By My Father Donald Adcox

DECADE ONE

I remember my first ten years as pleasant ones. I don’t recall a lot of specific events or incidents but overall the memory is positive. This decade began in Springfield, Tennessee, where I was born in 1920.

I do remember walking from the business part of town to the section known as the mill village where we lived. On the way I would see houses much larger and finer than our rented mill house and I knew we went to the chapel church rather than the big in-town church. I didn’t think much about these things. Our house was clean and we were happy. Great stuff … cleanliness and happiness. I didn’t think about it at the time but as I look back I realize that I felt loved and secure in our home. 

The chapel was a place of love and caring and the presence of the Lord was evident there. Great stuff, God’s presence and love. 

Dad and mother came from large farm families. They moved into town to find work in the woolen mill, Dad in the department where wool was processed on carding machines in preparation for the spinning machines, and Mother in the weaving department. Dad started in 1910 at about $7.00 a week. I do remember the time it was decided that a Sunday School classroom was needed in the chapel for the men’s class my Dad taught. Prior to this they met under a tree near the chapel or, in bad weather, in the church auditorium. The class members pitched in and did most of the work, hiring only a man who had a scoop pulled by a mule. With the mule and the scoop they pulled out the dirt under the church and made a basement and the needed classroom. 

We lived in Springfield my first ten or eleven years. During that time we usually lived in a mill house that we rented by the week. The rent was something like fifty cents a room a month. Most of the time we had an outhouse for a toilet, a wash tub for baths and fireplaces to keep warm. 

We had an icebox with a pan underneath to catch the melting ice. Removing the pan and emptying the water was a never-ending chore that required the help of a neighbor if all were away from the house for any length of time. Then dad got the idea of putting the icebox on the back porch and drilling a hole through the floor. He put a funnel in the hole with the large end under the icebox drain. Dad was the object of Mom’s admiration and mine for several days after this stunning event. 

Springfield was a tobacco and woolen mill town. The farmers raised what was called dark fired tobacco for sale through the warehouses in town. This tobacco was tied in hands. Several individual leaves would be tied together then placed over tobacco sticks and the sticks full of green tobacco hung in huge barns to cure over wood fires built on the dirt floor of the barn. A large number of people would gather in the barn to tie and hang the tobacco leaves. These were times of fun as well as work when lots of stories and jokes were told and good refreshments were available. I enjoyed being around these people and the opportunity to help out with the work. 

Until the tobacco was cut and taken from the field it had to be suckered and wormed. Both these tasks left the hands of the workers stained green. The suckers were small shoots growing out from the stalk of tobacco. These had to come off so the leaf would develop properly. The worms were bright green from feeding on the plants. We would pick them off the plants, hold their heads between the thumb and forefinger and snap their heads off. Once the tobacco was cured it was hauled by horse-drawn wagons to the warehouses in town. 

Wagons had a coupling pole that connected the front and back wheels and extended about three feet behind the wagon. I used to hop on the coupling pole of one of these wagons and ride to school when I was seven or eight. 

The mill where Dad worked produced wool blankets and coat fabrics. When I was about eight years old I would take Dad his supper. He worked from 6 PM to 6 AM. I would slide under the mill gate where wagons had worn ruts large enough for me to get under and head for the department he supervised. Once there I would hang around the men operating the machines. I loved doing this and soon learned what was going on. 

I wasn’t very happy the first day of school. This was a large in-town school just two blocks from the town square. We then lived two blocks farther out from the school so it was easy for me to leave school and go home without permission. I did. Three times. But three spankings convinced me that staying in school was a better idea. I can recall the name of only one of my teachers, Miss Tina Porter, my first grade teacher. The memory is blurred but I still have an idea of how she looked.  

My dad liked people, liked being with people and talking with them. Once while riding the train the thirty or so miles from Springfield to Nashville he got to talking with some men who suggested a crap game. Dad agreed and won more money during the trip than he made in a month at the mill. He decided to stay on the train for a while and make gambling his career. He lost all his money on the next leg of the trip and had to walk home. That ended his gambling career. 

Dad sang tenor in a quartet and later on led the singing at church. I remember the quartet singing over the first radio station in town which was located over a tire store. Dad also liked lodge meetings. At one of these meetings they had possum and sweet taters (opossum and sweet potatoes) as a special meal. Apparently all the men had enough to drink before the meal to cause them to think the food was great. Those were prohibition days but whiskey could be found. In fact there was a taxi driver in town known for his quick delivery of booze. Later when Dad persuaded mother to fix possum at home he couldn’t eat it. 

Years later in Switzerland I was given a bottle of really old whiskey. I gave it to dad. He poured the old stuff into a jar and over a period of time drank it. He filled the old bottle with new whiskey and shared this with his buddies. He didn’t lie to them but he did let them think they were drinking the old stuff. They would smack their lips and marvel at how good the old stuff was. 

I’d like to tell you how I got the old whiskey. I was in Germany for a year after WW II ended. I got acquainted with the people who owned a business that did painting on Rosenthal china. I sent a number of sets of china and various single pieces home to Jerry. Beautiful things! We are still using some of them. I would go to the factories in or around Selb, Germany, to buy the china. I would pay in German money but always had to give a few cartons of cigarettes in addition. 

I was given leave for an Army sponsored trip to Italy and Switzerland. When my friends at Rosenthal learned about this they said that I might see friends they had in Lugano, Switzerland, friends they had not seen for about seven years because of the war. I didn’t think it likely that I would encounter their friends but agreed to take news and a nice gift of porcelain just in case. 

On the train from Germany to Lugarno we soldiers were in the coaches with wooden seats. My buddy and I didn’t like this so we went into the first-class section where there were private compartments with cushioned seating for six people. We found a compartment with one man in it. Yes, we talked and learned he was the friend of the Rosenthal people! 

He said his home in Lugarno was closed since he and his family were in St. Moritz for the season but he wanted us to go with him to his home for a short visit. He said his chauffeur would meet the train. We wondered if we should believe him but sure enough the chauffeur was there and took the three of us to a magnificent home on the mountain overlooking the lake. 

When time came to leave he gave each of us a bottle of wine and a bottle of old whiskey. I saved the whiskey for dad. We went from the house to our hotel by chauffeured car much to the surprise of our GI friends on the same tour when they saw us drive up. 

In Lugarno we had our first fresh milk in over a year and ate our fill of all kinds of ice cream concoctions. A festival was going on in the center of town. Lots of costumes, dancing and great food. An English woman, retired and living in Lugano, sat by us as we ate. We got to talking. She invited us to tea the next afternoon and said she would send her chauffeur for us. Sure enough when we walked outside our hotel the next day there was the chauffeur in a robin’s egg blue Graham Paige convertible. 

Back to Springfield. It was a segregated town. If I thought about this at the time, I don’t remember it primarily because blacks were sort of out of sight and out of mind. I do remember one Halloween night when a group of young whites attacked a young black man without provocation. Disgust was my reaction and shame that men would so humiliate another man and seem to enjoy it. Years later, when we had children in school, I saw a black man taking his small child to an all black school. It came to my mind to wonder how the father explained to his child that he had to go to a black school, sit in the back of a bus, use the black rest room and more. I knew in my heart it must have been hard on the father and the child. I knew then that it was wrong that the father had to do this. I still feel the same way. 

We bought our groceries on credit because there wasn’t enough money to pay cash. The day after the mill payday Dad and Mother would go to pay the bill. I liked going with them because the grocer always had a treat for the children when the parents paid the bill. 

Mother and I were once walking the partly graveled street to the grocery. She slipped on the gravel and fell to the ground. I was panic stricken! She was about 32 years old at the time and I was sure she was too old to get up by herself and I didn’t think I could get her up. What relief and surprise when she jumped right up! 

Mother loved to pick blackberries. I am sure I picked up on the pleasure of filling a bucket with nice berries from going out with her. It must be a family trait. Tom, our son, loves to pick blackberries and make pies. When our first grandson, Dana Phillip Congdon, was about five years old I introduced him to blackberry picking and found that he enjoyed it too. 

Great fun, too, to eat Mother’s blackberry cobblers. One day Mother and I were heading home with our buckets full of nice berries. We had to cross through a gully going down the one side and up the other.  Mother was ahead of me. As we started up out of the gully I looked up and there on a limb was a snake. He must have been about four feet long but I thought it was at least twenty feet long. We didn’t take time to see what kind it was but we didn’t spill any berries either. 

Mother had a kerosene cook stove. One day she cut her hand rather badly. There was a lot of blood. She told me not to worry as she went to the stove’s kerosene tank and doused the cut in the kerosene. Then she tied a clean cloth around her hand. It healed nicely. 

We had a big black iron pot in our backyard that Mother used for washing clothes. She would carry water to fill the pot and then build a wood fire under it to heat the water. I am not sure just how it was done but she made her soap using animal fat, ashes from the wood fire and lye. I well remember her mixing up the ingredients in the wash pot, letting them cook for a while, and then, after the process was completed, letting the mixture cool before she cut it into squares. 

The only time I fainted was in my eighth year. Dad had caught his hand in one of the machines at the mill. It really looked bad. I have no idea why I was taken to the doctor’s office with him but I was and right into the office where the doctor cleansed and started to sew up Dad’s hand. When the doctor started sewing I fainted dead away.

The year I was seven Dad bought a used T Model Ford for $180.00. It had side curtains that snapped on for rainy days and a top that folded back. This model had a gas lever (throttle) and a spark lever on the steering column. The car was started by rapidly turning a crank that was inserted into an opening just below the radiator. Caution was the watchword in starting the car. If the gas and spark levers were not set just right the engine would backfire and this would cause the crank suddenly to reverse direction while still held by the person doing the cranking. Serious sprains or breaks sometimes resulted from this. When the hand brake was pulled up the car was in neutral. There were three foot pedals on the floor (where else?). The right pedal was the foot brake, the middle for reverse and the left pedal was for low gear when fully depressed, neutral at the halfway point and high gear when released. When Dad bought the car the salesman offered to show him how to drive it but Dad told him he didn’t need help. Driving home he kept the left pedal all the way down thus driving all the way in low gear. This burned out low gear so the car had to be repaired before it could be driven again. 

Dad didn’t drive fast enough for me. One day, when I was about eight, I reached to the steering column where the gas lever was located and pulled it all the way down. We reached a pretty good speed, probably 25 or 30 mph, before Dad figured out what I had done. 

In the mid nineteen-twenties the others in Mother’s large family moved to Evansville, Indiana, in search of work. My grandfather Vaught had been a blacksmith in Tennessee. He told me he became a dentist of sorts as well. Farmers would bring their horses in to be shod and if the horse had a bad tooth my grandfather would pull it. How did he get the horse to stand still? Have you ever seen an animal such as a horse controlled by a twist? A twist is piece of rope looped over the nose and twisted. Enough twisting and the animal is subdued. 

One day a man came by and asked to have his tooth pulled. It was a long way to town and the man may not have been able to endure the pain or he may have lacked the money to pay a proper dentist. Whatever, my grandfather gave him a big shot of whiskey and pulled the tooth. 

Later my grandfather got a smaller size pair of pliers for people in addition to the big ones he used for horses. He had a pretty good practice of pulling teeth and shoeing horses. 

Dad decided to take us on a trip to Evansville using the T Model for transportation. I remember that U.S. Highway 41 was then a dirt road as one approached the ferry dock on both sides of the Ohio River. This would have been in the last half of the twenties. When we left Evansville to return home it was raining. By the time we crossed the river and pulled off the ferry into Kentucky the road was deep in mud. We made it for about two hundred yards before the rear wheels dug into the mud until the axle was on the ground. Dad was soaking wet by the time he found a farmer willing to bring a team of horses and pull us out. 

The reason why is still a mystery to me but at my grandmother’s house in Evansville I liked to drink canned Carnation or Pet condensed milk. It was probably because we didn’t use it at home. Back in Tennessee Mother saved the cream off the top of the whole milk then available. In those day milk came in bottles with an indentation in the neck of the bottle. These were whole not homogenized milk days. A spoon held at the spot of the indentation trapped the milk below and allowed the cream to be poured off for whipping. Other times she would buy pure cream, thick and golden colored, much like the cream still available in England and not at all like the white, anemic and chemical saturated stuff now sold in our country. Some of her friends, especially farmer friends, kept cows and often had whole milk as well as cream, butter and buttermilk to sell. Buttermilk with flecks of rich butter in it and cornbread made for great eating. And this was all in a day when cream, egg whites and such were whipped with a hand held whisk not a motorized mechanical device. 

I’m not sure if I was a good little boy up to age ten or so or if I have just conveniently forgotten my misdeeds. I don’t remember doing things like Robert Mills tells about in his testimony. Robert ended up as Chancellor of Georgetown (KY) College and prior to that was President. Before that he was a college professor and was with the Atomic Energy Commission at Oak Ridge in the early days. As a junior boy back in Kentucky. Robert joined a few other boys for a swim in the baptismal pool of the local Baptist Church. You couldn’t expect boys playing in a church yard and then moving on inside to have swimsuits with them. Robert and the others went into the pool naked. Unfortunately, the President of the Women’s Missionary Union came into the room and saw the boys. She didn’t approve. She reported them to the pastor who had once been a boy and thus understood and wasn’t too hard on them. Robert said he realized back then that, never having been a boy, the WMU president couldn’t be expected to understand, but he stayed out of baptismal pools until he went into the waters for believers’ baptism. 

Compared to Bill Hall’s escapades Dr. Mills’ was pretty mild. When Bill was just old enough to see over the top of the kitchen table he started drinking whiskey. His uncles would place a pan under the bottles they filled from jugs of the bootleg whiskey they sold. They gave the pan with any whiskey that spilled into it to Bill to drink from and would laugh as he drank it. By the time he reached high school Bill was an alcoholic. During the war in Europe he liked the way the Russians did things, went AWOL and joined them for a while.

Home from the war Bill fell in love with Betty but she would not marry him as long as he drank. Bill quit for six months, six miserable months he told me, and he and Betty married. A daughter was born and things seemed to be going well. But one night while Betty was away Bill got to drinking and ended up setting their house on fire. Betty left him. Bill was devastated. 

Just a few nights later Ray Buckner went to visit Bill and tell him about Jesus. Bill opened his heart to Jesus and got saved. Ray suggested that they have prayer and started to pray. Bill stopped him and said, “I am the one that got saved and I need to pray and thank God”. 

My dad used to have a saying, “hit the ground running”. 

Well, Bill hit the ground running after he got saved. I have never known another man who was so quickly and deeply taught the things of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. He was a witness for Jesus until he died. 

Bill was walking in the mill village one day when a friend stopped to give him a ride. The friend was a man Bill wanted to see saved. But Bill didn’t have his Bible with him and had not yet memorized any scripture. Bill asked his friend if he knew any Bible verses. The man had been in church enough to have learned John 3:16. He quoted it for Bill. Bill said, “That is it!” Bill used this to lead the man to a profession of faith in Jesus Christ! 

Bill Hall, a wonderful friend and Christian brother! He and Betty got back together, had a son and a good life together until the Lord took him home.

One of my fond memories is of times when and I joined with Bill in sharing our testimonies in churches and in house to house witnessing.

Saturday movies were a big deal in my early days. There was always a cowboy serial on Saturdays. Seeing the first chapter hooked me for the eleven others that followed. When the l2th and final chapter was shown the first chapter of the serial to follow would be shown as well. So I stayed hooked. This wasn’t so bad since movies cost 10 cents. If, after a movie I was loaded with money after having had popcorn and a drink, I would go to the drug store for a 10 cent chocolate milk shake. If I were really loaded I’d have them make it a 15-cent chocolate malted milkshake. These shakes were special! They were made with real ice cream, whole milk and rich chocolate. 

Up until WWII drugstores were great places to eat. In my second decade the girl I would marry and I had wonderful times going to the drug store for drinks and grilled pimento cheese sandwiches. After the war the nearest thing we found to an old-fashioned drug store was Hicks’ Ice Cream Parlor on 49th street in New York City. They had fresh fruit sodas, real milkshakes and excellent sandwiches. But the place is no more. Would you believe it? It was replaced by a fast food joint. 

My cousin came from Indiana to visit me during my Saturday cowboy movie days. I was about ten and a great fan of Tom Mix and Ken Maynard and other cowboy stars. As we left the movie one Saturday my cousin’s bowels moved faster than he did. He cleaned up as best he could but oh! the smell. On the way home a friend of our family stopped to give us a ride. As we neared the car he must have smelled my cousin. The man let him ride but made him stand on the running board. You do know what a running board is, don’t you? 

I can’t imagine why but I took a girl to the movies when I was about ten years old. A friend got a girl to join him and went with us. When we got to the movie it turned out that he didn’t have enough money to buy two tickets. He waited in the lobby while his girl went in with us. On the way home we told him about the movie. 

When our son Tom was eight he decided he wanted to take a girl to the movies, must run in the family. He asked if I would meet him and the girl at school and drive them to the movie and then drive them home afterwards. I agreed so Tom called the girl and made arrangements. Then he asked if I would give him money for the movie, drinks and popcorn. I told him I wouldn’t, that he’d have to pay for his date. Tom had the money but didn’t want to spend his money. When I said no he said he would not go and asked if I’d call the girl and tell her. He didn’t want to call himself so when I would not he went through with the date as much as it hurt him to spend the money. When he got home he told us that at least the girl paid for her popcorn. 

I suppose one of my bad deeds as a boy was stealing. We once lived in the country not far from the Robert Johnson family. This family farmed and had cows, pigs, chickens and horses along with all the other things found on a farm. They had a nice springhouse, too. A springhouse is a shelter built over a spring of flowing water usually built near where the water exits out of the ground. What we then called sweet milk, buttermilk, cream and butter would be placed in containers and the containers placed in the cool spring water. More than once I slipped off by myself and had a good drink of cream or milk or both. I must have been a pretty good crook since I didn’t get caught. 

Have you ever eaten real country ham? What wonderful food! I learned about country ham when I was about ten and we had a rented house on William Fox’s farm. You can tell that we moved a lot. I don’t know why, but it wasn’t because Dad didn’t pay the rent. Two of the things that stand out in my memory about Dad are his honesty and his great sense of humor. He told me once that he had dreamed he was uptown walking around naked with his hands in his pockets. 

Mr. Fox knew how to cure hams. He raised the hogs, slaughtered them, got the hams ready, cured them and hung them in a smoke house to finish the cure. One-year-old hams were good — two years old and they were better. Dad would buy one or two of these tender, sweet-flavored hams. Mother would fry them and make genuine red eye gravy that almost spoke out loud for biscuits. Such hams are almost a thing of the past now. 

Rainbow restaurant near Morganton, NC, served good ham until Mr. Cline, the founder, retired. Caro-Mi Lodge near Tryon, NC, where Mr. Tomka held forth for a good many years, serves good ham, not the real article, but good. Lenward Wiggins, a farmer friend and a great travelling companion from eastern North Carolina, locates a real country ham once in a while and shares with us. 

An uncle of mine was a barbecue maker. This was during the time we lived in Springfield. His main business came from selling barbecue on the days the Robertson county court was in session. He prepared the barbecue at home, cooking the pigs over a wood fire.  Most barbecue makers in Tennessee would dig a whole in the ground, get a good bed of coals going and then put the whole pig on a spit over the fire. Cooking was anywhere from five to six hours and was usually done at night. When it was cooked and ready he chopped it and placed it in a metal wash tub. He would transport the tub of barbecue to the courthouse and set up shop on the sidewalk out front. The barbecue was so good my uncle always went home with an empty tub and a full wallet. His wallet wasn’t very thick but it was full. 

This uncle, his name was Zeke, never married but he tried to. Somehow he got the name of a woman in Indiana and had his sister write letters to her for him. His sister must have done a good job because the correspondence led to a proposal and an acceptance. But when Zeke got to Indiana after his train ride from Tennessee, the woman met him at the door of her house, told him he did not look like his letters and would not marry him. Poor Zeke! 

Many parts of the U.S. are noted for barbecue, especially eastern North Carolina. Melton’s in Rocky Mount, NC, started in 1920 and is still going strong. I think their finely chopped pork barbecue with a vinegar based sauce is among the best. In Shelby, NC, getting over to the western side of the state where the sauce is tomato based, there are two Bridge’s Barbecue Restaurants. I believe they were started by brothers and each is a company independent of the other. I think the one on US Highway 74 Bypass is by far the better. Their barbecue is not chopped as fine as eastern barbecue. It is more like chunks, but the meat is excellent and the taste delicious. 

Toward the end of the twenties we got our first radio. Saturday nights were special because neighbors would come over to listen and marvel that we could hear the Grand Ole Opry coming in from 30 miles away.

The last time Mother tried to spank me I was about eight and had decided to run from her. Round and round the house we went until she got tickled, began laughing and gave up the idea of spanking me. Another time I wasn’t so fortunate. We were on a picnic at Sycamore Creek. My uncle decided to stay after dark and gig frogs (stick them with a hand held spear). I decided to stay with him. Dad said no. I decided I was big enough to defy him. I told him I was staying. When he got through working me over with the keen switch he cut from a tree, I was ready and glad to get to go home.

We went to church regularly. I can’t remember when my parents started taking me to church. I saw something of value in the men and women of the church. I admired them more than I did the men I saw hanging out at drinking places. But I wasn’t turned off by the ones I saw smoking. I joined them at age 13 and continued until I was thirty two when I saw how ridiculous it was and quit. 

My first ten years ended with my becoming a Christian. It was at that age that I acknowledged my belief in Jesus Christ and committed myself to follow Him. The passing of time has served to convince me that this was the most important decision I’ll ever make. I believe life goes on after physical death just as the Bible states. I believe my decision to follow Jesus settled that I will spend eternity in a place prepared by Him. In addition I believe the Holy Spirit is sent by Jesus to all believers. He guides those willing to follow Him along a God-chosen path and is a Source of strength and encouragement along the way. 

As I look back, I am aware that my belief in Jesus at age ten must have resulted in large measure from the influence of my parents, the people I knew at church and the people we associated with generally. These people, along with my family, would have been considered poor in material possessions and for the most part uneducated. For example, my dad finished only the third grade, but, contrary to what this might imply, he was an educated man. He was a great reader, loved to read. He kept a dictionary close by to look up any word he didn’t know or understand. 

I am sure that being in a small town and living pretty much within the boundaries of the mill village kept me from being exposed to a variety of other lifestyles. So, really without being exposed very much to other than what would be expected from a small, rather naive in the eyes of the world Christian community, I made my decision. 

Since I made my decision to trust Jesus, I’ve been exposed to all sorts of lifestyles, both good and bad and all in between. I’ve had the opportunity to spend years getting to know cities like New York where we had an apartment and an office for several years. 

I’ve visited most of Europe’s capitals. I’ve been a luncheon guest of a President at the White House and a guest of the Lord Mayor of Nottingham, England. I’ve lived for a two-week stretch with fifteen others in a little 20×20 foot frame house in Haiti as we helped them build a church. While there I visited the nearby stick and mud hut of a woman and her two children. This hut was six feet square with two mats on the floor. There was no furniture. Outside they had a few pots used to cook over an open fire and a bucket to carry water from the nearby creek. This water was used for bathing, cooking and drinking. Neither the house we were in nor the hut had running water or a toilet. 

I’ve stayed at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid Spain, the Ritz in Paris was too expensive, and I have also stayed in a $3.00-a-night tourist cabin in West Virginia. I’ve heard the music and singing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the music of the Vienna Philharmonic doing Mozart and Haydn in Brussels, Belgium. I’ve joined in the singing at a twenty-member black church in the poorest part of Louisville, KY. 

With friend Ken Hooker I heard How Great Thou Art being sung as we walked a back street of Guatemala City. Following the sound we were led to a store-front church meeting where Guatemalan Indians, men seated on one side, women the other, were praising God. We joined in combining our English with their language.

During Communist days I attended a performance of the renowned Kirov Ballet in Lenigrad, USSR and a Bolshoi Theater performance in Moscow.

I’ve enjoyed my life and the experiences that have come thus far but I’ve seen and heard nothing that has attracted me like Jesus Christ and the treasure of knowing Him as Savior and Lord, nor anything to indicate that I made a bad decision.

In fact, from what I’ve seen, I rejoice that I got started with Jesus at the beginning. My Christian parents by their example really left me a great inheritance. I believe that following Jesus has protected me and saved me from a lot of grief and struggle.

DECADE TWO

My second ten years were great!

I quit school at age 16, but that wasn’t the great part because at age 35 I knew I wanted more education and went to college. 

In the early part of this decade when the nation was in a depression, Dad was offered a job at Peerless Woolen Mills in Rossville, Georgia. He and a number of others who worked at the Springfield Woolen Mills felt the Peerless might offer greater security. Dad took the job, went to Rossville and found lodging there in a rooming house. Mother and I were to follow later after Dad had received two or three paychecks and rented a house for us.

Friends who had moved to Rossville returned to Springfield for a short visit and offered us a ride back in the rumble seat of their Ford roadster. We really wanted to go, but didn’t have the money that would be needed for the trip and house rent. But we did have a hog that could be slaughtered and sold.

Virgil Bradley, a friend of Dad’s, volunteered to kill the hog and cut it up into pieces to be sold. We got it sold and I delivered it on my bicycle. Another family was moving to Rossville and offered us space on the back of their truck to take a few of our things. Dad was glad to see us but concerned about money to rent a house. He was relieved when Mother showed him the money from selling the hog.

I went to work in a woolen mill when I quit school even though Dad wanted me to go to college and become a lawyer. I loved working in the mill even at my pay of forty cents an hour. Later, there was a shortage of work at the mill, and I was laid off for a while. I found work in a furniture factory. My job was carrying baby beds into the spray room to be painted and then carrying them out. I was paid seventeen cents an hour. I was glad when the mill called me back to work.  

