TO MY CHILDREN

 

Chapter One…………..TO MY CHILDREN,

and their children, and their children, and my current friends, former friends and maybe future friends and my acquaintances and also to the strangers on the street:

January 07, 2021,                                                      David R. Snow, Marshall, Texas

 

Perhaps at a time, some 50 or so years from this date, if the earth is still turning and if there are those who record history and if the means still exist to keep and transmit the data, this story may be told. At that time hopefully clearer heads will have emerged so as to analyze the events, attitudes and mindsets of our present age in a soberer fashion, seeking guidance as to what happened and why, perhaps striving to avoid repeating the same mistakes made in these terrible times of deceit, of power lust, of a lack of morals, and with seemingly no obvious desire to respect truth, much less even showing a modicum of integrity, and obviously no ability or effort to accept it even when right before our eyes.

 

Please bear with me as I attempt to relate to the very recent events that have transpired in these last few days. These are big events, made up of course, of very small increments, all cascading into the cataclysm of two very basic world views: of good and of evil (and not surprisingly, each side sees itself as on the good side and those who disagree as on the evil side). These events began a century or so ago with rise of progressivism, then to socialism finally morphing into full-blown communism. And every once in a while the thing popped up in time, in various countries around the globe and now it has come up quite real right here in our United States of America, or maybe we should say, the Divided States of America, i.e., the bad and the good, the godless and the god-fearing.

 

The serpent has been threatened with truth and integrity and honesty and respect for fellow man (and woman) and with faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and he has coiled to strike back with false narratives, with outright lies, denial of facts in evidence and with fear of reprisal from authorities real or imagined.

 

Perhaps the last scene in the movie, the Planet of the Apes (1968), as a picture of a broken statue of liberty on the beach, graphically proclaims that the United States of America has been destroyed, is broken, and in ruins. Even though the story is presented as science fiction, we may well see it, due to the events of the past few months, as a kind of prophesy.

 

However, dear reader, what may seem to be real and final at first glance, may be only what it appears to be at present but the illusion may fade as time passes. What I am trying to say is that what we see right now may not be the whole of it.

 

There is an unknown factor, there is a force greater than us all, greater than our national experiment, greater than the constitution which, for the present has seemingly been shredded, greater than any man-made government, legislature, judiciary or executive branch and that force is Truth. It is the Divine Logos, it is the Word, and He is the Son of God (creator of everything big and little, and us human beings as well) as proclaimed in the beginning of the third chapter of the gospel of John. And that Truth (with a capital T) must be the object of our trust, of our faith, of our hope and not current events, videos, media reports and fears even if we are led "through the valley of the shadow of death" itself, fear is unthinkable. We are not at the end. The beginning is becoming visible just over the horizon as a new day dawns. 

 

It's Been a long time since I've written

Looking back, it has been quite a while since anything was written on this blog. Well this short post is an effort to say that we shall return at some future point hopefully not too many days hence! drs

Chapter Ten---A Bit of History in an Attempt to Understand the Present

In chapter nine I mentioned in passing that we would discuss my transition from the Disciples to the Baptist Church. Chronologically, the shift came in the mid 80s but it might make for better understanding to backtrack a bit and take a look at my religious roots, my birth church, as it were.

I grew up somewhere between a big city and a very rural community, from Dallas to rural Upshur County. Church was a major part of my early life. I mean the going to, participating in and observing church activities and behaviors. My earthly father, the preacher, the farmer, the factory worker, the hospital custodian, and ever the preacher, has certainly been an influence. Sometimes I wonder if that influence has been positive or negative. I sometimes catch myself reacting, even at this late date when we are both at advanced age he is 96 and I going on 70, to the way I perceive him to think and believe.

I too, grew up with some questions about religion--the religion that was preached by the back country evangelists of the 40s in the piney woods of East Texas, as compared to my family's observance of Christmas (gifts sans Jesus) and singing "I'll Fly Away" to the accompaniment of an out-of-tune piano in some church member's homes (not ours, as no one in our family played anything but a radio).

When I stayed at my grandfather's house, most always, we'd listen to KRLD (1080AM--Dallas) for the Stamps Quartet's rousing "Give the World a Smile Each Day" at noon week days while grandma put the lunch on the table. I learned later that Virgil Stamps (founder of what was then Stamps-Baxter Music Co. in Dallas) had grown up in Upshur County. I would now guess that granddaddy probably knew him.

