"I'm going to get myself a stick of dynamite and blow those railroad tracks up!" Those were the words I had heard my Dad tell my Mother for the second Sunday morning in a row as he slowed the new Plymouth Valiant car down to a complete stop in order to drive across the tracks without knocking the wheels out of alignment.

As I sat in the back seat between my two sisters dressed in our Sunday finest, I wondered if other Dads talked like that. No, not all other dads. Dads who were Baptist preachers. Somehow it just didn't sound "preacherly" to my 10 year old ears for a man to threaten to blow railroad tracks up with dynamite .

We were driving the 15 mile trip to Victory Baptist church in Blevins, Arkansas where we attended church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night....sometimes on Thursday for special meetings. And of course there were the revival meetings.

My dad wasn't the pastor of Victory Baptist church. My Dad was what was called a “local missionary” for the Missionary Baptist association. He was an ordained Baptist preacher. He'd been such since I was about six or seven years old. I don’t quite remember my exact age at the time he surrendered to the ministry. I do remember some of the ordination service though.

The week before my dad was to be ordained, I remember talk at home of what it would involve. … thorough questioning on his beliefs and understanding of the bible, among other things. It seemed that it was to be something like a solemn college entrance exam to my young mind. The morning before the ordination service was to begin, my dad was concerned about his hair. No, my dad wasn't obsessed with his hair normally, other than when he first noticed it falling out and for about two weeks speculated on just what he was going to be left with in a few years time. My dad was concerned that particular day with whether there was a trace of dandruff in his hair. (My mother checked carefully under the light and no, it looked fine to her.) There was then the concern as to whether he should put the normal amount of hair oil on it. All of this fascinated and puzzled me. Why was my Dad so worried about his hair and how much oil to put on it?

I found out later as I saw my Dad kneeling at the front of the church while several elders and preachers from the Missionary Baptist Association walked by and laid their hands on my Dad's head. What were they doing to my dad? Would he be the same when he returned home from that ordination ceremony? I came to understand more clearly later what it was all about. It was called the “laying on of hands” spoken of in the bible.

To return to that particular Sunday morning on our way to church, though; and my Dad threatening to blow up those railroad tracks. It continued to be a ritual of some sort to him every Sunday morning afterwards for what seemed like years to come. I would sit in the back seat of the car between my two sisters and each time we drove to church on Sunday morning, I would wait as we neared those tracks to see if my Dad would forget to make his statement about blowing them up. It amazed me that he never seemed to tire of telling my Mom what he wanted to do, even though my Mother knew good and well that he wanted to blow those tracks up from him saying so the last Sunday, the Sunday before that, and the Sunday before that.

My sisters and I asked our girlfriend at church, whose father happened to be the pastor of the church, if her Dad ever said anything to the effect of wanting to blow up railroad tracks. She got a good laugh out of hearing about it, but she said, "No, all her Dad did was say "thunderation" if he hit his thumb with a hammer accidentally."

The railroad and dynamite incident was just one of a long line of such diatribes that my dad could go into when he was aggravated by something. You see, my dad was probably the most intelligent man I ever knew. He was gifted in many ways. He had a great gift for words, for example, and it didn't stop at his talent for writing poetry. When something happened to aggravate my Dad, then you wouldn't get the simple statement, "That is aggravating", or maybe some crude curse words. My Dad didn't use crude curse words. He didn't even use the word "thunderation" as my friend's Dad did. No, my Dad used his imagination in getting across to everyone in the household just how aggravated he was. Take for instance the time he was walking across the floor in his bare feet.

My Dad stepped on a needle that was lying in the floor, and it stuck into one of his big toes. His first statement was a "normal" statement; or question to be more precise. He asked, "Who left this needle in the floor?" Nobody claimed responsibility, so my dad went into a description of just what was going to happen if he ever found out who WAS responsible for leaving that needle in the floor. He said that if his big toe became infected, and became gangrenous from having that needle stuck in it; then he was going to go to a doctor and have the doctor amputate that toe. Then he was going to bring that toe home with him and have our mother cook it, and whoever was responsible for dropping the offending needle in the floor was going to have to eat that toe.

