We, and I mean my little brood, had gone up home, as we put it, to visit for the weekend. Danny had a date that Saturday night with a girl down in Lowland. I believe her name was Trudy or something like that. He borrowed to old Ford LTD. It was the one with the burgundy color with the white top. Not a bad car for my dad, but me being a Chevy guy I would pass for something else. Anyway, Danny took off for Lowland. Sometime later we got a call from Lowland. Seems Danny was having car problems. Now you must know that between Aurora and Lowland at the time had a long stretch of nothing. I mean nothing. It was all woods with a rather large canal on one side to drain off water. This area was actually swamp land. However it happened Danny had not gotten there and he had either gotten a ride with someone the rest of the way or something, but the car was left on the side of the road on this lonely stretch.
Well, we got into my car and made off to see what we could figure was the matter since we were not told much. It seemed like the car was about half way through the swamp, but there it was parked on the side of the road. I parked behind it so the headlights shined on it and we got out the flashlight and checked the car. We saw nothing that was evident. The car was locked. I got down on my knees and looked under the car. There it was. The driveshaft was lying on the ground. I don’t know how it happened, but when the driveshaft came off the whole tail shaft of the transmission was broken off. I could only guess the shaft bounced on the road and tangled with the yoke on the transmission and twisted the housing off some way. Anyway, Danny wasn’t there, so we got back into the car and went on to Trudy’s home. When we got there we were told Danny had been there and that they had left to find someone to tow the car. So we went back to the car.
What we found when we got back was nothing short of shocking. There was no one there and the driver’s door handle had been ripped off. Our first impression was that someone had tried to break into the car. Dad was royally upset. It didn’t appear anything else was wrong with the car though. That part was a relief. But Danny was not to be found anywhere around. After a while we finally found Danny. Memory of that long ago doesn’t help with how we found him, but we did. Then the story unfolded.
He had gone back with someone, who had a pickup truck and a chain. They were going to forego calling a tow truck. Instead Danny got this idea he was going to pull the car to a safe place or repair shop. In doing so he had to figure out a way to secure the driveshaft from off the ground. His idea was very apparently not a good one. He used a rope to tie the driveshaft to the door handle. What he didn’t realize was that the driveshaft was still connected to the rear end. When the car started forward the wheels of course had to turn and you guessed it. The driveshaft began turning and it wrapped the rope around the shaft and pulled it so tight it ripped the door handle off the door.
I’m sure it put a scare in Danny. He just tucked the driveshaft back under the car and he and his cohort in crime got back in the truck and left the car as it was and so we came back along and found it this way. What a night. Needless to say Danny didn’t go on a date that night.
My mom was always cognizant of family. She had realized by this time that family as we knew it was fading fast. She organized a couple of family gathering during these three or four years. Once we went to a restaurant in Aurora. All of us. We had a bunch of table pulled together and had dinner. I seemed to want to think she was a waitress there for a bit. I may be wrong, but she seemed to know too many people there to not have some kind of stake in how things worked there. Then again, she was a waitress at the Berne Restaurant in New Bern for at least a couple of years during the sixties.
Then another time she got the use of the fellowship hall at White Hill FWB Church and had us all together one last time. It might have been a holiday or something. Our family at the time was quite big. After all there were five sons, of which you could add my three as well. Danny may have had someone with him. I don’t remember. This was before the Army and he was still in school.
Most every Christmas and so forth we were together up in Aurora. I do remember some other occasions when Tad had gotten into high school and he was drum major. I was quite proud of him for his musical talents and such. I went out the high school when the old building was still standing, but I believe the new classrooms had been built off what used to be the field behind the school where there were intramural sports fields.
Life at home with mom and dad had seemed come into some sort of harmony. At least that was my take. Julie and I had a son and lived in a home in Wilmington. It was our dream home. By now we had the cul-de-sac home with fenced in yard and a good job that allowed Julie to be a stay-at-home mom. Mom and dad would come down and visit for the day occasionally and we’d spend time up there.
Grandmother and Jamie had added onto their home and Jamie has built a guest room with half bath in the back area of the house that lent itself to privacy. We found it most accommodating when we went up to visit. Life was fine, or was it?
I reached my mid twenties thinking I’d made the grade. I was successful and long term employed with a company of reputation. We had health coverage, life insurance and stocks in the company as well as a goal of vestment at ten years of employment. But something was nagging in the back of my mind all the time. I began to experience a void in my life and couldn’t figure it out. I may have to digress at some point, but I’m going to write about what I hear in my heart at this moment. That calling to preach was perhaps at the core of it, but I didn’t have an open mind to that still, because I was still fearful of public speaking and had no idea of how to overcome this fear.
Anyway, I began to frequent Cox’s Christian Book Store at some point. I’d pick up books by Hal Lindsey. Primarily I was interested in his writings on end times. I had this penchant to know the future, I suppose. There is a father and son ministry I would read about who correlated with Hal Lindsey, which I read up on as well, among others. In retrospect I found myself reading what other’s had to say about the Bible without looking into the Bible for myself. One day I picked up this book that referenced several authors including Hal Lindsey and my dynamic duo with others and thought it would be a good read. I had this pre-millennial rapture doctrine down to a t. I could recite exactly what was to happen at any given moment according to the teachings I had absorbed. I was a self-proclaimed expert of the rapture doctrine. But this book I picked up stirred not only my intense anger, but also upset my thinking and curiosity. I found that my way wasn’t the only way of thinking. There was various trains of thought on end time events.
I can go into detail, but I don’t feel it would be beneficial, safe to say the rapture would occur, then the seven years of tribulation before the thousand year reign was my solid belief up until that time. But here was a group of renown theologians who had such a variety of beliefs. How could this be, was my question. If they were all “experts” how could they all be right? My mind went into a tail-spin. How could I rectify the idea of pre, a mil, post rapture thinking or no rapture at all? All this was confusing. Who do you believe? Well, if reading this has attacked your thinking, remember then you’re feeling what I felt at the time. The Bible is a veiled book to the average thinker and apparently to even the most educated theologian. Later in my life I came to one conclusion with my brother-in-law, Ronald who confronted me with my final conclusions. If we don’t live for Christ today, what difference does it matter how time comes to an end? So let that take care of itself. Now that I’m in my late fifties, I have evolved into someone that my sons aren’t particularly fond of, but I have to say, I’ve been shaped by what the religious world created in me. How I reacted for the most part has been good, but religion kills. Christian lifestyle brings forth more life. Believing in God is virtuous. So many church leaders have misled their congregations. I’m not saying all of them have been so scurrilous as the likes of Bishop Earl Paulk, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker or many other renown figures of the church world, but I would dare say most preachers have realized something they’ve dug out of their Bibles they dare not preach for fear of people’s reactions. I can go all the way back to Pastor Lupton in White Hill FWB church where I grew up. There was a point that he must have found something that upset him tremendously, because he resigned the church and became reclusive for a while, only returning for a short while and then finally retiring as I gather it. I was too young to question the issue, so I know little of the “why” part.
I know I seem to be deviating from my story, yet, I’m not. This time in my mid twenties was troubling until I turned twenty seven. I found myself writing my thoughts in a composition notebook and I myself became reclusive to some extent. Julie even took notice and was distressed yet she didn’t directly approach me about it. I kept my notebook under the seat in my car and would write in it in the parking lot at work before going inside. She somehow found my writings and used it as a way to understand what was going on inside my head during those two or three years.
What was to happen was most astounding when I reached twenty seven. I was happy on the outside with a family, a good home, job and outlook on the future. But inside I was in total turmoil.