The manager of the mill where Dad and I worked was a Catholic from Massachusetts. I suppose he thought folks went to church when they had sinned and needed forgiveness. Anyway, we had been going to a revival meeting every night for a week. This man would usually ask Dad each morning what he had done the night before. When, after the fourth or fifth time Dad was still saying that he went to church, the man responded by saying, “Frank, you must be wicked as hell.” 

When I was eleven Mother went to visit her parents in Indiana, leaving Dad to cook for the two of us. His cooking was terrible. For relief he said we would go to a cafeteria. The only eating out I had done was hot dogs at John Gill Clinard’s grocery store and the barbecue my uncle sold on the county court house square on Saturdays and the days the court was in session. We had never been to a cafeteria but Dad thought the prices posted included anything suggested by the servers. As we went through the line he took about everything offered and I said, “Me too.” 

At our table I looked at the cashier’s tape and saw we had been charged for each item. When I told Dad he swallowed hard and his “Adam’s apple” started going up and down. After he paid the bill he had just enough money to send Mother a telegram asking her to come home. 

While I was still eleven I got my first “adult” kiss. It happened at the home of William Fox. I was playing with one of the Fox boys when Gertrude Fox, a teenager, called me aside and said she wanted to give me something. I suppose she just needed some practice and I was there so I was the guinea pig. I thought it was awful and got away as soon as I could. My thinking did moderate later on. 

When I was 13 I had the opportunity to ride in the front seat of a friend’s Model A Ford and watch him drive. I thought I had caught on and asked him to let me try driving. He did. I had caught on and have been driving ever since. Later on, in 1938, after I was married, we bought an A Model Ford Roadster of our own. This was our first car and cost $50.00. With another couple we had planned a trip to the beach using my father-in-law’s car. When we learned that his car was not available to us we were still determined to go. I found the Model A, one with a rumble seat, paid the $50.00, and we set out the next day. I drove and our friends sat in the rumble seat.

While living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I liked to run around bare footed but one day I noticed how big my feet looked. I kept my shoes on after that. We lived within walking distance of Rossville, Georgia. On the Main Street of Rossville was a small restaurant that served great hamburgers. They were cooked fresh when ordered. I can still recall how good they were with the tomato and mayonnaise they put on them and they cost five cents each! 

In the early thirties Dad had the offer of a better job in Spray, NC so we moved again. The woolen mill there was owned by the Marshall Field family, the ones who had the department store that is still in business in Chicago. Spray has since been joined with neighboring Leakesville and Draper, both textile towns, to become Eden, NC.

While in Spray I saw my first Police Gazette paper. I wonder if they are still around? I didn’t know what this paper was all about except they always had photos of partially clothed women…some of them even had their legs naked right up to the hip!

Dad had a Model A Ford with a switch key that could be removed but still leave the ignition on. I got him to let me put the car in the garage a few times. I would leave the ignition on, give him the key and then when he went to work take the car out for a ride with two or three friends. One problem was that I couldn’t turn off the ignition otherwise I couldn’t start the car again. The solution was to leave the engine running as I braked to a stop. This made the engine stall and stop. 

About this time I had opportunity to make a trip to West Virginia. A friend of the family was taking a truck load of apples to WV and said I could go along. Since the third grade in school I liked geography, reading about cities and countries, looking at pictures and studying maps so I jumped at the chance and didn’t mind at all that I rode on the back of the truck with the apples. I’ve taken every opportunity since to travel.

When I was 16 we had our first meal in a hotel restaurant, the Hotel Danville in Danville, VA, about 20 miles from Spray, a grand place to us. One of the dishes contained what looked like mashed potatoes. Dad took a big serving and a big bite. It was horse radish! What a scene! Years later we found Lawry’s Restaurant in Chicago where they serve only Prime Rib and along with it a cream horse radish that is mild and tasty. What a difference to Dad’s first taste!

Our family has found Chicago to have a delightful downtown section. We enjoy the nice shops and restaurants and think the downtown area an interesting place for walking, especially the Water Tower area and along the Chicago River.

It was also at age sixteen that I dated Ruby Weedin a few times. That was fifty-four years ago as I write. I wonder where she is now and what has happened in her life. Ruby had three sisters age eight or younger. They decided to hide behind the living room couch before I came calling on Ruby one night. When we sat down on the couch we soon found out they were there. The sisters, we learned, had planned to wait until we were seated and then one after the other break wind. I don’t know how they had built up their supply of gas, but they had done so with great and loud success. Ruby was mortified. I really don’t know what I felt but I do know it was a short date without much courting. 

The great part of my second decade started in 1937 while I was still 16. In Sunday School on February 14 I saw for the first time Betty Geraldine Gentry and knew on sight she was the one. We dated on February 18 and married June 25 the next year a month after my l8th birthday. Wise decision to quit school at 16?  Who knows?  I’m not unhappy with what has followed. Wise decision to marry Jerry (Betty Geraldine)? Yes, sir! No question. I suppose Jerry and I married on June 25 because in 1938 that was a Saturday and not a work day. 

That day Dad let me borrow his 1937, 65 horsepower V-8 Ford and gave me $25.00. I drove from Statesville to State Road, NC and got Jerry. We then drove to Independence, VA and went to the courthouse for the marriage license. I was 18, Jerry was 17 and looked like a child, but we got the license. I wonder how now. Following this we went to Preacher Mayberry’s house to be married. 

After getting married we drove back to State Road to spend the night with Jerry’s parents. I don’t know if Jerry thought about a honeymoon. I didn’t, I just wanted to marry her and take her home. 

When we got to the Gentry home Jerry told her mother what we had done. She wasn’t surprised. Then we went to sit in the front porch swing. We were there when Mr. Gentry came in from his store and post office. We all spoke and he went on in for his evening meal. 

After a while he and Mrs. Gentry came to the front room, something they usually did only on special occasions. Mr. Gentry then spoke up and said, “You married folks don’t need to sit and court anymore. Come on in.” I was a little nervous, but Mr. and Mrs. Gentry were as nice to us as could be then and as long as they lived. 

I have never understood when I hear people talking about in-law problems. I am an only child. My parents must have thought they got a daughter when I married. At any rate they loved her and treated her like one. And our relationships with our son-in-law and our daughter-in-law have brought joy, not strife, to us. 

Later we were back to visit Mr. and Mrs. Gentry. One morning we slept until about 8:30. Jerry’s parents were of the old school that thought it was almost a sin not to be up in time to wait for the sun to rise. Before we got up we heard Mrs. Gentry say to Mr. Gentry, “They’ll never amount to anything lying in bed so late in the morning.”

When we first married we lived with my parents where we had a bedroom and kitchen privileges. We attended the same church as my parents. On Sunday after church we would often go to Hefner’s Restaurant in downtown Statesville, NC for lunch. A meal with meat, vegetables, bread and drink was 35 cents. With dessert it was 45 cents and the desserts were homemade. 

It was during this period that we decided to go into business. We thought a store like Jerry’s Dad’s might be a good idea. Her dad loaned us $150.00 to buy inventory for the store and gasoline for our pumps. We ran the store for a year but then ran out of money. We had to close, but we thought we had done pretty well living for a year, as we had, and losing only the starting $150.00. 

I returned to working in the mill. We got a three-room apartment, a brand new apartment in a home, and it cost us $13.00 a month. Earlier, we had decided we could make my pay go farther if we raised a pig for meat. Our mistake was making a pet of the pig. We would scratch it with a stick at feeding time and talk to it. When the time came to slaughter the pig … now a nice full grown hog … we couldn’t stand to have it done at our place. We had the men take the hog away for the killing. We got the meat cut up and the sausage made. Then we couldn’t eat our pet. We gave the meat away. 

We started a garden. My watermelon crop was especially nice until one day the melons started going bad, about one every two or three days until they all died on the vine. Years later Jerry confessed. She didn’t know that plugging a melon to see if it was ripe enough to eat would cause it to rot on the vine. 

It was about this time that I learned that a friend had a good number of frying-size chickens that he wanted to sell. I went to a produce buyer in town and found that he bought chickens too. I got his price, then bought the chickens for less so I could make a profit. This led Dad and me to decide we’d raise and sell chickens. We thought we might make a business out of this. 

We went to the basement, built our first chicken coop and brought it outside. Once in the yard Dad stepped on a rake that was lying in the yard. The handle flew up and hit him on the forehead. He turned loose his end of the chicken coop, it fell to the ground, the legs broke off and the coop came apart. We were not good carpenters. We decided not to go further into the chicken business. 

Years later we were owed about $125.00 by a business associate who offered us a calf in part payment of the debt. The calf was worth about $75.00 but we figured that was better than nothing. With the coming of the calf we decided we’d go into the cattle business. We had to buy feed for the calf. This cost about $60.00 over a period of a few weeks. Before buying more feed we decided to sell the calf to see how our business was doing. When we took the calf to market it brought $65.00. That was the end of the cattle business for us.  

Jerry’s parents were pretty well-to-do country folks. Her dad had been a school teacher at $30.00 a month but spent most of his working life as the owner of a general store and as postmaster. At age 70 he had to retire from the post office so he decided to retire from his store business as well. 

He didn’t like retirement. When he was 71 he bought his store back. When he was 80 the highway department took the land his store was on for a new highway. Mr. Gentry went across the road to another piece of property he owned and built a new store. He continued in business until his health failed at 93. Before he died at 95 he asked me to conduct his funeral. I did. My son, my daughter and my son-in-law helped me. We led a celebration. We celebrated Mr. Gentry’s life and the fact that he had gone to be with Jesus. 

Jerry’s Dad was a calm, easy-going sort of person who always seemed happy and content. We wondered about the source of his joy, especially after he entered a nursing home near the end of his life. His daughters wanted him to live with one of them but he chose the nursing home. Jerry and I decided to ask him about the source of his happiness on our next visit to him. Before we made the visit we heard he had created a disturbance in the nursing home, causing the nurses to rush to his room to see about him. We knew his sight was almost gone and his hearing was about gone. When we asked about the disturbance he laughed and told us there was nothing wrong. He said he been lying in his bed thinking about Jesus. Thinking about Jesus he got happy … so happy he shouted aloud for joy.  That was all.

Then, before we could ask, Mr. Gentry said he would like to tell us about the happiest night of his life. He was saved at age 16, but said that wasn’t the happiest night of his life. That came four years later. He and Betty, his wife-to-be, had saddled up his horse and on that one horse the two rode over to neighboring Wilkes county where Preacher Ford Gilliam was conducting meetings. Mr. Gentry couldn’t remember if he tied the horse to a sapling or a fence post. He just wasn’t sure, but once the horse was tied they went in. In the midst of his preaching Mr. Gilliam stopped and began to pray. As he prayed Mr. Gentry said something so real happened that it was like smoke coming from above and filling the room. He knew it was the presence of the Holy Spirit filling the room. Mr. Gentry opened his heart and was filled by the Holy Spirit of God and that, he told us, was the happiest night of his life. We knew then the source of his lasting joy. 

Jerry has three sisters and two brothers. One brother, McCree, lost his hearing as a result of an illness when he was just a baby. He went to the School for the Deaf in Morganton, NC. Mr. Gentry and some of the family would take McCree to school, about fifty miles away from home, and go for him at school breaks and at year end. Jerry remembers going along on some of these trips and the round kerosene stove they would light and put on the back seat floor of the car in the winter time. Her mother would also heat bricks to help keep their feet warm.

Ethel, one of Jerry’s sisters, told us about her salvation experience. It happened in 1920 when she was 15. Mr. Franklin was pastor at Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church. Ethel didn’t think he was a good preacher but she listened. During one meeting a lady came to Ethel and asked if she didn’t want to go to the altar down front, pray and be saved. Ethel realized she was a sinner and she wanted to get saved, but it didn’t happen that night. 

She felt that it was going to take a lot for her to get saved. She prayed every day to get saved. When she went to the spring for water she would go to a favorite big pine tree and sit there and pray. Still she wasn’t saved. Then one day she was standing in the door of her father’s store. As she looked out she saw her father and McCree returning from the school in Morganton. For some reason great joy came to her as she looked. She realized that her heart was open to Jesus and that she was saved. 

Ethel wanted to let it be known that she was saved. God then filled her with His Holy Spirit and set her to shouting. Later she visited Mt. Hebron Methodist Church where Mr. White was preaching and went forward at the invitation. This open confession of Jesus as Lord and Savior brought such fullness of the Spirit that Ethel again started shouting for joy. I know from experience that our Lord sent the Holy Spirit and He, the Holy Spirit, expresses Himself through obedient believers in a variety of ways. For Ethel shouting was one of these ways and I know too, again from experience, that it is a beautiful sound when it is Spirit prompted. 

Now, in 2002, Ethel is 97 years old, lives with her unmarried son in the house she and her husband built in 1939, cares for herself and does a good bit of housework [Note by Tom Adcox: Ethel lived to be 102. We have a picture of her at 101 with our one-year-old adopted baby.] 

I remember the time we were with a church near Cleveland TN. Uncle Billy, an 87 year old man, got saved one Saturday morning when a couple of men went to his house to talk with him about Jesus. Most people in the community knew Uncle Billy. When he came forward in church that night to make public profession of his trust in Jesus, just about the whole church started shouting for glory and in praise to God. 

Speaking of shouting and praising God I want to jump ahead and tell you about an event in Mt.Vernon, IN. I was with Floyd Parrot and a group of men for a witnessing meeting there. We were having a prayer meeting one afternoon. As we prayed the Holy Spirit made Himself known in the room. It started with Floyd beginning to chuckle. Then he started to laugh. It was a laughter of joy … joy brought on by the keen awareness of God’s presence in the person of the Holy Spirit. First one and then another of the men present began laughing until finally we were all laughing … laughing out of sheer joy simply because we knew the Lord was with us in the room. It was a beautiful experience. 

Floyd had an interesting experience that began in Europe during WW II. Floyd made the Lord a proposition. He told the Lord that he would walk down the aisle of his home church the first Sunday he was home and thank Him publicly if God would just get him home to his family. God did get him home safe and sound but in the process Floyd had a close call. Floyd had gotten separated from his company during a time of heavy shelling. He was alone, none of his buddies around, when a soldier he didn’t know pushed him to one side. As Floyd hit the ground a shell exploded where he had been standing. He looked for the soldier in order to thank him but the man was no where to be seen. There was no indication the soldier had been hit by the shell. Floyd thinks it was an angel. I do too. 

My wife, daughter, son-in-law and I were driving through the mountains of Greece one time. We had deliberately taken back roads, most of them dirt. We wanted to see rural Greece and we had succeeded. We went through tiny villages where all the people seemed to be farmers, the women for the most part in their black dresses and the men in work clothes. We were never in any danger but we were low on gas and there were no stations in the villages. We didn’t know where we were since we lacked a map. We wanted to make our way to Old Corinth and from there take the highway back to Athens. At a crossroads there were no signs but we figured the road straight ahead offered the best possibility and started that way.

But then we heard a whistle, looked to the right of the car and saw a man in a western style suit and tie, the only man not in farm clothes that we had seen all day. He had been no where in sight as we neared the crossroads. He was pointing left and saying, “Corinthos, Corinthos.” The road looked terrible but we decided to take it.  Before driving off we looked to our right to thank the man but he was gone. It was an open area around the crossroads but he was nowhere to be seen. The road we took worsened but then we came to a turn and a nicer road with a sign pointing to Old Corinth. We believe the man was an angel. 

I learned about Floyd’s experience twenty years later when I lead a witnessing meeting in his church. Floyd told me that he and his wife went to visit her parents the first Sunday he was home. After that it was easy for Floyd to put off going to church since he didn’t go the first Sunday as he had promised God. Floyd had lived a good life and was successful in business but he knew an unrest because he hadn’t made good on his commitment to the Lord. Floyd came forward during the meeting and, belatedly, made good on his promise. Then there came to Floyd a joy and peace he had not known.   

Before we married Jerry and I would double date with Lucille Vestal and Edworth Freeman. One night Edworth and I borrowed a T Model Ford, hired a man to chauffeur us and went to pick up the girls. Jerry wasn’t impressed but she had a good time. After we took the girls home we ran out of gas. We had already run out of money. Fortunately, a friend of my father happened by and loaned us a dollar. The dollar bought about 5 gallons of gas then. 

In 1939 Dad, Mother, Jerry and I moved to Lacon, IL where we all worked at Lacon Woolen Mills. It was there that Jerry learned to operate looms (weaving). It was about this time that diesel engines were replacing steam engines for pulling trains. We would drive from Lacon across the Illinois River to the Rock Island Railroad tracks to watch the Rock Island Rocket train go by. It was exciting to us, much like going to see our first jet airplane take off from the Atlanta airport in a later decade. We didn’t find living in Lacon to our liking so I decided to go to Springfield, my home town, and try to get a job there. 

I decided to hitchhike to save money, leaving Jerry with my folks with the thought that I’d send for her when I found work. At the last minute Jerry didn’t want me to go without her, so she went hitchhiking with me. We had good luck, even got a ride in a car taking the ferry across the river so we didn’t have to pay the toll. Once across we got out of the car, thanked the driver and walked the few blocks into town and spent the night at a nice little hotel. The next day we made it on to Springfield where I found work. 

Meanwhile Dad had taken work in Cincinnati at the Adler Woolen Mills in Cincinnati, OH. Before long I joined him there. This enabled me to continue the good training he had provided when I had worked under him previously. 

DECADE THREE

When my third decade began in 1940 we were living in Cincinnati where Dad and I worked at the Adler Woolen Mill Company located at Harrison Avenue and Queen City. This company was well known for its wool socks for men. We lived farther out on Queen City and it was there on December 7, 1941, that we heard about Pearl Harbor. 

In those days the better stores were still located downtown. Jerry and Mom had great times riding the efficient street cars downtown to Fountain Square and then making the rounds of stores like Shillito’s, McAlpin’s, Mabley and Carew and Pogue’s. Then they’d head for the Purple Cow for lunch. 

When I started working in the mill at age 16 my goal was to manage a mill. 

Shortly after my third decade started I left my job working under Dad and took a foreman’s job in a Philippi, WV woolen mill. Prior to my coming the carding machines had been improperly set causing short lengths of wool called noils to drop on the floor underneath the machines. Management didn’t know how to stop the accumulation nor what to do with it so they bagged it up and stored it. There must have been 50,000 pounds of this valuable wool by the time I got there. 

My dad trained me well. I knew exactly what to do. I got out my gauges, set the machines properly, eliminated the droppings and began adding a percentage of the noils back into each batch of wool we ran through the cards. It didn’t take long to clear out the warehouse and thereby free up the substantial sum of money tied up in the noils. I got a promotion and a raise and was managing a mill when my call came for military service.  

In Philippi we had an apartment in the home of a kind widow lady, Mrs. Raikes. Every Tuesday she made bread for the week following. When the bread came out of the oven she would bring us a hot loaf.  We would get out a bottle of milk and a stick of butter and make a meal of the wonderful bread.  

While we were in Philippi the mill manager, Claire Taylor, and his wife, though much older, seemed to take an interest in us. We didn’t have a car but enjoyed several short trips with the Taylors in their car, the insights they shared with us, the meals out we shared together and the fact that they were kind to us. We are grateful for the Taylors and many others who were used by the Lord as they expressed kindness and in many ways mentored us.

 A fire destroyed the mill in Philippi. What an experience to walk to the mill that morning ready to go to work and finding it burned to the ground! This was during the war years and the owners were most anxious to get back into production. They put me on half pay until something could be done. They found a mill in Texas that was not in operation. When they took over this mill I was sent to open it and get it into production. The mill was just outside San Marcos, a delightful town near the Texas hill country. 

We greatly enjoyed our time there. The source of the San Marcos River is an underground spring that provides the clear water that offered good swimming sites and formed the centerpiece of a nice park. 

The father of one of our employees was manager of a ranch. We enjoyed visits to the ranch but found we were not the best of riders of horses. I could never control mine to my satisfaction and Jerry said she had not realized that a horse’s back was so broad.

We especially enjoyed the mild weather in San Marcos, the beautiful nearby hill country and the warm friends we made there.

From Texas I went to a job in Pendleton, Indiana. What an experience! I was manager of the woolen mill inside an Indiana state prison. All the workers were inmates. It took a while to get used to going behind walls and through four guarded metal gates before getting to work. But I had realized my goal of managing a mill. 

This, the nineteen forties, was the start of the decade in which our daughter Julia and our son Tom were born. Julia was just a few weeks old when I had to go into the military. She was six months old the day I was told I was being sent overseas as a rifle replacement. The same day Jerry was told she was pregnant with Tom. She said she felt like a ton of bricks had fallen on her. 

We were saddened by my call to the military. Angry, too. Anger directed at our government leaders and the leaders of other nations whose leadership was so flawed they could not govern without sending men to fight and die.  War is a great tragedy. It is also a great mystery to me. For example, a leader like Hitler comes to power. Men like England’s Chamberlain get taken in by a Hitler and war follows. The mystery part to me is the logic that sends Chamberlain home to safety while English soldiers go to fight not Hitler, but German soldiers. And Hitler remains in safety while his men fight the English and others. 

Since Hitler in this case is the cause why not go after him first?  Why deal with symptoms and not causes? Why first cause millions of men to fight and die and more millions of innocent civilians including Jews to be brutally murdered, then come to the end of Hitler? 

The answer might come that Hitler could not be reached, that he was too well guarded and kept his whereabouts hidden. And it might be said that it would cost too many lives to go in and get him. All of this has a measure of truth in it, but would it not be better to lose a thousand lives or even five thousand to get him, dispose of him and head off the war, thus saving millions? Think about it. 

I went overseas headed for Belgium and the Battle of the Bulge. We arrived in Greenock, Scotland then went by train to Southampton and then by boat to Le Havre, France. From Le Havre by freight train in what were cattle cars to Belgium. There were 400 men in our battalion. Upon arrival at the Belgian camp 392 of our battalion were processed immediately and sent to the front. Eight of us were told to stay in the camp. We were never told why. We remained there three weeks. Many of the original 400 were brought back from the front during those three weeks. Some were wounded, some were dead. At the end of three weeks the eight of us were sent back to Le Havre where we were assigned to the 65th Signal Corps. My army training had been for the Signal Corps and included everything but driving a vehicle. 

On the way to Belgium our train had stopped in Paris. We took advantage of the stop to use steam from the locomotive to warm water in our helmets for shaving and washing up. We couldn’t find out how long we’d be waiting so, shaved and washed up, three of us took off to see Paris. We weren’t sure the train would be there when we got back, but I guess that didn’t matter very much. I wonder now what would have happened if it had been gone. But it was there.

Our first view of wartime destruction was as we drove into Kaiserslautern, Germany just across the border from France. Hardly a building was standing intact and we had to pick our way around the rubble in the deserted streets.

Back in Le Havre my assignment was driving a Jeep. I was one of fourteen men assigned to what was called a jump team. It was our job to follow close on the heels of the Infantry and set up and maintain communications between the front line commanders and the Corps Headquarters. 

I was driving from the front to Corps Headquarters one day. I came upon a group of German soldiers, 17 of them. When they saw me they put up their hands and called out, “Comrade.” By then I had stopped my Jeep and for the first time during the war removed my unloaded rifle from its dashboard case. I didn’t bother to load it but pointed the gun at the Germans. They put their hands on top of their heads and moved out in the direction I pointed. 

As I drove behind them, headed for the POW camp, I was imagining the headlines in our hometown newspaper. Probably something about local man single-handedly captures 17 German soldiers. I knew my wife and parents would be proud of me. When we got to the POW camp they would not take my prisoners! The German soldiers were surrendering in such numbers there wasn’t space for more. I tried to get the Germans to go away but they wouldn’t. Finally I had to drive off to get away from them. Thus ended my heroic adventure before it started. 

Another time I was driving from Corps Headquarters to the front with a message from the Commanding General to the Captain at the front. I was driving with blackout lights, tiny slits of light that shone through the taped over headlights. I missed a turn somewhere and ended up on the enemy side of a town our troops were in the process of taking.  As I looked I could see by the light of the burning buildings that German troops and tanks were between our troops and me. I quickly worked my way back to our side without being seen by the German.  

I served in the 3rd Army Signal Corps. We went into Dachau the day after our troops liberated the camp. What horror! We saw the dead looking like bones covered with skin and stacked like cordwood waiting to be dumped into a common grave. We saw the living looking little different from the dead except for open eyes, eyes set deep into their sockets and still reflecting the nightmare they had lived through.  

We went into Mauthausen near Linz, Austria the day the infantry liberated it. Again what horror! Men too weak to stand, just able to reach out a begging hand for food. But they didn’t need to beg. GIs started feeding them as soon as they entered the camp. These nearly starved men had been forced to carry large rocks up the seventy or so steps of the quarry where they worked. Some, who hadn’t moved fast enough to suit their guards, were still lying dead at the base of the stairs where they had landed after being kicked by the guards. 

I didn’t know it at the time but a Hungarian Jew named Lazlo was a prisoner in the camp that day in 1945. A GI befriended him, gave him a Bible and witnessed to him. Lazlo became a Christian.  Years later I was in Nottingham, England and went with Alec Steen to witness to Steve Trombitas, a Hungarian exile who fled the 1956 persecution in Hungary. After he got saved Steve wanted to know if we might visit his brother in Budapest and his parents in Feldebro, a village about 65 miles from the USSR border. Not long afterwards an invitation came from a church in Prague, Czechoslovakia. They wanted us to come and lead them in a witnessing meeting. 

We went, and then from Prague went on to Hungary where we were given an interpreter for our visit. The interpreter was Lazlo from the Mauthausen camp! It was then we compared notes and found that we both, under greatly different circumstances, had been in Mauthausen that May 7, 1945. 

Once we were in Feldebro the parents, peasant farmers and dear Christian people wanted us to witness to their 34-year-old daughter who was deaf and not a Christian. My wife Jerry and LaVerne Abbott, Lazlo and the mother sat down with the daughter. Jerry and LaVerne would give their witness and Scripture in English to Lazlo. Lazlo would pass this on in Hungarian to the mother. The daughter could read her mother’s lips as she mouthed the words. The procedure was reversed as the daughter responded. There was great joy when the daughter gave her heart to Jesus. Then she wanted Jerry to go over certain Bible verses so she could mark them in her Bible.