To some who read this, it may seem like my Dad was some kind of a nut to talk like that, but they would have to know my Dad and his sense of humor. You see, most fathers would probably have cursed a blue streak when it happened; but since my dad didn't curse, then I suppose the elaborate description he gave worked in the same way to relieve the pain and aggravation he felt in the same way as cursing would have done for another man.

Then there was the time my Dad would drive to New Hope, Arkansas where he was trying to establish a new Mission church. My Dad would always manage to be running late leaving the house for the drive. My Mother would sit silently and tensely in the passenger seat while my dad drove 80 to 85 miles per hour to get there on time. My sisters and I would be hunkered down in the back seat learning to pray fervently.

This particular “exceeding the speed limit” time of my Dad’s life took place when he had just bought a very “cool looking” 1958 Oldsmobile car. We even impressed our teenage neighbor Danny Daniels with it. Danny Daniels and his Dad were antique car enthusiasts. Danny said the car had more chrome on it than any car he’d ever seen and it was a fine looking car. It was the first decent looking car my dad had owned. Before that time, we had those old black cars that just barely ran most of the time. When we came home from school the afternoon that my dad had bought that used Oldsmobile car, we were all so excited. We could finally sit with our heads proudly displayed above the rear windows of the back seat when we rode to town. Prior to that time, we were apt to slunk down in the back seat so that our classmates from school wouldn’t see us riding in a junky looking car. This Oldsmobile was a used car of course, but a mighty fine looking one to our eyes. As far as I know, the only brand new car my Dad ever bought was the Plymouth Valiant that I mentioned at the beginning of my story.

Prior to the blue Oldsmobile, my Dad owned a series of old black cars that would sometimes run, and sometimes not. If they did run, then it wasn’t very well. This never stopped my Dad from offering a ride to someone he saw walking into town.

The most fascinating character I remember my Dad giving a lift to was Snow White. Yes, this was the woman’s real name. Snow White was as black as the ace of spades and probably weighed around 300 pounds give or take a few. At that time, I was probably around five years old. It was back before integration in the schools, so my sisters and my brother (I forgot to mention him before since he was the youngest and had the privilege of riding in the front seat each time we went anywhere). Any way, as I was saying, we kids had never been around black folks very much at all, except for once when my Dad was working with a black fellow on one of the old cars he had in front of our house and my Dad came inside and my mother teased us kids saying that my Dad’s hands had turned black because he had shook hands with the fellow. We were all goggle eyed at that. It was of course grease from working on the old car, but we weren’t quite sure until my mother laughed at us. Well, this Snow White person was our second encounter with a black person. My two sisters and I were crowded into the tiny back seat of one of my Dad’s old junky black cars driving into town. The car was having a hard time making it up hills because of a slipping transmission. I remember us kids pushing on the back of of the front seat thinking with our child minds that it would help the car make it up a hill.

My Dad spied Snow White walking beside the road into town one hot summer day. My Dad said to my mom, “Isn’t that Snow White walking on the side of the road?” Of course us kids’ ears perked up real quick when we heard the name “Snow White”. How fascinating! We hadn’t noticed whom my Dad was talking about when he mentioned the name, but then we looked and saw this 300 pound black woman trudging along. My Dad stopped the car beside Snow White and asked her if she would like a ride into town with us. Snow White said, “Yes, she surely would.” My Mom had to step out of the car in order to let the back of her passenger seat forward in the two door car we were riding in, so that Snow White could get into the back seat. It was some tight squeeze for Snow White, but she made it. She took up two thirds of the back seat when she finally got settled in. There was myself and my two sisters squeezed into the other one third of the back seat with our eyes as big as saucers staring at Snow White. Poor woman! She just smiled at us though and acted like it was nothing at all. My Dad talked to Snow White as we drove along, and all of us kids just hung on every word that Snow White would say. We felt that we were in the presence of a magical person. We never said a word though the whole time as we rode along in that old black car with the transmission now slipping more than ever with the added cargo it was pulling. We just crowded together with our eyes as big as saucers until my Dad dropped Snow White off at her destination; then all four of kids asked my Mom in unison, “Was that woman’s name REALLY Snow White?” Yes, indeed it was.