The absolute biggest deal in that community (Shady Grove--where there was a church of Christ church, a store and a one-classroom-school house) was the 4th Sunday in June All-Day-Singing-and-Dinner-on-the-Ground. Actually the dinner was purely pot luck, as every body brought something and spread it on sawhorse and plank tables. It was a wonderful forerunner of the pig-out buffets we have today, except the price of admission was a picnic basket full of fresh fried chicken, homemade biscuits and potato salad.

I remember this vividly, having participated for several of my growing-up years. On that Sunday, we would first go to church and do the regular Sunday school, church service (sans any instrument, of course), have the Lord's Supper, say amen, and go directly to the food tables and have our lunch. Then, when all had eaten, there was a migration to the schoolhouse, whereupon there was an upright piano on the little stage and there was an afternoon of congregational singing, quartets and groups from all over. I even remember that I first learned what Sacred Harp music sounded like at those gatherings. And, of course there also, were the professional quartets, Stamps-Baxter among them. Obviously there were all kinds of religious denominations represented and everybody seemed to have a good time.

As I grew older, it became more difficult to rationalize--even with the solid evidence of two (2) actual Bible verses, in the N. T., that said "sing (and not play)--that a piano, organ or (God Forbid) a guitar would not be OK to sing with in church. A. Campbell had certainly been adamant about not liking any instrument other than the human voice in worship. In reality, in many frontier churches in middle America in the early 1800s, one would not find a piano or a pump organ, but its absence was not so much a matter of doctrine, but a matter of finance, of getting the thing transported to the church house. The Methodists in those years put a church house about every 5 to 10 miles, about the distance a person would be able to travel by horseback or buggy from their farm to go to church. Many of those small community churches are still there and functioning. I served two such Methodist churches as pastor not long ago, here in Harrison County, Texas.

Among churches of Christ, at some point in history, there developed this idea (rather a rationalization, I think) that somehow corporate worship in a house designated as a place for having church services, and only during a specified, set time (by scriptural elders) is actually worship (perhaps with a capital Worship). And, after the final amen and in the home, it is OK to do otherwise and even to enjoy music, even religious music, with an instrument.

So, the instrument thing was an easy transition early on and it was not a big deal to go to the Christian church. The use of candles and responsive readings were a sort of a strange fire at first, but with time, that became no problem at all. In fact, if I go to a service and they don’t sing the Doxology after the offering, I think something is wrong with that bunch.

I must confess that I went somewhat astray, in fact, during the early 1970s. I was searching for something to hang on to, having rejected at the time most of my early theology. Being in college again in my early 30s and the influences present on the campus during those years led me to embrace, albeit temporarily, some ideas that I do not consider healthy today. Anyway, we got more involved with the Christian Church, both in Commerce and after we came to Marshall, but more so in Marshall. And I began to slowly get back to my roots, to take back some of the ideas that I had rejected earlier and I began to take an active role in the Marshall Christian church, even to supplying the pulpit in the Pastor’s absence.

The truth be known, churches change as people come in and people leave and pastors come and go. Maybe I changed too, but it became painfully obvious to us at one point that we were in the wrong church (for us at that time). Looking back, we could have made it work. I think it was the pastor at the time, and pastors come and go. Carolyn was, of course, working for the Baptists at ETBU and had many friends and acquaintances in that fellowship. I was trying to get away from some obviously liberal ideas and taking a more conservative stance in my thinking. There were grandchildren coming on who needed some religious instruction and the Baptists had a very good Sunday school system in place. All of these factors made the Baptist church seem a good choice. We joined, I am guessing, sometime in the middle 1980s.

Chapter Nine--Fun Radio and Other Stuff

The calendar said it was 1977, barely. It was December and the weather was cold. We had packed up our things and put most of it in a storage warehouse back in Arlington. For the second time, we imposed upon my parents, who were then living on my dad’s old home place in Upshur County. We stayed in a travel trailer in the back yard for just two weeks until we could find some place to light in Marshall. None of us shall forget the marvelous ride through Dallas, on I-20 to Hawkins and then on narrow oil-topped roads to a rural community called Shady Grove.

We were down to our last dollar and the Chevy pickup we were driving was missing a cylinder or two due what the mechanics call burnt valves. Richard and Randall were both in the Navy and Nancy was somewhere at that time. So, Russell and Amy rode the whole way in the back of the truck in the snow cone stand. I had constructed the stand out of 2 x 4s and plywood in Mexia for the kids’ snow cone business. Anyway, the stand made a rather nice camper shell/topper, if one can imagine it going down the road. Carolyn, had the promise of a job with the local mental health agency and I was supposed to have something as well, but it didn’t work out.