Later we were in Germany for witnessing meetings. There a man and a woman, business partners, made decisions for Jesus and wanted to join us later on for meetings in Austria. We were pleased to have them and people in Austria were blessed by their testimonies. Before the meetings in Linz we went to the site of the Mauthausen camp, now a memorial to those who suffered so cruelly there. The man and woman from Germany could not believe the scene preserved in the camp, including photographs taken by the camp authorities and by the liberators. They wondered out loud how any one could so treat a fellow human being. My answer was that apart from Jesus Christ any of us would be capable of such behavior. 

I got home from the military on Mother’s Day, 1946. It is difficult to describe my feelings as I traveled from Le Havre to the States by boat and then by land on down to Ft. Bragg, NC for discharge. My mind was full of thoughts about my wife, our daughter, the eight month old son I had not seen and my parents. It is one thing to be away from those you love and think about them. It is another to realize that you are about to see them and be with them without further interruptions after a long, enforced absence. Joy and tears and gratitude and all kinds of emotions sort of run together. 

Once home from the military in 1946 I went into business for myself. We had saved money all our married life even when I was in the service. Jerry lived with my parents while I was overseas so her expenses were small. While in Germany I sold my liquor ration for a tidy sum each month and sent the money to Jerry. So I suppose it could be said that I got my start in business, at least in part, by selling whiskey. Does that make me a former bootlegger? 

While in the replacement depot in Belgium for three weeks replacements were coming in and going out of the camp every day. My buddy and I found out we could get extra food and coffee by going through the chow line two or three times. We would take this extra food and coffee to our room. Then after ten o’clock at night when the February cold was at its worst we would make sandwiches, heat the coffee, and go sell these to the poor guys on guard duty. We had a captive market, our prices reflected this and we had no cost of product, thus our sales were all profit. I sent my share home to Jerry. 

When we went into business we put all our money, not much, but all we had, into it. The business was small, never really got going and failed after 18 months. We were devastated. Our money was gone. But I learned through this that I knew the production end of the business but didn’t know marketing and other aspects of carrying on business. 

The failure didn’t take away my desire to be in business even though it took us another eighteen months to pay off the debts owed by the business. We picked up the pieces and started again with less than $300.00 worth of merchandise bought on credit. After going broke we didn’t have any cash or credit but a friend stood good for the $300.00. Amazing, isn’t it, how the Lord has ways of sending His provision through caring, helpful people. 

Another asset was a new understanding of Matthew 6:33 gained as a result of help from Charles Howard, a Bible Professr at Campbell College in North Carolina.. Even though I had been a Christian for years I had little understanding that our Lord is interested in every part of the believer’s life. I didn’t know how to go about it but I wanted God to have first place in my life. I wanted to look to Him as Savior and as One who adds meaning and blessing to every part of life. I told this to God. I asked for His help. I realized later that my motivation was to get much needed help from God but He tells us to bring our burdens and needs to Him. In time I began to understand that a developing relationship with God leads one to see that He is worth knowing for who He is, not just for what He does for us. 

As our business grew we didn’t have the money to finance it. In fact we had so little money we couldn’t buy new shipping cartons or strapping material for the cartons. Near our little place of business a braiding factory threw their used strapping material into a trash bin. The factory manager let us pick out any of the strapping we could use.

Mr. Nanney was then manager of the local J.C. Penney store. He would save his used cartons for us to use in shipping our products. No doubt about it, we were operating on the cheap. We paid an individual one third of our profits to finance us. Then a bank took us on at a more reasonable rate. 

We didn’t have a financial statement and I don’t suppose I would have known how to prepare one back then, but because Jasper Osborne and Bob Phillips of Trust Company of Georgia bank believed in us they agreed to factor our accounts. It was a good relationship, one that lasted almost 30 years. Jerry and I enjoyed many happy times in New York and in Atlanta with Bob and his wife Florence. At the time there was a restaurant on Broadway in the Times Square section of New York that served great corned beef and cabbage. Bob loved to eat there and we did too. We were there the night JFK confronted the Russians regarding Cuba and caused many to think war was upon us. A lot of excitement followed. Our daughter was in her first year at Stetson University in Florida where there was great concern that Cuba might invade that state.

The New York Athletic Club was at the time another place that served excellent corned beef. We were at Calvary Baptist Church one Wednesday night with Henry Simpson and his wife Kate. They were members of the club and asked us to go with them for dinner there. Henry is the Simpson of the Belk-Simpson [now Belk] stores in North and South Carolina. The next night we went to a little French Bistro on the east side. Quite a contrast to the club. Henry and Kate are lovely, down to earth Christian people even though they had his and her Rolls Royce automobiles at the time. 

My first business trip to New York City was made on a total expenditure of $50.00 because that was all I had to spend. The bus cost $26.00 round trip and took 26 hours each way. The Walcott Hotel was on 32nd Street. I believe it was between 5th and 6th Avenues and cost $3.00 a night. It wasn’t a bad place. I walked to my appointments, ate cheap and didn’t invite anybody to lunch.  

A few trips later I had a little but not much more money so I decided I would buy a gift for Jerry. I didn’t know that B. Altman on 5th Avenue was all that different from Woolworth’s at home so I went in to buy Jerry a slip. When I entered the lingerie department I was already embarrassed. It got worse when it turned out that I didn’t have enough money to pay for the slip I selected. The saleslady was kind and understanding. She asked how much I had to spend and got me a nice silk slip that Jerry said she liked. 

When I got to Hickory, NC on the way home I still had two hours to go. I was hungry so I spent my last dime for a chocolate bar. 

I really don’t know how we made it. There was so little money and we were a family of four, but we did. I do know that for our part we just kept moving toward our goal of following Jesus and developing the business. As I look back I think we have had a slight measure of success because we kept moving … by this I mean that there always seemed to be some little thing that could be done in the business … the situation might look discouraging … we might feel we were making little if any progress … we might be almost out of money … but we didn’t give up and quit.

What we saw to do … what steps we saw to take usually didn’t appear to offer much hope for improvement of our situation but we did what we saw to do. And it worked. It                   worked, I am sure, because our Lord blessed our keeping on. For our part we tried. For His part He made things happen.

DECADE FOUR

1950, I was thirty and beginning my fourth decade. Gary Harthcock, a Hendersonville businessman, and I had started witnessing to unsaved people. We had seen in the Bible and caught from our pastor’s preaching that every Christian is a witness of some kind. Some are good witnesses, some bad and some refuse to function as witnesses, but every Christian is a witness of some sort. When we saw this we wanted to be good witnesses for Jesus Christ. We’d go to the homes or places of work of lost people and ask permission to talk to them about Jesus. Practically every one was willing. Many opened their hearts to Jesus after we shared with them. 

How did we go about this? First we’d tell them about our own experience of salvation. Then we’d ask if they had had such an experience. Those who had not almost always expressed interest. We would then read the Bible passages that point the way to Jesus Christ as the Savior. Once a decision was made we’d urge them to make public their decision and follow through with Bible study and Christian fellowship. 

This activity and my involvement in the North Carolina Baptist Men’s organization brought us to the attention of First Baptist Church, Franklin, NC. The church wanted to have a witnessing meeting with outstanding men to come in and speak. They couldn’t find any outstanding men to come so they asked Gary and me. We accepted their invitation but with no thought that other such meetings would follow. 

The meeting was to start on an October Sunday in 1954. Gary knew I wasn’t a preacher and I knew he wasn’t a preacher, teacher or lecturer so we settled on going to the church, giving testimony in the meetings and going out every day to witness to people. I was paired with Ken Hooker, a man I had come to know through the Baptist Brotherhood. The first day we went to visit a 57-year-old man. After we shared with him he got saved and did so with rejoicing. His wife rejoiced and we did too. Great joy when a person is born into God’s family. By Wednesday when the meeting ended eight adults had been saved and made public their professions and the church was blessed.  

After the meeting in Franklin Gary and I returned home, aware that we had been greatly blessed. Back at work we’d think about the great time in Franklin but always as something done and over with, a wonderful but a one-time happening. But another church heard about the meeting and about three months later sent us an invitation. We accepted and again saw God bless the undertaking. 

When the fourth invitation came we decided to take a group of men with us with the understanding that each one would team up with a man from the host church and go witnessing each day during the meeting. Eleven men went with us. Fifteen people got saved, the church was blessed and we men had a great time. Thus a pattern was set. We’d take a team of men and women, the size of the team depending on the size of the church. The church would provide each of us a partner for witnessing during the day, our meals at the church or a restaurant and lodging in the home of church members. We were led to feel that we should take no money from any church and found that the Lord always provided travel funds and time away from work even when meetings were held in Europe, Africa, Australia and Korea 

From 1954 until the present these meetings have continued, sometimes involving us in as many as two a month. A number of men who participated in these meetings that Gary and I led have gone on to leading meetings themselves. 

Gary and I were co-founders of the Baptist Laymen’s Witnessing Foundation in North Carolina in 1958. Similar groups have been formed in other states with the result that witnessing meetings of the sort the Lord used Gary and me to start are still going on in many parts of this country and other countries. The men and women I write about all began witnessing and the leading of meetings on their own after first participating in meetings with us.

For example Alec and Doreen Steen of Nottingham, England have been leading out with witnessing teams in England, Australia New Zeeland, the USSR and Poland for many years now. All sorts of people, men and women from every walk of life, lead and participate in these meetings.  Almost without exception the people I write about in this book are people I have known, people in business or with jobs or in the professions or those with the important responsibility of a home. They are not theologically trained people. For the most part they are ordinary people like me who have found Jesus a living reality in their lives, a reality to be enjoyed and shared. 

There is an interesting aside to sharing Jesus in that the more one tries to give of what has been received the more one gets of the life of Jesus. Jesus really is a Savior full of glory and majesty. 

I met Allison Howell in the 19 fifties. A native of Ohio, Allison had moved to Asheville in the 1930’s for a stay in a sanatorium. His mother and sister came with him and Allison joined the Presbyterian Church in Asheville. But he was not a Christian. 

When his health improved Allison went to Georgia Tech in Atlanta, then returned to Asheville and got into the real estate business. He met Lib, his wife-to-be, and they were married. He started going to First Baptist Church with Lib. The pastor visited Allison and asked why he didn’t join the church along with Lib. 

Allison told the pastor he couldn’t because he didn’t believe like First Baptist folks did and didn’t believe the Bible was God’s word. The pastor wanted to know why. Allison told him that he thought too many men had been involved in writing it and even if it was God’s word to begin with it was messed up by the time it got to him. 

Allison did tell the pastor he believed in a Supreme Being. The pastor asked, “Don’t you believe a Supreme Being could keep the Bible pure to the original. Allison agreed that He probably could and further agreed to read the Gospel of John three times and then read all four Gospels straight through. 

When Allison got to John 3:18 the fourth time he was caught. He gave his heart to Jesus and served him faithfully until his death in 1988.  

What happens when a man gets saved and follows the Lord’s instruction to share the gospel with others? For one thing others get saved and the process goes on. 

I remember talking to a woman in Nottingham, England. Jerry and I had shared with her about the Lord Jesus. Years later we were in her town and met with her and several others for a time of fellowship. This woman came to us with three people in tow. She introduced a couple to us, a man and his wife, with whom she had witnessed and they had been saved. Then the couple introduced the third person and told us they had witnessed to him and he had been saved.  

Allison taught Sunday School at the Revel Mission of First Baptist Church. Mike Smith, a businessman in Asheville, sent his children to Revel and sometimes went to Allison’s class but says he never really listened. Allison visited Mike in his home several times. Then he asked Mike and another fellow to go to a dinner meeting at a church. 

It was Mike’s plan after the meeting to get Allison to take him home first. That way Allison couldn’t witness to him since he would have to take the other fellow on home. But Allison didn’t go for this. He took the other man home first. Mike then had it in mind that he would open the car door and get out fast when they got to his house. As he tried this Allison grabbed him by the leg and told him to wait, that he had to talk to him.  

Allison explained the plan of salvation to Mike. Mike said he had heard the gospel before, but as with Allison’s Sunday School teaching, he had never listened, but when Allison explained that the wages of sin is death Mike said he listened. Mike said it was just like looking at a film running in front of the car windshield that showed him a11 the wages he was going to get paid for his sin and all those wages equaled death. The Lord began to convict Mike. Mike prayed, “Lord, I don’t understand but if the New Testament means what it says I want to follow you.” He wanted to tell his wife what had happened but was afraid she would laugh. He told her. Her answer was that they both needed this.  

There was a fellow that Mike worked with and respected so he asked him where he should go to church. One reason Mike respected the man was that he had been with him when he hit his thumb with a hammer. The thumb broke open and the blood spurted. The man looked at Mike, said that hurt, nothing more, no swearing, no cursing. The man suggested Merrimon Avenue Baptist Church. Mike and his family joined there and Mike is still there about thirty years later. Allison encouraged Mike to be a witness for Jesus. Mike was and is. 

In 1978 Allison and Lib went to Hawaii to spend two years as witnessing leaders for First Southern Baptist Church in Pearl Harbor, HI. Lib is a woman who loves Jesus and delights in sharing His gospel with others. She is also one of the finest cooks to be found anywhere. In addition she is one of those women who know how to set a beautiful table and serve meals in an attractive manner.  I say she is one the three best cooks in America. That leaves a place somewhere in the top three for my wife and yours.

Allison and Lib wrote Mike to contact others in North Carolina and get sixty-five people to go to Hawaii for witnessing meetings. Mike got them and went. 

In Hawaii Mike went to visit a Portuguese gentleman. Mike couldn’t pronounce the man’s name so the man said, “Call me Port.” Mike did. Mike learned that the man had been saved. He asked the man how he had met Jesus. The man said, “I did it on my knees.  Right at the table in this room I got on my knees and prayed and confessed Jesus as Lord and He saved me and it was wonderful.” 

Mike witnessed to the man’s wife but she was sure she had been so bad that she couldn’t be saved. Then Port witnessed to his wife. Mike said it was beautiful to see the love and compassion Port had for his wife as he urged her to open her heart to Jesus. But she wasn’t saved that night.  

The next night Port and his wife were in the church for the service. Port had never made a public profession but he came forward that night and openly acknowledged Jesus as Lord and Savior. Mike was watching as this happened and praying for Port’s wife. As Mike prayed and watched, Port’s wife left the pew and came forward to join Port and to receive Jesus as her Savior too. It was a glorious time.  And the process goes on. Allison led Mike to Jesus. Mike led Port to a public profession and his wife to salvation. 

Mike was in a witnessing meeting at a church in Sedro-Wooly, Washington. One day a member of the church told Mike there was a man in the hospital that he was interested in and wanted to witness to but didn’t think he could. But he thought Mike could. Mike went with the man. They witnessed to the man and to a second man in the room with him. 

On the way back to the church the church member asked Mike to do one more thing for him. And that was to witness to his brother who was in prison in Raleigh, NC. 

When Mike got home he found that the brother had been transferred to a prison in Asheville! He found the man bitter and not receptive to his witness. But Mike did go and witness to his wife and she was saved. The process goes on. 

Later Mike was in a church in Brevard, NC. There he went on a visit and witnessed to a man who gave his heart to Jesus. Then he learned that the man was a brother to the man in Sedro-Wooly, WA and the one in prison. The process goes on.  

The Lord has a way of helping those who are tuned in to Him and committed to obeying Him. The experience of Mike Smith and Frank Dorato, an automobile dealer in Asheville, is an example of this. They were new at witnessing when they were part of a group leading witnessing meetings at several churches in Somerset, KY. The two of them were to lead the Sunday service at one of the churches, something they had never done before. They really didn’t know what to do but pray and get on with it. Mike told Frank to start off with a testimony and then he would share and try to give an invitation. 

The invitation was given and the people were singing and waiting for a response to the invitation. Mike was watching from the platform. As he watched he saw a woman start out from the balcony. She made her way downstairs and toward the front but stopped at the fourth row of pews. She made her way to a woman in this pew, talked to her and apparently made right with her something that had been wrong. 

The church must have been aware of what was going on between them because the reconciliation caused rejoicing to break loose and glory to come down. This experience ignited a fire in Mike and Frank that still burns brightly and keeps them rejoicing on their way as they tell others about Jesus. And the fire is like a beacon drawing others to the Jesus they see in Mike and Frank. 

The process goes on. Frank Dorato had an interesting salvation experience. His father was Italian and Catholic. His mother was Methodist. This resulted in very little involvement in either church.

Frank met and married Mary, a committed Christian. Mary continued regular church attendance and encouraged Frank to go to church with her but he refused. He told Mary to go on to church with the hypocrites there and he would spend his free time with his friends.

When the deer season opened Frank was among the first hunters out. His salvation experience started the year he went to the woods with two friends. They drove their Jeep to a parking spot and then headed out, each in a different direction. After a time of walking through the woods Frank realized he was lost. This didn’t bother him at first. He had been lost before and found his way out without difficulty. He saw a small stream and began following it downstream. But then this direction didn’t seem right so he started in another direction. Finally, confused and distraught he realized he really was lost. 

Frank panicked, something totally out of character for him. He spoke out and said, “Lord help me get out of here.” Then Frank thought, “Why are you calling on the Lord? You don’t know Him.” It was then that Frank realized he was not only physically lost but spiritually lost as well. 

In his heart Frank felt that his confusion was really God bringing him face to face with reality. His background had not prepared Frank to know exactly what he was supposed to say to the Lord. So he just said, “Lord if you will get me out of here I will go to church and do whatever it is you want me to do.” He knew there was more to it than going to church but he wasn’t sure what it was. 

Frank started to get on his knees to pray. He said that bending his knees was like trying to bend two old dry sticks. But he did kneel. And he prayed, asking God to show him the way out. When he raised his head he saw a shooting star that had come from behind him, was passing over his head and continuing onward over the steep hill in front of him. He felt the star was pointing out the direction he should take. In his heart Frank knew God had sent the star on its way, who knows how long ago, just so it would be there when he called on God. Frank thinks this is wonderful and I do too. 

Frank started up the steep rise, trying to run but aware that a voice within was speaking to him. Frank knew it was the devil because the voice was telling Frank to forget about making promises to God. But Frank meant business. He shook his head, got on his knees again, much easier this time, and told God he would keep his promise. This time when he raised his head and looked up there he saw the head lights of the Jeep.

When Frank got to the Jeep he saw that his friends had a big buck deer on the hood of the jeep. They wanted to talk about the deer but Frank wanted to talk about Jesus but they didn’t want to hear. Frank decided he would just wait until he got home and tell Mary.

Once home rather than telling Mary what happened he decided to wait until Wednesday and when she asked if he was going to church with her he would say yes. Later he realized this was the devil getting him to put off a public profession of his experience. Wednesday came and Mary, who always asked him to go to church, didn’t. 

Frank was crushed but decided he could wait until Sunday because Mary was sure to ask him then. But she didn’t.

Frank likes pro football and tried to pass the afternoon by watching a game but soon lost interest. He went out to rake leaves but didn’t escape the struggle within. As he pulled the rake he said the devil seemed to be riding on the rake and telling him to forget his promises to God. But on the next pull the Holy Spirit would remind him that he had promised. Frank said he didn’t find any rest but sure did get a lot of leaves raked. Finally the afternoon passed. Frank went in and got dressed and was ready when Mary came out to go to church. 

She looked at Frank and asked, “Are you going to church with me?” Those were the magic words for Frank. Frank said he didn’t play any cat and mouse games with Mary. He said, “Yes, I am!” 

That night Frank responded to the invitation and went forward to tell about his experience with God and to open his heart to Jesus Christ as his Savior. Since then Frank and Mary have known a wonderful walk together with the Lord and have been the recipients of His grace and blessing.   

Allison Howell met Gene Edmonds when Neal Pyatt introduced them at the start of a witnessing meeting at West Asheville Baptist Church. Gene had been asked to get names and addresses ready for the visitation during the meeting but he had no thought of going out to witness. When the time came Gene could find no excuse for not going. He was teamed up with Allison. Gene was impressed that Allison was a fine looking man and was well dressed. Once in the car Gene cranked up and was ready to go when Allison said,” Whoa, we have to pray before we start out.” 

Their first visit was to a shade tree mechanic. Gene noticed the difference in the dress and the appearance of Allison and the working mechanic. But if Allison noticed it he didn’t indicate it as he proceeded to open his heart and tell the mechanic about Jesus.   

Gene got a taste of witnessing, of seeing men and women open their hearts to Jesus and finding a joy they had not known before. Gene found that his own life was enriched in the process and has continued telling others about Jesus to this day.  

In the early seventies Gene and Joe Ramsey were in a witnessing meeting in Liverpool, England. They were asked to visit a prison and give a talk on the prison riots in America.  They told them they didn’t know enough about the riots to the extent they could talk about them. They explained our purpose in being there was to tell people about Jesus. 

The professor told us we couldn’t share about Jesus in the prison. He went on to say that instead he would show a film strip about riots. By then about ten inmates had joined us. 

The professor set up what looked like a new projector and screen but he couldn’t get it to work. A technician was called in but still it would not work. In what seemed like disgust the professor told them to go ahead and share whatever they wanted to. 

They began to talk to the men about Jesus. They told them how He saved them when they opened their hearts to Him and what it means to know Him personally. They explained in their own words and from Scripture how those listening could be saved. They were talking, but a discernable quiet seemed to come into the room followed by a holy hush. One man, a hardened criminal, they were told, had scars on his wrists and neck indicating that he had tried to take his own life. This man prayed to the Lord and asked for the salvation of Jesus. 

Two of the other inmates told them they were Communists and had planned to rip apart the Americans verbally. But they listened as they talked about Jesus and offered no rebuttal. 

Finally they said, “We made our way to the professor’s car. When we got to the car we noticed the professor was crying. We sat in the car for several minutes while he regained his composure and was able to drive. Finally the professor was able to talk and said, ‘God was present in that place and we must give Him the glory.’”  Joe and I felt the same way. 

The process goes on. 

On a November Sunday in 1951 Roy Reed found himself pacing the floor of his home, restless and feeling empty. He couldn’t get interested in the Sunday paper so he decided to get some Jazz music on the radio. He thought the beat of the music might relieve his depression. When he turned on the radio he heard the Radio Bible Class program. He found the program interesting and continued to listen. He thought about the program during the week and tuned in again. He also listened to the Billy Graham program. There in his home Roy gave his heart to Jesus and was saved. But he didn’t make a public profession of his faith in Jesus.  

About a year later Roy and his wife Thelma felt they should have their children in a church that had a vacation Bible school. This led them to join Gashes Creek Baptist Church. Allison and Roy developed a close relationship. Allison saw in Roy a deep love for Christ and a sincere commitment to Him, but something troubled him so he asked a friend to pray with him for Roy. Roy didn’t know the men were praying for him but during the time they were praying the Lord convicted Roy that he had not turned everything over to the Him. Roy wanted to be totally the Lord’. He told the Lord he did and made the commitment as best he knew how.

This commitment was followed by a growing concern in Roy regarding his mother. Roy questioned this concern because his mother was religious and was regular in going to Holiness meetings. The feeling was strong that he should go talk to her, but Roy sort of argued with the Lord. Finally the Lord won out and Roy went to see his mother. 

They sat and made small talk until after ten that evening. Roy thought that he had better get on with it so he asked his mother if she knew Jesus as her Savior. To his surprise his mother said, “No, son, I am not going to lie to you. I am not a Christian.” 

Roy’s response to his mother was, “Well, Mom, you can be!”  Roy went on to tell his mother how to be saved. She prayed and opened her heart to Jesus that evening! 

In 1972, Roy’s youngest son, Ricky, 19, became ill. Ricky was checked by the doctors and told he had strep throat. He was treated for this but got worse. He was checked and told he had mumps. But his condition continued to worsen. On his third visit to the hospital he was told he had leukemia.   

Ricky was in the hospital for treatment but seemed to be in excellent spirits. In fact he was joking with the nurses and told Roy and Thelma he would be home the next day. Instead of Ricky his coming home, Roy and Thelma got a call to go to the hospital. They went and were told that Ricky had died. 

Roy tells me that his response to the doctor who told him about Ricky wasn’t thought out. It just came as though someone was speaking it through him. Roy said to the doctor, “The blood you gave Ricky failed, didn’t it, doctor. But the blood of Jesus never fails.” Bert Starnes, a dear brother now with the Lord, asked Roy for the doctor’s name so he could pray for him. The day of the funeral Roy says he couldn’t think death now. For Ricky the curtain for act two has gone up and will never go down.” 

For the believer life is a wonderful event that goes on forever, here in time for a little while and then a change of scenery into eternity. I think I could go on the length of a book telling how Allison Howell came to the Lord and then was instrumental in causing men like Mike Smith, Gene Edmonds, Roy Reed and many others to become bearers of the Good News that Jesus saves. But you get the point. 

The process goes on.

DECADE FIVE

In the decade of the sixties we felt led to try to expand our business. Jerry had made a skirt out of some cloth we were selling. This gave us the idea for a sewing business that we started with two sewing machines in a home. This led to a business employing about three hundred people, a sales office and showroom in New York City and business with retailers all across the country.    

When this all began we had no experience in the garment business, nor did any of the people working with us. We did have two extremely capable key people in the company, Ken and Lucile Hooker. In another chapter I mentioned that Ken and I got acquainted through our involvement in Baptist Brotherhood activities. This was followed by our involvement in Lay Witness meetings around the country. Ken was also the key person in the invitation for my going, along with Gary Harthcock, to lead the first of these meetings that took place in First Baptist Church, Franklin, NC. In a very real sense these two, Ken and Lucile, were so capable they were able to learn and lead in production and in other areas for the company. 