Our old black car made it back home with the transmission slipping very badly and didn’t make many more trips afterwards, so my Dad replaced it with another ugly old black car. We were missing that old car with the bad transmission; because although the next car didn’t look much worse on the exterior, there were two big flaws that the interior had….No back seat, and a rusted through hole in the back floorboard that was big enough for a child to stick his foot through. My sisters and I were all crowded into corners in the back of that car….. Not because Snow White was there, but because we all wanted to steer good and clear of that rusted out hole in the floorboard. It was pretty hard to do too, since we were standing up holding onto the back of the front seat the whole time, trying not to lose our balance when my Dad turned corners. So much for seatbelts or child safety seats, huh?

Oh yes, did I mention we were poor? Maybe you have deducted that on your own by now. Yes, we were poor. We were decent though; and we were clean and my mother made sure we were dressed nicely because she was an excellent seamstress. When she sewed for other people, they would give her nice fabrics in return for her work and she would make us kids some very nice looking clothes. I envied other kids their store bought clothes, but I came to find out around third grade that those kids were envying my tailor made clothes.

My Dad had a long series of hobbies throughout his life that would inevitably bring him frustration along with gratification. It could be very trying on the rest of the family.

Take for instance, cacti. My dad for some perverse reason developed an unbridled interest in cactus plants. At one time during my childhood, I probably could have identified several species myself just from being exposed to hearing so much about them. I was also exposed to more than hearing about them. You were very careful about where you sat around our house for a while. You didn’t sit beside a table and put a glass on that table and recklessly reach for that glass. Oh no, you looked first. By the time I was old enough to pluck my eyebrows, I was already an expert at handling tweezers.

Now where could my dad have found his large collection of cacti? About 15 or 20 miles from our house was a plant nursery ran by an old woman who loved to talk almost as much as my Dad did. This nursery just happened to be on the way to my grandmother’s house. I spent many boring hours roaming around that nursery during my childhood. I remember once when we were driving to my grandmother’s house for a visit, I sat in the back seat of the car and listened to my Mom and Dad’s conversation as we neared the stretch of highway where the plant nursery was located on the side of the road. I hadn’t heard my Dad mention a single word about stopping at the nursery that day. There was hope in my young mind that we would be driving straight through to my grandmother’s house. I decided that maybe it would be a good idea to insure myself a bit though. As I saw that we were approaching the stretch of road where the nursery was located, I decided to ask a question of some sort that would distract my Dad so that he wouldn’t think to stop at the nursery if it hadn’t already crossed his mind.

I don’t remember what question I asked, but it seemed to work, because I noticed we drove right past the nursery. I settled back into my seat feeling relieved that I wouldn’t be spending two hours of that hot afternoon wandering around a boring plant nursery that I had wandered around many afternoons before. My relief was short lived though, because about five miles later down the road, my Dad asked my Mom, “Aren’t we near that nursery now?” My Mom informed my Dad that we had just passed it a few miles back. My afternoon was ruined. My Dad turned the car around and drove back, and there I was again spending many hours of a perfectly good day of my childhood among hundreds of cactus plants.

There was one time in my years of growing up, I can remember my sisters and I becoming privy to a useful strategy in which to keep our Dad from getting in a foul mood over something. The strategy that did work, for a while any way it seemed, came in the form of a woman named Mrs. Tapp.

My Dad had just started preaching at a mission church not far from our house. He would invite people to come to church whenever he had opportunities to do so. One Sunday, not long after beginning his ministry at the mission, he noticed there was an old lady who lived in the house across the road from the church easily within walking distance. After the church service was over that Sunday, my Mom and us kids sat in the car in the church yard waiting while my Dad walked over to personally invite the old lady to come to services the next Sunday. We could see my Dad chatting with the woman as we waited in the car for a good while. Finally, my Dad returned and as he got into the car, my Mom asked him if the old lady had seemed interested in coming to church. My Dad said he felt like she probably would because she had really seemed interested when he talked to her. Her name was Mrs. Tapp, and she was a widow woman living alone.

Lo and behold, the next Sunday Mrs. Tapp indeed did show up for church bright and early, waiting for the nice preacher who had invited her to arrive. She was there early enough that she even had time to chat with the nice preacher some before the rest of the church attendees showed up. My Dad didn’t recognize Mrs. Tapp at first though when he arrived at church that Sunday morning. Mrs. Tapp had appeared to be an aging, slightly sickly woman when he had talked to her through the front door of her home the Sunday before. This “new” Mrs. Tapp consisted of about three pounds of heavy makeup and a full bottle of cheap perfume. This concoction was dressed in a flashy floral dress with what looked to be every piece of costume jewelry ever sold at Scott’s Five and Dime Store.

