to help raise her daughter. And had moved closer to Georgia Tech University to pursue some type of a math degree. Soon she would be graduating and returning to get her child to pursue a new career plan.

We only knew each other for a few weeks at best. But before graduating, she wrote a full sheet of simple math formulas that I read and practiced over and over. By late Summer I went into the Air Force Recruiting station and passed their tests with above average abilities in understanding basic schematics, math, and comprehension skills.

I entered the Air Force on a delayed enlistment plan in 1976. By 1978 I had met and married another Air Force member, Jeffrey Jordan. We have three daughters that we’re very proud of.

Let Go and Let God

“The Lord has broken through my enemies before me like a breaking flood.”         2 Samuel 5:20

“What good can come of this situation?” Is a question most of us have asked from time to time. We find ourselves in a negative situation where there seems to be no good answer. And you may be feeling anxious about it. Figuratively speaking, you’re starting to think that the walls are closing in on you.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Don’t let your emotions run ahead of your decision making. Stay calm, and breath deeply. And let some good old common sense come into your mind. Or in other words: Let go and let God do His work in the situation.

My maternal grandpa was born in a chaotic situation when good choices were few and far between. Even in spite of that, I believe God’s hand was in it, and the best choice was made.

His mother was from one of the most rural areas of Western North Carolina. And it still is. Few outsiders travel to those areas. An outsider brings suspicion on him or herself. I know because I’ve gone looking for headstones throughout WNC. And I have been asked what I was doing there even with NC plates and having a pronounced WNC southern accent.

Back to my grandfather. His entire life story could be summed up in that one phrase, “Let go and let God do His work in this situation.” Through some effort I’ve been able to weave together the highlights of his life. And, in reading it you’ll see what I’m talking about.

First, he is the only grandpa I knew in my growing up years. My Dad’s dad died of a massive heart attack when my dad turned thirteen years old. He was in his forties and had three of his four children still at home. My paternal grandmother immediately started working in the Knoxville, TN school cafeteria. Not much time to grieve back then. All of that happened during the Great Depression.

My maternal grandfather was born to a fifteen-year-old unmarried girl. She was not quite a woman, but no child either. My math tells me she was pregnant at fourteen and turned fifteen a few months before my grandpa was born. She died a few years later giving birth to her second child, also a son, also illegitimate.

My grandpa’s dad was in his early twenties when the teenage girl from down the road delivered his first child, in 1898. He had just started operating the only grocery store in that whole community. That’s where most likely the two met. Was their quick union consensual? I don’t know. All I know is that my grandpa’s dad rejected his first born and despised the ground his son walked on. That I know to be a fact.

My grandpa’s dad did marry later and had one son. I have a picture of that man and he looks a lot like my grandpa. The resemblance between the two is striking and leaves no doubt that they were brothers, right down to both being small frame wiry looking men. Both had fair skin, slicked back trimmed blond hair, that framed narrow faces.  The eye set, what I call “the look” is the same on both men.

My grandpa, as a child moved from house to house in that community until he reached twelve years of age. He never talked about his childhood but my mother and her sister have shared some memories of their childhood and what they remembered being told about their parents childhoods.

The 1900 Census shows grandpa’s teenage mother living with her parents, but no mention of a boy toddler in the home. The 1910 Census shows him living with his paternal grandmother who had been widowed just prior to that. Then he was sent across the state line to another relative’s farm to pick peaches in Georgia. From there he went to Rome, GA to the Berry’s School for orphaned children where he learned a trade.

Then, in 1917 he left Berry’s School to enter the Navy. Berry College’s archival department had his name on their attendance roll. It doesn’t look like he graduated but being older he just left.

From there Grandpa caught the train to Atlanta and went straight into the Navy. He sailed for France on a frigate. The early idea of that type of ship was that most everyone was a machinist of some type or other. There were guns on the larger ships that required maintenance, ships engines required maintenance, etc. I have a copy of his discharge papers that shows all his assignments.

Experiencing Rejection Twice

After WWI he comes back to the rural community that he was born in. The place where he was rejected in. The place where his dad still ran the only store there. The place where he didn’t have much of a chance at attending school, if any at all.

That was the place where, in his early childhood he had to go from house to house wondering if he could just stay there long enough to work during the Spring planting season. Or the harvesting season. Or the cold Winter season. And who or where did he get a coat from when it snowed? And we usually have a few snowfalls here in WNC every Winter.

Where did this boy get clothes? And shoes for those cold months? Who took care of him when he gashed his knee wide opened? Did any maternal woman give him just one reassuring hug during those early years? Who showed him how to be a responsible man? Which, he did grow up to become very responsible.

My big question is “Why do we always go back to where we’ve experienced the most pain in our lives? What good can come of that?” I’ve done that too and I don’t have any great nor even a good answer to this question.

If you are thinking closure, then maybe you’re not old enough to know the difference between that or just trying to move on with life. If closure were a creature it would be the most elusive living thing on Earth to catch. There is no trap strong enough or quick enough to catch closure. So, let’s all agree to stop trying to catch it.

