A Common Man's Journey

By A.C. Oliver

This little volume was written by a common man who, looking back from an eight decade vantage point, and through the prism of God’s marvelous blessings bestowed, wanted to somehow be an instrument in God’s hand to help his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren in their own journey of faith—and to give them (and other readers) a glimpse (sometimes serious, sometimes humorous) at who he is—and how he got “here.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ketch Publishing
• Release date: Jan 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9780996995641

Book preview

A Common Man's Journey

A Common Man’s Journey

A Spiritual Memoir

Asa Calvin (A.C.) Oliver

Ketch Publishing

*COVER:

Barrett Place

2015, (Watercolor - 10x24 in.) by Tim Oliver

www.TimOliverArt.com

Copyright  2015

by Asa Calvin (A.C.) Oliver

All rights reserved. 

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means without written permission.

ISBN:  978-0-9891973-3-5

www.KetchPublishing.com

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Foreword  (by Gary Hyer)

Statements from Friends and Brothers

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Postscript

Dedication

This little volume was written by a common man who, looking back from an eight decade vantage point, and through the prism of God’s marvelous blessings bestowed, wanted to somehow be an instrument in God’s hand to help his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren in their own journey of faith—and to give them (and other readers) a glimpse (sometimes serious, sometimes humorous) at who he is—and how he got here.

I dedicate the volume to MLR—my lovely Ruth. My strong right arm.  Wife, Mom, Grandmommy, and Great Grandmommy extraordinaire.

Acknowledgments

I began writing this memoir of my spiritual life-journey at the insistent proposal of my eldest grandson, Troy.  He called it an autobiography and very respectfully, courteously, and yet always very adamantly encouraged me to write it down, Poppy!

I feel quite honored—and flattered—that Troy felt very deeply that I should write, and amazed that he thought that I could!  I will be for the rest of my life indebted to him for his perceptiveness, and for his gentle persuasion.  These writings would never have been done—except for Troy.

Troy is much loved, deeply appreciated, and held in highest esteem by his Poppy.

Another who has for some time encouraged me to write, and has been a true Barnabas to me during the writing of this memoir is a man who is my fellow graduate of Sunset School of Preaching, Gary Hyer.

Gary and I were classmates, fellow campaigners with teacher Richard Rogers during many a research week at SSOP, neighboring preachers (he preached in Williams, Arizona during my East Flagstaff Church time), correspondents during our missionary time (he in Papua-New Guinea), and has always accepted my calling him Little Brother with good grace (he is about twenty years my junior, and half a foot shorter), and as my comrade-in-arms in our spiritual battalion always says to me, Asa…I’ve got your back!

No one stands higher in my grateful esteem than Gary Hyer.

Much of what I have written here deals with the period of my journey spent in Nova Scotia CANADA.  More broadly speaking our time in CANADA was spent in three of the Maritime Provinces—Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick.

In recounting these times I relied very much on my own cherished memories of that time, but I also used my little Records journal to jog those memories.  One dear friend and brother—who was at the time we were there—a student in Maritime Christian College in Charlottetown, P. E. I. has been a tremendous help to me in proof reading, correcting my mistakes about the names of people and   places, and saving me from making mistakes about things Canadian—barely noticeable to an American, but glaring mistakes to a Maritimer!

Victor McCullough—teacher, preacher, pastor and friend—one to whom I give my respect—and my deep gratitude.  Salute!

My ‘in-house’ helper, encourager, and ‘right arm’ during the writing of this memoir—as well as for the previous sixty years—is the person to whom I refer as MLR—my lovely Ruth.  MLR has jogged my memory, listened patiently as I read try-out phrases, proof read what I so blithely wrote, and corrected punctuation—all cheerfully, and without any complaint.  She is irreplaceable to me.

My lovely Ruth is, and forever will be, the light of my life.

Finally, my four children, Terry, Mike, Tim, and Janie—having learned that I was writing a memoir—each had words of help and encouragement.  I am blessed by them, and am humbly grateful to them.  In a very true and noted way they and their marvelous mates—Carri, Marina, Missy, and Dave—are in a ‘class by themselves’. 