You see, my Dad was a handsome man. Mrs. Tapps’ taste in fashion might have been lacking, but she certainly knew how to appreciate a good looking young preacher. Her mascara laden false eyelashes fluttered as she adoringly looked at my Dad. After church, I guess sitting through the long sermon and the weight of all the jewelry had taken its toll on Mrs. Tapp. She definitely needed assistance crossing the road to walk back home. She didn’t hesitate to commission the handsome young preacher to do the job.

It took two Sundays in a row of this behavior on Mrs. Tapp’s part for my Mom, sisters, and I to catch onto what was happening.

Although my Mother had captured my Dad’s heart and hand in marriage, and had given birth to his daughters; Mrs. Tapp had captured my Dad’s arm to escort her home every Sunday morning, and she had also given birth to his daughters’ best opportunity to tease their father.

We teased my Dad relentlessly about Mrs. Tapp and the obvious affection she showed to him each Sunday. My Dad would just grin sheepishly and duck his head a bit like he didn’t quite know how to respond. Mrs. Tapps’ garishly decorated person was of no temptation to him of course, but he could not think of any way to avoid her request for assistance in navigating the path back to her home each Sunday morning either. He was definitely in a dilemma, and his wife and daughters well knew it. My Mother didn’t participate excessively with the torment us girls would subject our Dad to concerning Mrs. Tapps’ attraction to him. She was not beyond providing fuel for the fire though.

I remember one day my Mom came home after she and my Dad had been to the grocery store. My Dad was looking red faced as they came through the front door. My Mom didn’t wait for her daughters to question what was up. She volunteered the story. Mrs. Tapp had been shopping at the grocery store that day at the same time my Mom and Dad happened to be there. Mrs. Tapp cornered my Dad for a chat, accompanied by her usual lash batting tactics. She was wearing a sleeveless dress, and her slip strap had slipped down onto her arm. My Mom said Mrs. Tapp pushed the slip strap back into place and coyly said to my Dad, “Us women just have so many straps.” I would have liked to have been there to witness the look on my Dad’s face when that happened.

Now the teasing torment began with a vengeance on my sisters and my part. We would sit in the back seat of the car as we drove to church. One sister would point out to the other one that her bra strap was showing. The reply from the other sister would be, “Us women just have so many straps.” I’m sure it was a terrible distraction to my Dad in the pulpit with all this nonsense going on….Mrs. Tapp sitting in one of the pews in the church batting her Maybelline eyelashes while visions of “so many straps us women have” ran through his head. He finally did get fed up with it. He put a stop to our fun with the “so many straps” joke one day by telling us, “That’s enough”. He said this in a tone we clearly understood meant “That’s enough”.

Over the years though, Mrs. Tapp’s name became a weapon of great power between us girls. If one of us wanted to point out that the other one looked tacky, then all she had to say was, “You look like Mrs. Tapp in that dress.” That would send the victim running to the closet to choose a different dress. My Mother wasn’t beyond using the “Mrs. Tapp” weapon to make sure us girls didn’t wear too much makeup or jewelry either.

I don’t know if Mrs. Tapp’s affections for my Dad just cooled after awhile or if she became ill, but one Sunday she stopped coming to church. My Dad went by her house to check on her. She did claim to be ill. She never came back to church after that and I don’t know exactly what happened. Seems like maybe her son or daughter came to take her to live with them somewhere else. Mrs. Tapp was gone from our lives, but she definitely was not forgotten even to this very day 35 years later.

The cacti hobby of my Dad’s became old to him, so he moved on to another hobby. I don’t know if you realize how long a cactus can live though with no water. A long time, I can tell you that. We still had to watch where we sat or put our hands for quite awhile longer. Another thing that lasted just as long was the job of explaining why there were so many cactus plants around my house when my friends came over to visit.

