This World Is Not Your Home

Growing up in a religious home, together as a family wasn’t easy. My mother and father took us to church every Sunday, Sunday night and Wednesday night. We went to church no matter what, even when we weren’t feeling well. My dad used to say if you’re sick, church is the best place to be. Why not? Everyone there can pray for you. It was my dad’s conviction to be in the house of God every time the doors were open, which was a good principle, but should’ve been with a few exceptions.

Our family consisted of four boys and a girl, so we were considered a good sized family in those days. One of the brothers is my identical twin. We left our mark on every house we lived in, with four boys it was inevitable. There were holes in the plaster behind some of the doors to the bedrooms, from chasing each other around the house and trying to get into the bedroom. Once in the bedroom we would try to hold the door and lock it, before one of the others could get in. That worked sometimes but when it didn’t, you guessed it, the door would be pushed open by force and another hole was imprinted in the wall. This caused my mom to take action, when she had had enough she would go to the closet to get the broom. This would definitely be considered child abuse today. Wow, how times have changed. By the way the broom was my mom’s weapon of warfare, well maybe not spiritually but for sure physically.

My mom was a genuine Christian. She loved the Lord with all her heart and loved her children equally, even when we didn’t deserve it. Mother’s are usually the glue that holds families together, with a few exceptions. She was a praying mother and had faith in God. She taught me so many good principles.

My dad was a good father and did the best he knew how. The church we went to was very legalistic, a lot of man made rules and regulations. The rules were

created by the church based on their denomination and their interpretation of the

Bible. If you abided by the rules, you were considered saved. If you didn’t you would probably be considered excommunicated. What a burden that was, based on your Christian duties. It was so extreme that sometimes I thought God might not love me and I would have to get saved again, to experience his love for me.

That was a common practice of that church. When you went to a meeting, people would try to coerce you to go to the altar to make sure you were saved. I guess that made them feel like they were doing their Christian duty, although I wasn’t sure if they were in right standing with God themselves. I am not sure how they justified some of the things they did.

When my twin brother and I got into trouble my mom would tell dad that we needed a spanking. Of course we would blame each other, but that didn’t matter to him, we were both guilty. He always spanked first and then asked questions later. In his opinion, if one of us didn’t deserve it, the spanking would be credited for something we were going to do the next day. Before he spanked me, he always told me, “ Son, this is going to hurt me more than it is you.” I could never understand that, because I was the one crying.

My twin brother and I were wrestling one evening. I managed to get on top of him to pin him down. In the process he stuck his foot through a window in an encyclopedia case. Once again that would cause mom to go get the broom. Then his other foot got caught underneath him. The pressure on his foot caused some of the bones in his ankle to break. I felt so bad as he rolled on the floor in pain. It just happened to be Sunday late afternoon, and we were getting ready to go to church. Dad expected all of us to go to church, even my brother who had just broken his ankle. After a heated discussion, mom spoke up and said, he’s not going anywhere. The next day mom called the doctor to get my brother in for a cast. He wore that cast until we moved to Arizona, which was a couple of months.

When we packed up to move to Arizona, I remember mom previously reading

Zane Grey books, which had pictures of the southwest desert areas of the United States, mostly in New Mexico and Arizona. The books had pictures of giant

saguaro cacti, which I thought were fictitious. As we were driving through New Mexico and into central Arizona from Flagstaff on I- 17, we began to actually see those giant cacti. It was such a site to behold, all sizes and shapes.

I heard there were also rattlesnakes in Arizona, which interested dad. So as we

traveled through New Mexico he stopped at a rattlesnake, see’em alive farm.

Some of us were excited, some of us weren’t but my mom was totally against the idea. He actually paid a few bucks to see a man handling rattlesnakes in a pit, warding off the vicious vipers. I think the man had been bitten so many times, he was immune to the venom. It was pretty exciting to see, but some of our family

thought the man was crazy. Maybe the man couldn’t find a real job. I thought it was pretty cool, but it was totally scary.

