Before the Grass Withers: A Memoir

By Tom Frist

From the Preface

For you who have honored me by opening this book to read, I thank you. I hope that it will give you pleasure, that you might learn from it, and that you might be inspired by it to write your own story for your own sake and for the sake of your family and friends. Even though we are like grass that withers, we also hope, as Jesus said, that the very hairs of our heads are all numbered. For that reason, all of our stories matter, not only to us and our descendants, but also to our friends and, most importantly, to God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532014765

Tom Frist

Thomas Ferran Frist Tom Frist has spent much of his life promoting the health, relief, rehabilitation, and economic development of people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. He is the author of seven books and has co-founded several nonprofits. Tom and his wife, Clare, have two children and mostly divide their time between their home in Montreat, North Carolina, and their farm and projects in Brazil. More information about him, his books, and projects can be obtained at his website, tomfrist.com.

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Copyright © 2017 Thomas Frist.

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English Standard Version (ESV)

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-1477-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1476-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017900016

iUniverse rev. date: 01/19/2017

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: A Bridge to the Future

Chapter 2: Beginnings

Chapter 3: Prep School and College

Chapter 4: Freedom in Europe

Chapter 5: Exotic India

Chapter 6: Vietnam

Chapter 7: My Trial, Yale, Clare, and Tanzania

Chapter 8: Marriage and Spain

Chapter 9: Research in Brazil

Chapter 10: Becoming a Social Entrepreneur and Other Adventures

Chapter 11: A Year in the U.S. and the Birth of Lisa Kristin Frist

Chapter 12: SORRI-Brasil and the Birth of John Daniel Frist

Chapter 13: ALM and ILEP

Chapter 14: Family Life in Greenville and Montreat

Chapter 15: Our Brazilian Farms and a Family Adventure

Chapter 16: Midlife Crisis

Chapter 17: Nicaragua

Chapter 18: Back in Montreat—the Good and the Bad

Chapter 19: The Writing of Books

Chapter 20: Journeys

Chapter 21: Looking Forward

Chapter 22: Conclusion

Appendix

Dedicated To My Family and Friends

For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.

1 Peter 1:24-25 (King James Version)

"I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work."

John 9:4 (King James Version)

Preface

We all have our stories, and this is mine. I write it and share it with you for several reasons.

I write it for myself in order to relive and remember my past, to recognize and give thanks for people who have been important to me, and to seek meaning and purpose in the whole of my life by looking back on my activities and decisions.

I write it for living relatives, friends, and maybe even strangers because I hope that the stories that I tell will be interesting and useful for them to read. I am not famous, nor have I done anything great or memorable, and so I certainly don’t merit a biographer other than myself.

I write it so that my yet unborn grandchildren and other relatives will know that I once lived and laughed, yearned and feared, succeeded and failed, just like they will. I want them to meet me through these pages and to also meet people who were important to me—including their parents and other ancestors.

They say that almost all of us are forgotten within one or two generations of our deaths. I am sure that will be my fate as well. However, maybe there is one person in the future who will want to read this, as I know that I would have loved to have had a book like this written by my parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents for me to read. It would have helped me to understand not only them better, but also myself, for in many ways, we are the products of our ancestors as well as of our own unique life experiences.

For you who have honored me by opening this book to read, I thank you. I hope that it will give you pleasure, that you might learn from it, and that you might be inspired by it to write your own story for your own sake and for the sake of your family and friends. Even though we are like grass that withers, we also hope, as Jesus said, that the very hairs of our heads are all numbered. For that reason, all of our stories matter, not only to us and our descendants, but also to our friends, and most importantly to God.

Chapter One

A Bridge to the Future

I will begin my story with what happened to me one day on a hike near Rishikesh, India, in 1968. Although not at all extraordinary, two events of that day had a momentous effect on my life.

I was twenty-three years old at the time and in India on a Fulbright teaching and research grant that I had won before graduating from Davidson College in 1967. While two-thirds of my time on the scholarship in India was spent teaching English and American literature at the Government College of Arts and Commerce in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, one-third was devoted to my research project—investigating the similarities and differences between Christian and Hindu mystical experiences.

The truth is that I was not qualified for any of these tasks. While I had been a college English major with a minor in French, I had no training as a teacher other than what I had gleaned from the experience of a summer teaching math at an academic camp in Chattanooga and from the instruction we Fulbrighters had been given at a university in Kashmir for a month. Nor did I have any expertise in mysticism, either as a practitioner or researcher. I chose the project because I thought of myself as a truth seeker, and besides, it was a splendid excuse for traveling all over India and meeting fascinating people with the Fulbright Program paying my expenses.