Details as to exact times and events get a little out of focus about here, but somehow we got the truck fixed, found a house, moved to Marshall and Carolyn went to work for MHMR and I went to work looking for work, in a few days returning to my old standby, radio. This time, I became directly involved with time sales as well as an air shift and writing and producing my own commercials. This was, if you don’t dwell on the money made, a very enjoyable experience. It was a time when I met some real good friends who are still friends to this day even though we each have long ago gone our own ways, ways away from the radio scene. It was during this time that I became acquainted with the business community of this little town and made contacts that have proved invaluable to this day.

I have a vivid memory of February of 1978. The weather was miserable for Texas, but not unusual. There was ice everywhere and here I was driving around calling on merchants and trying to sell them what I called at the time, “hot air.” Or perhaps it was a sort of dubious notoriety, the hearing about oneself and one’s business coming out of a radio speaker.

One of my favorite ploys was to come back to them when they said that radio did not work for them, that I would be glad to dial up the station right then and go on the air and tell whoever was listening that so and so store was giving away free kittens this very afternoon. They then proved that that they thought it might work enough to clog up their phone lines with potential cat takers so that I was told not to do that—they were really afraid that it would work. Sometimes that was all it took to get them on a contract.

One time, I had a meat market on my list and I had been by almost once a week for a month or more and they always said they did not need any more advertising. Well, this particular morning I was determined that this was going to be the day. So I scribbled down a few lines from his yellow page ad and went to the store. He was busy cutting up meat, and I said that I wanted him to hear something that I wrote for him. He agreed to listen. So I read the standard stuff about name and address and product and concluded the 30-second spot (Note: in small market radio we were not as strict about 5 or 10 seconds one way or another) with so and so’s “got the best meat in town and that’s no bull.” Well, he slapped his knee and laughed so hard I was afraid he would kick over the butcher block, and then he asked me how much that was going to cost him. Well, we made a deal and he stayed with me a long time, and in fact, even after he had retired, I got this call one day from another city. It was his daughter. She informed me that his wife had died and that she had wanted me to preach her funeral. I did recall that years before, in the store when I would visit, we would sometimes talk about spiritual things and she had made me promise. I had long forgotten the thing, but I took care of my obligation. It seems that I have been able to make friends and relationships, even as I have done business with folks. And, even get a little ministry in from time to time.

One guy here in town, and its been twenty five years, still insist that I not pay for tomato plants when I visit his nursery, because he remembers that I helped him get the business started with the humorous radio ads I produced for him back when he was just struggling to get it going, It was pretty simple. When the guy talked, you just naturally laughed because he had a kind of corn-pone, down-home funny way of expressing himself. I just took notes and told about his plants in his own words. It must have worked because he is still doing good and had greatly expanded over the years.

Actual time working in radio was probably about three years, maximum. But the residual effects far surpassed that. In between, we started a successful free paper, a shopper, but the local power structure did not like competition for their daily. They won, but we did have some fun in the process. Later, I tried it again, alone. The first one was called the East Texas Shopper. I would write little editorials and Carolyn had a column called “Dear Susie.” The Shopper died in December 1979.

The second paper was called the Country Catalog. I put out the Catalog with a Radio Shack TRS 80. It printed justified type off a print wheel and carbon ribbon at 10 characters a second. I used a strip-printer for the big letters. The little door for the diskette on the TRS 80 had a broken hinge and I put a stick of wood in it to keep the limit switch closed so it would think it was OK to run. I took a photo of the computer with the stick of wood sticking out and labeled it the world’s first wood-burning computer. That kind of got some folks to raising their eyebrows. I put the Catalog to sleep sometime in 1988. It probably was a viable operation, but I was just tired.

If you were keeping up, you will notice I skipped a few years and a few stories. There was the one about the adventures of a vocational high school teacher. There was the one about going back to school to get some additional credentials for teaching. There was the one about forming our own social service agency. There was the transition from the Christian Church to the Baptist Church. And the list goes on, so don’t miss the next exciting episode of My Snow Story Here!

Chaper Eight--Moving on!