And we think the Lord helped. For example, there was the time when Ken needed to repair a sewing machine. He was not an experienced fixer but, as mentioned, so capable that he was making good progress learning. This happened on a Saturday morning and the machine was needed for Monday morning. Since he couldn’t seem to get the machine fixed he stopped and prayed, really put the need before the Lord. In a little while a man walked in and asked what was going on. The man wasn’t drunk but he had had enough to drink. But he said, “Let me look at the machine.” In a few minutes he had it going. 

Later he came to work for us as our mechanic. We witnessed to him through the years but he never gave up his heavy drinking and died while still a relatively young man. 

One of the events that led to a measure of success in the business was the coming of a salesman who guided us into doing color adds in Sunday newspapers in cooperation with some of the leading department stores. We would work with the store buyer and merchandise manager to develop a new group of sportswear items every three months. Once we settled on styles and colors we would produce in quantity to cover initial stock for the promotion plus the backup we felt would be required. We were able to come up with the right styles, colors and quantities often enough to make this a worthwhile endeavor. 

It was Ken Hooker who nurtured our accounts with many of the nation’s leading department stores, a group that gave us a good percentage of our sales. Meanwhile Lucile was doing the important work of guiding the ladies doing the production and working with Ken in encouraging our sales people.

Roy Huggins was a great help to us in business, personal and spiritual life. Roy, a Henderson County native, had sort of pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and was a successful businessman and a highly regarded person in our county. Roy’s family and ours were in church together and, along with Roy, we were part of the group of nineteen that were the beginning of what is now Main Street Baptist Church in Hendersonville. Roy is now with the Lord. My lasting impression of him best describes him as humble, capable and giving. 

I well remember the day, it was during the Christmas holidays, that a call came that Roy was in the hospital and not at all well. Our plant was closed for the holidays but I was doing some work in my office when I got the call. I finished up my chores in the office and went to a chair across from my desk and sat there to pray for Roy. Before I could begin it was as though the Lord to whom my prayer would be addressed said to me, “What is on your mind?” I had not heard any voices but I silently answered, “Roy is on my mind.” The response I heard, not out loud, was, “Don’t worry about him. He will be alright.” 

I left the office and went to the hospital to see Roy. I told him about my attempt to pray. His response was that he had prayed, had told the Lord he was ready to die or to live. He told me that the response from the Lord was that his sickness was not unto death.

A day or two later Roy’s doctor called to tell me that Roy was in intensive care and could not live very long. The doctor said that I should come to the hospital to witness certain papers that Roy needed to sign at once. Whom to believe? The Lord had told Roy that his sickness was not unto death and He had told me that Roy would be alright! Roy and I decided to believe the Lord. Fifty-nine days later Roy left the hospital and lived for a good many active years afterwards. 

The early days at Main Street Baptist were times of great blessing. We were without a pastor for some time but this seemed to encourage all the members to share in the ministry of the church. The result was a real experience of being an expression of the Body of Christ, all the members in touch and in harmony with each other and each one in touch with the Head, the Lord Jesus. 

A further result was that the Lord was able to direct us as one Body because we were all trying to follow Him.  I remember one occasion when a lady choir member got involved with a man and left her husband to go away with him. We were all shocked of course and the husband was crushed but the husband didn’t quit the church or the Lord. We didn’t understand but we didn’t pass judgement on the woman. 

Time passed and one day a call came from the woman. She said she had made a mistake, had sought the Lord’s forgiveness and wanted forgiveness from her husband and the church. The husband was agreeable and wanted her back. It was arranged that the woman would take a bus back to Hendersonville, her husband would meet her and they would be at the next meeting of the church. 

Preparations began at the church. A fatted calf was killed, a nice robe made ready for the woman plus a ring for her finger. No, the church didn’t really do those things, but such action is descriptive of the attitude of the church toward the woman. The Lord brought blessing out the situation because it was turned over to Him. 

Not long after the experience just related Jerry and I were visiting Christian Fellowship in Richmond, Surrey, England. Jerry and I had met with this church a few times. We had found it to be a company of believers with a considerable measure of spiritual maturity. Fellowship in and out of their meetings was for us a source of great blessing and encouragement. In fact the first time we met with them Jerry said that spiritually she felt she had come home. During the Sunday meeting I was asked to share. The impression came to me that I should tell about our experience with the woman who had left her husband and then returned. Much to our surprise we were told after the meeting that the church there in Richmond had been struggling with a problem without coming to a satisfactory conclusion but they had, in the testimony I had shared, found their answer. 

Another blessing for us in our business was stretch fabrics. Jerry and I saw these at a trade show in New York but they were too expensive for the trade we served. 

Later a friend who was in the business offered us access to a warehouse full of slightly off-shade stretch fabric at a price we could afford. For a couple of years we had a hold on the market in our price range for garments made from this fabric. 

We must have been too successful! We had so much credit and our planning was so poor we bought more piece goods than we could pay for when the bills came due. We had no choice but to ask the creditors for an extension. This led to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.  It bothered me greatly to do this and the creditors certainly weren’t overwhelming us with friendliness. They laughed when I told them I was a Christian and wanted to pay them in full if they would give me time. They said they didn’t believe I’d do it. For three months things were up in the air. We didn’t know in the morning if we’d have a business at the end of the day, but we kept on praying.

 September 16, 1965, I was into my morning devotion before going to work. I felt the Lord impressing me to ask Him to let me know that day what was to happen to the business. I wrote this in my notebook and left for work before Jerry came down from our upstairs bedroom. 

When I came in at lunch she said she had something to tell me. After her morning devotion she started toward the powder room. On the way she heard the Lord (inwardly, nothing audible) say, “Pray for Donald and Ken to have another chance in the business.” 

In obedience she started back to the family room but the voice came again instructing her to go to the rose chair in the living room. She did. Her prayer was short. She asked the Lord to give me another chance and that was it. But then she had a time of worship and praise that went on for some little time. 

I almost shouted when Jerry told me about her experience. I figured if the Lord had told me to ask that I know that day about the business and told Jerry to pray as she did, He meant to give what He told her to ask. 

The next day the creditors told me they really didn’t know why but they had decided to grant me an extension. I thanked them and told them I knew their action was the result of people praying. It took four years but in November 1969 our company paid the creditors in full. 

The next month the creditors, all nineteen of them, had a luncheon in my honor at one of the finest private clubs in New York City. They were glad to get their money. 

Their spokesman made a nice talk and thanked me. This gave me the opportunity to respond. I thanked them for allowing me the time to pay my debt. And I told them I believed it was the Lord Jesus, using the time they gave us, who had blessed our efforts and brought us through. All this made me think of the 23rd Psalm where it reads, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” The creditors weren’t really enemies, I suppose, but they hadn’t been very friendly until we paid them. 

With the extension came the condition that the highly regarded New York accounting firm of Wasserman and Taten become our accountants. This firm had its start early in the 1900s. Jacob (Jack) Wasserman, a Jew, and Bruce Taten, a Gentile, started the business while Jack was a New York University student. Jack went to night school and held a daytime job to support himself and Taten while the business got going. 

This reminds me of another Jew, Paul Stein. Paul and his wife are well-educated, cultured people. They survived the Holocaust in Germany. They came penniless to this country to make a new life. Unlike so many now they didn’t come for welfare. They came for opportunity. Paul’s wife, a woman with a Masters Degree, worked as a cleaning woman and Paul as a laborer until he got work as a salesman. They saved their money until there was enough to start their own business. It was my privilege to know them as friends as well as doing business with their firm. They retired at the end of a very successful business career.

In a very real sense Jack Wasserman guided us through the proceedings with the creditors. Jack, a man of great integrity, became one of the dozen or so men who have had a major part in shaping my life, men who have had a significant impact on me. Jack, about twenty years my senior, became a friend and mentor and inspiration personally and business-wise. Jerry and I enjoyed our dinners with Jack and his wife when we were in New York and were privileged to use their box at the Metropolitan Opera. It was there we heard Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne in the opera Norma. 

Jack and I were shocked when Bruce Taten, an Episcopalian, died at a relatively young age. We talked about life, about death and about life after death. We looked at Job’s question, “If a man dies shall he live again?” And we talked about Jesus saying, “If you believe in Me you will never die.”  Almost 25 years have passed since Jack and I met. He divides his time now between Boca Raton, FL and Stamford, CT. We stay in touch. 

I think of him often and always with a prayer for his well being physically and spiritually.

During this crisis time up until the l5th of September Jerry had been bothered by fear. We had bought a nice lot and wanted to build a house and we had children to put through college. Would we be able to do these things and others that were important to Jerry? After our prayers that day she realized that she wasn’t afraid anymore. She felt so good she decided to test herself. In her mind she went over the things that had been frightening her, tried to be afraid but couldn’t. The Lord had set her free from fear. 

In my fifth decade I got my first Cadillac. I suppose I thought it would do something for me but it didn’t other than provide good transportation. We seem to like them, though. We are still driving one.

In 1962 I met Joseph (Red) Harrell. I’ve asked Joe to tell what happened. Joe writes, “I went to work on a Friday morning but developed such a pain in my shoulder that I couldn’t carry on plastering. I told my helper we would rest and go back to work the next day. I went home and took my Chihuahua dog for a walk around the yard. 

“My wife called to tell me someone was at the front door. I rounded the house and saw a man on the porch and a couple waiting in a car at the curb. The man introduced himself, said he was from the church and would like to talk to me about the Lord Jesus. I am a plain spoken man and felt then that I was a self-made man and reasonably successful so I told him I wasn’t interested. 

“I had sent plenty of people away from my door and wasn’t about to change my ways. But this man didn’t leave. He just kept talking in a way that captured my interest. Finally it started to rain so I got myself and my dog under the awning. I thought the man would leave but instead he squeezed under the awning with us and kept on talking. 

“The dog was having a fit to get into the house and the man wasn’t leaving so I told the dog we’d go in and take the man with us. The man motioned the couple in the car to come in. Once in the house I learned that the couple from the church were Mr. and Mrs. Holton and the man was Donald Adcox. 

“Donald went on talking about Jesus. I’d try to draw him away but he’d always get back to Jesus. I didn’t realize that two hours had passed when Donald said we’ll have to go and let these people have their lunch. I agreed that we could have prayer so we joined hands in a circle. After the prayer the folks left. 

“My wife asked if I wanted to go to the store with her. I opened my mouth to reply but instead began crying and sobbing like my heart would break. I was bewildered. My wife had never seen me cry. I thought men didn’t cry. My wife was frightened and wanted to know what was wrong. I told her I didn’t know but whatever it was it was in the house and I was leaving so I could get away from it. I got into my truck and drove the back roads of Sebring. The pressure seemed to ease after about two hours so I went home. 

“My daughter was a football cheerleader so I drove her to the game, then drove by the big glass First Baptist Church. In my mind I was able to ridicule the people who were there for the meeting. 

“I made it through the night but the next morning the pressure began again. I thought about reading the Bible that lay on our coffee table, hesitated, and then opened it and read about the ten virgins, five with oil and five without. I had no real knowledge or understanding of the Bible but I knew the five without applied to me. I knew that if the Bridegroom came then I would not be ready. 

“Again I started crying and left the house because I thought the pressure was in the house. I went for my helper. He had a toothache and couldn’t work. 

“I decided to go to the church, got cold feet, drove away but finally made it back and went in. I asked for Donald. We went into the pastor’s study and he asked what he could do for me. I started crying again. Until the day before I had not cried since I was eight years old. Now I couldn’t stop, it seemed. 

“Finally I was able to tell him that something had come into my house the day before and whatever it was it was tearing me apart. I told Donald I needed relief. Donald shared Scripture with me and explained that what was happening to me was Jesus working in my heart to bring me to salvation. We looked at more Scripture and Donald explained what I needed to do. He suggested I go to the nearby room where a number of people were preparing to go out witnessing and there make public my profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. I asked if this would bring me relief. Donald told me it would. We went. Before those people I told what had happened since the day before and confessed Jesus as my Savior. We got on our knees and had prayer. When I got up from the floor I was a new man. God had done his work. 

“I drove home full of rejoicing and told my wife I was saved. I went out and bought a suit that afternoon and went to church that night. At the invitation I went forward, was baptized the next night and became a part of the church family. I began telling everybody I could about Jesus and what He had done for me. I would walk in the woods rejoicing as I went so I suppose I was witnessing to the trees and shrubs and the birds and animals of the field. I wanted everybody and everything to know Jesus. 

“Before I got saved my language must have sounded like it was coming out of a cesspool. That changed the moment God saved me. In Sebring before I was saved I had a good reputation as a businessman and workman, as a family man, one who paid his bills on time, worked hard and was honest. I was also known as one who hung out with the wrong crowd and did some drinking. Most of the crowd dropped me after my salvation experience but later on I had the great joy of seeing some of them come to Jesus. 

“The Lord called me to preach. My mother’s church asked me to come and speak. My father, whom we called Pa, seldom went to church but he came with mother that morning. I was praying as the invitation was extended after I closed my message. I was standing near the pastor, heard him speaking to a person who had come forward and recognized in the person’s response to the pastor the voice of Pa. He was fifty-four years old in that year of 1963 and was born again that morning. That night he was baptized. 

“Pa is eighty now and has cancer, but refused treatment, saying he was ready to go to heaven where Mom is and is looking forward to the journey. My story will never end since I will be living forever, here while time remains, and then in eternity with Jesus when time ends. But I’ll end this chapter of my life by saying that I’ve been privileged these last eleven years to serve Jesus as pastor in Ona, FL. I’ve learned that God honors the proclamation of His word in ways that greatly encourage me and the people of this fellowship. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.”

So ends a chapter in Joe’s life.

Quite a few years later I had a call from Joe’s family asking me to cone to Ona, FL to speak at Joe’s funeral service.

It was in this same decade that Julia, our daughter, married. Her husband was not a Christian, his father, a psychiatrist, wasn’t and neither were his sister and brother. His mother was greatly talented in music and otherwise. She had been saved at age 18 but had drifted away from the faith. At the time of Julia’s marriage she was paid soloist in a large Long Island Christian Science Church. 

Dana Congdon, Julia’s husband, was a premed student when they met at Stetson University. I understand that Dana had a red MG sports car while at Stetson. He had picked up a few philosophical phrases from his doctor father. This led to him being known as Socrates on wheels. 

About six months after their marriage Dana got saved. Some of the men from our church would go to witness to Dana. At first he was amused by these men coming, as he said, with their little black Bibles. He felt he was outwitting them and sidestepping their witness. But as he went to church with us and lived in the community he began to see that these men evidenced a joy and peace that he didn’t have. He also noticed that some of the intellectuals at the university who seemed to have all the answers had lives that were falling apart, whereas the men toting their little black Bibles had their lives together. 

On an April night about 6 months after his marriage Dana was at home by himself one night when God’s Spirit began to work in his heart. That night Dana gave his heart to Jesus.

Dana’s mother visited Dana and the rest of us in Hendersonville and finally, on a May Sunday, renewed her commitment to Jesus during a service in the renovated pool hall where the church met. 

Next, Dr. Congdon, a graduate of Harvard and Columbia Universities and trained in surgery as well as psychiatry, got saved. Dr. Congdon’s father was not a believer. He was a well-known anatomist who worked in several countries under the sponsorship of the Rockefeller Foundation. While his father was serving in China, Dr. Congdon, then twelve years old, was sent to a church school in the Philippines. There during chapel he heard the phrase from the Psalms that goes, “And do not take Thy spirit from me.” Dr. Congdon didn’t know what this really meant but he somehow realized that God is and His Spirit was with him. With sincerity he asked that God never take His Spirit from him. 

He and Mrs. Congdon joined Calvary Baptist Church in New York City where Stephen Olford was then pastor. Then Dana’s sister Edith and his brother Ralph came to the Lord. At the time Ralph, an unusually intelligent young man, was playing with one of the major symphony orchestras in the U.S. Ralph then lived with his parents on Long Island. One day he called and asked if I would visit him on my next business trip to New York. He said he wanted to talk about what was happening in his family. 

Sam Hargett made the trip with me. We went to Ralph’s home and there we shared the gospel of Jesus Christ as we understood it and had experienced it. While we were there Ralph gave his heart to Jesus. Later, in the city where he performed with the orchestra, he made a public profession and was baptized. All this in about one year. Then Dana felt God’s call to ministry, completed his seminary work, served along with Julia as a Baptist missionary and then began a sort of free-lance ministry in preaching and music that continues. 

This ministry has taken Dana over a good part of the U.S., Europe, the Philippines, Australia, China, India, Brazil and Russia.   

Ralph Congdon came to the Lord at age twenty-three. Prior to this he had had very little exposure to things spiritual, the Bible and church life. But he was the kind of person who, once he knew the Lord, committed all out to Him. Ralph has mentioned to me that after being saved he soon got to know a person whose influence on him was not altogether benign. As a result Ralph put a great emphasis upon getting thoughts or ideas in mind that might be from the Lord and then quickly acting on them without a background of experience to rely on.  

Ralph felt the Lord was telling him to go from his New York City home to Rochester, NY so he took a bus and headed out. He didn’t know why, but he went. On the way he sat by a young lady, got into a conversation and shared something of his testimony with her. The girl explained that her parents were in the midst of a time severe trials. She asked Ralph to go with her to her parents’ home and talk with them. Ralph felt sure this was the reason for going to Rochester but on arrival at the parents’ home found they were out of town and would not return for some time.   

Then Ralph went to a hotel and checked in with the thought that he would wait on the Lord. On the way in he saw a homeless person on the street and thought about talking to him but didn’t. Once in the hotel he felt that he should have talked to the man so he went out to find him. The man was gone, but Ralph saw another man and went up to him and shared a bit of testimony. The man was drinking and responded by staring at Ralph and then walking off.   Back in the hotel Ralph felt released and free to return home. 

In his heart he wondered if it really was the Lord who told him to go to Rochester. Perhaps, he thought, in his anxiety to hear from and follow the Lord he had acted on his own desires, not the Lord’s command. Nevertheless he felt that his desire to be obedient had pleased the Lord.  

A little later, back in New York City, Ralph felt that he should learn Russian. He had no particular reason for this but following the Rochester trip he was still in an obedience mode. So he learned Russian with no thought of putting it to any particular use. Later he became engaged to Barbara McDaniel. They were making plans for their wedding. 

Barbara, a former national archery champion, model and drama student and performer, had decided to go back to teaching high school English. After marriage Ralph planned to work on his doctorate at State University of New York in Stony Brook, Long Island. In order to be near the university they drove out to Long Island to look for a teaching position for Barbara. They approached the Stony Brook School for Girls and on an impulse Barbara went in. She was told there was an opening but there were several people whose applications were already in. As they talked the Headmaster walked in. Cloudy weather had kept him from the beach with the result that he decided to do some work at the school.   

The Headmaster was impressed with Barbara but explained that they really needed a married couple, one to teach English and the other elementary Russian! If they could find such a couple they would not only employ them but in addition to salaries would provide them with an apartment. Ralph and Barbara could hardly believe this, nor could the Headmaster readily take it in when they told him Ralph could teach the Russian classes.   

Ralph and Barbara married that August and went to Stony Brook to live and teach while Ralph also went to the university.   A number of years later Ralph and Barbara came to another decision time. It seemed right to them to leave New York and move to Hendersonville. They sought the Lord and wanted to be led by Him. They prayed and waited on the Lord. In time the assurance came that the move was being prompted by the Lord. Just today I had lunch with Ralph and heard him say that the years since their move to Hendersonville have served to prove that the Lord was guiding them. 

Ned and Billie Greene live in Monroe, NC. Ned was a master cabinet maker and businessman before retiring. In 1966 we led a meeting in their church. Before the meeting began Billie had decided that she would not participate in the meeting in any way at all. But she gave in when her pastor pleaded with her to come and drive one of the visitors. 

At the church Billie met Ed Medlin, the man she was to drive. On the way to the home where Ed would share his witness Billie learned the name of the woman they would be seeing. Billie knew that the woman didn’t have a good reputation in the neighborhood. Her first thought was that it would be interesting to see how Ed handled this one.   

Ed was a retired railroad man. He had operated a little narrow-gauge railroad in an amusement park in his retirement as a way of making a little extra money and for the fun of it. Once in the home Ed began to talk with the woman. He told her how he had wanted to move back to his home town after his wife died but first he had to dispose of his little railroad. He told her that he had explained to the Lord his desire and the resultant need to find a buyer. About three weeks after Ed’s explanation to the Lord a man from up north came by and asked if he’d like to sell his railroad. Ed would and did and moved back to his home town. Then Ed told the woman how he had come to know Jesus as his Savior. Since it had happened to Ed he could tell about it. Then he used the Bible to show the woman how she could be forgiven and receive the salvation of Jesus Christ. The woman opened her heart to Jesus that day.   

As the Lord and Ed were dealing with the woman the Lord was also dealing with Billie, especially about her attitude and the fact that in sixteen years as a Christian she had never led a person to receive Jesus as Savior. Billie repented that day, made a new commitment to Jesus and began a life of sharing Jesus with others. When I got to know the Greenes it was easy to see that their hearts were the Lord’s. I asked Billie to consider a prayer ministry on behalf of all the people going out to share Christ by way of personal testimony. Billie felt led to accept and, along with Dorothy Baumgartner, was greatly used by the Lord in prayer support for the teams.   

Ned and Billie are still at it. Right after Hugo hit Charleston, SC they went down to a nearby town to witness out from a church and to pitch in and help clean up the ravages of Hugo. The fire chief sent Ned and some others out to help clean up a community cemetery. Soon after Ned started working an elderly man came up and demanded to know why they were there. He seemed angry. He told Ned he had given the land for the cemetery and wanted them to leave since the people in the area didn’t seem to care enough to clear it. Ned felt like asking him to go away so they could work, but he didn’t.

Introductions were made. Ned learned that the man owned the adjoining land and had experienced extensive damage there. The man left, Ned and the others went on working and then looked and saw the man coming back with his tools to help them. The man’s name is Charles. He and Ned started loading limbs onto a trailer. As they loaded Ned talked about Jesus. Charles was seventy-three at the time and had never made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Charles listened as Ned told him how he could be saved. Charles then prayed and opened his heart to Jesus.   

Charles’ wife came out with refreshments for the team. When she was told about Charles’ decision she made known her desire to become a Christian. After a time of explanation she was saved. Then the two of them asked Ned and others to come to their home that night to share with them.    

During the visit in the home Charles thrust a roll of bills into Ned’s hand with the explanation that he had never given anything to the Lord but now wanted to express his gratitude for God’s forgiveness and salvation through a gift. Ned took the money with the explanation that they would give it to the church. Later, Charles and his wife came to the church and made public their decisions to follow Jesus.

DECADE SIX

In 1970 on land we had purchased the year before we put up a building to house our business. A good many town leaders, business people and Christian friends met with us and our employees to dedicate the new building and to recognize God’s blessings on us and thank Him for them. 

An invitation came in 1970 for a witnessing meeting in England. Norman Grubb had told Alec Steen about us and the witnessing teams. Brave Pastor Alec asked us to bring a team to Queensberry Baptist Church in Nottingham, England. We had heard a lot about English reserve and wondered how a group of U.S. men with their wide, bright ties and polyester jackets and their wives would be received. 

We had a few days in England before the meetings began. We toured a bit of the country by day and had times of preparation in the evenings for the meeting to come. Along the way we came to Flore, a delightful English village with cottages covered by thatched roofs. We all got out of our vehicles to look. Out of a cottage came a man named John Todd. We learned he was a retired farmer. He asked if we’d like to see his cottage. He and his wife showed us around inside where we had to bend over to get through the doorways and outside where the flowers and vegetables were in abundance. John and his wife had the place looking neat and, as the English say, tidy, inside and out. They apologized for having only one gooseberry pie, not enough to serve us all. Back on the street we told John and his wife that we wanted to sing for them. 

Bert Starnes had been getting us ready for this as he led us in singing along the way. Now he led us in singing “Oh Happy Day”.  Bert had been saved in an evening meeting and had added a verse called “Oh Happy Night”. We sang that too. The cottages on the street were close together and the street not very wide. As we sang people living in the area around the Todd cottage began to open doors and windows and look out to see what was happening. They seemed to like what they heard. Then John asked us to wait, went into the house and brought out a beautiful hand-carved wooden candle holder. He only had the one ready but wanted us to take it. We did, deeply touched by this expression. Back home a friend of ours was confined to an iron lung but this didn’t keep her from praying for us and our mission. We took the candle holder to her. 

On to Nottingham and the Steen residence and our first real exposure to English tea. We loved it and we immediately loved the Steens, Alec, Doreen, Nicole and Cressida. Alec had arranged for us to be received by the Lord Mayor in Council House, the headquarters of the city government. Once there, Dr. J.R. Jones from Louisville and I presented letters from the Mayors of our cities. I didn’t tell them how small our town is. 

Bert Starnes didn’t have a letter from his Mayor but he did have a New Testament all of us had signed. He presented it to the Lord Mayor and said,” It is a communication from the Lord of Lords.”

Then Bert quoted Psalm 146 for the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor, a Christian, quoted a verse for us. Then we sang “Oh Happy Day” for the Lord Mayor and his Lady just as we had for farmer John Todd and his Lady. Both liked our singing! The Lord Mayor had tea laid on for us and then arranged for his deputy to guide us through Council House. The tour ended in the Lord Mayor’s apartment where we had a great time of fellowship. The English just didn’t seem as reserved as we had heard. Our few days in the church removed any doubts we might have had.  

While in Nottingham we had our first taste of Pork Pie. We found that the best of this English specialty come from Melton-Mowbray, a town near Nottingham. We liked the ham called gammon that we and the Vickerys discovered in our travels in England. We were in Okehampton on one sightseeing journey and had gammon for dinner. This was in the dining room of a tiny hotel where we had lodging. We had to insert coins in a slot to get the gas heater going at night. We asked our waitress if she would have gammon sandwiches prepared for us the next morning. We had in mind a picnic as we traveled through the Moor country. She was most agreeable but said she could not. As we talked we learned that it really wasn’t that they could not but rather that they never had and it had never occurred to her think about it. We asked if they had slices of bread. The answer was yes. We asked if they had slices of gammon. The answer was yes. We asked if she could put a slice of gammon between two slices of bread. At this point her eyes brightened and her face lit up. She was delighted at this new venture set before her and had excellent sandwiches prepared for us.   