I arrived in Rishikesh a few weeks after the Beatles had returned to England from studying there at the Mararishi Mahesh Yogi Ashram. The small Indian town at the foot of the Himalayas is a holy place to Hindus because it is there that the Ganges emerges from the majestic mountains on to the plain as a clean, cold, rushing river with huge carp visible below the surface. As a holy place, Rishikesh has become the home of dozens of Hindu ashrams and stores for Ayurvedic medicine, of hundreds of sadhus and thousands of pilgrims who come for short visits. I was one of the latter, as I wanted to experience the place and maybe interview one or two of the yogis there whom I had read about.

It had been a long journey for me to get to Rishikesh from Indore. While the Fulbright Program offered us first-class train tickets to get around India to do our individual projects, with their permission, I usually chose to go third-class, as I wanted to use the savings for future travel in Asia once my Fulbright had ended. I had chosen the third-class option on that particular trip and so had spent a long night in a crowded train car on hard, wooden seats. Braced by the hot milk tea in disposable clay cups that I had purchased through the window at train stops, I rarely dozed and was mesmerized all night by the steady beat of the wheels on the track and the stare of a bearded sadhu facing me. When the train arrived at city of Hardwar, I took a local bus to Rishikesh. There, following some information from a book I had read called India of Yogis, I headed to the Divine Life Ashram started by Swami Sivananda, a former medical doctor and famous Indian Yogi.

Sivananda’s well-known disciple, Swami Chidananda, who now ran the place after Sivananda’s death, received me graciously, even permitting me an interview with him in his office—a simple room with no furniture but piled high with books stacked on bamboo mats. After he served me tea, by pouring first the tea into his cup and then from his cup into mine, we spoke in English of the difficulty that I had in understanding Hinduism as it was so vast and contained what seemed to me so many apparently contradictory beliefs and statements—starting with the basic—whether Ultimate Reality was monistic or theistic, whether God and man were one or separate. I was impressed with Swami Chidananda who was a humble and kind man, very different from many of the less authentic personalities whom I had met previously in my travels in India—so anxious to impress me with their spiritual and physical feats and to claim me as a western disciple.

It was Swami Chidananda who introduced me to Joubert, a Frenchman in his early thirties who was also staying in the ashram, and who had already been there for a month or so before I arrived. I enjoyed talking with Joubert as it was a chance to practice my French, now getting rusty from disuse, and we decided to climb together the next day into the mountains on the other side of the Ganges to look for the cave dwelling of a sadhu we had heard about.

In 1968, there was only one footbridge crossing the Ganges in Rishikesh, and as we approached it, I became uncomfortable. Bordering the path on each side, a dozen or so impoverished and deformed individuals in ragged clothes begged for alms from those who were passing by. They squatted in front of basic shelters put together with sticks, leaves, and cloth that looked more like dog houses to crawl into rather than homes. As a white foreigner in India, I was used to constantly being approached by beggars, but this experience for me was somehow different. These people had leprosy, and their faces, hands, and feet were badly ravaged from the effects of the disease.

As this was the first time I remember ever seeing someone with leprosy, the experience affected me deeply. One part of me was afraid, but another part wanted to do something concrete and systematic to help them besides just giving small coins. It struck me as ironic that even in a holy place like Rishikesh, no one seemed to be trying to help them deal with their disease and its social and economic problems in a long-term, productive way.

After we crossed over the bridge and climbed for a few hours into the mountains, Joubert and I finally got to the cave in the Himalayas that we were seeking. There we found a man who looked to be in his forties, in good physical shape, living alone. His cave had an annex for cooking and a few of his recently washed clothes had been hung on a rope outside to dry. As we didn’t have an interpreter, and both Joubert’s and my abilities in Hindi were very basic, we didn’t get much information from him other than him showing us how he lived alone. My disciples bring me food and anything else I need, he explained.

After our visit, Joubert and I goodbye to the sadhu, thanked him for his hospitality, and began to descend the mountains to Rishikesh. On the way back to the ashram, Joubert shared with me his personal story. Hearing his story was, for me, the other momentous event of the day.