So cherished by their Dad.

Foreword

by Gary Hyer

Every life is a journey, but not every life follows a course that inspires others to want to follow it.  A Common Man’s Journey by Asa Calvin (A.C.) Oliver is a journey that inspires.  You will be touched not only by his life, but by his unique style of sharing his memories.  As you read, you will find yourself empathizing with him, as he journeys through life.  A. C. Oliver, a common man…without a doubt, but his journey anything but. 

A. C. developed his principles by following footprints worn deep into the track of his life, by Godly parents.  You can see it in his unpretentious description of his father and mother as he writes and talks of them.  A. C. is defined by these same qualities, and you will see them displayed throughout this book… sometimes quietly and passively, and other times forcefully and unyieldingly, but always without fanfare. 

Only one who has come face to face with the stark realities of a works oriented ‘faith system,’ can fully appreciate coming face to face with the God of all grace revealed in the Scriptures.  One can almost see his burden lifted as he sat in Ed Wharton’s Bible class on Galatians.  Sitting in that class, the veil was lifted and he saw the light of the glorious gospel. A. C. was touched by the biblical concept of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and for the first time glimpsed the meaning that it was for freedom that Christ set us free.

I met A. C. Oliver in 1968.  We were both enrolled in the February class at Sunset School of Preaching in Lubbock, Texas.  His background and maturity made him a natural leader, and his unassuming but confident character made him likeable and easy to trust.  He and his lovely wife Ruth were a perfect fit at Sunset. They worked hard, and taught their four children how to respect and honor others, and he and Ruth always chose to serve rather than be served.  Of the many blessings God bestowed on me at Sunset, (which are many) knowing A. C. Oliver is one of the richest.  He and I made several cross country trips together and I got to know the man well. 

Since graduation from Sunset School of Preaching in February of 1970 A. C. Oliver has served God in Flagstaff Arizona, Nova Scotia Canada, and Lubbock Texas.  His worship has been daily, (Rom. 12:1, 2) including expounding from the pulpit, on the first day of the week, his insights into the marvelous grace so lavishly bestowed upon us by the Father.  Wherever A. C. has been, life has driven him ever deeper into the merciful God whom he loves and serves.  In his own words it has been a Common Man’s Journey, however, when one reads it he is forced to declare: What a God!  What a man!  What a journey!

Gary Hyer

May 2015

Comments From

Friends and Brothers

From Edward Fudge:

"The author of this book sees himself as a ‘common man,’ an error I attribute to modesty on his part. The adjective ‘common’ can refer to quality (to describe something so ordinary it is unimpressive) or to quantity (to describe something found in such great number as to make it unremarkable). For reasons that become abundantly clear when you read these delightful memoirs, Asa Calvin (A. C.) Oliver is not a common man in either sense of the word.

Growing up on a cotton farm in West Texas, A. C. could never have imagined the life that awaited him, or the good works on two continents that God had prepared for him to do. A. C. was baptized at age 12, and he knew that he belonged to Jesus ever after. But the truth that shaped him the most, the truth that defined and motivated him throughout ministries in Arizona, Nova Scotia, and Texas, was not about his efforts or baptism or any religious group, but about a Savior in whom we trust and find our peace with God. Any person empowered and controlled by that truth is far from ‘common.’ I highly commend this book to you. It is uncommonly good!"

From Leroy Garrett:

(July 16, 2015)

Dr. Leroy Garrett passed away September 29, 2015

"There are three basic questions about life: What is our origin?  What is our mission on planet earth? What is our destiny?  The author of A Common Man's Journey appears to address these questions.  He seems to know where he came from, what he's up to in this world, and where he's going.  That does make it a spiritual memoir!"