In England much is made of having tea. Some insist that the best tea has the milk poured into the cup first. Others insist that the tea must be poured first and the milk added. We were having tea at Claridges Hotel in London one day. The waiters there in their formal dress are the soul of dignity. As our waiter poured the tea and then the milk I asked if he ever poured the milk first. His answer was, “No”. I asked, “Why?” His answer was, “It never occurred to me, sir.”   

One of our best tea times was with Ruth and Finley Baird. We were traveling through Wales on our way to witnessing meetings in England. We were driving from Aberystwyth on the west coast to Shrewsbury in England. We came to a crossroads in the open country and there saw a small inn on one corner. There was no town in sight, no houses, just open country. 

Inside the inn we found a small, cozy sitting room with a peat fire going in the fireplace. The young waitress greeted us in Welsh that had a pleasant musical sound even though we didn’t understand. We ordered and got our tea and enjoyed one of those rare times when all seems right within and without, a time when it came easy for us all to relax totally.   

Once in Shrewsbury we made our way to a Berni restaurant, one of many scattered throughout England. There we had their great Berni coffee. They serve this in a glass cup and top it with a layer of heavy English cream. The cream is not whipped but is so thick it stays on top, doesn’t mix with the coffee.  

After the Queensberry meeting we drove to Dover and made our way by boat across to France. From the French coast we drove on to Iseltwald, a village near Interlaken, Switzerland for a vacation. On the boat going over from England we enjoyed a delicious lunch with plaice (really nice fish) as the main dish. Our drive through France and into Switzerland was exciting for all of us. 

In France we wanted to stop for a time of worship and the Lord’s Supper. In a small village we located a Catholic Church and asked if we might use it for our little meeting. It was a blessing to us that the caretaker of the church wanted to provide the wine and bread for us. We had a time of worship and praise and then stood in a circle to take communion. Dr. Jones and his wife Gail had their two daughters with them. Jennifer was just eight but a source of delight all through the trip. As we passed the bread and cup around the circle each person would say to the next person, my sister (or my brother), “Jesus said, ‘This is my Body (or my Blood) broken (or poured out) for you.’” Jennifer was standing by her dad. We wondered what she would say. As she offered the bread to her dad she said, “My brother J.R., Jesus said this is His Body broken for you.” And Jennifer was right since she and her dad are both Christians.    

Joe and Peggy Ramsey were part of the team. Before leaving home Peggy’s doctor had told her she had a tumor that would require surgery when she returned. The trip to Switzerland was a long, tiring drive. The first day in Iseltwald Peggy felt she must stay in and rest while the rest of us went sightseeing. That evening Gene and Betty Edmonds and I felt that we should have at least had prayer for Peggy before leaving her. Gene and Betty talked to the Ramseys about this. It was agreed that following the guidelines of James chapter five we would pray for Peggy. We were so new at this sort of thing but we knew in our hearts it was the Spirit leading us.

The only church building in the area was a small Catholic one and the only oil we had was motor oil for the car. We really didn’t know how to go about this so we just did what the Bible sets forth. We prayed and anointed Peggy with oil and trusted God. When we finished Joe and Peggy were excited! They both said they knew something had happened. Sure enough when Peggy got home the doctor couldn’t find the tumor!  After the passing of twenty years it is still gone.  

Iseltwald is a tiny village on the south side of Lake Brienz, near Interlaken. We stayed in a friend’s beautiful chalet that looked out over the lake. The Alps rise behind it almost straight up to majestic heights. There are several small hotels on the shore of the lake.  In one of these the owner had an open grill in one corner of the restaurant. There was a wood fire over which he grilled fish from the lake. I don’t know the name of the fish but it is a smallish white fish that we were told is found only in the two thousand feet deep Lake Brienz. We gave the owner a day’s notice that we were coming for the grilled fish. The next day he had a fisherman go out and catch the fish for our meal. It was delicious!    

Speaking of fish, we like to go to Gloucester House in New York City for seafood. It is a place for wonderful food but the prices are sky high. The Sea Shell in London, England is just as good as Gloucester House and the prices down to earth. A real fun place for excellent seafood is the tiny village of La Carihuela just outside Torremolinas on the Costa del Sol of Spain. There must be seventy-five restaurants side by side in one long row fronting on the water. The restaurants are entered from the waterfront side. The other side, the back, is also an entrance but this one leads to the bar and a more casual whoop-it-up eating area. There is nothing fancy about the restaurants at the front but the food is so very fresh and the prices low. There is one problem. It is difficult to decide which restaurant to choose and what seafood to have from the multitude of choices offered.   

For fresh salmon the best we’ve found is in Bergen, Norway, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Portland, OR. Plaice is a fish we have found only in England. It is excellent, somewhat like flounder, but better, and a little like sole. In Alaska we had fresh halibut and found it  ranks high among the list of best fish we’ve had.  

Bert Starnes and Horace Easom are now with the Lord. Both were my senior by about twenty years. In my youth I heard about statesmen, men in public service, highly regarded men who were considered wise in the business of government. Their breed must have vanished and in their place we seem to have today men of expediency heading our government. I’ve known two Christian statesmen, three if Robert Mills is included, but he is still young for such distinction. The two are Bert Starnes and Horace Easom, men wise in the business of spiritual reality, men in touch with a God who lives.  

Horace Easom, successful fund raiser, connoisseur of barbecue, banker, educator, musician, denominational worker and leader of men. A man’s man without guile and by comparison to his associates a giant among pygmies. Horace was able to take the flack that comes to those who reject acting out of expediency and self-serving when most around him were not, and he stayed sweet while doing so, all the while bringing people into the presence of the Lord.   

Horace was a great blessing to Wayne Cole, a railroad man turned bakery owner, and me when we were first trying our wings as Christian men and for a considerable time thereafter. But he was a wild driver! On a trip to St. Louis his driving was atrocious. He passed cars on hills and curves thinking that the passing gear on his Ford would get him out of any tight situation. He called the passing gear the Jack Rabbit and would say, “I’ll put it in Jack Rabbit if I need to.”   The only problem was that his Ford had about 75,000 miles on it. The Jack Rabbit when engaged would cause a great engine roar but the car didn’t go any faster. Horace never seemed to notice that the speed didn’t increase. He just loved the roar of the engine. Wayne and I were terrified. To get relief I volunteered to drive but Horace would say, “Oh no, I’m not tired.”   He wasn’t tired but we were scared. Finally we made it up that following a lunch stop I would go to the driver’s seat and Wayne would talk Horace into the passenger seat. It worked.   

What did Horace leave us? Not rules, not outlines for living, nothing I can recall that relates to subject matter in spite of the fact that we heard him speak many times. No, it was something of himself that he transferred. When Horace died it was akin to Elijah passing on his mantle. I don’t know that Horace was an Elijah and Wayne and I certainly were not (are not) Elishas. Maybe all of those touched by Horace would collectively make up an Elisha, but at any rate the mantle touched us when Horace went to be with his Lord and remains to this day a factor in our lives.   

Horace Easom. Christian statesman.   

Bert Starnes’ mother was part of the large Hackney family that came from England in the late eighteen hundreds when she was sixteen. His father lived in the Candler community in Buncombe County, NC and built his large two-story house before his marriage, a house that stood for more than a hundred years. Bert tells his story.

“Being brought up in a Christian home makes a world of difference in a person’s life. My parents were church people, part of the organizing group that later became Calvary Baptist, the first Baptist church in West Asheville. They had six children and furnished each of us with a Bible. We would each follow along as Father gathered us around the fireplace for evening Bible reading. I was the slowest reader in the family so my father would stop now and then and ask, ‘Bert, what verse am I reading?’  Sometimes I could tell him, other times I couldn’t.  

“In 1910 I was saved during a revival in a church on Hanover Street. I remember someone asking about the meeting and hearing the response, ‘Oh, it was pretty good. One of George Starnes’ boys got saved. I believe it was the one they call Bert.’   But it was more than a pretty good meeting to me. 

“In 1918 I went to work in Washington, DC where I met Hazel Cloyes, the finest young woman in the city. I saw at once that she was the one I wanted to take home and keep all the time. We married in 1925 and moved to Asheville where I went into the coal business. The depression years were soon upon us and I felt like worrying. But the Lord impressed upon me that I should take care of his business and he would take care of mine. He has. 

“Hazel and I set out to establish a Christian home. We did and learned that such is the happiest place this side of heaven.  We had fifty-five wonderful years together and raised four boys and a girl who have gone on to establish Christ centered homes. I was on my way home from a witnessing meeting in Australia in 1980 when I learned that Hazel had died of a heart attack. Great loss but great blessing as God assured me of her destination and walked right through this time with me. Robert Vickery was with me on this trip and passed the word to me that Hazel had died. In response I quoted for Robert and for myself the twenty third Psalm.  

“In the 1940’s I worked with underprivileged boys in West Asheville. Each Sunday I would have as many as 85 of them in my office for breakfast. In the 1950s I was president of the North Carolina Fishers of Men. Such wonderful meetings we had in Asheville city auditorium with men like R.G.Lee, Joe Henry Hawkins and Billy Graham as speakers. I remember Dr. Graham saying in 1963 that he had wondered if he would ever get to speak in the auditorium.  

“In 1968 Hazel and I added personal witnessing to our other endeavors that were directed toward getting the gospel out to others. This started when Donald Adcox brought a team to Merrimon Avenue Baptist Church in Asheville. Men came from all over our county to team with men and women experienced in witnessing.  Following this introduction to witnessing we witnessed in our own community and we went with teams for witnessing in other cities and countries.   

“I had an unusual experience on the way to one of these meetings. Frank Dorato, Allison Howell, Neal Pyatt and I were on the way to Paducah, KY. Neal was telling about an experience he and Donald Adcox had when they asked for the filling of the Holy Spirit. I have always wanted all that Jesus arranged for us and He did send the Holy Spirit. I asked Neal if he had some Scripture to back up what he was saying. He did. Frank was driving. He pulled off the road and said he wanted that experience. I did too. Allison, the old Sage, smiled and assured us we were on the right track, one he had already taken. We asked and by faith received. Nothing dramatic happened immediately but the matter was settled by faith and so very much was to follow.  

“When I got to Paducah I was placed in the home of Morris and Edith Wallace. Their children were Jennifer, 4, Julie, 2, and David, l. Saturday evening after the meeting we were relaxing in the living room. Edith told me that Jennifer had been born with an abnormal and painful colon condition. After retiring to my room I could hear Jennifer crying as her mother unsuccessfully tried to help her. When I awoke the next morning Jennifer’s condition worried me. I couldn’t bear the thought of this little girl going through life in this condition and the doctors not able to help her.  I knew the Bible had something to say about this sort of thing and wished for Sam Hargett, who had had some experience along this line, but Sam wasn’t available. I found the Scripture in James 5:14-15. It reads this way, ‘Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him anointing him with a little oil in the name of the Lord and the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord will raise him up.’  

“I went into the kitchen where Morris and Edith were preparing breakfast and asked them if they thought the Lord could heal Jennifer. Edith told me again what the doctors had said. I said yes, but look at what the Bible says. We read the Scripture. Morris was a deacon in the church. I was a deacon, too, so we had the elders.   After breakfast Edith got a little oil, I held Jennifer and we all prayed and touched her head with a little oil. I thanked the Lord for what He was doing for Jennifer. All this took only about five minutes, then we went to Sunday School. 

“That afternoon we men started the 445 mile drive back home.  The next Tuesday about 10:30 PM my phone rang. It was Morris and Edith calling to tell me Jennifer had been healed. They have visited me twice since. The last time we all hiked to the top of Mt. Pisgah. Jennifer had no trouble at all. Praise the Lord! He is so good. 

“In the last twenty-two years since I was sixty-nine we’ve been to South Korea where my son is on the staff of a seminary, all over the U.S.A., to England, Europe and Australia telling people about Jesus our Savior. I sort of wish I could start all over because there are so many people who haven’t heard about Jesus. But if I started over I would delay my going to see Jesus face to face. What a great dilemma! Either way I win.”   

So ends that part of the story of Bert’s Starnes, Christian Statesman.  

In September following the trip to England we were to go to a country church near Cleveland, TN. Neal Pyatt was to go but had a business matter in his Greenville, SC office that needed attention at the same time. Neal wanted to go to the meeting but common sense said go to Greenville. While in the shower the day before the Cleveland meeting Neal had an inner awareness (nothing audible) that God was saying,” If you go to Greenville do you expect to handle the problem by yourself.” Neal responded, “Of course not, I’ll be depending on you.” Then Neal knew God was saying,” Don’t you think I can handle it without you?”   Immediately Neal said, “I’ll go to Cleveland.”   

Prior to going to Cleveland Neal Pyatt and Dr. Finley Baird were together and praying about the upcoming meeting. As they prayed the Lord put it in Neal’s heart that there would be an alcoholic in the area of the church that needed a Christian witness. Neal asked the Lord to use him to witness to such a person if indeed there was one.  The first night at the church Mr. Rhymer, a stalwart of the church, asked us to pray for Morris, his son, an alcoholic. Neal was staying in the home of Roy Rhymer. Before going to bed Roy told Neal that Morris was his brother. The two of them then prayed for Morris. 

The next day several of us had lunch at the church. During a sharing time Fred Pinckard asked us to pray for Uncle Billy, his father-in-law. Mr. Rhymer again asked prayer for Morris saying, “I don’t believe I can stand it if my boy dies in his present condition.”    Neal was deeply touched by this and called us to prayer. Neal led out but he didn’t do much praying. He was led to proclaim. The Lord had spoken to Neal as he prayed and given him the liberty to say, “These men, Uncle Billy and Morris, will be saved.” No plea, no request, just a statement, but what a statement. 

On Saturday morning Fred and Finley Baird went to see Uncle Billy. Neal, Sam Hargett and I drove up the hill above Uncle Billy’s house and prayed for Fred, Finley and Uncle Billy. Fred and Finley came out of the house rejoicing! Uncle Billy had been saved. That night when Uncle Billy went forward, shouting broke out in the church … shouts of praise and rejoicing. It was glorious. 

It is wonderful that a person can be so happy in the Lord that he just has to shout for joy.   Have you ever noticed how people shout for joy at a ballgame when a player hits a home run! And Oh! the shouting when the home team wins. Well, finding the Lord and settling where eternity will be spent is more wonderful than the home team winning. Three weeks later word came to us that Morris had been saved. From then until his death Morris was a faithful witness for Jesus.  

On a plane to England, Jerry and I saw a little Chinese girl sticking her head around a partition to look at us. We smiled. She pulled back. The she’d look again. In a few minutes her mother appeared and asked if the child was disturbing us. We said no and got into a conversation with the mother. While I walked the aisle of the 747 to stretch my legs Jerry talked to the woman, Dr. Nancy Wei, a dentist from Canada. In response to a question Jerry told her we were going to England to share our Christian witness in some churches. Dr. Wei said, “That is interesting. A few weeks ago the matter of the Christian life came to my attention and I’ve been thinking about it since.” Jerry shared her Christian experience with her and answered a few questions. I joined them for a final word and a prayer and then Dr. Wei opened her heart to Jesus. Later she shared with her husband, a college professor, and he, too came to the Lord. We’ve stayed in touch these fifteen years or so rejoicing together in the goodness of the Lord.  

During this decade we got to spend three weeks in Israel with ten friends, including Lance Lambert and his mother Laura. Elliot and Jeanette Belcher from Alabama are friends of ours. As we walked through the Church of The Holy Sepulcher we ran into Elliot and Jeanette! We had no idea they were in Israel and they didn’t know we were there. We had a good though short little visit with them.  

One evening we were invited to the home of Israel’s Minister of Health. He and his wife had about 40 Jewish friends in to meet us. Our host found out that Dana and Julia had put several Scriptures from the Psalms to music. They were asked to sing these to a guitar accompaniment. Then our host told us he was a cantor in his synagogue and he and the others would sing from the Psalms for us in Hebrew. What a wonderful experience sitting there in the land of our Lord hearing our Jewish friends praising God in their language. How much more wonderful it will be when they recognize Jesus as Messiah. Oh! How they will sing and praise then.  

It was in this decade that Jerry and I decided to combine a vacation to the west with a visit to friends. Our first stop was Springfield, MO to visit the Woodburys. A.D., the husband, was a salesman for our firm but at heart he was still a drummer, a name for sales people many years ago. To get to some of his customers in the early days he would take the train as far as he could, then go to the livery stable to hire a horse and buggy to go the rest of the way and he really did spend the night with some of his customers, but never said anything about the customer’s daughters. More than anything else he and Martha were great friends who often visited us here and always brought great joy with them. 

We were to fly from Springfield to Wichita, KS, wait out a long layover and then take a plane on to Liberal where we would rent a car to drive to the Nordlings, our friends in Hugoton, KS. At the Springfield airport we were told we had tickets on an airline that did not serve Springfield. We never did get a straight answer from our travel agent about this. 

Because of the long layover in Wichita we thought we could make the plane to Liberal if we rented a car and drove without stopping to Wichita. We made it with just a few minutes to spare. While I went to the counter to check in Jerry got us sandwiches and drinks to take on the plane. We rushed to the departure gate where the man I saw at the ticket counter checked our boarding passes. As we walked to the plane we saw the same man putting the bags on the plane. Jerry said, “If he flies the plane, too, I’m not going.”   He didn’t. 

After a rewarding visit with our Hugoton friends we drove to Colorado Springs, with a stop at Rocky Ford where the wonderful melons are grown. At a roadside stand we bought a watermelon, a honey dew and four cantaloupes. They gave us one cantaloupe to eat on the spot. Delicious!   

It was dark when we left our hotel to drive to the Broadmoor Hotel for dinner. The drive and the hotel both offer inspiring views of the city area and the mountains and valleys. The shimmering lights easily gained and held our attention. We ate in the hotel’s Penrose dining room. The meal in elegant but simple surroundings was a delight. The hush of the room was in harmony with the service of the seldom noticed but ever present waiters. 

During the meal Jerry told me a wonderful thing had happened. The expression on her face confirmed her words. As we were eating, a quiet but irrepressible joy had come to her. Then the thought came to her that God was saying, “I’ve arranged for you to enjoy this because of some of the things you’ve done in my Name.” Jerry described her experience, a presence came into the room, she said, expressed Himself to her and she knew it was the presence of God. The evening took on a new glow following this, a glow that remained as we retired and continued with us throughout the trip. 

Travel and all that it opens up to the mind through all the senses is constant delight for us. We got excited by the green of a city park in Denver and felt secure among the friendly people and stalwart trees. In Wyoming we stopped to watch a regal moose eating leaves from a young tree. We see the moose as part of God’s creation. We watched him eat and enjoyed it when he turned to look at us before slowly walking off.  

In Montana we saw raw majesty, splendor and awe defined as we looked at the vast open spaces and mountains of this Big Sky country. We went up to the top and over snow covered passes and down to still high elevation meadowlands laced with swift running streams that were fed by the melting snow. We rounded a curve and there saw four or five hundred sheep including two black ones, all of them munching on the abundant grass. 

We left our car to get a better look and then we heard a whistle followed by a gentle voice saying,” Move along now, move along.” We looked and saw a shepherd on horseback, two dogs and a limping sheep. The shepherd and the dogs with obvious tenderness and patience were urging the lame sheep on toward the rest of the flock. What a wonderful picture of the Lord’s loving care for us, His sheep. When the shepherd got to where we stood we made a picture and talked about Jesus, the Good Shepherd.  

On we went to Yellowstone and Old Faithful Inn that speaks of another era of hotel building. Built of wood, massive and with a look of sturdiness about it, it is an inviting place. Logs were burning brightly in the enormous stone fireplace. A drenching, cold rain marked our arrival but this only made us the more willing to yield to the warm embrace of the Inn. The rain stopped and the sky cleared long enough for us to see Old Faithful erupt before going in for dinner. A pleasant evening of reading and reflection was followed by a good night’s rest.   

The next morning visibility was great horizontally but limited vertically. This didn’t matter for the moment because most of what we wanted to see, the lake, the falls, the canyon and the geysers, large and small, were pretty much at eye level or below. We wondered about later on when we would drive to the Jackson Hole valley area where we would need vertical visibility to look up to the Tetons. When we drove down from Yellowstone the nearer we got to the Tetons the more the clouds lifted and then the sun and blue sky gave us a clear view of the mountains. A wonderful time of vacation that we reflect on and still enjoy.

In this decade we were in a Nashville church where we met one of the members who was a part of Johnny Cash’s band. This man knew we were interested in witnessing to Mr. Nixon. He told us Mr. Cash would be interested in this and would probably like to meet with us. He arranged the meeting. We shared our burden for Mr. Nixon and our country. Mr. Cash suggested we needed to commit the matter to the Lord in prayer. We were much impressed by Mr. Cash, his personality and talent, but more than this we were impressed when he left his chair to get on his knees to talk to God. We got on our knees, too, there in his office and had good fellowship together and with our Lord. 

Interestingly enough this same sort of thing happened once when Mark Hatfield stayed at our house. We had a few friends in for brief time in the evening and ended with prayer. The first person on his knees was Senator Hatfield.   

Tom, my son, and I made a trip to Eastern Europe in this decade. On the way we arrived in Brussels and found that the Vienna Philharmonic was playing that night. The concert was sold out but we were told to come back just before curtain time. We did and got two of the best seats in the house. A wonderful evening of Mozart and Haydn followed. The tickets were $12.00 each!  

In Poland we drove from Warsaw to Zelazowa-Wola, the birthplace of Chopin. His home is now a most interesting museum. On the way just outside Warsaw we saw numbers of people trying to get rides. We learned that this, in Communist days, is an accepted mode of public transportation in Poland because of the shortage of busses, trains and cars. We picked up a man and his daughter. The man spoke some German and a word or two of English. Tom and I can get by in German so we learned that the man’s name was Artur Krolak and his daughter was Katy. They were on the way to their home in Sochaczew. We were invited into their home for tea and there met his wife Teresa and their son.  

Artur wanted to visit the U.S. We arranged for him to come. First he spent a week with our daughter and her family in Massapequa, NY. Then a week with Carl and LaVerne Abbott in Marietta, GA and five weeks here in Hendersonville. He never mastered English, but then we never got started on Polish. When he liked something such as Jerry’s baked ham, he would say,” It like–ed me.”   When Artur, a Catholic, arrived he had his Polish Bible with him and for us a beautiful, framed oil painting of Chopin’s birthplace by one of Poland’s masters. He told us it was the first time he had ever taken his Bible on a trip.

After a few days Jerry and I felt we should witness to Artur. We did this by pointing out in his Bible the John 3 account of Nicodemus going to Jesus and the matter of being born again. We told Artur we felt he might want to be born again. Immediately he said no! We hardly knew what to say but then he managed to convey, “I was born again while with Carl and LaVerne.” It turned out that Carl and LaVerne had witnessed to Artur, he had understood and opened his heart to Jesus as Savior, but had not told them he had done so. We rejoiced together. 

On the way home to Poland, Artur stopped off for a conference in Richmond, VA. At the end of the conference there was an opportunity for those desiring it to be baptized. There Artur was baptized. Artur told us that in New York he had seen Christian Community (he meant believers who cared for each other), in Georgia he had heard the gospel, in North Carolina he made public his profession and in Virginia was baptized. Wonderful how God works isn’t it?  

 In 1988 we got word from Teresa that Artur, just 48, had died of a heart attack.  

Tom and I went on to Hungary and Rumania. In the latter we were driving from Bucharest westward to Clugj on a rainy day. Along the way we saw armed soldiers at every side road entering the highway and at frequent intervals in between. It was just after dark that we came to a road block where we were without explanation told to pull off the road. Finally a motorcade of police on motorcycles and in cars appeared with lights flashing and sirens blaring. Interspersed with the police vehicles were black Mercedes cars. 

After they passed we were waved on. We learned later that the Mercedes cars were taking a group of government officials to a hunting lodge in the west, thus the main highway had been kept clear of traffic for well over one hundred miles until they passed. Back in the west we were astonished by the contrast in the amount of consumer goods in the stores as compared to shoddy goods on the almost bare shelves in the east. No wonder the Russians have to build walls to keep their people penned in and unable to leave. 

Now that it is 1989 and the Russian experiment in Poland has failed and the Poles are left bankrupt I wonder why it is that our country is so quick to rush in and offer millions to bail the Poles out of the mess Russia created. I want to help the Poles but it seems to me it would be good to let the Russians have a part in cleaning up the mess they made. After all they have billions to spend on their military and five billion a year to keep Cuba afloat.   

In 1970 we were in Georgetown (Kentucky) Baptist Church for a witnessing meeting. We had a great time and met some people who became and remain friends, Cecil and Opal Hill, Robert and Millie Mills, Francis Johnson and others. Dr. Mills was President of Georgetown College and he and Millie had some of the men stay in their home during the meeting. We were glad when Millie decided to go the next January with us to a meeting in Middlesboro, KY. Great blessing when she and Sam Hargett sang “He Touched Me” as a duet. 

During the meeting Millie told me she wanted to be baptized when she got back to Georgetown. She explained, “I was baptized once for the United Brethren Church and my parents and after my marriage for the Baptists and my husband. Now I want to be baptized just for Jesus and me.” And she was.  

It is interesting how Robert and Millie met. They were teaching in the same school. Robert taught math on the floor above Millie. She, a music major from the University of Cincinnati, was teaching music. The sounds from the floor below were disturbing Robert’s class so he went down to have a talk with the music teacher. As Robert puts it they are still talking. 