Next came the CB radio hobby. As usual, my Dad went overboard on that one too. We had a CB radio mounted on the wall in our living room. (This was the one on which, during summer school break, we kids were to monitor for that noon time call from my Dad where he worked and also kept a CB radio.) I think us kids spent more time fighting over whose turn it was to do the monitoring of the CB radio between 11:30 and 12:00 noon than just about anything else. We knew how important it was, and heaven help us all if SOMEONE wasn’t monitoring, so we worked out a schedule of some sort.

I can still remember the call letters of my Dad’s CB radio even though it has been over 35 years ago. They were KQR2177. I can’t remember my home phone number nowadays from time to time, and I can’t remember all of my children’s phone numbers. KQR2177 though, is permanently etched into my brain cells.

My brother and I were the youngest of four kids, and we happened to be at an age when we were a bit interested in the CB radios ourselves. Since the CB radio craze had not yet swept across the country in full force yet, we were held in awe a bit by our friends because we not only knew how to use a CB radio, we were REQUIRED to use one.

Along with the CB radio on the living room wall was the one in my parent’s bedroom, the one my Dad had at work, and of course the one in the car. The one in the car would provide some interesting entertainment for us kids from time to time. It also kept my Dad from threatening to blow up those railroad tracks on the way to church on Sunday mornings.

As my Dad would drive along slower than usual, talking on that CB radio to some stranger he happened to hear on one of its channels, he would also seem to experience great glee in seeing that he had slowed down the poor soul who was driving behind him. After the poor soul would trail along behind us for quite a few miles on an otherwise traffic free road with many passing opportunities, they would finally pass us and go on their way. My Dad would then turn to my Mom and ask her if she had noticed that car trailing behind us for so long, and he’d ask her if she knew why. She would say that she wasn’t sure. My Dad would then smugly explain to her that they probably thought he was a police officer because of that long CB antenna on the back of our car. The Plymouth Valiant was a solid black color also, so that made the person think it was possibly an unmarked police car.

I remember the time also that we were once again on the road to my grandmother’s house for a visit. (We rarely ever seemed to drive straight through to my grandmother’s house.) My Dad was talking on his CB radio in the car once again. He heard some young fellow who was evidently enjoyed his CB radio just as much as my Dad enjoyed his. The young fellow talked for a while, and then informed my Dad he was nearing his house and would soon be signing off. My Dad asked him if he would mind us stopping by for a few minutes, because my Dad would like to meet him in person. The young fellow seemed enthusiastic about meeting my Dad also. It seemed a bit strange to me since the fellow had mentioned he was just 19 years old and my Dad had informed him that he was quite a bit older than that, and had his wife and kids in the car with him. The young fellow seemed undaunted by this information though, and genuinely seemed excited about meeting my Dad. He even informed my Dad that some of his friends were coming over later and they were going to have a game of football at his house, and my Dad was welcome to join in when he arrived.

I was becoming interested in boys at that time in my life since I was 12 years old. No, I wasn’t any where near dating age, but I could look, couldn’t I? My two older sisters had pulled their compacts and lipsticks out of their purses and were primping in the back seat as we drove into the driveway where this 19 year old CB prodigy lived. It sounded good. A dashing 19 year old football player.

For many years I could remember that boy’s first and last name, but now the last name eludes me. I can still remember his first name was George, though. Well, George didn’t turn out to be the dashing teen football player that my sisters and I had been imagining. George seemed to be a few bricks shy of a load, and he was very strange looking. My Dad didn’t even get out of the car. He just made a few feeble attempts to talk intelligently with George, shook hands with George and told him it was nice meeting him in person; and then we drove on our merry way toward my grandmother’s house. We all agreed that George had sounded much more intelligent over the CB radio. My sisters and I agreed he had sounded a lot better looking over the CB radio too.

There was another strange looking individual that entered our lives because of my Dad’s fascination with CB radios. That individual’s name was J. E. Hilliard. J. E. Hilliard was a diehard CB enthusiast who lived in the same little town we did. He would come over quite often to check out the new CB equipment my Dad may have just purchased from time to time. J. E. owned quite a collection of CBs himself, but evidently spent all of his money on them and didn’t have a cent left to buy a razor with. We never once saw that man cleanshaven. Too bad Miami Vice wasn’t yet in fashion. J. E. was the originator of the “trim your whiskers with a pair of scissors instead of shaving” look. You know the look. It isn’t a beard, it is just a three or four day growth of facial hair. The “I’m too cool to care about my appearance look”, if you prefer. J. E. seemed harmless and polite, so I suppose he was an all right fellow as far as I can remember. He certainly wasn’t a catalyst for young ladies to pull out their compacts and lipsticks when he was coming over though.