From Victor McCullough:

A.C. Oliver came into my awareness when I was present at the South Range church the evening the mink interrupted the service.  And then in 1978, Maritime Christian College spring tour, A.C. and Ruth had two students, Paul Stevenson and myself, stay over-night at their home on Barrow St., Truro.   From there, it is a blur, but a development of a friendship that related to my wife, Amy, and myself being in River John when the Olivers were in Truro for their second round, and many letters back and forth and a few phone calls and then email – and finally a visit with them in Lubbock in 2010.   This book makes someone I feel like I always knew just more a part of my life.  A.C. affected things in the Maritimes and was affected by Maritime Canada’s believers.  And, as he makes very clear as he writes, Ruth was his constant companion, helper and quiet coach.  Great friends and a book of honest reflection.

Preface

My life has been blessed.  I have no doubt of that.  This is the story of one man, and his travels from childhood to mature manhood, and encompassing a journey that began in the innocence of the newborn, progressing to his awareness of a life being lived contrary to God and His way, of a deliberate decision to ignore that awareness, and finally to be shown—and to receive ecstatically—some understanding of the grace that God had extended all along.  It is the story of a man, a very ‘ordinary’ man—standing now in the twilight of life—looking back, recognizing the incredible series of blessings that have literally made the life of this ‘Common’ man.  I have given here my best memory of some of those blessings.

My story is ‘cradled’ in the loving arms of two magnificent people—my parents.  Loving, yes—and honest, strict, upright, hard working, poor, and God reverencing parents.

My story is ‘boxed’ in by a form of legalistic religion, and its institution that was confining, restricting, and exclusivist by it’s misunderstanding of the very Word that it was so honestly desirous of following.

My story is ‘crated’ by war.  Two wars really—World War II, and the Korean Conflict.  The first was the catalyst of a fevered patriotism that consumed my formative years, and the second was the catapult that hurled me out to face the reality of my patriotism and its fearful consequences to my spiritual being.

My story is the story of every man who has seen the nature of sin, has experienced the magnificent, gracious, healing of forgiveness, and has then placed his life on God’s altar as a living sacrifice of worshipful gratitude to Him.

My story is the story of a man who has had the love, confidence, support, encouragement, and faithfulness of a Godly wife, and four superbly loving, obedient, parent honoring, and Messiah Jesus following children.

I have attempted to write here my description of a portion of my own spiritual life-journey.  Memory always has its failures, and mine is somewhat faint in many places, but the memories are there, and are not fabricated stories.  There are times when I am able to give verbatim the words from others’ mouths, but there are other times when I give words to that effect or the gist of a statement or conversation.

My intention in writing this memoir is to give a little insight into my thoughts and actions—my life—for my children, and their children, and their children… and to show how the mind-staggering illumination brought about by my first hearing the concept of salvation by grace has so lightened the burden of legalism that was part of my early life understanding and motivation.  I trust that God will somehow use my poor words to enrich the lives and understanding of those who follow me, and to give them help in their own spiritual journey.

I have closed the memoir at the time of our return to the United States from Canada in December 1982.  I am writing in 2015—more than thirty-two years later.

A Common Man’s Journey

A Spiritual Memoir

Chapter 1

I don’t really remember, but Papa must have driven me to town that morning in Old Blue.  December 15th, 1950.  I don’t remember any show of emotion on his part…or on mine, as I walked out to the TNM&O bus parked in the street on the west side of the courthouse square.  I don’t remember looking back.  Just got on the bus with some other guys my age—draftees for service to our country as citizen soldiers in the Korean War.

I was twenty-one.  I had just harvested my first cotton crop.  Cotton raised (along with some milo) on a hundred acres of land ten miles east of Brownfield owned by Jack Wagner.  I worked for Papa, and he allowed me the use of his equipment (a Farmall M tractor and appropriate attachments—planter, cultivator, knifing slides, etc.) as my pay.  My first cotton crop was a fair one—probably about twenty bales—and I sold the fluffy white stuff for over forty cents a pound.  Papa had been farming cotton most of his adult life, and had never sold a single pound for forty cents!