Later Robert, Millie, Cecil and Opal participated with us in other meetings and still do.  They were part of a team of twelve that went to Wiesbaden, Germany, for a meeting. First we flew to Zurich and again went to visit Iseltwald. Such a beautiful spot. Driving south from Zurich we could see the Alps ahead. As we reached the foothills we could look back and see lakes, villages and the lower hills. It is a breathtaking view and so very green. As we topped the first of the alpine peaks and started down we could see Lake Brienz far below and beyond the higher snow-covered peaks of the Alps with waterfalls splashing down their sides. Opal could not contain the joy, glory and worship that welled up in her. We had stopped the van to look. As we sat there glorious song burst forth from Opal’s heart. She began singing in a language that wasn’t English. The rest of us were caught up in the glory of the moment. We were drinking in the beauty of God’s creation and letting out the worship of this One that filled our beings. 

When we had finished in Wiesbaden we drove to Prague on the way to meetings in Vienna, Austria. The twelve of us were travelling in a nine-passenger van and a small car. We left Prague in time to reach Vienna about 10 PM but on the outskirts of the city we had trouble with the car. Finally it gave out on us. One of the group got a photograph of Robert and me pushing the car toward a garage. It was a good shot of the car’s rear end, Robert’s and mine, too. 

We couldn’t get the car repaired nor could we get a replacement. We couldn’t get a call through to Switzerland where we had rented the car. We left the car at a service station. When we got to Austria we let the rental agency know where the car was.  The twelve of us piled into the van. Fortunately there was a luggage rack on the van. Hunger set in so we stopped in a small town south of Prague on the road to Vienna. It was a beer drinker’s haven, filled with men downing their Pilsner and all talking at the same time. What a racket! 

The manager agreed to prepare us a meal and took us to small, plain but nice room adjoining that of the beer drinkers. The food was excellent. We started to have a prayer before we ate. The manager realized what we were doing, rushed to the door of the adjoining room and said something in the Czech language. The resultant hush was remarkable and continued as Robert led us in thanks to God.

We found out that the manager spoke German. We managed to witness to him in that language. He told us he was a Christian and his brother a priest. We asked if Jesus Christ lived in his heart. With tears in his eyes he said, “Oh! Yes.”   

We continued on toward Vienna where we were stopped a kilometer before the border. The armed guard checked the van. The rest of the way to the border was void of vegetation, plowed and smoothed over so it would reveal footprints and filled with landmines. Guard towers with spotlights were in evidence and the growling of patrol dogs could be heard. At the border they were suspicious because our papers showed we had two vehicles. We told them what had happened but they didn’t believe us. They thought we had sold the car on the black market. They said we’d have to go back to Prague and secure papers to prove what had happened.  

As the others waited in the van I tried to secure our release. By now it was midnight and we certainly didn’t want to drive back to Prague. The guards would hassle me, then go into a back room where I could hear them laughing. Then back to hassle me again. This went on for three hours. I was frustrated and angry. Then the Lord seemed to say that He had been subjected to hurt far worse than I could even imagine, worse than anything any of us would ever experience, but He loved His tormentors and died for them. He impressed me that the least I could do was pray for the guards. I did and sincerely so. Within ten minutes the guards came out with a paper for me to sign and then let us go. I learned later that the eleven in the van had treated the matter lightly at first but then as concern set in I they, too, began to pray.

In Vienna we had great fun and pleasure. We enjoyed the Sacher Torte at the Hotel Sacher where it was first made. A special evening was spent at a park right alongside the Ring Strasse where an orchestra played Strauss music The setting was the bandstand outside where Strauss had once led the playing of his music. It was a beautiful evening when we were there so we sat outside and had coffee and pastry as we listened to the orchestra. 

It was fun to ride the street cars around the city and out to Schoenbrun Castle. Street cars are such a civilized way to get around. Too bad we didn’t keep ours in this country.   

The Vickerys, Jerry and I tried to save the Nixon presidency and believe God would have done it through us if we could have gotten to Mr. Nixon. Because of Jesus the Vickerys, Jerry and I got to know Mark Hatfield, the Senator from Oregon, and his wife Antoinette, and Harold Hughes, the Senator from Nebraska. With these and a few others we had a glorious time of intercessory prayer for Mr. Nixon in senator Hughes office. We felt sure our Lord wanted to save Mr. Nixon’s presidency and could easily do so if Mr. Nixon could sincerely see the error of his ways and ask God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of the American people. If this had been done we believe the American people would have sensed Mr. Nixon’s sincerity, rallied around him and been a part of ushering him into his greatest days as president.  

We pursued this matter, enlisting Norman Vincent Peale, a friend of the Nixon family, to help us. We were to attend Marble Collegiate Church in New York City and then have lunch with Dr. Peale. For the first time in his ministry there Dr. Peale was unable to preach because of illness. Dr. Caliandro, then associate minister, preached that morning and then met with us. He and Dr. Peale tried to help us get to Nixon. On the day Nixon announced his resignation Robert and I were at the White House waiting for Mrs. Nixon’s secretary to come out when word came to us from Senator Hatfield’s office that Mr. Nixon was resigning. What a tragedy that Mr. Nixon couldn’t openly bring God into the matter.  

In connection with our efforts on behalf of Mr. Nixon I wrote an article in 1973. In the article I expressed my belief that the United States has a national conscience that is not insensitive to God. The years since I wrote the article convince me of the validity of that set forth in the article. I stated in the article that I was not sure any other nation is blessed with a national conscience that is sensitive to God. The article continued: “Certainly no other nation carries the weight of an influence that matches ours. I know that other nations rally around causes or concepts or fears. They must have some focal point to survive as nations. Lacking such, a return to tribal life would result. I know there are nations numbering among their citizens many deeply committed men and women with a conscience sensitive to God. But I don’t know of one with a national conscience sensitive to God. Israel has a form of national conscience that is tuned to protecting and defending Jews and building up a homeland and that is good. Germany and Japan have a sense of purpose directed toward productive excellence and that is good.   

“There is no evidence that Russia or China has a national conscience and certainly nothing to indicate sensitivity toward God or toward those they control. These are fragmented nations held together by military power. The leaders of Switzerland seem to have found the touchstone for the Swiss in pointing them toward the good life and neutrality. And they’ve kept the faith by their leadership. But this hasn’t brought about a national conscience that reaches out to others. But I believe the United States has a national conscience that is sensitive to God. It is significant to me that a national conscience can be spoken to if there is a voice with a message for it.” 

“As I observe life today (1973) I sadly say that my denomination (church) has so long ignored causes that all its time is taken up dealing with symptoms like financial needs, increasing indifference among the people and squabbles, including doctrinal matters.  We long ago defaulted on our calling to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, speak to the national conscience, to be the salt that preserves the nation.  

“I do not believe Billy Graham can speak to the national conscience as matters now stand. He is used mightily of God to speak to the unsaved and is a man this nation should greatly treasure and honor. But, strange to say, there are those who name the name of Jesus that comprise a faction opposed to Mr. Graham. Mr. Graham is known for bringing people into God’s kingdom rather than as an instrument for purifying those within.    

“I don’t think the United States had a national conscience in 1930. Our bellies were too empty. FDR spoke to a need for stability and security, not to a national conscience. I really don’t know what to say about Mr. Truman. It must always be to his credit that in large measure he made it possible for the Jews to return to Israel.  

“I believe Mr. Eisenhower spoke to a deep longing for calm and a sense of desire for things to be right in the world and a desire for the removal of things that threaten. Then in the 1960’s we began to feel that perhaps the depression would haunt us no more and a dream of greatness began to claim our attention. JFK spoke to that dream but not to a national conscience. Incidentally, I still mourn the passing of the man, not the president, because his qualities were never tested, thus we don’t know where he would have led us, and I regret  to this day that he was taken from life as he was and from his family.  

“In LBJ I see further tragedy, and in a way, a microcosm of the present national tragedy. We really aren’t a sophisticated nation. Neither was Mr. Johnson a sophisticated man, but he was shrewd and a schemer and got the most for himself out of being a politician. He spoke to a rising sense of self confidence in the nation and he read us right, but he didn’t speak to the national conscience and he missed reality completely when he resigned. Had he discerned the true heart and greatness of America and the rising sense of national conscience he would have gone on television and admitted his errors, asked God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of his country and pledged himself, a repentant man, to correcting wrongs. Had he done so I am convinced he would have been appreciated by his countrymen. Americans are a forgiving people, not when arrogance is involved, but quick to support those big enough to face up to their mistakes. He would have been supported and I believe he would be alive today (1973) instead of dead, a death that was probably hastened by his sense of failure in Vietnam.    

“To a degree we are out of Vietnam but we really don’t feel clean. I believe the root of this unclean feeling includes not only the error of Vietnam but terrible wrongs that go back to the days of slavery. A nation cannot tolerate traffic in human beings by numbers of its people and prosper from the proceeds of such traffic, build an economy on it and come away clean. A nation involved in slavery is not cleansed and set free by civil war that sets citizen against citizen and creates ill, resentment and division.  A nation involved in a Vietnam is not cleansed and set free by a cease-fire agreement or acts of human kindness such as rebuilding what was destroyed by war. Neither civil war nor cease-fire agreements deal with accumulated evil and its offspring. Cleansing is needed. Catharsis is needed. 

“Perhaps for the first time in history we have in the United States a people brought together by God and touched by Him and given by Him a national conscience, a conscience that will listen to a God-prepared spokesman and, once shown reality, will repent. Oh how as a nation we need to repent before God. We are a great nation, made great by the blessings of God. True greatness resides in this land, I do believe, but it is lost in our need for repentance.”  

In this decade we hosted a Lord Mayor’s luncheon in Liverpool, England. Robert Vickery sat by Sir Douglas Crawford of the Crawford Biscuit Company, one of England’s great businesses. The two hit it off as they conversed. Later Robert felt he should visit Sir Douglas and share a Christian witness with him. An appointment was made and George Sumner of the local church drove Robert to the Crawford mansion. George thought it might not be proper for him to go in but Robert assured him it was. 

A delightful visit followed and then Robert shared with Sir Douglas and his sister about Jesus. He asked if they were sure where they would spend eternity. They weren’t. Robert told them they could be, showed them some of the wonderful promises in the Bible and explained how he had opened his own heart to Jesus. Both made professions of faith in Jesus and did so with rejoicing. George couldn’t believe what had happened but joined in the rejoicing and followed Robert in exchanging hugs with the new Christians. I have wondered if George thought hugging was proper. I think he did. Sir Douglas has since gone to be with the Lord. I have a feeling the title Christian means a lot more to Sir Douglas than the Sir.  

Robert Vickery and I decided to take a trip England. Once there we saw a lot of beautiful scenery, drank our fill of good Jersey milk, ate too much cream and our share of fish and chips. While there we decided to go to Lisse in Holland for a look at the Kuchenhof Gardens. We flew to Amsterdam, rented a car and drove to Lisse. We picked up a hitchhiker, a university student in Holland. We learned he was the son of a Chinese army general. He spoke enough English for us to witness to him. He opened his heart to Jesus before he left us.   

Another time the Vickerys, Jerry and I were travelling from Monaco to the Isle of Capri. We stopped in San Remo, Italy for a meal at the restaurant Pesce d’Or. I really think the best meal we have had in a restaurant was at the Espadon in the Ritz Hotel in Paris. The Espadon has the service, the beauty of the setting and food that we found very near perfection from salad right on through dessert. But Pesce d’Or was right up at the top. 

As we started to leave, we complimented the owner’s son, who spoke English. Before we could leave, the son relayed a message that his father wanted us to take our seats again. We thought he might have in mind coffee or fruit for us or maybe cheese. Instead he rolled out a magnificent wooden cart loaded with about every kind of alcoholic beverage. We didn’t want a drink but didn’t want to offend the owner. Miriam took a brandy, a small amount in what looked like a quart-size glass. Jerry, Robert and I took a distilled essence clear as pure water and smelling exactly like fresh raspberries. It was tasteless! But it was full of fire. Miriam couldn’t handle hers and we couldn’t either. We thanked the owner profusely then, as he walked away, we began pouring the clear drinks into the water glasses and, along with Miriam’s brandy, into the bowl of roses on the table. We left as quickly as possible, hoping the roses didn’t wilt before we got out of sight!   

The restaurant I’ve just described is quite a contrast to conditions in Cazales, Haiti where a group of us went to help put up a church building. The town was settled in the late 1700’s with people from Poland. The wife of a leading black General in Haiti befriended these people and arranged their safety when the revolution came about 1800. As a result they were about the only white people left in Haiti. Intermarriage has had its effect but there are still many light-skinned people in Cazales.   

Don and Janice Crace gave the money to buy the materials for the building. Much of this material came in on the heads of Haitians walking the twelve miles in from Duvalierville (now Cabaret, its name before the Duvaliers came to power) on the coast. I got together fourteen men and two women to spend two weeks helping the Haitians get the building up. We were given the largest house in Cazales for our stay. It was 20×20 feet in size divided into four 10×10 rooms, rooms that had no ceiling, just the tin roof overhead. The two women with us did the cooking and helped in other ways. 

At the end of the day we’d take turns going to the nearby creek for our baths. Then we’d sit and talk by moonlight or lamplight until our early bedtime. Our army cots were stored overhead on the exposed rafters during the day, then brought down and set up four to a room at night.  Quite an experience and not at all what we were used to. But we couldn’t complain. After two weeks we’d go home to relative luxury. The folks of Cazales would remain.   

In this decade we led a witnessing meeting in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Twenty-two of us made the trip. We landed in Frankfurt, Germany where our bus met us. These were still cold war days so we were not surprised to find guards on duty in the hallway outside our rooms at the hotel. And we were warned to watch our conversation in the rooms because they were bugged.  

While in Prague we met Jerri and Mirki Budinski and had tea in their apartment. After WW II Jerri left his village home for Prague where he worked as a factory technician. Jerri and Mirki were married in the late 1940’s even though housing was not available. They moved in with relatives in an already crowded apartment. The coming of their two children added to the crowding, but they added joy as well. As best they could Jerri and Mirki got on with life in a country controlled by Russia for the benefit of Russia. 

Jerri resented the terror imposed as a means of control in his country, the violence and the injustice. He spoke out against these things, was arrested for doing so and charged with being an enemy of the state. He was cruelly tortured … made to stand, without clothing, inside a large upright metal pipe. The pipe was outside in cold weather. Near the bottom of the pipe were two rods, about two inches in diameter. Jerri had to stand barefooted on these rods. All this led Jerri to making a confession and to a sentence of hanging. He was just twenty-five with a wife and two little children.   

Jerri was fearful of death and in deep stress because he felt there was no hope for him. After a period of waiting Jerri’s sentence was changed to seventeen years hard labor. His name was removed from official records and he became a number. There followed a long journey through prisons and concentration camps where he worked in coal mines and uranium mines.  Jerri began to show symptoms of uranium radiation, first kidney inflammation and then leukemia of the bone marrow. It seems strange in a way that God chose in His mercy to touch Jerri who was not then a believer and heal him without benefit of medical aid. It was all the more so since Jerri had not called upon the Lord.   

The worst of times came for Jerri when he was transferred to a fortress prison. In this place were the worst of hardened criminals, men guilty of horrible crimes. These were permitted by the authorities to lord it over the innocent ones like Jerri and others who were also there for so-called crimes against the state and those arrested for their stand as Christians. One pastor in the prison had a few pages from a Bible. He shared these with Jerri and along with others shared testimony with him. Jerri didn’t have much of the Bible but it was enough for him to get saved. 

In 1960 Jerri was released on ten years’ probation but officially he was still a number. Limited as they had been, almost not existent, none of his rights were restored. He was constantly followed by police. Friends were afraid to acknowledge him and employers afraid to offer him a job. He had no one to confide in. This began to affect Jerri physically, emotionally and spiritually. His development as a Christian had not yet begun, leaving him unaware that he could turn to the Lord. Jerri told me he felt completely alone.  

God hadn’t forgotten Jerri. A friend took a great chance and stood warranty for Jerri so he could be employed. It was hard, dirty work in a foundry, and sometimes dangerous. The pay was less than other employees received but Jerri had no rights that permitted him to complain. He was anxious to make friends with his fellow workers but they were afraid to get involved because the authorities were still watching Jerri.    

Jerri came across a group who were into alcohol and drugs. They were willing to accept Jerri and soon he was joining them in their drinking and drugs. This seemed to be the only kind of fellowship open to Jerri. All this led Jerri to overdose and go into toxic shock. The night this happened Jerri was alone. He lost consciousness and fell to the floor. He isn’t sure how long he remained there but when he came to the pain was so acute and his confusion so great Jerri decided to take his own life.   

Once the state had said it would take his life but didn’t. Now Jerri said he would take his own life. But he didn’t. I asked Jerri to put into his own words what follows. 

Jerri writes, “Before I moved to end my life I knew inwardly that this was my last chance to live a changed life. Then it was as though a film of my life ran before my eyes showing me how terrible my life had been. It was so dirty! I knew I deserved whatever God might do to me. I was ashamed especially for the way I had treated my family. I wept bitterly.  I asked for mercy. I confessed. It was like a waterfall running out of my mouth as I confessed. The Lord Jesus did have mercy. He forgave me and I knew He had done so. Immediately I felt relief.  

“It was as if I had been released from the jaws of a giant vise that had been slowly closing in on me. The cruel pain left me. I started to pray but the prayer wasn’t in my language. It was a language I had not heard before. I could not keep the words from flowing out of me as they welled up in my heart. I knew such joy I didn’t want it ever to end. Later the Lord told me that my words that I didn’t understand were words of praise and thanksgiving that the Holy Spirit had given me. The Lord also told me that He understood them and welcomed them. In a way this all seemed unreal. At times I wondered if I was dreaming or perhaps mad. It was neither. God had made a direct hit on my heart. [Jerri’s exact words.]

“I got up from the floor. The fatigue, the anger and the horrible cramps were gone.  I was a new man. Later my wife and children saw this, accepted it and rejoiced with me. Since this experience I have never felt alone. We started reading our Bibles, going to church and witnessing to others. We found sweet fellowship with other Christians and I became a presbyter in my church. My wife and I joyfully confess that we no longer live but Christ lives in us.”  

Mirki shares that following the arrest of her husband she was left alone with a son one and a half and a three-year old daughter. She had no income. She was reluctant to work outside the home because of the children. Then an opportunity came to work at home making spirals (springs) out of a very strong wire. At first the pain in her hands was so great she wondered if she could continue but with time her hands strengthened and she went on. But this work ran out after nine months.   

She then had to take outside work and the timing seemed to be right. The children liked their nursery but being alone without her husband, having to leave the children and seeing little reason to have hope for the future began to take its toll on Mirki both physically and emotionally. It didn’t help that there was not freedom in her country nor did it help that there were difficult chores at home such as carrying coal for heating and other supplies up six flights of stairs.    

About this time a friend invited Mirki to a Christian meeting.  To her surprise the Lord touched her in the meeting. She began to read the Bible and found God speaking to her by His word, and she opened her heart to Jesus. With Jesus as her Savior she found joy even though her circumstances had not greatly changed. She began to witness to others and started a ministry of taking down the pastor’s sermons in shorthand. Then she would type these and distribute them to a number of people including one blind man to whom she read the sermons. It was a source of satisfaction for her to see the joy this brought to the blind man.    

Mirki missed her husband terribly and dreamed of the day when he would be released and they could be together again. But she and the children were happy in the Lord. From Jerri’s account we know that problems developed when he got into drugs and alcohol. It was so bad that Mirki thought life was really better without him. The low point came when Jerri refused to go to church and the children followed his lead. Then Jerri said he wanted a divorce to marry a woman twenty years his junior.  

As she prayed one night Mirki told the Lord she couldn’t go on any longer. She acknowledged that her prayers had been centered on getting the things, good things such as a happy family life, that she wanted. Now she told the Lord she was prepared to release Jerri to Him, that she was trusting Jerri to His care and she was giving God first place in her life. 

After this Mirki went to bed and for the first time in weeks slept soundly without depression or sorrow. Mirki didn’t know it, but at the time she was praying a miracle was taking place. It was the same night that God touched Jerri and set him free. Since then Mirki says theirs has been a happy Christian home. Their delight is serving God and going about their country telling others about Jesus. Jerri and Mirki say that God is great and greatly to be praised.  

DECADE SEVEN

My seventh decade began with retirement. A series of events had led me to weigh our business situation with the result I thought it best to sell the business and retire. Jerry agreed.

I greatly enjoy reading and travel and felt these two would occupy my time with little left over. 

One trip during this decade got underway in Prague. Earlier we had led meetings in a Prague Church and made friends we had stayed in touch with. Grandson Mark, often called Polo, and friend Lenward Wiggins were with me on the trip. Before we left Prague we had a delicious lunch in the home of a family of friends and a happy time of reunion. 

On to Karlova Vary, formerly Carlsbad, where we stayed at the once famous and still elegant Moskva Pupp Hotel. The town was run down as a result of Communist rule. The stores offering desirable merchandise were those that took only western currency. One felt the mood of depression among the people. 

But the hotel, though below its peak of grandeur, is still a place of comfort and luxury because of visitors from the west bringing hard currency and taking advantage of the favorable exchange rate, the black market, the casino and the spa waters.   

In the hotel dining room the three of us had a great meal for about $40.00 total including the wine and tip. When we offered the dining room manager a twenty-dollar bill in full payment he was pleased. Then we decided we’d like two sets of the wine glasses used by the hotel. We traded a few packs of cigarettes for these. 

I am sure this trip that ended with a drive up the Rhine and then along the Moselle to Trier had a part in arousing Polo’s interest in travel. After high school he traveled in Europe on his own from September until December, then joined the rest of the family in Spain for a Christmas holiday.   

But I soon found that travel wasn’t for me a full-time occupation. I read because I love to read. I enjoy reading the Bible, books about the Bible and our Lord, books on history and biography. I was a regular at our excellent library. But reading for me couldn’t be a full-time occupation.   

Then I looked for work. I found I was too old or too experienced. I offered to work for one young company without pay until the owner had time to decide if I was deserving of compensation, but wasn’t taken on.   

The Lord is gracious. About this time a thought came to maturity. We had been involved helping some churches in Haiti, supporting their little schools and joining them in witnessing to the unsaved. We continued this along with our friends Robert and Miriam Vickery, Cecil Shepherd and a group from Shepherdsville, KY, Don and Janet Crace and a number of others who joined in. 

For some time the thought had been in my mind that as much as the Haitians needed Jesus they needed jobs too. I remember one visit to the island of La Gonave. About seventy thousand people live on this island that is just a few miles off the coast of Haiti proper. We stayed overnight in the home of a pastor and shared in the church and witnessed out from the church. There are no real towns on La Gonave, just a cluster of houses and huts here and there, mostly near where water is available. And there is no industry or business offering work. The people exist off the land and a primitive approach to fishing. There were hundreds of young men and women idling away their days, nothing to do and no work available.   

A large church in what was then Duvalierville and is now, after the departure of Baby Doc, again called Caberet, talked to me about finding work for some of the church members so they could have an income and be able to contribute to the church. It was decided that they would make baskets utilizing local materials from the countryside. I sold the baskets here in the States, arranged a container for shipping the 7500 baskets they produced, delivered them to the buyer and sent the money to the church. This worked out well.   

Then we decided to give the church a little braided rug factory. Don Crace and Robert Vickery joined me in buying the machinery and shipping it down to Haiti. It was my job to set up the machinery, get it going and sell the production here in the States. Ken Hooker, formerly President of a company I had owned, joined me in this undertaking, doing so without cost to the church just as I did. We got it going and found when we offered samples here in the States that there was a good market for the products. 

Sad to say the church folks just couldn’t keep the factory going. We had brought two young men from the church to North Carolina to be trained by working in a local factory. They stayed with us in our home and worshipped with us while here. When they returned to Haiti my friend and I went down and worked with them to get the operation going. But then after we got home a call came before too long saying the factory was shut down, would we come back and see what was wrong. We couldn’t keep going back and forth so we reluctantly called a halt to the effort. 

Meanwhile we were getting calls from people who had seen the samples and wanted to buy the rugs. And the basket buyer was calling for more baskets, but the church folks couldn’t get organized for another basket effort. Our response was twofold. I found a small company in Haiti that made baskets. I gave them an order and they filled it. 

Over a period of time our business with this basket company grew. We got to know the principals, John Faubert and Victor Boulas, Jr. We have greatly enjoyed working with these men and their staff. They have a small kitchen and dining area and serve some wonderful Haitian food at their place of business. The tomatoes in Haiti are great all year round and their range chickens and eggs are full of flavor. When we are there we are invited to lunch. Julia and Tom have the Haitian meal they prepare and I eat bacon, eggs and tomatoes they prepare for me. Every once in a while I have a little of the Haitian rice and beans as well.  

Victor told us about the time he was four years old and facing possible surgery. He was in a hospital in Baltimore for observation and tests. His mother was praying about his condition and felt led to promise the Lord that she would dress Victor as Saint Anthony for one full year if He would spare his life. As it turned out Victor recovered with no complications. His mother didn’t forget her promise. For a year he wore the type of clothing Saint Anthony is depicted as having worn. Victor didn’t think much about his clothing at the time. He was a little boy of four or five and spent most of his time at home or close by. One noon time he was walking from his house around the corner to an aunt’s house. As he turned the corner a woman walking toward him saw him and thought he was an apparition sent from heaven. She was sure the Lord had sent Saint Anthony to signal some dramatic happening. She grabbed hold of Victor, picked him up and began to rejoice loudly. Her rejoicing caused much excitement as a crowd gathered to see what was causing her rejoicing. Meanwhile all Victor wanted to do was get out of her embrace and get to his aunt’s or back home. Finally his mother learned what was going on and came to the rescue.   

I had located a few machines and put them in the store front part of a house in Mills River, a community near Hendersonville, and started making the same rugs we had tried to make in Haiti. Bill Allen and his wife lived in the house where we had the machines. The two-story house had once been a post office and store with living quarters in the back of the first floor and in the upstairs. Bill, who is now nearing ninety years of age, has worked for or with four generations of our family. He and my dad and mother were together for many years as friends and Bill drove for Dad. Then he worked with me and my son as a supplier of merchandise from his own business. Finally, he worked with two of my grandsons as we got our present business going. 

