Conversion

So I want to share with you some memories that happened around the same time.  Please forgive me if they are not in order, jump around a bit or don’t flow like usual.  Hey it’s been 25+years here and I know the memories are there.  They are just stuck on the floppy drive in my head.  I am still trying to give you a since of who I was then and what was going on around me about that time.  So here goes. 

After Oma died Momma tend to Grandpa.  He ate dinner with us every night, and constantly complained how bad the food was, while he steadily shoved it down.  I can still hear him saying, “This gravy tastes like wallpaper glue.”  Correcting me on my table manners, “When you put soup on your spoon, try not to ding the side of the bowl.”  I still think of this when I am nervous at the table.  Nothing was ever good enough for him.

Between the time Oma died when I was 7, and he married Barbara when I was about 12, Grandpa developed cancer.  Well not really.  The Dr.’s never did quite understand what it was, but they treated it as cancer with radiation. They found it during his routine yearly examine.  He had developed some kind of sack at the base of his Medulla Oblongata, or his brain stem.  He had a six inch scar down the back of his head and neck.  We called it his zipper.  The surgery left him with balance issues and he was unable to lift his head to see the stars.  Something he told me he greatly missed.  He had retired from sea life, at this point. I don’t think he could have ever gone back to sea, because of his balance issues, even if he had wanted to.  For the first time, since he was about 17, he was land locked.

The surgery changed him a lot.  So much so, that I don’t think my younger cousins, will recognize the man I have described in this blog.  After his surgery Grandpa was a much kinder man.  I don’t know that he ever beat Barbara, the way that he used to beat Oma.  His demeanor changed.  We used to say they had taken out his meanness with his surgery. 

Grandpa, Barbara, my parents and me all became very active in the Bethel community.  It was a small community outside of Logansport, way back in the woods and we began to attend the Bethel United Methodist Church.  Bethel church had a large congregation and lots of kids at the time.  It was here that both Grandpa, Barbara, and eventually Mom became members.

My best buddy at Bethel was Jennifer.  We used to sit behind my Mom and Dad in church.  We would just giggle.  Then Mom would do that thing, where her head rotated like an owl, her eyes would get huge, her eye brows lift, and she would give us this look of, “If you two don’t shut up.  I am going to beat you within an inch of your life when we get home.”  And then she would turn back around like everything was normal and fine. 

Jennifer was a year younger than me.  We helped put on Vacation Bible School.  I can still hear, “Jesus and you at Camp Can Do,” in my head as I write.  My favorite story to tell of her is that there is an old hymn called, “Bringing in the Sheaves.”  That’s it, some of you are humming it now.  I can hear you, Alto’s in the back.  We had no idea what a sheave was at that time.  So our brains changed it into something we recognized.  I brought in the sheep and Jennifer brought in the sheets.  When we realized this in church one day, we started just busted out laughing.  All I could see was Jesus getting the sheets off the line, just a humming that song. Oh still makes me smile today. 

In the summers made the rounds of Vacation Bible School (VBS).  One week I was at First Baptist, one week at First Methodist, and one week at Bethel.  It was at the VBS at First Baptist that I really heard about Hell for the first time.  The pastor had us hold up our hands, during prayer time, of those of us who were not saved.  I held up my hand.  I was not sure what he was talking about.  He asked those of us who had raised our hands, to stay for a moment before we went to our classes. We did and he explained that if we were not saved, we would go to hell and be burned for ever.  I think he gave us a little tract pamphlet and told us to go home and talk to our parents. 

I did and told my parents that I wanted to be saved.  They were overjoyed.  I now just had to decide if I was wanted to be Baptist like Mom or United Methodist like Dad.  If I went Baptist they would have to find a place to baptize me, as they had no dunking tub at the church.  I knew there was a nasty old pond outside with snakes, and I didn’t want that either.  In the Methodist church I would be sprinkled.  I liked that idea a whole lot better.

I joined Keatchie United Methodist Church the next first Sunday.  Hell seemed to be something that was really talked about more, and emphasized more in the Baptist churches that I attended, then in the Methodist ones.  Yes, from what I understood, Methodist believed in Hell and Satan, but they focused more on Jesus’ teaching.    There was also a lot less screaming, and hell fire and brimstone sermons in the Methodist Church.  I was sprinkled in the Methodist Church August 6^th, 1989.   

About the same time in my life my favorite thing to do, was to go camping and fishing with my parents.  We took my friend Courtney once, but she was not too keen on it.  My Grandpa had about 200 acres down the old Bogle road, where he had grown up on the old family home place.  That land is now all owned by Dow Chemical. 

Mom, Dad and I had started out years before fishing.  There were two ponds on that property, a little pond and a much larger one.  We would borrow Grandpa’s little green aluminum boat and paddle out to the middle of the pond.  Daddy’s job was to put worm on Mom and I’s hooks, and to untangle us when our lines got crossed.  Poor Daddy, I don’t think he ever really got any fishing done.  I never could jab those little worms, so I just wrapped them around the hook and the Brim would just suck them right off.  So I learned to poke them, just a little bit.  Oh I was heartbroken when I found out worms cannot breath under water, and that I had been killing them.  I have yet to go back fishing after that. 

Camping kind of naturally came out of that.  We were working class poor, and Daddy worked all the damn time, so the idea of a vacation, that lasted more than a weekend, was a real luxury to us.  I think I took a handful of those during my school years.  What we did do a lot was go camping.  We mostly liked North Toledo Bend State Park out of Zwolle.  It is a beautiful park and in those days it was cheap and close for us.  We would go several times a year.   Sometimes we would even take Grandpa’s bass boat out.  It was a beautiful dark blue with a glitter finish.  Some of my best memories are of camping with my parents.  My parents spoiled me with the gift of their time.  I encourage you to do the same thing with your kids if you can. 

Daddy would often leave before dawn and come home late after dark.  It was nothing for him to work 60 to 80 hours a week, sometimes for months at a time. Daddy worked in the oil fields as a pipeline supervisor.  But a lot of the time he was on some type of machinery, whether it was dozer or a trackhoe.  Hell he can run them all.  He used to take me on location with him sometimes.   He would put me in the space behind the seat of the trackhoe, and it would go boingy, boingy, boingy and just bounce me up and down. 

He would come home and he had worked so hard he had sweated salt rings onto his shirt.  I always wanted to kiss him when he first came home, even if he was dirty.  He smelled like dirt, and diesel and oil.  Even today those smells excite me and make me think of home. 

Daddy is not an uneducated man.  He was raised on the Dairy at Keatchie, went to Longstreet High School and then went to Louisiana Tech in Ruston.  He was working on his degree in Animal Husbandry when he ran out of money.  He had wanted to be a vet, but there was not a vet school in Louisiana at that time. 

He left Louisiana, and bounced around for a while, traveling to New Orleans, and then Kansas, and finally after that and went to Houston.  His first job there was working as a rigger, for Brown and Root Construction.  He was working on the tops of buildings that were being constructed, walking those huge steel beams.   Brown and Root lead him to work in the oil field and he’s been doing it ever since.  He’s gone from being a hand and running equipment, to pipeline supervisor, to basically being a company man now.  His job is to sit in the air conditioned truck and make sure everyone is doing their job correctly.  The last 10 or 15 years he has had to travel for work going to Oklahoma, Ohio, and South Texas.  But as a child, I was lucky he had work where he was home every night. 

 

Ilsa