Joubert said that he was from a wealthy Jewish family in France and had been raised as a Jew. I don’t remember exactly how or why he said that he became a Christian, but once he did, he told me that he was disinherited by his family. He related that he grew rapidly in his new faith and soon felt a calling to become a contemplative Christian hermit. That decision led him to investigate the possibilities of working as a forest ranger in fire towers far from civilization which he did for awhile. Later, he felt that his calling by God was to come to India as a Christian contemplative and live alone in the Himalayas as a hermit, praying.

Having little money, Joubert sought out a tourist agency in Paris and inquired if there were any way he could get to India without having to buy a ticket—like working on a cargo ship? According to Joubert, that was when the coincidence or miracle happened. While he was still in the tourist office, the telephone rang. On the other end of the line was the National Tourism Board of India offering free tickets to India for French journalists willing to go and write articles promoting Indian tourism. The French tourist agent with whom Joubert was talking immediately suggested Joubert as a candidate!

It all worked out, and after arriving in India, Joubert visited some tourist sites and wrote several articles about them for a French newspaper. After his obligations to the National Tourism Board of India had been met, he journeyed to Rishikesh to fulfill his personal mission in India which was to train to become a contemplative hermit in the Himalayas. As there were no Christian monasteries in Rishikesh where he could stay, he had chosen to reside at the Divine Life Society.

Thus I begin this book on my life with these two memories from that one day in Rishikesh—first, the encounter with people affected by leprosy by the bridge and second, hearing Joubert’s personal story. I do so because in many ways, the focus of much of my future adult life story was revealed to me on that day.

It is through that encounter at the bridge with those disabled and deformed persons affected by leprosy that I trace my interest and later professional career in helping people with Hansen’s disease and disabilities to lead normal, integrated, and productive lives in society.

It was through my talks with Joubert on that hike and during the rest of my stay in Rishikesh that I came to understand that one’s choice of a life of contemplative and intercessory prayer, devoted to loving God with all one’s heart, is an equally valid and God-pleasing alternative to a life of action. Joubert’s story was evidence to me of the reality of God’s presence and intervention in our lives when we totally commit ourselves and our future to him, faithfully following whatever light that we have received.

In other words, that day in Rishikesh, India, focused my attention on what I have come to believe are the two most important ways that we can achieve meaning and happiness in our short lives on this earth—first, by loving God with all of our hearts, and second, by loving our neighbors as ourselves. Despite my own personal strong ego, ignorance, and failures, my deepest wish still remains to one day to fully obey those two greatest commandments of Jesus and to experience the deep joy that I know will come from finally being able to do so.

While looking back on my life today at seventy-one years old, I feel deep remorse because I seem to make so little progress year after year in achieving these two goals. Yet, at the same time, I feel deep gratitude because I trust that my many personal limitations and failures will be forgiven by a loving and good Father God, and I give joyful thanks to him because I have had such a fun, adventurous, and rewarding life journey up until now.

So with this introduction, my personal story begins.

Chapter Two

Beginnings

I was born in Tampa, Florida, on July 2, 1945, the fourth of four children. My sister Jane was ten at the time, Charlotte, seven, and my brother Johnny, four. People mock me when I say this, but the truth is that I have some memory (false or true) of looking out of the hospital window down on a pirate ship. Later, someone told me that the Hillsborough County hospital where I was born was located next to the spot where they moored the pirate ship for the yearly Buccaneer festival in Tampa. While I like to interpret this early vision of the pirate ship as a sign that I was a precocious baby, my siblings hoot at the thought and add that all they remember was that I was red like a newborn rat and smelled badly too. They call me little Joseph even today because elder brothers and sisters are always bitter when a newborn takes their place as the center of attention.

The name my parents gave me, however, was not little Joseph but Thomas Ferran Frist. The Thomas was for my father’s beloved younger doctor brother, Thomas Fearn Frist. The Ferran in my name was in honor of my mother’s family, the Ferrans, who had been early settlers of central Florida moving down to the Eustis area from Indiana in 1884. (My great-grandfather’s Ferran ancestors were of Irish stock coming to the U.S. in the early 1800’s, while my great-grandmother’s ancestors had the Avery name and came to New London, Connecticut, from England in the 1600’s.) The Ferrans made their mark on the central Florida area in business, real estate, orange growing, medicine, and religion, and the small town of Eustis named their town park, Ferran Park, in their honor.

