3 Background, Boyhood

Background, Boyhood

I was born September 26, 1942 at Fort Sanders Hospital in Knoxville TN. My father had abandoned my mother and my 5 ½ year old sister to move in with his girlfriend, whom he married after he and my mother divorced, and with whom he had other children. As far as I knew, the only contacts were his (more or less) monthly payments for our support, and occasional Christmas gifts; I remember an “Erector” set (with a motor) one year, and a chemistry set another; one week-end we went on a train from Chattanooga to Knoxville where my mother had a meeting with her divorce lawyer; my sister and I saw the cartoon movie “Alice in Wonderland”.

My mother moved with my sister and me to Chattanooga’s Brainerd section, into the new home of her parents, due to their great kindness. Chattanooga boasted the Lookouts AA baseball team, who had downtown Engel Stadium as their home field; they vied with the Atlanta Crackers. A farm team for the Washington Senators, the Lookouts had first baseman Harmon Killebrew as their star hitter, and the great Warren Spahn pitched for them during his minor league years. My grandfather, well known in the city, was superintendent of schools, and was honored in his later years as the “Knight of Knothole” (he proudly kept the portraited plaque on his study wall). My grandmother, a schoolteacher, was a Mayflower descendant and a cousin of the famed Benjamin Franklin; she was one of five sisters and grew up in NC, near Yadkinville. When I was a young boy I spent a summer with my sister at a great-aunt’s country home, which she shared (as his second wife) with her physician husband in SC; I favored the library in their house where I curled up on a comfortable leather sofa, while my older, more venturesome sister played in their pond, where she was bitten by leeches. I remember one stormy night by the fireplace, being invaded by bats from the attic, when we took turns telling ghost stories. We also hosted on at least two occasions another of Grandmother’s kinsfolk – a man (I think he lived in Ocoee TN and was a school principal; I remember he had a moustache), whose wife came also sometimes.

Later Ginny and I drove on vacation to Pilot Mountain in Surry County NC for a visit with Grandmother’s youngest sister, the only one still living, who had written a history of Rockford and lived next door to her daughter and son-in-law, in whose house we stayed. One fine morning Ginny and I went for a walk; then my great-aunt took us on a tour of Yadkinville, and regaled us with some of her memories. Her daughter fed us a nice home-cooked supper; it was there, with the cooked-to-death green beans, I learned that summer squash can be fit for human consumption. The next night, before we left, she took us for a sumptuous (for that area) dinner at a local restaurant.

Growing up, I thought I could do anything, and nothing was out of my reach; in middle age there were some things I didn’t want to do; now as a senior, some of my former abilities have waned. Along the way, though, my undertakings have been with zest, and the gracious Lord has overseen them all.