Back in 1965, as we left for Kansas, housing in the Dallas area was plentiful and relatively cheap, meaning that rentals in the $40-50.00 range were plentiful. But by 1967, the area had evidently experienced some sort of boom and even though we had funds due to my job, there was just no place to rent. Now I’m sure if we had had enough cash to buy a place or to pay several hundred dollars a month, we might could have found something. However, that was certainly not the case. We had left a friend in Wylie, Texas, a 70+ year old retired chiropractor. He had moved to small lake house on Lavon. The house had a garage type storage shed and he allowed us to unload our rent-a-truck in it and let us dwell with him for a few weeks until we finally persuaded a local grocer to move the hay (he kept for his cows) out of a badly dilapidated house and rent it to us (the house, not the hay). We called it the Hay House and there is a picture of it towards the end/beginning of SnowStoryHere. It’s the one with the kids lined up with their Christmas bicycles. It was during the move-in time that the “opossum” story happened, as well as the “sickest time ever” occurred. We might get to those later.

One final note about church stuff might be addressed at this point. We were back at Wylie where we had lived just two years earlier. Prior to preaching at the Culleoka Church of Christ (remember that’s where the woman would squirm around and loudly clear her throat if the preaching went too long) and before going to Kansas, we were members of the Wylie Church of Christ. In fact, I had functioned as their song leader at one point. Anyway, we attempted to re-join the church when we moved back to town. However, the folks in Coffeyville had corresponded with the Wylie church and they elected not to offer us the right hand of fellowship. I never quite understood just why they would visit their judgment on my wife and children also, when it was me and my alleged false teachings that they had a beef with. But they did.

The very next Sunday, we attended the First Christian Church in Wylie, joined and were welcomed with very open arms. It was not long before I was regularly doing supply preaching for the Disciples. It was because of this connection that we were asked to go live as house parents at Fowler Home in Dallas. While there, I volunteered in the maintenance department, worked at Collins at night and went to Elkins Institute of Radio Broadcasting during the day. We lived in cottage with our five plus several other boys. This was really a learning experience for both of us.

Living and working in the combination children’s home and old-age home in a then fairly rough section of East Dallas with five children of our own got to be a bit much and we did not last a year there. But it was enough time for me to finish my radio course and become a real live disk jockey (an ambition that I had had for quite some time). I must admit that the time sequences just here are fuzzy but I do remember working at my very first radio job at KTER, Terrell, Texas.

One day, while on the air at KTER, I got the call to come to Caddo Mills and talk to the folks at the First Christian Church there about being their pastor. During my time at that station the space program successfully planted an American flag on the moon and I remember tearing the copy from the teletype and reading the AP story over the air. I’m quite sure that millions were listening to our 250 Watts of clear-channel power!. The year was 1969.

The Caddo Mills church insisted that we move our mobile home to the church lot right in back of the church house. They put in the pipes for it (we had bought a new mobile home after we left Fowler Home) and we had it moved from the lot next to the hay house. This is where the tornado story happened, perhaps more about that later.

Caddo Mills was a nice little town. We could charge groceries and gas if we were out of money and the banker was very helpful with auto financing. The kids liked the school, I guess. It was not long until I changed radio stations and went to work for KGVL, a 1000 watter! The station was only about eight miles away, compared to 20 or so to Terrell. Caddo Mills was were Randall had a paper route and where he bought a mower on time from the local store and went into the mowing business and Richard forgot his speech and here Amy learned a little about race relations in Texas and I learned another lesson in church politics
.
Commerce, Texas was just a few more miles up the road and there was a wonderful university campus and Carolyn decided to go to school. To make a long story shorter, I decided to try to stay up with her. Good thing too! I owe her a lot for helping me to see clearer and take some positive action. Oh, we muddled around a lot, I did at least, but somehow got through a degree in record time. We moved to Commerce, was able to buy a house, operated an upholstery shop and got graduate degrees. I’m compressing years into sentences here. In the middle of this, there was a sojourn to Mexia and later, for me a very short sojourn to St. Louis. We might visit these stories later.

Our great computer venture was flopping and it seemed that jobs were hard to come by so, for lack of anything better to do in order to get bread to eat, we moved to Arlington and put in a nice respectable upholstery shop right there on Pioneer Parkway. We worked hard, long hours for not much left after expenses and one day a call came from an old college friend. And, to make a longer story shorter, we moved to Marshall, Texas. It was December, 1977.

Chapter Seven--To Kansas and back in two years

Neodesha, Kansas is a nice place. The population in 1965 was about 4,000 as I recall. Located in the southeast corner of the state, bordering with Oklahoma and Missouri and set at the convergence of two rivers on U. S. Highway 75, the town could be described as quaint. It was also fairly quiet. Some of the closest larger towns are Independence and Coffeyville and just to the south, Bartlesville, Oklahoma. There were quiet tree-lined streets and neatly kept older homes. There was some industry that provided jobs for the residents and there were nice schools, churches and parks—a good place to raise kids.