Well, from there grandpa moves to the nearest bustling community and meets my granny. They married in the early nineteen twenties. I don’t know the exact year, but my mother was born in nineteen twenty-six, she had two older brothers and one younger sister. They attended a Calvary style church that was in walking distance all of my mother’s growing up years.

About 1930 grandpa almost died from falling off an elevated platform onto a concrete floor at a factory he worked at. In falling he cracked his skull open and had “brain bleed.”

The hospital must’ve been close by because he survived a rare operation. Most people with head injuries died back then before they could get to a doctor. Grandpa’s scalp was sliced open and the skin peeled back. Then, the doctor screwed a metal plate over the crack. Of course, this was all done under anesthesia or morphine induced sleep.

Well, long story short, my grandparents went back to farming near the community my granny was from. They both grew up farming and knew it the best. Plus, the metal plate caused my grandpa to have seizures, so he never worked a regular job nor ever drove after that surgery.

They worked their way into owning fifteen acres of wooded farmland that included a livable house. They closed in a “dog trot” back porch and turned it into an indoor bathroom in 1946. My mother was already married to my dad by that time.

Their two sons joined the Navy during WWII. Both came home from the war, quickly married, and moved off. My mother and her sister worked in the naval yard in Panama City, FL as riveters during some of WWII. Then, they attended Knoxville Business school. It was in Knoxville that they met their future husbands, one being my dad.

My parents settled down about fifty miles East of my grandparents in Asheville, NC. By then they had all of us five kids. A few years later my dad convinced my mother to quit her steady factory job and try an idea he had about getting into the souvenir business near the Cherokee Indian Reservation. That one idea made them millionaires several times over.

My grandparents’ four children had seventeen children, collectively speaking. Of those seventeen; three became teachers or connected to Univ. of TN. One obtained her PhD. Another cousin joined the Navy and made Chief Petty Officer within thirteen years. I’m happy to say that all of us siblings and cousins became the “Salt of the Earth” type of people.

It’s always best to let go and let God takeover our problems.  Life is too short to do otherwise.

Living The American Dream

Living The American Dream is a “rags-to-riches” story about my parents and how they became millionaires. It all started in about 1963 as we were traveling to my grandparents’ house in Murphy NC.

We (my parents with their five children) lived about 60 miles east of Murphy. So to get to their house for a day of fun and good eating, we had to pass through the Eastern Band of The Cherokee Indian Reservation. We rarely stopped in Cherokee, but in the summer of 1963 we did. It was a brief stop but a life-turning decision was made during that stop-over.

My dad wanted my mom to talk with one of the gift shop owners about how could they operate a gift shop also. I remember being told not to get out of the car for any reason. I was about 11 yrs old at the time and I and my siblings obeyed our parents.

By the next year we had moved to the outskirts of then “Old Cherokee” and opened up a gift shop. It was located on US19, across the river from Frontier Land. By 1967 dad realized that the “big money” he was hoping for was in whole-selling souvenirs. So my parents switched from running two retail businesses to strictly selling wholesale.

There wasn’t much to risk in them switching to becoming “middle man” sales people. My two oldest siblings had graduated high school and had left home. And all that my parents owned at the time was a single-wide trailer and two very used cars.

If you would like to know “the rest of the story” then please buy my book here. I’ll be glad to sign a copy of my parents rags-to-riches story for you. Reading this might inspire you to reach what seems like an impossible goal to reach, as well.

I’m asking $10.00 plus $3.00 shipping =$13.00 per book.

 

How I Stopped Stuttering

On the most part I was a quiet child growing up. Even my mother would often comment that it was hard to know whether I was in the house or out in the yard because I rarely spoke. That’s probably because I stuttered as a child and didn’t like to speak. Also, I’m the youngest of my parents five children so I always had my two older sisters to figure out what I was saying.

Both my parents worked so I was left in the care of my two older sisters during summers and after school. We three did all the housework and laundry. Plus, they took on the task of interpreting for me to our parents or just went ahead and got me whatever I needed.  That’s the way it worked for me up until I entered the third grade.

My teacher that year was Mrs. Allison, who had taught well beyond her retirement time. I remember her having a complete head of white hair and my parents wondering how she was going to keep up with us kids on the sprawling playground.  I don’t think they figured in her persona in their equation on that though.

Mrs. Allison truly was grandmotherly to us kids, which we seemed to love so we naturally obeyed her.  After recess she always read or told us a story while we wound down from play time, resting our heads on our desks.

I started school in 1958, so by this time it was the early sixties. Back then, teachers could give a random hug to a young child if they thought that would cheer the youngster up some. It was a different time back then.

Long story short, it took Mrs. Allison most all that year to get me to stop stuttering. She did this by getting me to slow my speech pattern down during class reading time. Standing beside me, she usually rested one of her large hands across my shoulders, while covering my designated sentence with her other hand until I could only pronounce one word at a time.  Which, I guess I hadn’t been doing prior to that year. Still today I’m a scan reader. I just want to know the basic facts of the story, issue or the situation at hand.

I’m certain that I never stuttered after that year. I remembered giving oral book reports and answering questions in class all through the rest of my formal education. That confidence I showed didn’t happen instantaneous, of course. But, over time I overcame my shyness and strengthened my public speaking skills enough to do as well as any other child in school.