I wasn’t thinking of my first year of farming as the big blue and white bus pulled away from the square, out onto Main Street, east on Main to the intersection with the Lubbock highway (I didn’t know it had a number – US 62-82).  I was headed for Amarillo and induction into the United States Army.  I don’t remember looking out the window at the familiar buildings of Brownfield as we rode east on Main.  I don’t remember passing through the little town of Meadow, or the city of Lubbock as the bus rolled northeast on the highway. I was quietly becoming acquainted with my fellow draftees.  I only remember a few names—Calvin Bartlett, Glen Rutherford—but in the few hours of that drive to Amarillo I started forming one friendship that has lasted over sixty-four years.  My new friend was also a farm boy.  He was from Anton in Hockley County, and I have been introducing him (since our discharge from service in 1952) as my best friend, Corky Spradley—about sixty-two of those years.

I don’t remember much about that day in Amarillo.  Just that I was cold and uncomfortable in the light jacket I had worn.  We were given the typical hurried, harried, loudly rude introduction into Army life…by men who were only doing a job.  We draftees, on the other hand, thought these guys had the authority to shoot us on the spot if we didn’t jump at the slightest growl—or bark—that they uttered.

We were ordered to strip, and were given a quick physical examination.  We had had our real physical exam a few months before, and this was only a quick pre-induction affair.  I don’t recall anyone being rejected.  And sometime that day, we—along with fifty or a hundred other draftees who had been brought from other areas—were assembled in a large room, told to stand and raise our right hands, as we swore to defend to our death (I assume) our Country, its Constitution, and its flag.  We became civilian soldiers then and there!

I believe we spent the night in Amarillo, and were transported the next day to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.  Here we suffered more indignities as we were berated, cursed, insulted, and further transformed into real soldiers.  We took tests to determine our intelligence, our physical fortitude, and our physical adeptness at various tasks, our talents, and our ability to stand at attention without turning our head to avoid the foul breath of any man with stripes on his shirtsleeve.

We stood for interminable periods of time in long lines while being given—and waiting to be given—injections for every ailment and malady known to medical science.  We shuffled along in other lines while we were issued uniforms.  Army dress OD (Olive Drab) Ike Jacket and shirts, pants, cap and a web belt with brass buckle.  Olive green fatigues (pants with over sized side pockets), shirts, caps.  Combat boots, low quarter dress shoes, socks, and olive green underwear with white Tee shirts.  That pretty well rounded us out—in   mostly WW II leftovers! 

We spent something like ten days at Ft. Sill.  I remember the bare looking barracks, double deck steel bunks with bad mattresses.  There were no footlockers.  We had been issued duffle bags, and all our belongings were kept there.  The time at Sill seemed like a very long time.  Since we were in a Reception Center there was really nothing for us to do.  We did policing of the area, cleaning the latrine, a little KP, and other small tasks.   We had a lot of idle time. It was a very boring time.  I suppose the boredom affected most of us—and some of us it affected in very strange ways.

One day several of us were sitting on our bunks…just talking about where we lived, what we did as civilians, what was going on back home.  We had been issued our dog tags—the metal identification tags—and mine were laying on my bunk beside me, when without a word a kid (we were all kids!) reached over, picked up one of my dog tags, and calmly bent it double.  Why would he do that?  He wasn’t trying to pick a fight.  Just wanted to see how strong the metal was…I guess.  After he put it down, I calmly placed it on the wooden floor and beat it back somewhat into its former shape… using the heel of my boot for a maul.  It’s in a shadow box on the wall above my computer as I write.  Still has the bent place across it!

And then at last—through the mysteries of military planning and wisdom—a large group of us were assigned to our post, put aboard a DC-3 airplane (civilian version of the C-47 workhorse of the WW II Army Air Corps), and given a ride (the first airplane ride of our lives for many of us) to Fort Hood, Texas.

Chapter 2

The little white farmhouse in Terry County Texas where I was born was probably about 300 miles from Fort Hood, Texas—but that farm was a world away from Fort Hood.