Three families made up the Church of Christ. As far as we knew, these were the only members of the Church of Christ in all of Wilson County, population about 14,000 in those days. They had met in a small native rock building for many years. The building was narrow and the part back of the pulpit area, probably intended for future Sunday school rooms, had never been completed, you stepped down to the dirt. The little building could not have held more than 30 persons, if that many. Our family of seven immediately doubled the attendance. The Bartlesville church offered us support, if I would get a new building built. We did, and it stands there today, on the north end of 8th St. We drove by it one time while going or coming from Topeka.

Before we went to Kansas, I had preached for a small congregation on the north shore of Lake Lavon in Collin County, Texas which, ironically, had more folks attending each Sunday morning than the Neodesha church. They had Sunday school all together and made a point to start the morning service a bit early, so that they could be out and home before noon. There was a woman in the congregation, who presented quite a formidable presence, who would fold her arms and clear her throat rather loudly as the clock neared the noon hour as the sermon labored on. I always took this, and wisely I think, as a subtle signal to bring it to a close. If I gained nothing else from that experience, the ability to be able to quickly wind it down and quit almost on cue has proven to be a useful homiletic tool at times. We were back in that area several years ago and drove by the old church building. It was falling down and was covered with high weeds and vines.

Thinking back on it, I wonder how they stood to listen to me. My thinking is that a lot of the rural churches, of any kind, get very used to providing the training ground for the younger minister. Its probably not that they are any less spiritual or less godly people, they just learn to overlook inexperience and youth and sometimes just turn off their switches when an especially bad sermon comes toward them. A caution to the young preacher: watch it when a parishioner tells you at the church door how much they “enjoyed” the message. But I digress.

One incident that occurred in our Kansas sojourn was truly a life-changing event. Carolyn got real sick. She was taken to Wichita in an ambulance and I followed in the car. She was admitted to St. Francis hospital, basically in a coma. The doctors in Neodesha did not know what her trouble was and sent her to a bigger hospital. The doctors at St. Francis did not have a clue either. One doctor told me as we walked down the hall, away from her room that she might die. That was a real comforting thought, knowing that back at home there were five children who would be in need of some kind of mothering if that occurred. This was, to me, an unacceptable prospect so I spent the next couple of days praying over her comatose body. I made a deal with God: raise her up and I would always be his minister. My point was that I loved her and I knew that God loved her, so since we both loved her, she needed to be awake to know it. Well, she came out of it and was discharged. She was weak for several months. My mother had come up to stay with the children and I guess was glad for the way it all turned out.

I signed a bill for about $1,800.00 and told the sisters there that I would pay when I could, as we did not have any insurance. I was grateful to God for having healed her. I would guess it was God, for it was not anything the hospital or the doctors did that brought her back.

So, God did his part. Now it was up to me to do mine. A few days later a couple showed up at the door and said that they had sold some land and wanted to tithe a portion of it and gave me a check for about $1,800.00 (which took care of the hospital bill). Talk about faith!

Being a new minister in town, I had met the Baptist preacher, the Assembly of God pastor, a delightful fellow with the Independent Christian church and the Disciples minister among others. Thus I became friends with and would get to visit with them from time to time as I became involved in the community. Something finally dawned upon me. All these men seemed to genuinely believe in God, in Jesus and the cross and held the scriptures in high esteem. They seemed to be very spiritual and very much at ease in their respective positions.

But something was wrong. All my life, from my youth up, it had been drilled into me as I sat and listened to sermon after sermon in rural southern churches decrying the various errors of the Baptists, the Methodists, the this and the that. It appeared to me and I was convinced that I was definitely in the right church believing the right message and worshiping God in the right way. I do not ever remember, and my memory may be faulty at my present age, but I can not recall ever hearing any preacher referring to the statement attributed to Alexander Campbell (a Scotch Presbyterian preacher who, with another Presbyterian, Barton Stone and others in the early 1800s began a movement to restore what they termed New Testament Christianity) that we were Christians only, but not the only Christians. Somehow that fact had either escaped me or I was never exposed to it.

As I said earlier, I do not now see how they stood me, but I am glad that I was tolerated. When we got to Kansas, I begin to understand that I was really ill-prepared for the job at hand, but Jesus said that we should not look back when our hand is put to the plow. I had to study a lot, because I had not done much of it in the past. I had to pray a lot, because I felt I really needed help from above. I remember working on the book of Romans and trying to see what Paul was trying to get across.