We had just six machines at Bill’s house but it was a start and Ken Hooker, who had helped me in Haiti, was still with me. He too was retired and we enjoyed playing around with the little business that was developing. I had a pickup truck that we used to go scouting in as we bought yarn for the rugs. We’d find yarn, load the pickup and head for the little shop at Bill Allen’s. Bill and his wife would make up the braid. Then we’d get it sewn into rugs. Next we would load the pickup, deliver the rugs, get paid and head for the bank.  

Later I bought the equipment we had given the church in Haiti, moved it to Hendersonville and increased our production. The church told us they would use the money I paid for the equipment that had been given to them to set up a retail and wholesale bakery. They felt this was an operation they could start and keep going. I found other products in Haiti to go along with the baskets and began importing these on a regular basis.  

Later my daughter Julia got involved and worked with our Haitian contacts to design and develop new products for the American market. The braided rug business continued to grow, nothing spectacular, but it grew.  

Many people think poverty when they hear a reference to Haiti. Poverty is there and much to my surprise a class society. I haven’t met any of the really powerful and wealthy people in Haiti. I have met some from most of the other income levels. I have found that from even the poorest of these on up the people are friendly, creative, skilled in many ways and surprisingly upbeat, given the difficult circumstances confronting them. I think they have been ill-served by their government and thereby denied the opportunity to gain experience in democracy, to gain education and experience in industry as workers and managers and thereby reach their potential. 

There is also much beauty and wealth in Haiti but the latter is pretty much concentrated among a few at the top.   Along the streets in Port Au Prince and along the roads outside one finds little stands set up to cook, on charcoal grills. The food is offered for sale to people walking the streets and roads and to those, mostly women, riding their loaded donkeys to market. 

The forests of Haiti have about been destroyed as the people have cut trees to produce charcoal for sale or for their own use. Great waste is incurred as the people burn the trees in homemade, inefficient kilns.   

People going to market will often be riding atop a loaded donkey and leading two or three more. Others will be walking with tremendous loads carried on their heads. This walk to Port au Prince is from Kenskoff 8000 feet up the mountain and a good growing area because of the mist that accumulates at that height. 

There are excellent restaurants, a few the equal of Paris restaurants, in Petionville, a small town up the mountain from the capital. Here the worst sort of makeshift huts are in sight of beautiful mountainside homes costing $300,000.00 to one million dollars. 

I suppose our favorite restaurant is La Voile that started out as a seafood place but later expanded the menu. Bread in Haiti, as in Paris, is wonderful and La Voile’s fresh oysters in garlic and butter are just about worth a trip to Haiti. Chez Gerard has the best fresh crab claws we had found until we got to Alaska, plus a tomato and shallot salad with vinaigrette dressing that, joined with their roquefort in puff pastry, makes a perfect lunch. There are good places where rotisserie chicken is served right off the spit at tables set up outside under the trees.   

1983 is a year to be remembered. Julia, our daughter, started a little business on Long Island where she lives. I would send her baskets, rugs and other items I had come across, all bought at close-out prices. She would merchandise these and make a bit of profit for herself. Then she got the idea to advertise in a national magazine and see if she could sell other merchandise that way. The idea frightened her because of the cost of about $2500.00 for the ad but she believed in it and asked me for a loan to cover it. Later she told me she wondered if she’d ever be able to pay it back. The ad ran in August.  

In September Don and Janice Crace joined us for a trip to Spain. We enjoyed Madrid and the Ritz Hotel there, the Prado with all its treasures and some good restaurants. We shocked the folks at a department store restaurant by asking them to make us fried ham sandwiches out of their prosciutto (air cured ham) that they eat uncooked. In fact, because of my inability in Spanish I had to go into the kitchen, get a frying pan and show them what I meant. It was delicious.   

This reminds me of the time after a witnessing meeting in England when eighteen of us were staying in a small hotel in a village just south of Paris. We wanted scrambled eggs for breakfast but just couldn’t make ourselves understood. Julia went into the kitchen and showed the cook how to scramble one egg and that did the trick. Incidentally, the coffee was strong, so strong we just couldn’t take it until Jerry figured out we should use one third each of coffee, the hot milk and the hot water that were placed on the table at meal times.   

Speaking of coffee, Robert Vickery was once trying to tell a waiter in Haiti that his coffee was not hot enough. He was not getting the message across until finally he got the waiter’s attention, stuck his finger into the lukewarm coffee and looked the waiter in the eye. The waiter ran off but returned at once with a fresh cup of steaming hot coffee. 

Another time we were in Salerno, Italy trying to get fresh strawberries for dessert. Robert got paper and pen and drew an outline of the shape of a strawberry but this didn’t work. Then he took the pen and started making dots to indicate the surface of a strawberry. That did it and the waiter was soon back with a big smile, fresh strawberries and cream.   

On the same trip Jerry didn’t do so well in Heiligenblut, a beautiful mountain village in Austria, when she tried to get eggs with the yolk cooked hard. I had tried to get the eggs cooked right for her but failed so she took over. She said the word yolk very, very slowly assuming I suppose that a word of English spoken slowly somehow became German to the hearer. The waiter’s face did light up and he headed for the kitchen. I figured Jerry had done it. Then the waiter returned with a dish of yogurt, having translated yolk into yogurt. At this point Jerry gave up and had a continental breakfast.   

Back to Spain. After we left Madrid we went to Toledo. What an interesting place! The approach made us think of the approach to Jerusalem. Inside we marveled at the ancient buildings, the marketplaces, the narrow streets with the little balconies extending over them and El Greco’s house. I was up early each morning for coffee with hot milk served in glasses and the deep fried churros that were still hot when served. From Toledo we went to Avila, an amazing walled City that goes back to Roman times, and then to Segovia where we ate their famous roast pig in a five-hundred-year old restaurant. The restaurant was located almost underneath the two-tier aqueduct built in the first century by the Romans. Almost ninety feet high, the aqueduct still supplies water for Segovia.  

When we returned from Spain Julia’s ad had run and a flood of responses had come in. We were to process these and ship from Hendersonville rather than sending merchandise to New York and then shipping from there to the customer. Thus began a process of catching up that was not concluded until late 1986.   

In November of 1983, Tom, my son decided to join our company. It really wasn’t much of a company but we were busy and growing. We were located in what had been a skating rink. We had a little office where four of us worked. Actually, we worked part of the day in the office and part of the day in the little production and shipping area. When all four were using the office two had to stand to let the other two get by to their desks. Our office was that small. I worked in the office and ran the braiders with the help of a young man and his wife. Tom ran the office, packed rugs and did anything else that was needed. Summers we drafted our grandsons to help out and Jerry did our payroll and taxes. 

We all thought we’d go crazy when Dollar General Stores gave us an order for 15,000 rugs but we got them out on time.   

In early 1983 Mike Walters, a good friend in Atlanta, sent us a page from a magazine showing a heart-shaped rug. The rug had been made by a woman in New York. It was interesting, nice and expensive and it seemed like a good idea for Valentine. Mike suggested we try making one from our braids. We did, put it on the market and found that it seemed that every woman in America wanted one, and not just for Valentine but for year-round use. This stepped up the pace of our trying to catch up as we moved to increase production.  

 In 1985 I was in Haiti walking through a factory there that supplies us merchandise. Tossed in a corner was a rag basket that caught my eye. Rag baskets are made by wrapping cloth strips around rush and weaving baskets from this material. I asked about the basket and was told that it was an idea that created little interest. I thought it had possibilities and asked for a sample. The one in the corner was the only one available. I took it, cleaned it and found that Julia liked it, too, so were decided to offer it. The item took off like a rocket. For two or three months we had to fly baskets in from Haiti in order to keep up with orders. Then we started bringing them in by the container load. Again we had to increase our efforts to catch up.   

1984 was also the year we got a daughter-in-law. In the process Tom, of course, got a wife, something he had wanted for a good while. It must have been about 1978 that Linda, a shy, intelligent and hardworking country girl, came to our company to apply for work. She was from a good family and just out of high school and told me later that she was scared to death when I interviewed her. I also found out later that she wasn’t so scared that she didn’t notice Tom at his desk. Tom and I shared an office and Linda saw him there for the first time. She decided that Tom was the best looking thing she had seen. 

 As stated Linda claims to be shy but that didn’t keep her from going after Tom. Tom wouldn’t date her at first because he didn’t think he should date an employee. But that didn’t stop Linda. She got him, he has her and they are both happy and we are happy for them.  

Tom, Julia and I thought it would be a good idea to try developing production in the Dominican Republic. We made a few trips there but did not succeed business-wise. We didn’t do very well with cars either. We listened to a car rental agent at the airport who told us he had the best cars in Santo Domingo. We rented from him. He brought a VW Beetle around for us. Questions came into our minds when we couldn’t get the trunk (in the front, as you know) open. The agent assured us this was no problem. It wasn’t. He kicked the front of the trunk and it came open. But the chrome strip down the center came off too. No problem. He placed it back on the hood and banged it in place. 

As we drove off Julia started to open the vent window. She raised the latch, pushed and watched the window fall to the ground.  We stopped, picked it up and drove back to the agent. Julia held up the window for him to see. No problem. He said he would bring another car to our hotel the next morning. This was all right since it was late, the car would get us to the hotel and we expected the other car in time to go sightseeing before we started on our business mission. 

The next morning we waited but no car. We drove from our hotel in the new quarter to the colonial part of Santo Domingo. We were walking through this most interesting district when I heard my name. Surprised that anyone knew my name, I looked and there was the car rental agent. He was a little late but he figured we had gone to the colonial quarter and came looking for us with a better car. As he said, “No problem.”   

Another time we were going from Santo Domingo to Santiago in the center of the country. We were going to check out a ceramic factory we’d heard about. Our car gave us trouble on the way but we made it. Returning we made it through La Vega and a few miles more but then the car stopped. Several Dominicans stopped and tried to help us, but to no avail. Finally, one on a motorcycle said he would go to La Vega and send a wrecker. 

The wrecker was a vintage Dodge truck that had been made into a wrecker of sorts. They hoisted the front end of our car and started pulling us into La Vega. We sat in the car. In town before we got to the garage the wrecker broke down. There we were stopped on the street sitting in the car with the front hoisted in the air. About that time a flat bed truck with a load of rice pulled up. The truck driver knew the wrecker driver and agreed to put a cable from his truck to the wrecker and pull the wrecker with our car still hooked up. This worked fine until the trucker slowed down, then started with a jerk, causing our car to swing into the back of the wrecker. Our car would not run. Now the front end was totally demolished. 

Once we reached the garage we inquired about a rental car, but there were none.  Finally, we found a taxi driver who said he would take us to Santo Domingo. I could see in my mind a taxi bill of a couple of hundred dollars but we had no choice. I asked how much. The driver said $35.00. What a relief. On the way one of those tropical rain storms came up. Only then did we find out there were no windows on the drivers side.  Julia and I were in the back. I was on the passenger side. She moved over as close to me as possible, but still neither of us could escape the rain coming in from the driver’s window and blowing back on us. We didn’t complain. We were glad to be on the way.   

Don and Janice Crace and I were in Santo Domingo another time.  Don wanted to look at a spice factory near Santiago. In the Dominican Republic rental cars don’t come with a full tank of gas. We had arrived in Santo Domingo at night so we drove from the airport straight to the hotel. 

The next morning we had to fill up before heading out to Santiago. On the way to the station I did something that caused a rifle-carrying policeman to stop me. Don was in front with me and Janice was in the back seat. The policeman got in the back, pointed the direction we were to take and said, “Police.”  We tried to explain we just wanted to buy gas and go to Santiago but he would not budge. He pointed again and made it clear we had better start. I did but pointed once more to the gauge showing empty. 

On the way I saw a station and pulled in. A man there spoke a little English. I got him to explain our situation. Still the policeman said we had to go to the police headquarters. 

As we pulled out of the station I reminded Don and Janice that we are instructed to praise God in everything. Janice can sing. Don is pretty good at singing. So they began singing Scripture songs of praise. I joined in. 

In a little while the policeman tapped Don on the shoulder and as a question said, “Santiago?” Don nodded yes. The policeman motioned me to turn around and go back. We drove right back to where the policeman had stopped us. He got out, pointed in the direction of Santiago, smiled for the first time and waved us on. Some friends said he just couldn’t stand our singing but we know the Lord impressed him to let us go.   

Another change came in 1980. Jerry and I, Baptists since birth by virtue of being taken to church by our parents and later by our own profession and baptism, felt the time had come for us to fellowship with a small group meeting in a home. This was not the result of finding fault with our Baptist brethren. We had known great blessing among them. It was a matter of believing the Lord had made known to us that we were to make this move. It wasn’t a matter of leaving. It was a matter of going. Going of course requires leaving. For twenty years now we have found and continue to find blessing in this fellowship.  

Our family likes to travel and we enjoy travel together. I mentioned grandson Mark joining us in Spain. 1985 was the year and we had decided to go to Torremolinos on Spain’s Costa del Sol. Mark, our middle grandson, had skipped the first semester of college and had been in Europe on his own for about three months. He joined the other seven of us in Torremolinos on the day before Christmas.

We had been visiting Rhonda with its gorge and bridge and the great roast pork they are noted for, Seville and its streets lined with orange trees and its grand old Alphonse 13 Hotel, Granada and the remarkable Alhambra and across from the Alhambra the strange looking cave dwellings, Malaga and its excellent Parador (delightful government-owned hotels) with views of the water and a number of other places in the south of Spain.   

Most of the Paradors in Spain are the result of the government taking beautiful old buildings … sometimes a castle, sometimes a fort … and making them into hotels without changing the look or beauty of the building. 

While in Spain we acted on an impulse and rented a minibus, loaded everybody in and headed for Morocco. The guide books we read warned that Morocco wasn’t very safe and Tangiers was really questionable. We figured that between my two grandsons, son, son-in-law and me we could mount a pretty good defense, so off we went. Our first stop was Tangiers. Our hotel did fit right into the concept of intrigue and spies that we had heard so much about. Our women were a little uncomfortable but I don’t think there was ever anything to fear. 

We went to a night club in the Casbah. The floorshow featured a belly dancer who greatly pleased my grandsons when she made it a point to wiggle over to me and get my face buried in her bosom. I didn’t resist very much. 

We were fascinated by the changing countryside of Morocco. We drove toward Fez with the ocean on one side and beautiful farmland on the other. Then we’d come to low-lying hills, go through interesting villages and towns, and we did see one camel on the way.  

 Fez was the highlight of this journey. We didn’t have reservations but managed to get rooms in a deluxe hotel where Jerry and I had a suite with a bathroom so large and a tub so huge we had to let Linda come try it. We had dinner in the Moroccan room of the hotel.  The couscous with vegetables and lemon chicken got raves from all of us, but Mark and Linda really didn’t relish the Moroccan salad that included sheep brains.

Eric is a guitar player. He stayed at the hotel one night while we went out to dinner. When we returned we couldn’t find Eric until we looked in the lounge where we found him playing with the musicians there. We noticed that Eric and Mark were getting exceptional attention and service from the bellhops and other service people. We didn’t understand until we checked out and found that they had been adding a dollar tip to the bill every time room service brought them a coke or some other service was provided for them in the hotel. Little wonder they got great service when a week’s pay was probably about $10.00.   

We spent a day in the Medina or old city of Fez. Had it not been for the electricity and its various applications we would have thought we’d gone back in time a thousand years or so. Once we were through the entrance gate and behind the walls there was no vehicular traffic. Everything that came in for the thousands of people living there was carried by a man or a donkey. And it seemed that all commerce was carried on within sight of the narrow passageways that wound through the Medina. 

We saw the dyers preparing yarn to be woven into clothing, carpets and other materials. Whole butchered animals and cut-up meats were hanging in the open and ready to be sold. Craftsmen were at work in their area of the Medina producing beautiful silver and copper work. We had never seen so many spices and herbs or so much in the way of natural cosmetics for the face, hair and body. It was endless! Name it and there it was, but for the most part not packaged and displayed in its natural, primitive state. 

We ended our visit to the Medina in a typical Moroccan restaurant. We entered from the alley way through a small door into a coffee bar and then were guided up a narrow stairway to a mezzanine dining room that overlooked the first floor. The food was good. We sat on cushions placed on the floor and ate from the low table in front of us. And we made it safely in and out of Morocco and very much want to go back.   

On the way to Morocco we had decided to stay overnight in Gibraltar. Driving from Spain into Gibraltar we found that the highway crossed the airport. If a plane was taking off or landing cars had to stop and wait. What a remarkable place! One mile by two miles in size, there it is sticking 1400 feet up out of the water. Roads are narrow, the town is crowded with buildings and roads that go back and forth up the side of this rock right to the top and down again. Houses and other buildings line just about every road but it is a wonderful place to visit. 

All of us had a big time feeding the apes and Julia and I found a great cup of coffee at a little sidewalk stand in the center of town. Good coffee isn’t easy to find when travelling so a good cup takes on real importance. The view from the rock is worth the trip, giving as it does a panorama that includes Africa and Spain.    

1986 was our best year volume-wise in our business, but the end of 1986 and beginning of 1987 saw a decline in our sales. We attributed this to the fact that where we in the beginning had a good part of the market to ourselves, we were now seeing many others getting into the same type goods so we were faced with a market that was not growing and perhaps declining a bit but with more and more companies sharing the market. It was the difference between having a pie to eat all alone and having to share it with several others. Thus where we once had to scramble to keep up with business we were now having to scramble to keep expenses and overhead below income so we wouldn’t have more going out than coming in. We can testify that the latter is not as pleasant as the former.    

For our 1987 Christmas trip we decided on a winter vacation and headed for the Hotel Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, Canada. The hotel is more of a village, a citadel, than just a place for lodging. It is a grand old building, big but cozy and a place of warmth. Snow was almost everywhere and where it wasn’t there was ice, including much of the St. Lawrence River.   

In 1988 Eric, our youngest grandson, graduated from high school. Jerry and I gave him a trip to Europe for a graduation present. I went with him. I had accumulated enough frequent flyer mileage to get us two free first class tickets.  When we passed the jet way to the coach section and went on the first-class jet way that led to the first-class cabin Eric was impressed. Immediately he changed the designation from coach class to roach class. 

I wonder how many of you know Jimmy Page?  I’d never heard of him until Eric told me about him. Eric was born in 1970. As he grew up he started playing the guitar. When we left for Europe he told me that Page is a great guitar player. He might not be able to see Page, but wanted to try since he knew the location of his studio. I drove him there. Page wasn’t there but a workman gave Eric directions to his home. We went but Page wasn’t there. 

We made our visit to London and Paris and back to London for our departure home.  Eric asked to try once more to see Page. It was useless I knew, but I drove to the home Page had bought from the actor Michael Caine. I parked a hundred feet or so from the gate.  Eric walked over, found a bell and rang. I saw a man saunter out from the house, a cat at his heels. He walked over to the gate and he and Eric began talking. I figured it was the butler. Their conversation went on ten minutes or so. They shook hands. Then Eric, out of breath and incoherent, came to the car. He opened the door, fell to the ground and began to beat the car seat. The only word I could understand was Pop. Then he got to his feet and began pounding the top of the car and trying to talk. Finally he got it out that it was Jimmy Page who had come to the gate and talked with him. I think Eric could have flown home without the help of the 747.  

It was also in 1988 that we celebrated our 50th anniversary with a trip to London and then took the Orient Express to Venice. Dana and Julia joined us since they were celebrating their 25th anniversary. I had enough airline miles for four first-class tickets to London with a return from Paris.  

In London we went to Christian Fellowship in Richmond (Surrey). This is a gathering of believers who meet in Halford House. In this house, built in the early 1700s, they have an apartment or two and several bedrooms. We stayed with them for a day to get over jet lag and then went to Victoria Station where we boarded our car, a part of the Orient Express. We were dressed for it! Jerry and Julia in 1920’s style right in keeping with the beautifully restored rail cars that dated from that period. 

When we boarded we were shown to our private room in the dining car. There we found a table set with china, silver, linens and flowers. Our armchairs were well cushioned and comfortable. As we left London and entered the Sussex countryside an excellent lunch was served. A strike was on at the channel so we crossed over to France by hovercraft rather than the ship that is normally used. In Boulogne, France we boarded the French version of the Orient Express and headed for Paris. En route we enjoyed the club car and the parade of passengers passing through in all their 1920’s glory.  Then we went to the dining car for dinner that began at dusk and ended as we saw the lights of Paris from a distance. 

When we returned from the dining car our sleeping berths were ready, so off to bed and a good night’s rest. Once in our beds it was easy before drifting off to sleep to imagine that all sorts of intrigue and romantic interludes might be taking place on the Orient Express as we journeyed through France. Maybe a murder that would require Hercule Poirot to come aboard. Earlier in the club car we had observed a handsome woman of perhaps fifty, beautifully dressed, enjoying a good-sized cigar. The way she handled the cigar, the fact that she was inhaling the smoke and the contented look on her face made us sure it wasn’t her first cigar nor would it be her last. Maybe she was plotting a murder as she watched the cigar smoke curl upward. Or maybe the man across from her whose eyes were fixed upon her had her in mind as a victim, but what sort of victim? Who knows?  We went to sleep.   

The next morning we were in Strasbourg and on to Switzerland where we had breakfast in our room. Great fresh croissants and great scenery as we rolled through the Alps and on to Italy. 

Afternoon was ending as we reached Venice, left the train and took the taxi (a boat) to our lodgings. We had arranged space in the apartment section of the Gritti Hotel. This added pleasure to our stay since we could have coffee and fresh bread and pastries from a nearby bakery for our breakfast in the rooms. And we learned that Dana makes great coffee.   

We learned that some of the cast of NBC’s Today Show, including Willard Scott, were traveling on the Orient Express about the time we were and filming a show in the process. We didn’t see any of them on the train but at dinner in Venice we saw Scott and his wife at a nearby table. Jerry likes Scott and watches when he is on the Today Show with his birthday greetings to those 100 years old or older.  She couldn’t resist going to his table to speak to him. They had a nice chat and then after dinner he came to our table to meet the rest of us and had a word with us.

We took a boat along the Grand Canal one day, a boat that is much like a bus in that it stops frequently to discharge and take on passengers. This particular day an aging but handsome Venice college professor began talking to Julia. He told her she was beautiful and told Dana how lucky he was to have her. He had much more to say but when he neared his stop he said to Julia, “You have gained my love and admiration but I must leave you now because my heart belongs to Venice.”  As he left the boat he handed Julia a heart-shaped box with candy inside, removed his hat and swept it before him as he bowed and departed.   

From Venice we drove to Verona to look again at its first-century Roman amphitheater, to Milan and its remarkable cathedral and to Italy’s Lake Country in the north. Our intermediate destination was Alsace, an area of great beauty and wonderful food. Then we went on a sightseeing drive to Baden Baden in Germany, had tea and admired the beautiful grounds at the Brenner Park Hotel, and tried the mineral waters. We returned by way of Freiburg where we had the best wienerschnitzel we have ever tasted. If you are ever there follow the street car tracks out toward Gunterstal, stop before going through the arches and look left for the Gasthaus Kuhler Krug. It is worth the trip.  

On to Paris. In Paris we arrived late, found our hotel and inquired about a place nearby for a simple meal. We were too tired to do much more than eat and go to bed. The hotel concierge told us to go to the train station Gare de Lyon and eat at the restaurant Le Train Bleu. The station was nearby but the restaurant at the far end. When we finally got to it we were even more tired and not at all pleased to see an enormous and ornate room. We figured that the food would be anything but simple. As it turned out it was exactly what we were looking for. For example, Jerry had a grilled young chicken, no sauces and very little seasoning but full of flavor. When we finished we were all satisfied and Jerry had nothing on her plate but a neat stack of bones that looked like they had been sanded and polished. Our very proper but kind waiter couldn’t resist a grin as he looked at the bones and then at Jerry.  

 A good night’s rest found us ready to enjoy the next day and two or three more as we finished up our stay and flew home.   

 In 1989, Julia was in the Philippines with Dana where he was preaching. While there Julia visited a hotel gift shop and saw several products that interested her. She felt some of these might be good for our company. She managed to track down the factory that produced the items and later had a meeting in New York with the owner. This resulted in Julia and me going to Manila in August of 1989. We made arrangements to have several products made for us and still do business with the firm. The head of the firm is a Christian and a delightful person to work with. She has visited us in our home and we have enjoyed good fellowship, good food and good times with her in Manila, Tokyo and New York.  

In 1990, Lenward Wiggins, my country ham and barbecue friend, joined me for a trip to Argentina. We enjoyed the city, its many parks, wide boulevards and pedestrian shopping streets. The city has a European flavor with sidewalk cafes and many fine restaurants and buildings. We could not believe the quality of the beef served, nor the quantity and the low prices. 

From Buenos Aires we went to the Bariloche area, sometimes called the Argentine Alps. This area is said to have been the choice of many Nazis fleeing Germany after the war. It seems that they were prepared financially for this resettlement. Then to the Iguazu Falls between Argentina and Brazil. We were told that this is one of the three greatest falls in the world … the other two being Niagara and Victoria. After seeing Iguazu it is easy to believe. Now Lenward and I want to visit Bolivia and Chile.   

Seven decades have now come and gone. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was a kid at home. I can clearly remember my paternal grandmother Julia who was blind. Even so she watched out for me and played with me when I was four or five years of age. What do I remember about her? The main thing is that she was a contented, happy person. I do remember that she expressed satisfaction by rocking in her chair. For example, she liked meat but we didn’t have meat every day. She would ask Mother what we were having for dinner. If there was no meat she didn’t complain, but if there was she would start rocking.  