While my brother and I may have thought that the CB hobby of my Dad’s was the first really cool hobby he had come up with, my mother would have disagreed. I mentioned the CB radio that was in their bedroom, didn’t I? My Dad would talk on that thing until the wee hours of the night, and he would leave it on all night long. My poor mother didn’t sleep well during those CB days. I think the static from the CB radio must have irritated her brain cells, because although she was normally a calm woman, it seems I remember her being a little more on edge during those years. She was normally a very hospitable woman too, but I think there were a few times my Dad had to remind her to invite J. E. Hilliard to stay and eat supper with us.

Another hobby my Dad took up that was appreciated by us kids was TV repair. You see, previously my Dad had so much to keep himself busy that he didn’t show much interest in owning a TV set, even when nearly everyone else in the whole country owned one it seemed. I missed out on “Batman” and “My Favorite Martian”. I’d hear other kids at school discussing watching them, and I wouldn’t be able to join in their discussions.

That changed suddenly one afternoon when my sisters and brother and I came home from school one afternoon. We opened the front door, took three or four steps and could proceed no further. A blockade of TV sets ranging in size from your cabinet 25 inch models to some small portable 12 inch sets sitting on top of them greeted us. To top it all off, in the kitchen sat two large cardboard boxes of TV tubes of assorted sizes and uses. (This was back in the days when TVs were engineered to run on tubes.) My Dad had been to town and had stopped by James’ TV repair shop. James was wanting to clear out some old sets he couldn’t repair, so my Dad bought the whole lot; lock, stock and barrel along with the boxes of tubes. I don’t remember how much my Dad had paid for all those TV sets, but it seemed that he thought he had gotten a superb bargain on them. My mother helped my Dad carry the TV sets to the back screened in porch on our house; while a couple of them were put into their bedroom in order to clutter up the space not taken up by the CB radio equipment that remained.

None of those TVs were in working order. My Dad had a brilliant idea though. He would use the parts from all of those TVs to assemble a perfectly working set for our own use. He set to work that very night to begin this frustrating job. Lo and behold, he succeeded in not only getting one TV in good working order, but three. His greatest pride in getting the TVs in working order was that in one of the sets he had used a chewing gum wrapper as a conductor for a circuit..

My Dad presented two of his fellow preacher friends with TV sets. One of the preachers had previously preached on several occasions against the sin and degradation that this nation was experiencing due to the influence of TV. I’m sure he had new life pumped into his sermons against sin, since now he could watch it happening right in his own living room on his own TV.

The remaining TV set my Dad fixed, was for our own enjoyment. It needed some adjusting on the vertical and horizontal knobs each time you turned it on though. We adjusted that TV so many times that we finally had to resort to using a pair of pliers to turn the knob. Eventually, the pliers no longer worked. So unless you were willing to sit with your head cocked sideways, then you were out of luck as far as watching TV goes.

My Dad set about repairing another one of the TV sets then. He had some trouble with it though. Although the horizontal and vertical hold on it seemed to be so much better than the other TV’s had been, there was a very peculiar problem of which I am not sure what it was caused by. Take “Star Trek” for example. That was one of my favorite TV shows to watch back then. I had to watch Captain Kirk walk around with his feet walking on top of his head. The screen seemed to be split horizontally, and two inches of viewing screen that should have been at the bottom, were on the top of the screen instead. I suppose Captain Kirk really did accomplish that mission “To go where no man has gone before” on that old TV set I used to have to watch. His feet cut off at the bottom of the screen and appearing to walk on top of his head, certainly made it seem that way. My Dad finally broke down and purchased a brand new 12 inch TV that we were able to watch.

By that time, my oldest sister was a senior in high school and dating. She wasn’t too impressed with the new TV setup. My Dad had about 20 extension cords (still rolled up like they are when you buy them at the store) extending from the 12 inch set to the center of the living room ceiling. My Dad had some explanation on this odd and unsightly extension cord setup, but I don’t quite remember what it was all about… Something about cutting down the electrical current to prevent something or the other from happening. It looked like a fire hazard to me, and it was a constant source of embarrassment to my oldest sister when her boyfriends would come inside to meet our parents.