The farm was about ten miles southeast of Brownfield, in the Union School community.  It had been a part of the Flache Ranch.  Mr. Ame Flache (Flache is a German name pronounced Flocka, and mispronounced by many as Flocker) had begun putting into cultivation parts of his small ranch in the early 1920s.  It was about this time that a man named Asa Alvin Oliver loaded his mules, a few milk cows, and some other livestock, along with all the other earthly possessions that he and his pretty dark haired wife Agnes claimed as their own onto a couple of rail cars in Gilmer, Upshur County in East Texas and moved west.  They were pioneers.  Not the covered wagon train type pioneers of the early American migration westward across the continent—but pioneers nonetheless.

Asa was called Acie by his wife, East Texas relatives, and close friends.  This was a mispronouncing of Asa.  It was not a childhood nickname.  He was A. A. and sometimes Double A. to his farming friends and businessmen with whom he dealt—or Mr. Oliver to those who knew him only by his good reputation…and respected him as a man of quiet humility, immense honesty, and deep integrity.  I called him Papa, and I very proudly wear his name, Asa.  And I just as proudly called his pretty wife Agnes, Mama.

They were strong, hardworking, God fearing—and poor, Papa and Mama.  They had come from different backgrounds in East Texas—she the daughter of William Nix, a hard driving lumberman who had become quite well off by cutting down tracts of Pine trees, and converting them into lumber in his sawmills.  The description hard driving was given him to me by another of his grandsons, Clennon Nix… the son of one of grandfather Nix’s older sons.

My father on the other hand was the son of a second-generation Irish-American farmer in Upshur County (William Oliver), and had worked in the woods for Grandfather Nix’s company when not busy with his father on their family farm.  How it came about that Papa married the boss’s daughter I never knew.  The Nixes had come to Texas from Alabama in the first decade of the 20th century.  The Olivers came—via a several years long migration from Virginia, through North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana—in the eighteen-fifties.

An interesting bit of Oliver family history (to me) is that both my great grandfather (James Bryant), and my grandfather (William James) served in the Army of the Confederate States of America.  The father (in his forties) left his wife, his son, and a family of Negro slaves on their farm near Gilmer, Upshur County and joined the Confederate Army in 1862.  His son (in his teens) followed his father into the service of the CSA later the same year.   Father and son!  That sort of grabs my heart.  They both survived the War.  After Appomattox they walked home defeated, discouraged, and broke (from what I have read in the papers of Vaughn Oliver, our family genealogist).  They paid the debts accumulated in their absence.  They lived through and survived the Reconstruction of the South.  They both raised large families, and apparently maintained the upright lifestyle for which they were known.

Two of my great uncles, James Caswell (Uncle Cass), and Heywood Fillmore (Uncle H. F.) became well known preachers—one a Baptist, one a member of the Church of Christ!  A favorite family story—it came to me from separate ‘wings’ of the family, and so I assume it is true—says that in years when both these brothers happened to be ‘back home’ they would sit on their father’s front porch in rocking chairs discussing the Scriptures.  The story goes that the longer the discussion went, the faster the two brothers (both of them were debaters) rocked in their chairs.  I like the story.  I can pretty easily imagine how the discussions went!

The farm where I was born started to grow out of the earth when Mr. Ame Flache made a proposal to Papa.  Mr. Flache designated a half section (320 acres) of the ranch, and would drill a water well, erect a windmill, build a four room shed roofed house as temporary living quarters for the Oliver family (it later became the barn).  Papa and Mama would live there with their family—Ahleen, Jewell, Fay Belle, and J. D. for the first year.  I’m not sure of the exact timing of this, but probably during the autumn of 1924 and the winter of 1925 Papa used a double bit axe, and a spade (a short D handled shovel)—tools that he had brought from East Texas—to grub (dig up by the roots) the mesquite trees, and cat claw shrubs, pile the brush and burn it, pile the roots (grubs) of the mesquite into a huge pile for use as household firewood for the next several years!  Papa cleared a hundred-sixty acres in whatever rain, snow, sleet, and cold wind that came that winter—and put in a cotton crop there in the spring!  He observed the thirty-ninth anniversary of his birth that July.  I said he observed it—I doubt very seriously that he knew what was special about the day when July 20th happened that year.  And, I’m not sure how long it was before the little white house was built, and Papa moved his family out of the barn.  Probably the same year.  My sister Lena May was born in March 1926.  She and I were both born there.