On the last leg of the trip, we stopped in Albuquerque to eat at a little hole in the wall, greasy spoon cafe. That was the only restaurant we had stopped at, since we left Ohio. That turned out to be a disaster, because we all got food poisoning from the fried chicken. As I was throwing up I felt so miserable. We would’ve been better off to save the money and had bologna sandwiches instead.

I loved my dad very much, and now that I am older and my children have grown up, I could see a lot of what he believed and did was from a good heart, his way of protecting his children from the world, although I couldn’t understand why we weren’t able to ride our cousin’s bikes on Sunday or watch television. When I was growing up, dad would get up early in the mornings to meet with God. I could hear him praying, as I laid in bed. Sometimes, I think of him when I am praying in the mornings. If he were still here, I would tell him thank you dad for modeling a prayer life for me.

When we moved to Arizona, I watched as my parents' relationship started growing apart. Through the eyes of a child it has to be one of the hardest things to go through. The heartache of losing my dad was so confusing. It wasn’t a physical death but an emotional death, which was one of the hardest things a child has to go through and try to comprehend. That along with the fact that my dad didn’t know how to love me or tell me that he loved me, caused me to have a father wound that would take many years to heal. It gave me feelings that I would never be good enough and I would never be accepted by anyone. My oldest brother was promoted to be my father figure, which came with some peer pressure, I’m sure.

When we went to church together as a family, I remember a song we used to sing. The lyrics to the chorus were: This world is not my home, I’m only passing through. If heaven’s not my home, O Lord what would I do. The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore. My mom would sing off key, and she was the loudest. She sang from her heart. What

precious memories I have of her. She was my mentor growing up and I always

wanted to be like her. She taught me how to clean the house and cook meals. I

would stand by the stove watching her prepare the food. She did it with joy in her

heart, because she loved her family. We always had supper at the table, when we

were growing up, so we could converse with each other as we ate together. The

family table was also used to communicate with each other. We need this more than ever today.

As I write these pages, my wife and I are camping at Fool Hollow lake

campgrounds, in our pop up tent. It is our home away from home, about 160 miles from where we live. The breeze has been a little windy at times. I wanted to

go fishing but the wind was causing white caps to form on the lake, plus I would’ve had to renew my fishing license and the cost of the license is a little expensive, since I might use it two or three times a year.

The pine trees were so beautiful, swaying in the wind. It reminded me of the church campgrounds we used to live by when I was younger. After church on Sunday’s, my mom would prepare something to eat for our family so we could have lunch with some of the other folks. Then we would sit under the trees with a blanket on the ground. We would listen to different singing groups, mostly quartets singing old time gospel songs. They sang Power in the blood, In the sweet by and by and Amazing Grace and so many others. Those were the days of my childhood I remember well. Then my memories were interrupted by another gust of wind which brought me back to reality.

I can recall Christmas’ past, we would buy a Christmas tree from a lot, or someone would donate one to us. The smell from the fresh pine tree made our Christmas so wonderful to experience. We would gather in our living room to hear the Christmas story from the gospel of Luke. Our family was not a well to do family, because dad was sick, with ulcers. Mom worked at a nursing home to help make a living. The Christmas presents were not in abundance, but I always felt loved by my mother. One of the gifts was a bat and a ball for my brother and I.

We always looked forward to the different shaped Christmas cookies with red and green sprinkles. I still can’t decide if I like the red or green sprinkles better. I loved making red and green paper chains to hang as Christmas decorations across the room. That was my sister's idea and I thought it was so pretty and it was so much fun. I loved spending time with her doing different things. She

would save the outsides of gum wrappers, from the gum we chewed and from others that would save them for her. We also wove paper chains out of those. Our

Christmases were pretty basic, but we managed to have a lot of fun in the process.

One Sunday night, when we got home from church someone had bought several bags of groceries and left them on our front porch. It was such a blessing because our cupboards were getting empty and the Lord knew we needed the extra food. God has always provided for us and I have never forgotten that. There were indeed some good hearted people that went to our church.