There were numerous other hobbies my Dad had. I enjoyed his guitar playing. He was a superb guitar player. My brother and I were interested in learning to play the guitar ourselves. We asked my Dad once to teach us. He picked up the guitar and demonstrated how to play the guitar with the fanciest hot licks he knew how to play… lesson over. I really did enjoy listing to my Dad play the guitar though, so a couple of times I asked him if he would play and sing. I say “a couple of times”, because it seemed like all I’d get to hear then would be him tuning the guitar for an hour. I’d sit and wait for the tuning to finish, but it would go on for so long that I’d finally give up. I learned that in order to get to enjoy listening to my Dad play something on the guitar, you don’t ask. You just wait until he was in the mood to do it hisself. The last song I vividly remember him playing was “Me and Bobby McGee.” He did a fine a job playing it. He seemed to lose interest in the guitar after that, though. A couple of years before my Dad died, my husband and I had made a trip to come in to visit my parents. I asked my Dad to play the guitar because my husband had never heard him play. I shouldn’t have asked. We got to hear the one hour tuning session.

There were a series of hobbies I won’t go into great description on…. like raising quail, pheasants, rabbits, and numerous other animals.

I had married and moved away when my Dad got into his gun hobby. When I’d come to visit, I’d hear stories of one room in my parent’s trailer house that was exclusively filled with guns and reloading equipment. The front coat closet contained canisters of black powder. A small war could have been waged with the guns and gunpowder my Dad had. My Dad also kept had a cute little gun strapped on his leg. My mom carried one in her purse. (Per Dad’s instructions of course.) After the trailer house caught on fire and a lot of the gun equipment was destroyed, then that hobby was over with just about.

The Mennonite fire department stood a good distance away from the burning trailer after being told that the front coat closet contained quite a bit of gunpowder. Fortunately they got the fire extinguished before the fire reached the coat closet. The trailer was pretty well a total loss though.

There was also a long bout with raising Border Collie dogs and training them to herd sheep and ducks.

Now, it may seem from reading what I have written so far, that my Dad was too busy with hobbies to ever study for a sermon. My Dad though was a highly intelligent man and didn’t spend his time sitting in front of a TV set watching a ball game on weekends or going out with the other fellows. My Dad kept his mind occupied 24 hours a day most of the time, and I mean 24 hours literally. You see, although my Dad’s hobbies would come and go, there is one thing that was part of him that never left. That was his love for studying God’s Word. My Dad would even make recordings of the bible that he would listen to as he slept. I remember well those recordings he made. Us kids would have to walk very quietly around the house and shut doors very carefully in order not to interfere with those recordings.

would say that my Dad was a Bible Scholar. You could mention some verse of scripture that you may have heard and my Dad could quote that scripture verbatim not even leaving out a “thee” or “thou”. He could in fact, quote the whole chapter that the verse was in. He could tell you exactly where it was located in the bible also. This talent my Dad had for knowing the bible was not a useless demonstration of memory. My Dad “studied” the bible and prayed and knew what his bible meant. If anyone had a question about something in life, my Dad could turn to scriptures in the bible and explain just what the bible had to say about it.

Through the years, hobbies came and went, with the resulting diatribes that went along with them.

My Dad’s final hobby was an ACER computer purchased from Wal Mart. I had just been convinced by my oldest son to purchase one and when my Dad heard of it and the reasonable price you could get one for at Wal Mart during the pre-Christmas sale in 1997, he of course had to have one. My mother once again was plagued by the moods my Dad tended to have when dealing with the frustrating aspects of his hobbies. That hobby only lasted for about five months until my Dad had a severe heart attack and was admitted to a hospital where bypass surgery went terribly wrong. He died a few weeks after the surgery.

My dear mother was left with custody of the ACER computer. She is now a world champion emailer, though. My Dad had finally picked a hobby that brought my mother great joy. I’m sure he would have been very surprised to see my mother handling his computer like a pro herself.

As for my Dad, he now resides in heaven with God who was the light of his life here on earth. I have no idea what my Dad is doing at this moment. “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” 1Corinthians 2:9.