My mother, Elizabeth, or Ibby as they called her, was the second of seven children—a pretty and vivacious young woman whose father, Dr. Clarence Ferran, was a Presbyterian minister and the founder of Park Lake Presbyterian Church in Orlando. He had already died when I was born, although my grandmother and all of mother’s siblings—Lee, Curly, Harold, Bob, Harry, and Lucy—were still alive.

When I was born, my father, John Chester Frist, was the minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Tampa, Florida—the only Frist that I know of who was a preacher. We traced our branch of the Frist family to Jacob Frist who came down from Delaware to Chattanooga, Tennessee, before the Civil War. He was descended from one of two brothers who came to the U.S. on a ship from Rotterdam, Holland, in 1749. We think that the brothers were probably Dutch, but they may also have been German, Norwegian, or Swedish as there are a few Frists in each of those countries and a DNA sample from my brother’s daughter traces us back to Scandinavia and the Sami people.

Daddy had grown up in Meridian, Mississippi, the son of the station master of the railroad there and was one of four children—two girls (Helen and Mary Louise) and then two boys, (John Chester and Tommy). The order of girls to boys and the years separating them in his family were the same as in our own nuclear family. After attending college in Memphis, Tennessee, and seminary in Richmond, Virginia, Daddy had held pastorates in Moorefield, West Virginia, and Starkville, Mississippi before moving our family to Tampa in 1942.

We lived on Palm Drive, and while I remember the pirate ship, I remember nothing of the house we lived in or of life in Tampa. We moved to Mobile, Alabama, when I was only two. My sister Jane claims that the move was because Mother was embarrassed that members of the congregation saw how messy the manse (the minister’s home) was when they walked through to inspect the damage done after my five-year-old brother Johnny lit a fire in the false fireplace while Mother and Daddy were both out. (To this day, Jane takes credit for saving my life from the fire by whisking me out of the house onto the lawn.) Daddy, on the other hand, said that the move was because he had accepted a call to become the minister of the Government Street Presbyterian Church in Mobile, Alabama.

Government Street was the oldest Presbyterian Church in southern Alabama having been organized in 1831 by the Presbytery of New York. Noted in many architectural books, it was a beautiful downtown church that looked like an ancient white Greek temple with columns inside and out. Located at 300 Government Street next to the Mobile Press-Register, the church had some 1,200 members at the time. I loved that church and as a child explored all of its crannies—the dark basement behind the kitchen, the huge attic with its ancient wooden rafters, and I particularly loved to sneak out on the roof as a kid. Later, after the church was remodeled and an elevator installed, I enjoyed stopping it between floors when no one was in the church to read comic books. Also, it was fun to have the fellowship hall to myself on Sunday afternoons while Daddy prepared his evening sermon in his office upstairs. There I would watch The Twilight Zone on TV, play pool, and listen to those little rock and roll records with the big holes in the middle.

When we first moved to Mobile, we lived for awhile in a modest home in a downtown area called Silverwood. An early recollection I have is of regularly crossing the street to the Harris’s house to get coffee. I’ve been addicted to coffee ever since as well as to my habit of bumming food and drink off friends and neighbors. Later, we moved to a huge house on Government Street that one of the members of the church had donated as a manse for the preacher.

Government Street was a beautiful wide avenue bordered by majestic oak trees on each side whose branches formed a canopy over it. The houses along the street were large and elegant, and many of them were later turned into doctor and lawyer offices. Many years after we moved from it, our house was purchased by the Belgian Government for its consulate in Mobile, an important seaport. Much to my sorrow, the house later burned down. The imposing two houses next to us, though, are still there today. When we lived on Government Street, our next door neighbors were a Catholic family and a Jewish family.

Childhood on Government Street was happy for me. Albert Hillard, an older single African-American whom Mother and Daddy had hired during one of our vacations to Moorefield, West Virginia, took care of me and also cooked for us and did other chores. His apartment was over the garage in the back. I remember it as being dark and always with a fire lit in the fireplace in the winter. I loved Albert a lot, and he would take me every day riding on my tricycle to the corner where he sat and chatted with the maids from the other houses in the area. He was something of a lady’s man.

Two of my other favorite older people at that time of my life were also African-American men—L.V. Ellerbee and Emerson Stafford who were janitors at the church. It’s a sad thing from my Southern upbringing that as a child, I called them only by their first names without a Mister in front. They were always kind and playful with me, and I loved them both. Besides our next door neighbor, Skip Tonzmeier, who was a year older, I also had other friends on streets not too far away from our home—Bobby and Jimmy Coil, Winnifred Bell, Do-Ann Johnson, Gordon Denniston, and Ginger Taylor.