Chapter 3

It seems a little unrealistic that I would think of a childhood spent on a rough, newly broken out farm, several miles from a town, almost a mile from the nearest neighbor, and with the very least of modern conveniences as idyllic.  But I do.

When I Google the calendar for 1929 on my computer I find that January 25th of that year fell on a Friday.  My birth certificate shows that Dr. T. L. Treadaway delivered me… into the loving arms of my Mama… at 7:05 a.m. on that date.  I don’t know what the weather was like on the Plains of Texas that day, and I would like to know how Papa managed the logistics of that remarkable event.  I’m not sure if he had an automobile by then.  There was not a telephone.  It was eight or ten miles to Brownfield.  I wonder what time of day it was when Mama first indicated to him that now is the time!  What I do know is that my mother was safely delivered of this tiny body of mortality by the blessing and help of a God who she trusted and loved, and that I am grateful to her.  She taught me—in the years that followed, by her words, and by her life—to trust Him also.

The farm hewn (literally!) out of the raw range of the Flache ranch was—by the time my memories were forming—a settled, carefully cultivated quarter section, with another quarter section left in grass for livestock pasture.  Picture a tract of land a mile long (east-west), half a mile wide.  This is a half-section (320 acres).  The cleared, cultivated hundred-sixty acres were on the west, the pasture was on the east.  The farmstead itself was situated about in the center of the half-section—with the cropland to the west, and the mesquite pastureland to the east.  It consisted of the little white (four rooms) house, the barn, the well and windmill, a ten foot square concrete livestock watering tank, various coops, sheds, lots (corrals), and of course the little wooden, shed roofed, outside toilet—a typical two hole-er.   It was a great setting for an idyllic boyhood!

Great memories flood back.  Not all stories.  Just memories.  For instance, I remember when my sister Lena May and I were permitted to go swimming in the water tank.  Mama would put us in Papa’s old work shirts…for modesty…and we would splash around in the four feet deep tank—as happy as if it had been an Olympic sized pool.  What fun on a hot summer day!

I remember going barefoot in the summer, and I remember that my feet became toughened by this to the point that I very seldom got a sticker that required Mama’s attention for removal.  Grass burrs and Goatheads were common plants in weedy or grassy areas, and to be avoided of course.  I had a friend—Willard Brock was his name—who lived on the adjoining farm, and he and I used to run across a patch of these goatheads trying to avoid getting one of the nasty, sharp pointed burrs stuck in our feet.  We believed that the faster you ran, the less likely you were to get a sticker.  Worked for us! 

The barn sticks out in my memory.  It should be noted that it was built as a temporary dwelling before the real house was built.  In the memory of a young boy sizes, shapes, and distances get a bit skewed, but I remember the barn as being about 40 feet long, maybe 12 feet wide, a shed roof of corrugated sheet iron.  It faced the south, was divided into three or four rooms, and was built on the pier and beam foundation of that time—the piers being six inch diameter cedar posts set in the ground, and the beams were probably two by six boards.  From that foundation upward it was built in the box and strip method of the day—which means that the walls were of one inch by maybe eight inch planks, with a one by four nailed over the cracks between the wider boards.  The wider boards were called boxing boards—thus box and strip.  The idea was to keep as much of the wind and dust outside as possible!

I remember the barn as being a place that had different smells.  One room was used as a harness room.  Here Papa kept the leather collars, bridles, lines (inch wide leather straps used to guide the work horses), and other leather harness items, as well as shears, curry combs, and hoof trimming tools.  Therefore, the room had a smell of leather and of horse sweat.  And the smell of horse liniment sometimes was there—a pungent addition to the aroma of the room.  I loved to hang out there!

At the east end of the building was the last room.  This was not a room actually, but an open front shed.  Here was the smell of feed.  Ground feed called shorts for the hogs, ground maize or corn for the milk cows, and—best of all—sometimes