I do know that my Dad is experiencing joy at this very moment though: “Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” Psalm 16:11

As I sat in the glider on my Dad’s front porch after his funeral, one of my aunts sat beside me. I commented to her that although my Dad had not furnished me with a lot of material things like new bicycles and such while I was growing up, he had furnished me with what my soul needed because he taught me so many things from God’s Word. My aunt replied, “Yes, but he sure could aggravate me sometimes.” To that, I replied, “Yes, I know. He could aggravate a lot of people, but God is the one who does the choosing when He calls a preacher so who are we to argue with God’s choice?”

You see, there is no doubt in my mind that my Dad was a God called preacher. He was a preacher. He was a man also. He was a “Preacher Man.”

I respected my Dad because he was not selfrighteous. He lived his life as a man would live, and gave God the glory for righteousness…. Where it rightfully belongs.

My Dad often told his children that when he died, he didn't want long speeches about what a wonderful man he had been. I feel no guilt in writing about the aggravating ways my Dad used to have.

I remember a phone conversation with my dad not long before he died in which I was telling him about a preacher I had listened to on TV who said that alcohol had never touched his lips. My dad said, "Well, he's got one up on Noah then hasn't he?" That simple reply from my Dad is a summation of how he felt about himself or others for that matter. How dare any one of us go around bragging about our own righteousness? We all have our faults and if we will just do the best we can, but concentrate on God's goodness and mercy towards us, we will not be bragging one single bit.

I am putting an email below that I received from my Dad during the last few months of his life. He was describing the trouble he was having with his new computer hobby. He was working on getting a web site. I titled that email, ‘Web Page Publishing in Rural Arkansas.” He may sound fairly calm with the troubles he is describing in the email, but my dear mother could tell you what really happened.

Subject: Updated

Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 14:23:02 -0800

From: Vernon Roberts

To: June Thompson

June,

I stayed up last night until close to midnight. About four and a half

hours of that time was spent downloading more data to update that Paint

Shop Pro 5 again. It is a good program but I'm ready to leave it as it

is, without any more updating. What was the number of the Paint Shop Pro

that you ordered? While I'm complaining about spending so much of my

time downloading and asking questions, I'll tell you about some of the

rest of my problems. I started to typing the main page for a web page,

and just about the time that I got started good, a dog killed one of our

goats. Then I finally got back to it and spent a lot of time trying to

do a really good job on it and when I had it looking like what I thought

was pretty good, a bolt of lightening came out of a little cloud and

knocked the power out for about five seconds. That's when I began to

think about asking you if you had found out any more about those UPSs or

whatever they are called. If you find where a good one is available, How

about letting me know? Sometimes the power goes off here when the sun is

shining and not a cloud in sight.

Well, I guess that I've complained enough, since it doesn't do any

good anyway.

I just wondered where the picture of junior was taken that you used on

the web page that you fixed for Judy. Was it a picture that you put

together or one that Junior had taken at some entertainment location? It

looks like you have got that web page business pretty well under

control.

I'll be looking to hear from you. With love, Daddy

Below are two poems that my Dad wrote. I believe the “From Ruin to Rejoicing” poem to be the first of the poems he wrote concerning his love for God; and the one titled “Beginning” was his final poem. He sent “Beginning” to me in one of his final emails to me the week of his heart attack.

Oh what shall I do, thou preserver of men?

For I find there's not ought in my grasp,

To atone for the sin

That corrupts me within.

Under my lips is the poison of asps.

My heart is like lead, down my cheek slides a tear.

Sin's load is too heavy to bear.

Hell's flame seems near,

I tremble with fear.

I'm wild in my grief and despair.

My thoughts go back to a time in the past;

What's the meaning of this thing that I see?

I stand aghast,

To a cross nailed fast,

Hangs a sinless man dying for me.

Could this be the Lamb that in former days

God promised for sin would be slain?

I continue to gaze,

As rocks rend and the earth sways,

And the Temple's Veil is rent in twain.

I watch as gentle, loving hands,

Place Him beneath the earth.

I remember what He said,

Before He bled,

About a Spiritual birth.

I watch Him rise, and realize

That God's oath is the end of all strife.

I'm saved! I'm free!

Oh, I love you! I love you!

Forever my God and my life.

Vernon Roberts