One of the memories I have of our Government Street house is the many times Johnny and I piled boxes in the driveway and made Daddy pay a toll before he could get through and park in the back. It was a lot of work stacking them up and pulling them down, but I guess well worth the ten cents we got as a toll fee.

I also remember being in pain a lot because of my brother, Johnny. One day I almost lost my lower leg because he manipulated me into doing his chore of cutting the grass near the house with a scythe. Unfortunately, he didn’t take the time to explain to his six-year-old brother how to swing the tool, so I ended up whacking my leg with the blade and getting stitches for a deep cut to the bone. Another time I was hit by the swing in the backyard and ended up with three stitches over the eyebrow. I can’t remember if it was Johnny who was in the swing, but it probably was.

The worst accident happened, though, in our neighbor’s backyard on a playground contraption they had that looked like a metal May-pole. It was a sort of merry-go-round thing with two circular metal hoops welded together suspended by metal bars from the rotating top. The child held on to the outer hoop as he spun around. Sometimes the inner rim hit the central metal pole with a clang depending on how weight was distributed. My brother, Johnny, dared me to slide down the pole in the middle as he swung around me by himself. Of course, I took his dare. The good news was that my head was not hit and dented. The bad news was that my thumb was crushed when metal hit metal in a loud clang.

Not only my thumb, but the rest of me was stunned when I saw it dangling and unrecognizable as a body part. Mother rushed me to Dr. Bell, my friend Winnifred’s dad, who was then in his seventies, and he repaired the thumb as best he could. Since then, it has never been very pretty, and I was always self-conscious about it—especially when I held hands with girls, which, unfortunately, was not that often. On the positive side, I became an excellent thumb wrestler because my opponents were often grossed out by it so I could pin them unaware!

The best memory I have of that incident is of Mother chasing Johnny around the kitchen with a broom once it was clear that I would survive my latest ordeal as his little brother. (Today, I take some of the credit for Johnny later becoming a plastic surgeon, hopefully, because of his guilt at all the physical damage he did to me as a kid.)

I must have been an innocent little boy growing up, although I’m sure my siblings would use the term gullible instead. One day before Halloween, Johnny told me that this was a special year and I should dress up and start my trick or treating a day earlier than normal. He gave the day a special name which I have now forgotten or repressed, but believing him, I dressed up in my costume and set out at breakfast to trick or treat at the house of two elderly ladies (the Ladds) who lived on the corner. As you can imagine, they were very surprised to see me and even more confused when I told them what Johnny had said about this special dress rehearsal holiday for Halloween. Still, they were kind enough to invite me in for breakfast. (They were somehow kin to our local U.S. Congressman Big Jim Boykin who once took me along on a night possum hunt with my Dad.)

Other memories I have of the Government Street house were of being rocked to sleep upstairs on the screened porch and of Mother singing Long Ago and Go Tell Aunt Sally in her strong, low voice. I also remember the paintings of Christmas scenes that she would do on the front door at Christmas and of how she loved to have her callused feet rubbed by me. I remember, too, the babysitters who would sit for me, our small, one-room trailer in the backyard, and one day finding a rusty BB gun that I would let friends shoot for a favor. Another memory I have is of dressing up once in my mother’s clothes at Winnifred Bell’s instigation, but quickly changing into men’s clothes when a neighbor pointed out that boys should wear their father’s outfits and not their mothers.

Our house was big, so it was a good place to play hide and seek. My favorite place was under the bed. My sisters, Jane and Charlotte, accuse me of spying on them through the cracks in the upstairs floor, but I don’t remember that at all. I must not have seen anything that impressed me! I also recall Mother getting Jane and Charlotte to walk on coke bottles as kids in order to improve their posture. Other memories were that Charlotte played the accordion, but as she was so small in comparison to the instrument, she had to be strapped to the chair so she wouldn’t fall over.

After I graduated from Mrs. Spoule’s kindergarten, where we sang Spanish songs and balanced on a big standing see-saw for ten children or so (which would surely be outlawed today for safety concerns), Johnny and I both went to Leincaulf School, just a few blocks away from our house. Johnny was four grades ahead of me so he got to carry the lunch money, and I had to go upstairs every day to his classroom to get mine from him. I remember my teachers, Mrs. Wedgeworth and Mrs. Nichols, and learning to write and read through the Dick and Jane series. I also remember having to stay in after school a few times—once for fighting with a sixth grader who came into our area of the playground where we played, What time is it old witch? It was my first (and only) fistfight, and I remember the glory of being a mere second grader beating up an upperclassman.