Well, trouble began to raise its head. I saw the other church folk from the “denominations” to be sincere and dedicated believers. I saw in Paul’s message to the Romans that the thing that really makes the difference is faith, or belief, or trust, in Jesus and not in ourselves or a in a group for that matter. It began to dawn on me that Jesus died on the cross and was raised on the third day and in that act, because he was without sin, was made sin for everyone who will accept that he arose victorious over sin and death and is right now at the right hand of the Father, being an advocate for any one who falls short. Salvation, then, is not an act, a ritual or a set of steps that one takes. Salvation is a free gift to anyone who can let go and let God, who can trust in what Jesus did, who can allow God to dwell in his or her spirit (the new birth). So, as I began to realize these things, that these people, these other church people were not necessarily wrong and that I, may in fact, have some ideas about religion, about church and about what its all about that may not be altogether right.

By now, I had begun to experience a genuine joy, able to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was my Father and that I actually had salvation and possessed eternal life here and now because of what Jesus had done for me. And that there were many more brethren out there than I had ever imagined!

I guess I got overly excited and misjudged my audience as I shared these things with them. They demanded my resignation. Later, in a called meeting in Coffeyville where there were representatives of several congregations from all over the area, I was formally forbidden to ever preach or teach or lead a prayer or lead a song in a Church of Christ because of my heresy.

I was unsuccessful as a recruit for National Life Insurance. I lasted just a couple of months. We wound up back in Dallas as I was able to be rehired at Collins Radio. At least we now had some income again. The year was 1967, and our furniture was in a friend’s barn out at Lake Lavon and we were homeless.

Chapter Six--the family expands to fill the home, and other considerations

Hindsight often, and it certainly does in this case, gives a much more accurate assessment of a set of circumstances and subsequent decisions that play out as actions that eventually lead to yet another set of circumstances. For a few weeks right after my discharge I attempted several employment scenarios with very limited success.

This, looking back on it, was a lot like the Big Spring time. Maybe, at that point, I just needed structure. Maybe being able to function outside of the structure of a job, having a schedule to meet and quotas to fill and having lots of help with decisions, requires a good deal of maturity, which I probably had not attained at the age of 23. I had experienced four years of marriage, four years on military bases working a somewhat rigid schedule. I had taken on the responsibility of three small children. But, did all this add to my maturity or did it contribute to my confusion and indecision as to what course to pursue. Time was of the essence.

I chose the familiar, at least to me and not necessarily to my wife. I had experienced Dallas as a child and as a high school student. I somehow knew that there was money to be made, jobs to be had and that we could indeed survive. So, we went to Dallas, found work and rented a place to live and raise the kids. Carolyn did her job well and without much fanfare. I look back on it now and know it was a hard time for her. Three little ones, and soon another was on the way.

First was Richard, born at the Chanute, AFB hospital in Illinois, Nancy, born at the hospital in Wichita Falls, Texas because Shepard AFB did not have hospital facilities for maternity cases and Randall, born in the base hospital back at Chanute. By the time Amy came along, we were out of the service and she was born in a Garland, Texas hospital. By the time Russell was born, we had migrated to Wylie, Texas and he was born in the little hospital there. Five small children and some were in school already.

During this period, from 1960 to 1965, we lived in several rent houses in several small towns and I worked at Collins Radio Company as a general maintenance technician and Carolyn kept the home front. I tried several things, attempting to extricate myself from the factory. I briefly sold organs for a music company, sold automobiles, or at least tried and eventually wound up preaching for a small country church in north Collin County. This led us to Neodesha, Kansas in 1965. I do not know for sure whether it was that I had a call to preach at that time, or was it a job that I was able to do fairly well at and it was not factory work. Only God can know that for sure, but I feel like He blessed us in the work there and helped me to grow in a spiritual sense and to see other possibilities.

Hindsight, again, comes into view here. We must have had a great gift of faith in those days. We walked by faith and certainly not by sight. We did not have any money in savings, as it seemingly took every cent we could raise just to get along month to month. However, we went to visit that little church in south east Kansas because I had answered by mail a preacher-wanted ad in one of the gospel papers. We drove up there from Wylie and they hired us that Sunday afternoon for a salary of about a half of what I had been earning in the factory. Carolyn and I had agreed, in the car as we drove behind one of the church families on the way to their home for lunch that day, upon a figure that we would accept. That was the figure they offered later that afternoon. We had some good times in that town, but before two years had passed trouble was a-brewing, religious trouble, church trouble. And I quickly tried to learn to sell insurance.