When you reach the latter years of life, you become thankful not only for what God did for you, but also what He did not do that you may have thought you wanted at the time.

Case in point is the three young ladies I was in love with, somewhat. In telling the story, it’s hard to keep it brief.  I apologize for my tendency to wander. Oh, and I’ve altered the names of the first two girls.

I grew up in Winston County, Alabama.  When I was 11 we moved back to Alabama from the West Virginia mining camp (near Beckley) where we had lived for four years.  Since the mines had closed and we had nowhere to live, we moved in with our newly widowed grandmother, Sarah Kilgore, my mom’s mother.  How in the world our family–there were eight of us!–crowded into that small farmhouse is beyond me.  But I have no memories of a problem.

After a year or so, we moved to the house on the next ridge when my uncle Ted Spain, married to Mom’s younger sister Ruth, became forest ranger in Guntersville, Alabama.  It was a four-room house with a screened-in back porch, sitting on 107 acres, that Dad rented from Uncle Ted for the princely sum of $75/year.

In 1951, my siblings would be 16 years old (Ron), 15 (Glenn), 13 (Patricia), 9 (Carolyn), and 7 (Charlie).

Since Dad was unable to find a job in any of the local coal mines–this was all he had done since he quit school at the age of 12 to work alongside his dad and his uncles–Dad began farming.  And his sons learned to plow.

My first girl-friend.  Now, as a teenager on the farm, there was no dating as such. We had no money and no car. Furthermore, none of my siblings were dating as far as I could tell. So, I learned nothing about girls and dating etiquette from anyone in our family.

The first time I saw Joy she was in the sixth grade.  I passed her classroom each day since the school cafeteria was just beyond it. Sometimes she would be leaving her room to walk home, which was just across the street.  I was instantly taken. She was cute, cute, cute.

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I remember it clearly.

It was the summer of 1951 and I was eleven years old.  Our family had moved back to rural Alabama from the coal fields of West Virginia.  For the four years up north our family had attended the little Methodist church that sat at the foot of the mountain by the railroad tracks.  I loved that little church and actually joined it when I was eight.  I recall that too.

For our four years in Affinity, WV, this was the only revival that the little church had.  I loved it. For reasons known only to the Father, I was enthralled by church and preachers and church services.  I loved Jesus, I felt, although I’m not sure how much I knew about him.

That night at the Methodist church, when the pastor gave the invitation for people to come to Jesus, I looked at my Mom as if to say, “Can I go?”  She nodded and I went.  I did not know what to do when I got to the preacher, and clearly neither did he.

“Kneel down here,” he said.  So I did.  My mind was blank, nothing going on. I’m just waiting for what comes next.

After a bit they stood up those who had responded and introduced us to the church.  I have no memory of what they said, but I recall vividly what happened the next Sunday.  We went to the altar where they put a few drops of water on our heads and gave us grape juice and crackers.  What they did not give us was an explanation as to what this was about. I was clueless and assume the other children were too.

Toward the end of that service, a little girl sitting with her preschooler brother spoke out loudly in church. “Jerry didn’t get his grape juice!”

So someone took him some.

Our family laughed about that for years.

I was now a member of the Affinity Methodist Church.

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I was never very good at introspection, trying to figure out why I said something or did something or how I got to be the person that I am. Most men are said to have the same limitation.

However, looking back over a life that has lasted nearly nine-tenths of a century, it’s hard not to notice a few life-intersections that felt minor at the time but turned out to be major game-changers.

The summer of my eleventh year was just such a time.

In mid-1951, my world changed. Our family moved from a West Virginia mining camp into the home of our maternal grandmother on the remote Alabama farm where my mom had been raised. To my mind, we had moved from civilization to Mars.

We went from living in a mountaintop community with swarms of children to a farmhouse 13 miles from town and nearly that far to the nearest friend my age. It felt as if I had been sentenced to solitary confinement.

From a life preoccupied with playing and enjoying myself, I moved to one focused on the life of a working farmhand. Ball games and fun times with buddies were replaced by long afternoons in the field alongside my brothers and sisters.

In leaving West Virginia, I traded an exciting new school with terrific teachers and great classmates for an old, barren, two-room Alabama school 10 miles from the county seat, presided over by a small-time dictator-principal and his wife. Mrs. Johnson taught the first 3 grades; Mr. Johnson had the other three. I wondered if the county school board even knew they were in the system.

For the four years we’d lived in West Virginia, our Alabama cousins seemed to find my Yankee brogue fascinating and on summer visits south, would gather around just to listen. When we moved back to Alabama and it became apparent that I was going to be a classmate at Poplar Springs, my strange speech pattern quickly went from exotic to an embarrassment;

That summer, in the annual revival at New Oak Free Will Baptist Church, the small church where our family had worshiped for generations, Jesus Christ came into my life and saved me.

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At the age of 86 (and counting; still doing good! walked my mile early this morning), I’m reflecting on how life works. From time to time I’ll be posting these little memoir-essays on my FB page.  The plan right now is not to leave them up very long before posting a more typical piece.  The point is to keep the essay.)

I was thinking how little things matter.

ONE DAY IN 1945, my mama made me a cartoonist by one small act.

Mom had three children in school and three at home. When I was 5, Carolyn was 3, and Charlie was 1.  Mom was always working hard and furiously–cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, everything.  And I recall the day she put Carolyn and me at the kitchen table, gave us a tablet and a pencil each, and said, “Now, sit there and draw!”

I learned that day that I loved to draw. And never stopped.

People ask if mom knew what she was doing.  My answer is: All she was doing was getting us out of her way, trying to find a little peace and quiet.

The Lord took it from there.  Next year when I went to first grade, the other children would gather and watch me draw.  Could I draw well, people ask?  Of course not. I was six years old.  But the point is I could draw better than the rest of them.

For reasons unknown, the single most asked question when I’m sketching large numbers of people is this: “How long have you been drawing?” When I say, “81 years,” they are stunned into silence. So, then I explain what Mom did.

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