My other moment of glory in the two years I was at Leincaulf was when I was elected to represent the second grade as the knight for our school Mardi Gras celebration. Jackie, the prettiest girl in the class, was my lady-in-waiting, and Johnny was the sixth-grade king of the whole show. Mother worked for months on making us elaborate costumes with sequined and bejeweled capes that she put together for us (the only time in my life that I saw her sew) and it was a proud night (except for the lipstick and rouge she put on us) when we walked down the ramp in the auditorium to our positions on the stage with the applause of our fans echoing in our ears. We were even invited to parade around in a circle in our fancy attire at the local television station. (At that time we didn’t have a TV in our house.)

As an adult, Johnny inflated the story of his reign as Mardi Gras king so much that for many years, his wife, Mary Corinne, surmised that he had been the king of Mardi Gras for the whole city of Mobile—a major honor since Mobile was where Mardi Gras first started in the U.S. despite the greater fame of the New Orleans’ celebration. Once, when we were all married and had gathered back in Mobile for an historical celebration at Government Street Presbyterian Church, my brothers and sisters and our spouses visited some of our old haunts—including Leinkauf Elementary School. When I mentioned to Mary Corinne that it was here that Johnny and I had experienced our former moments of glory, she was astonished. This is where you were king?! she exclaimed to Johnny. An elementary school?! The pink of Mobile’s famous azaleas could not match the red in Johnny’s face.

Another memory of an even earlier Mardi Gras celebration in Mobile was getting separated from my father as we watched the parade. A policeman later found me and returned me to my frantic parents at our home on Government Street. The story my parents told me was that a man turned me into the police when I asked him for the time. He thought I had asked him for a dime and turned me in for begging!

At the end of my second grade at Leincaulf, Mother decided it was time to move from the big manse owned by the church and build the first of the many houses that she later built. The church graciously gave Daddy a housing stipend, and the parents of my friend Winnifred Bell sold us a lot on the fourteenth hole of the Mobile Country Club golf course in the suburbs. During the building process, we rented for a little over a year.

The first few weeks, we stayed in the penthouse apartment of the Mobile Seamen’s Club. It was there that we ate most of our Sunday dinners after church, along with another Presbyterian pastor friend’s family, the John Crowells. I loved going there on Sundays because I could play ping-pong and pool as we waited for lunch. (I usually ordered a hamburger steak meal with ice tea for 85 cents.) The manager was someone who had traveled all over the world and took a liking to me, giving me all sorts of exotic gifts. Particularly, I remember an ostrich egg wrapped in leather and, of course, our black cocker spaniel, Topper, whom I named in honor of my benefactor. Topper replaced two other family dogs which I remember—a Dachshund named Smokey, and a copper-colored Cocker Spaniel named Penney.

From the Seamen’s Club we moved to a rented house in Dellwood, an area of big lawns and pine trees. I think we were in Dellwood for about a year in a ranch house which I don’t remember very well. I had a number of older friends in the neighborhood including Billy Heiter, Greg Buckalew, and Monty Dumas as well as a kid whose name I can’t remember. The latter lived in a modern house with a goldfish pond, half inside and half outside his house. This older, goldfish-pond-friend introduced me to a life of crime, and now as I now look back, I thank God for saving me from what could have been a disaster.

What happened was that my friend came up with the idea that it would be great fun to hide in the woods and throw rocks at cars passing by on Airport Boulevard and then run and hide in the pines when the drivers came after us. Actually, it was fun at first, listening as the stone hit the car metal, watching the car screech to a stop and then running for our lives as the drivers got out and chased us. The fun quickly turned into horror and fear, however, when one of the rocks that we threw went through an open window and hit a driver in the head. As he got out stunned from his car, I saw a stream of blood coming down the side of his face.

Soon the police were called, and thanks to the help of an informant among the neighborhood girls, we were quickly rounded up. The policeman who captured us kept me in the backseat of his police car while he went in to talk to the ringleader’s mother at the goldfish house. Unfortunately, my mother happened to be returning home at the time in her own car. Always curious, she got out to investigate when she saw the police car parked in our neighbor’s driveway. When she spotted me ducking from view in the back seat, she was horrified, especially when the policeman later recounted the reason for my being there.