My brother and I were hooked on chocolate milk. Everytime the milk truck

would come through our neighborhood, we would chase after the truck until the driver would stop and get out of his truck. We told him we wanted a carton of chocolate milk each and gave him some change mom had given us. Looking back I think I would have dropped out of kindergarten if it weren’t for the chocolate milk. That was the best part of going to school everyday, plus the fact that we got to take a nap on our little blankets, after storytime.

As I walked around the campground this morning, I happened to notice a sign

on a plaque, of two bears that read: “Love is staying together after parking the

camp trailer.” I thought it was funny but there is a lot of truth to it. My wife and I seem to get on each other's nerves when she’s helping me back the camper into our camp space. We now make it a practice to say a prayer for patience when we arrive at our campsite. You’ve probably heard the old saying, “ Maybe you shouldn’t pray for patience because God might answer your prayers.”

I have an older brother who always liked playing the guitar. He was always the last one to come to the supper table. Mom always had to call him several times to get him to come and eat. Everyone else's priorities were eating, but his was just playing his guitar. He seemed to be able to play his guitar without a lot of effort, most likely from all the time he spent practicing. He didn’t just strum his guitar, he learned how to finger pick each string, just like Chet Atkins, “Mr. Guitar.”

We visited my grandma and grandpa a few times when I was growing up. We would travel from Ohio to Virginia. They lived on top of a mountain called Big Ridge. There was a small cemetery on top of the mountain where their parents were buried. To get to the top of the mountain you would have to go through a few old wooden, narrow gates, so it took time to open and close the gates after

going through them. It was a lot harder to get up the mountain in the winter time because dad would have to drive slower, through the snow.

They lived in a quaint little wooden house that was built by grandpa and his

family. He was a tall man with wrinkles on his face from age, and wore old blue jean overalls. His name was Noah and he was a gentle giant to me. I was told that he was named after Noah Webster, the one who wrote the dictionary. He was my dad’s father and had a very creative mind.

There was a well next to their house, and a platform with an old water pump that had a handle to pump it. You had to have a bucket of water to prime it as you pumped the handle. He took an old washing machine motor and rigged it to the water pump handle with a pulley, using a fan belt. Then he took a piece of rain spout and placed one end of it under the pump spigot and the other end went

through a window seal and into their kitchen sink. Then he used a light switch to hook the electricity to the washing machine motor. He also figured out how to make it self priming, when the switch was turned on, by using stored rainwater. They also had a wood burning oven to cook meals on.

I used to go on walks with my grandpa to a nearby spring where he would get water to drink, and we would hike through the woods. My grandma’s name was Lotte. Her face was also weathered from age, and she wore a homemade dress she had sewed for herself. I would go with her to the barn to milk the cows. They had a tomcat that would tag along with us. Grandma would begin milking the cows, and when she was done she would squirt the last stream of milk into the cat's mouth. Sometimes she would miss the cat's mouth and the milk would get on its whiskers. It didn’t seem to matter to the cat, he just licked it off.

One time my parents took them to Dairy Queen in White Sulfur Springs. They had never been before, and had never had a milkshake. As they got their order the waiter gave them straws to drink their shakes. They didn’t know how to use a straw, so mom and dad had to show them how to remove the paper from the straws so they could drink them. They also had to show them how to suck the shake through the straw.

My mom worked as a nurse's aide at a hospital and met a man who worked as

an orderly. She started dating him and they finally got married. It was hard for my twin and I, being the youngest ones in the family, to adapt to having a stepdad.

We had our challenges through high school and sometimes we had family fights.

My step father would get in the car and drive around the neighborhood, while

things cooled off at home.

My brother and I joined the navy right after high school, we left for bootcamp in San Diego. After we served in the navy for four years, we came back home to live, until we could find a place of our own. The time we spent in the Navy made us realize how kind our step father really was. We just needed to grow up.