I received that evening the worst whipping with a brush that I ever had in my life, and I have had a number of them. I’ll give you ten to get back here!, Mother always said as I ran from her when I had been summoned to receive my punishment for something I had done.

Or it will be twice as bad!, she always added.

The decision between returning for my medicine or continuing to run away was always a very difficult one for me to make, especially with the added pressure of her getting to eight in the count. Yet, I always returned by the count of ten, as I figured the twice as bad would be twice as painful.

Most of the time, when I was accused of things, the accuser was right. But once in the third grade at Westlawn School, a substitute teacher insisted I had done something that I hadn’t and that I was lying when I insisted on my innocence. She made some comment about how my father would be ashamed of me since he was such a well-respected minister in the city. That, of course, made me feel terrible, especially since there was nothing I could say to convince her that I hadn’t done what she had accused me of. Thank goodness she wasn’t my regular teacher, and thank goodness my Daddy wasn’t ashamed of me. That same year, he was invited to come to our class on Father’s day to give a little talk to my class, and I remember learning and reciting a poem for the occasion. My Dad is more than a Dad. He’s a chum to this lad.

The house that Mother built on the golf course was a quaint looking cottage with its steep gray slate roof and board and batten and old brick exterior siding. Mother, who had a thing for early American antiques, worked hard to make it look old and authentic, and in the process, even made sure that some of the slate shingles were put on crookedly. The floors were of wood and polished brick, and the house had a lot of other interesting details that most kids would love. The piano was hidden behind folding doors in a cubbyhole under the stairs and one got to the laundry room by going through Mother’s and Daddy’s bedroom and then through their closet. The laundry room was my favorite place to hide in moments of grief like when my dog died or when I had to change schools and leave my friends.

Johnny’s and my room was upstairs along with Charlotte’s. (Jane went off to Peace College, a woman’s boarding school and junior college in Raleigh, when we moved to the suburbs.) In our room, Johnny and I had a hideaway work table in a long narrow closet whose wall was covered with pictures of early gliders and planes. Johnny had a chemistry set in there as well. When Charlotte followed Jane to Peace College, I got her room.

I have happy memories of living off Airport Boulevard. At that time, it was out in the country, and it was a lot of fun to roam the pine forests and golf course by our home. One of my main playmates at the time was Ted Mueller whose father was an electrician and an ex-semi-pro baseball player. I enjoyed spending the night at his house and playing softball in his backyard, riding my bike back and forth to his house through Jackson Heights and coasting fast down the hills.

Gordon Denniston, a friend from downtown, had also moved out to the suburbs, and as the son of a banker, he was blessed with a big house, acres of woods, and a pony that he would let me race. We also made underground forts at his place and got filthy as we crawled through the tunnels as dirt fell into our hair through their roofs of branches and sod. Not everything was perfect, however, and I remember one huge argument we had when Gordon was sleeping over at our house. We disagreed vehemently as to which of us knew the most verses to the song Davy Crockett. I threatened to make him go home, as he would not admit to my superiority in this important measurement.

John Cater was a church friend whose family owned a speed boat and they often took me with them to Dog River or to Mobile Bay to water ski. That was great fun and I am still grateful! As we didn’t have television for many years, I had to go across Airport Boulevard to another friend’s house when I wanted to watch a show.

I liked all of my friends, but I also liked playing alone. Sometimes I would pretend to be a cowboy with my six-shooter and later with the B.B. gun that I got as presents for Christmas. I also loved collecting cat’s eyes marbles of different colors that I would line up on the bed like opposing armies and then jumble them together. Most of all, I enjoyed exploring. I rode my bike all over the place, and when they were building a new low-cost housing development not too far from our house, I rode there and parked my bike and explored the huge underground water drain pipes stretching hundreds of yards underground. God protected me from sudden rains and a lot of accidents!

Daddy had a special preacher’s membership to the Mobile Country Club, so I could use their swimming pool and play golf as a kid. I rarely played the game, however, and never took lessons. That becomes apparent in my infrequent golf games as an adult! Mostly, I caddied and chased balls for my father who took up the game late in life and would sometimes practice his drives on the fifteenth hole early in the morning before anyone else was on the course. One Sunday, some of his friends at our church played a joke on him and put up a professionally painted metal sign in our backyard at the edge of the fourteenth hole green that read, Attention Government Street Presbyterian Sunday Morning Golfers. Attach offering check, ring bell, and children will come. The bell was a cow