It doesn’t seem possible that I met Jerry 53 years ago, seems more like yesterday. It really doesn’t seem long ago that our children were born, went off to college and then married … that I went off to war and came back … so much of those 70 years are as fresh in my mind as if they were just happening. And so many friends come to mind and by far the majority of them Christian friends who have loved me, prayed for me and been channels through whom God has been able to send His life flowing to me, giving me strength and courage. Over the years the Lord gave me the privilege of leadership to some small degree and these Christian friends followed my leadership and supported me and made me look pretty good, but everybody knows that the lasting good any of us are involved in is from the Lord. So, the present is good and the future sure according to the promises in God’s Word.

DECADE EIGHT

Now that 1990 is here and with it the beginning of my 8th decade it seems right to extend my writing beyond the original plan of telling about my seven decades of blessing.

The end of my 6th decade in 1980, when I was 60, saw the selling of my garment manufacturing business, Ada Company, Inc., and my retirement. This decade also saw our move from membership in a denominational church where we had found much help and blessing and opportunities for service to meeting with a small group in a home. I think it appropriate to call this the decade of ending involvement in a business where we had been blessed and ending involvement in a denomination where blessing had also been ours.  

My 7th decade, 1980 to 1990, could be called the decade that saw the Lord give us another, unexpected business and the decade that saw us being built together with a group of the Lord’s people into an expression of the Body of Christ. I say expression because I believe that the Church, the Body of Christ, is made up of every saved person, who has lived, past, present and future. I also believe that wherever the Lord’s people, just a few or in large numbers, are found there is found the Body of Christ in all its fullness. I say this because I think the fullness is of Christ, not a consequence of the numbers of people.

My 8th decade, 1990 to 2000, could be called the decade of travel. The travel came about, in part, because the new business, Mills River Industries Inc., required us to develop business connections in countries where we had not had prior production, Mexico, The Philippines, China, Sri Lanka and the exploring of possibilities in India, Nepal and Indonesia. 

And there was travel to Japan for participation in trade shows to sell our products to the Japanese. We were pleased by the results of this selling effort and pleasantly surprised by the friendliness of the Japanese people. Some of the Japanese who became our customers still correspond with us and four have sent us Christmas presents. 

In 1990 Julia and I had an interesting beginning for the trip to Japan. We were on board a Continental Airlines plane at the Newark airport bound for Seattle and a change for the Tokyo bound plane. The pilot had just pulled out from the gate when he stopped the plane. We sat for a few minutes. Then the pilot, with trembling voice, announced that the right engine was on fire and told us to abandon the plane. We did! 

As we did we saw the engine ablaze and smoke pouring out. We hit the chute and started running as soon as we were on the ground. By then the firemen were on the scene pouring foam on the engine. They soon had the fire under control. You will understand our thanksgiving that this happened on the ground, not after we were in the air.  

We had a deadline for the trade show that required us to leave the same day as the engine fire, otherwise we would lose our sizeable investment in the trade show, we’d lose the business we hoped to write and the travel and other expenses we’d laid out. We were waiting in the terminal for word from the airline. The announcement came that we would be sent by bus to JFK airport where we would be put on a Northwest Airlines flight for Tokyo. On the way to JFK the bus driver got lost and arrived at JFK after the Northwest flight had departed! What to do? 

We learned that Japan Airlines had a flight leaving in thirty minutes but there were only two seats left in business class, none in first. We convinced the bus driver to take us to Japan Airlines, got them to give us the two seats and took them even though we had first class tickets. Fortunately, we never check baggage so we had our carry on bags with us. We were hardly in our seats when the plane left the gate for the 14 hour nonstop flight. I should say that we had not bought first class tickets. I had enough frequent flyer miles to get two free first class tickets. These tickets if purchased run $12,000.00 or more for two … too much for me.   

We arrived at our Tokyo hotel and went to bed right away but I woke up about 2 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep. I went for a walk and enjoyed this strange, to me, new world we were in. Tokyo is in many ways a modern city, new buildings, excellent trains and busses and a swiftly paced life style. But it also has its tiny streets with small frame houses and buildings. I was surprised to find as I walked in the early morning hours that bicycles and motor scooters were left on the streets unchained or otherwise secured.  

Our first order of business was to set up our show booth. What a job! Plus, just as in the U.S, air conditioning is not turned on until the show opens. Exhibitors must set up without it. And it was hot that September, 1990 in Tokyo. But we made it, had a successful show and sold our samples so we would not have to pay the freight to ship them home.   

We made the rounds of downtown Tokyo and had a great time in the enormous, well stocked food halls of the major department stores. We were amazed by what seemed to be the unlimited variety of fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood, desserts and every other sort of foodstuff we could think of. We had two or three good meals by selecting the prepared foods available.    

We had planned for a few days sightseeing after the show. First, we took the bullet train to Kyoto. I think the coffee at our hotel in Kyoto was the best of the many excellent coffees we had in Japan. The Japanese know good coffee. I understand they buy up most of the highly prized Blue Mountain Coffee from Jamaica. I know that the Blue Mountain Coffee we took as gifts was received with bows and expressions of thanks.

Kyoto has a most interesting street, actually a narrow lane, along its river front. For the most part the shops and excellent restaurants along the lane were constructed of wood, obviously old and small and all without signs in English. We took pride in the fact that we were able to find the one we were looking for by identifying it by its sign that was in Japanese.   

We visited the temple sights, a nature garden that utilized rocks, sand raked smooth, a small lake, stands of bamboo, trees, many with moss around the exposed roots and walkways winding through the whole. We found sitting by the lake and looking beyond to the garden to be a calming, relaxing experience in the midst of a bustling city.  

We rented a car and drove on the left side, as the Japanese do, into the countryside. We found many interesting, small villages and small farms, especially rice and tea farms outside the cities. We also traveled to Nikko, a most amazing small tourist center. Nikko is in a mountain area and has beautiful streams of clear, rushing water with one that goes right though the town. For us the main attraction was a path, at least 100 feet wide through a stand of giant trees. We read that the trees were more than three hundred years old. They led, for at least a mile, to a series of temples with carvings and decorations and a type of architecture featuring spires that for me outdid the ornate ones of Calcutta, India.  

After a nice meal in a hotel dining room we boarded the local train, spotlessly clean and efficient but slower than the bullet train, back to connect with the fast train to Tokyo.   

Then to Hawaii for a rest and sightseeing and a most interesting experience. We had not felt we needed to reserve a rental car on Kahlua, but found on arrival at the airport that there were no cars available any where on the island. What to do? 

We had sights we wanted to see but would need a car. The plan was that I would continue on home after three days and Dana was to join Julia for about a week following that. We will never know what prompted her but Julia walked to the counter and asked if Mr. Congdon had reserved a car. The answer was yes. We were told to go to the office where the papers were ready and get the car there. We did. The lady handed over the papers to Julia saying, as she did, “All set for Mr. Robert Congdon.” Julia’s husband is Dana, not Robert. 

She looked at me. I looked at her. I suppose we both had taken on the look of conspirators. She took the papers, we took the car and drove. At times we felt badly about Robert but not bad enough to turn in the car.   

Travels with Jerry continued in 1991. Since our earlier visits to Communist Eastern Europe I had an interest in visiting the USSR. We had observed the results of communism in Poland, Czechoslovakia and other countries but these were nations forced into communist control by Roosevelt and Churchill. 

I have yet to understand why these two men felt it was their right to consign nations, a number of them, and their millions of people, to a period of slavery that lasted almost fifty years. Whatever good these two men accomplished it seems to me that this, one of their final acts of WW II, was a crime of enormous proportion and I do mean crime. 

How would you or I feel if the leader of a foreign power were to hand the United States over to be ruled and exploited by another nation, a nation both repressive and given to brutality?  

Jerry and I were once having lunch in a hotel in Yellowstone National Park. We learned that our waiter, a man in his twenties, was from Romania. He told us that he had spent his entire life until just recently without ever knowing freedom in his own country. He and his fellow citizens were literally slaves of the USSR. Now, he told us, he is working his way around the U.S. because he wants to experience and learn what it means to live free.   

So, in May, 1991 we headed for Leningrad, USSR. Our routing took Jerry and me to Sweden. Julia and her son Mark decided they would like to join us for the visit to Leningrad. Their routing took them to Finland. We agreed that Jerry and I would take a ship from Stockholm to Finland and meet them in Helsinki.   

We had a nice but short visit to Helsinki and then boarded an overnight train to Romenevi, a small town in a sparsely settled area at the Arctic Circle. This came about because Jerry said that if we were going to Finland she wanted to see reindeer in the wild. We were in our train compartment preparing for bed when Julia and Mark came to join us because it was May 30, my 71st birthday and they wanted to celebrate.  

We arrived in Romenevi about 8 AM, rented a car and drove to our hotel. It was cold and there was plenty of snow. Then we started out to see reindeer. Most of the roads were dirt but in good condition. We thought we should take back roads as much as possible. The first drive out from town we saw three deer walking across a farmer’s field. We shouted for Jerry to look. She was pleased but not at all satisfied. She told us she had not traveled to Finland to see three reindeer, she wanted to see a herd. 

We drove on and saw a moose cross the road in front us and disappear into the woods. We saw a few more reindeer but not many. Back at the hotel Mark and I took advantage of the hotel sauna, had dinner and then to bed. I was up about three AM, looked out the window and saw that it was still daylight. There were about two hours of darkness each day at that time of the year.  

One event was most interesting to us. We drove deep into the country side one day. After a few miles on a main road we turned and drove about ten miles without seeing signs of houses or such. Then we came upon a large lake and a big resort hotel. We saw one or two cars but not much that indicated anything was going on. It was lunch time so Mark went in to check out the situation. He called us to come in. 

The owner of the hotel, the chef and the manager were the only ones there. The hotel would open for the season in about three weeks and they were there to make ready for the full staff that would soon arrive. The owner said it would be all right to serve us lunch if the chef wished to do so. The chef did so wish. The manager said he would be our waiter. We had a wonderful meal! Lunch took a little longer than we expected because the manager, a German married to a Finn, spoke excellent English and was intent on telling us all about the area we were in and about the Finnish people. We enjoyed the food and the manager’s comments.

This resort hotel really was in the middle of nowhere but a beautiful spot located as it was on a large, clear lake and surrounded by a thick forest. We were told that most visitors to the resort are from France. On the way back to our hotel in town we saw more reindeer, seven in one place, but Jerry would not accept our suggestion that seven made up a herd. 

On our last day at the Arctic Circle before we headed back for Helsinki and the train to Leningrad we drove in a different direction. This time we saw more reindeer, probably as many as fifty all told, but never more than eight or ten together. Still not a herd as far as Jerry was concerned. We were again on a back road with about twenty miles to go before we reached the main road back into town. As we rounded a curve we saw a good number of reindeer. We slowed the car to a crawl and then to a stop as an actual herd came out of the woods to our right and crossed the road in front of us. As we looked we saw they were on both sides of the road, spread through the woods and eating and milling around. I’m still not sure what number constitutes a herd, we counted to a hundred and then in our excitement lost count. But Jerry was satisfied. She had seen her herd of reindeer.  

I remember well the USSR train from Helsinki to Leningrad. It was bad even though we had “soft class,” the USSR designation for first class. But the train from Leningrad to Tallin, Estonia was worse. So, I’ll wait until we are on our way to Tallin to tell you about the trains in the USSR. 

We had decided to take Bibles in Russian to Leningrad. We took the full Bible, Old and New Testaments. They were heavy and since we only take carry on luggage for our trips we felt that 14 were all we could handle. I took one of the Bibles into the Intourist Travel Office in Leningrad, not knowing what these USSR employees would say. When I offered the Bible the lady said, “Oh, yes! And we will all read it.” I am not sure that we put our name and address in all the Bibles but I know we did in one. 

We gave the Bibles out at random, just following our impressions. On the street, on our way to a flea market where Jerry bought a set of the nesting Matuska dolls we gave a Bible to a deaf couple. Then a young man walked up to us and asked for one. He was a street merchant and we were afraid he wanted it to sell it. He said, “No, I have a small part of a Bible but I want a whole Bible for myself.”   We have not seen this young man again but strange as it seems Jerry and I both remember him and something of how he looked. We gave him the Bible. 

As I said we have not seen the young man again but in the Fall of this year, 1995, we received a letter from him. I will quote here the letter we received from him. Valeri wrote, “Dear people of God, I do not know who you are but I do know that you love Him. In summer of 1991 in Leningrad I got my first Bible from you. At that time I wasn’t a child of God and our blessed Lord Jesus Christ but now I can joyfully say that I have trusted Him for salvation. I don’t know you but I want to thank you for giving me a living word of God, the God that I love, and am ready to give my life for one who already died for me. I love our Lord Jesus and I want to love Him more! Because of your love for Him today I have His word and because of His love to me I have His life for ever. Thank you again in the Name of Jesus. s/s Valeri Nosenko. Hebrews 12:15.”   

Valeri wrote to us after he met Pam Linstead who is from Kansas. Pam, along with her family, is involved in ministry in Russia. Along the way she met Valeri who told her of his experience. We have learned that several members of Valeri’s family have come to know the Lord Jesus and Valeri is sharing his witness with his fellow Russians.   

Change was in the air the week we were in Leningrad. Just a short time after we were there, a matter of weeks, the USSR and Communism collapsed and Leningrad again became Saint Petersburg. It was obvious that the citizens somehow knew that freedom was imminent.   

The first evening in Leningrad Mark went to a disco. As he left the disco to return to our hotel the taxi driver quoted an outrageous fare for the return. Mark refused and was prepared to walk when a young couple who saw what was going on offered to drive him to the hotel. The young man was Algerian, studying at a Leningrad university known for its courses on locomotive engineering. His native language was French and Mark is fluent in French. The young lady was Russian and spoke some English. On arrival at the hotel they told Mark they would come for him the next morning and show him around Leningrad. Mark told them this would not work since he had his mother and grand parents with him. They said,” No problem, we’ll take them too.”   

The next morning and for the three mornings following they came for us, took us to all the places we wanted to see. The Hermitage, The Summer Palace, the broad and still beautiful avenue Neva Prospeckt, and so much more. They also took us to restaurants that did not seem to be open to the public. There were no signs outside these places. But Joseph, the Algerian, would drive to a building, tell us to wait in the car and go knock on a closed door. The door would open, Joseph would talk to the one opening the door and then motion for us. We’d go in and find a room beautifully furnished, tables with linen cloths, napkins and silver, crystal glasses, an excellent staff, including the chef, and food we never saw in a Leningrad grocery or meat market.  

I’m still not sure what was going on but whatever it was Joseph knew how to negotiate. And he refused to let us pay for anything. When we tried he would say it is nothing. We later learned that Joseph came from a well to do family in Algiers and had western currency that could be exchanged on the black market for rubles. The exchange rate was so good that what Joseph was spending was as nothing.   

The last night in Leningrad Joseph and Irene secured tickets for the Kirov Ballet performance. This ballet company is housed in the Kirov Theater, one of the most beautiful theaters we have seen. Here we spent one of the nicest evenings we can remember.  

After the ballet we went to the station to take the night train to Tallin, the capital of Estonia. Again we had soft class but soft class only meant that two people slept in a compartment rather than four or six, depending on the ticket purchased. There were four bunks in our cabin, four in Mark’s and Julia’s. The lady coach attendant came by with two bedrolls for each of our compartments. We had to make up our own bed. Each bunk had a reading light but only one, the one over a top bunk, was working and only dimly so at that. We were told that lights would come on after the train started moving but they did not.   

Our bedding, Jerry decided, was clean but it sure did have tattle tale grey. Julia was not so sure it was clean so she slept in her clothes. The worst part was the toilet. Fortunately Jerry carries a small flash light and toilet paper so she got to the toilet but once there didn’t want to see what she saw. The toilet would not flush, there was no running water and the whole room smelled. Mark and I got by but I don’t know how the women did.   

This was an overnight train, nine hours for the 140 mile trip to Tallin. We learned that the road bed was in such poor condition that the train was allowed a top speed of 35 miles per hour.  

Tallin was a relief. It is an old city … about 900 years … well preserved, not a big city but with beautiful old buildings, wide streets, flowers and good old street cars, something I really like. In Tallin I changed dollars for rubles at the rate of 30 rubles for $1.00. Later in the day Jerry and I had lunch at the best restaurant in Tallin, an Indian one. The meal cost us 45 rubles, the equivalent of $1.50! Our main dish was Tandoori chicken, the best I’ve had.   

In Tallin we arranged for a nice hotel dining room to prepare a surprise birthday dinner for Julia. It was a most enjoyable end to our visit to Estonia.   

From Tallin we took an overnight ship across the Baltic Sea to Stockholm, Sweden. On board we had a good dinner and a good sleep.  

We drove north through the beautiful Swedish countryside and spent a day and night at a small but excellent country style resort hotel. On one of our flights Jerry had reindeer steak and at the hotel they went all out to prepare their famous antelope steak. We didn’t care for either. After a few days in the north of Sweden it was back to Stockholm and the flight home.   

Our business involvement in Haiti changed in 1991. Baby Doc Duvalier, the President for Life, had been deposed and sent from the country. An election was held and Jean- Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest, won by a landslide. He took office in February but a military coup in September drove him from office and from the country. The generals took over and ruled Haiti in spite of repeated condemnation by the U.S. and other nations.  

I don’t know of any other situation that has received worse handling by our government than this one. A series of sanctions and finally a total embargo were placed on Haiti. For over two years we could only operate under a restrictive license from our government. The total embargo stopped our company and other companies from doing any business in Haiti. This put hundreds of already poor, innocent Haitians out of work and forced the closure of most of the few private businesses.   

Meanwhile the wealthy Haitians and the military were increasing their wealth or making new fortunes as they ignored the embargo and brought in goods for sale on the black market. Our government officials called the military rulers murderers, saying that 3000 to 4000 innocent Haitians were killed by the military in a three year period. Killed because they opposed the military dictatorship. 

Finally President Carter went to Haiti and asked the military leaders to PLEASE leave, allowed them to take their stolen wealth with them and even agreed that the U.S. would rent the house of one of them  for several thousand dollars a month. This doesn’t seem like much of a way to deal with those called murderers by our government.  

Many businesses simply pulled out of Haiti and do not plan to return. We had to secure production elsewhere but now that Haiti is open again we are producing there.   

It is of interest that Aristide was restored as President in 1995 and finished out his term. Now out of office, this former priest has married. On a recent trip to Haiti I was shown the location of the million dollar estate he built and now occupies just outside Port Au Prince.    

One of the places where we established production was Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon. Our first contact with the Perera family was with Sooriya, the oldest son. Sooriya attended college in Texas and was seeking ways to develop business in the U.S.  Sooriya sought us out but we felt that Sri Lanka workers would have difficulty producing for the America market. Their skills were acceptable but things like their sense of color would, we felt, be difficult to change. 

Increasing production problems in Haiti caused us to give more thought to working with Sooriya. When he approached us the second time, we decided we had better give him a try. We sent samples to Sri Lanka. When enough time had passed for production to be under way Julia and I headed for Sri Lanka. Our routing was Tokyo, Singapore and then Colombo. Our return was Singapore, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo and home.  

I was delighted by the prospect of a visit to Sri Lanka. I had been to Japan and The Philippines but felt that Sri Lanka and the other places we would visit would be an introduction to a different culture. We were not disappointed. 

The Perera family numbers five. Gerry the father, the mother, Yamuna a daughter, Nilantha a son and Sooriya … beautiful, intelligent people given to hospitality. Mrs. Perera is one who prepares delicious food for her guests and sets a most attractive table. Each time we have had a meal in their home she served ten or twelve different dishes. Each one seemed better than the one just tasted. Mrs. Perera knows just how to season food and was considerate of us and our lack of exposure to really hot and spicy foods.   

We stayed this first trip in an older but very nice hotel. The hotel and the town in which it is located have the same name, Mount Livinia. The town is actually a part of Colombo. I suppose the city and town have grown together over the years. By now the traffic is heavy between the two and well beyond in every direction.  The hotel is on the Indian Ocean and has nice lawns, palm trees and a riot of flowers. 

The British influence can still be seen in the public buildings and many of the homes and in the hotel practice of serving certain foods in certain places and at certain times of the day. For example, in the morning coffee was not offered at the bar overlooking the swimming pool and the beach. Instead, we were told we must go to the far end of the hotel, quite a distance, where breakfast was served and there we could have a coffee. This wasn’t what we wanted. 

In the morning, first thing, we wanted a coffee, the newspaper and the faxes that had come in overnight from my son, Tom. In the faxes he gave us business, family and U.S. news. When on the other side of the world a little news from home is a great treat. 

After our coffee we then wanted to go to the breakfast room where a great breakfast was served … and more coffee. A cook was on hand to prepare eggs to order and every kind of fruit imaginable was offered along with all the other breakfast foods. After we explained our wishes a couple of times the food manager agreed to our time for coffee, the papers and faxes before breakfast.  

Our days in Sri Lanka were busy as we moved from one production site to another, checking on quality and insuring that colors used in painting were not the bright and beautiful but tropical colors found in Sri Lanka.   

We enjoyed our drive to Kandy in the mountains and home to the famed temple that holds the Buddha’s tooth. And we had an interesting drive to the south and the former Dutch settlement of Galle. This settlement goes back about three hundred years and is the location of a hotel that occupies what was once a Dutch Barracks. The hotel and the town are good examples of the easy going, laid back life.   

On our return we stopped for two days in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I had not known before that Malaysia had such a high concentration of Muslims. A number of public buildings, graceful and beautiful, are in the Muslim style and, at night, are lighted like a fairy land. The country is in the midst of an economic explosion, Kuala Lumpur is a vibrant, vital and crowded but clean and orderly city with attractive people with money to spend and shops ready to accommodate them. 

I have never seen such traffic as that in Bangkok! And pollution that can not be imagined, but must be experienced. Even so, as I write, I realize that it was not as bad as that we encountered later on in Agra, India. 

Agra is the site of the Taj Mahal. We had a driver take us from Delhi to Agra on the two lane highway connecting the two. There was pollution on the highway, the result of heavy trucks belching smoke, small motorcycles made into three wheel taxis with the driver straddling his seat and two passengers in a seat behind him and cars of all sorts. Mixed into the motor vehicle traffic were carts, two wheel and four wheel, pulled by cows, water buffalo and camels. And we saw elephants with loads on their backs walking the roadside. A mad house!   

But it was worse in Agra. Our contact in Delhi, a potential source of production for us, arranged for his driver to take us to Agra. The traffic seemed to zero in on Agra as its final destination and the pollution seemed to have selected Agra as the place to settle. The air we breathed burned our eyes and nostrils.   

Our man in Delhi had selected a hotel for us in Agra. Julia, usually a most agreeable traveler, took one look and one smell and refused to stay in the hotel. Sheraton has a beautiful and expensive hotel in Agra. We had a magazine that quoted a good rate at the Sheraton but registration told us it was a mistake, that we could not have the rate. Mark, my grandson, is a good negotiator. He insisted that the manager come out from his office and talk to us but he would not. Mark made it clear we were not leaving the lobby until we got the rate, telling the man at the desk he was going into the manager’s office if he did not come out. The man went to the office, came back and said we could have the rate.   I don’t think it had anything to do with it but I could have hurt the manager if I had fallen on him and Mark is six feet four and could easily be mistaken for a professional boxer or such. Anyway we got the room at the price we had seen in the magazine.  

But for a truth the blue of the pollution was visible in the hotel and still got to our eyes and nostrils until we got to our rooms. I found it remarkable that this fine hotel, like so many others, had its own resident astrologer with his sign out indicating his office hours. 

We enjoyed our visit to Agra and especially to the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort. We also enjoyed a boat ride through shallow waters of a bird sanctuary where we saw deer, wild boar and other animals in addition to hundreds of storks and other birds. In Agra we crossed the most crowded bridge I have seen. The bridge was high above the river, maybe as much as 100 feet. Down below there was a commercial laundry operating along the river, not in buildings, and close by a great number of water buffalo resting and taking the water before going back to work. 

The bridge had two decks. The lower was for trains that were crossing, almost one after another. As each train came onto the bridge the effect, a readily felt shaking, was obvious.   The top deck was for everything but trains, pedestrians, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, animals being led, animals … camels, water buffalo, horses, donkeys, elephants … pulling wagons and carts and there were motorized busses. There was no order to this traffic. We finally got across. When we did we passed a series of low buildings where scores of monkeys were scampering about. 

On our return as we crossed the bridge back into the city we saw that the bridge traffic emptied into a street that was also receiving traffic from two other streets. Again a long delay before we got through.   

Back to Bangkok, the Chad Phraya River was perhaps our most amazing sight in Bangkok. We took the local ferry … just like a bus, with the boat pulling up to docks every two hundred yards or so and hardly stopping as people jumped off and on. These ferry boats operate much like the ones on the Grand Canal in Venice but much faster and they allow little time for the passengers to board or get off. In fact it seems that they hardly stop before they are off again.

We also took the fast boats, powered by a large car type engine with the propeller at the end of a drive shaft that extended at least eight feet to the rear of the boat. This enabled the pilot to raise the propeller to avoid objects in the water. These boats were the taxis taking passengers to the destination of their choice.   

The river was lined with the dwellings of people who made their homes on the banks and hundreds of boats cruised the river offering all kinds of fruits, vegetables, fish, fowl and meat for sale. The congestion on Bangkok streets is worse, but river traffic runs it a good race.   

We enjoyed seeing the temples with their remarkable and, to us, ornate spires of every shape and color. The Thai people seem to be quiet, easy going and peaceful but at the same time the city is a busy, almost hectic, frenzied metropolis and the nation is moving aggressively ahead in many industries and types of businesses. 

It was fun driving by the King’s Palace and seeing his elephants in the pasture provided for them right in the city. We went to visit the world’s largest teak wood house, once the summer home of the king. Three stories tall, with furnishings much as they were when it was built. We were surprised by the number of western leaders who had visited the King at this palace, so-called royalty from Europe and Presidents and others from the U.S. and other countries.   

On a beautiful fall day in 1992 I left home to meet grandson Mark in New York to start a trip to Eastern Europe. On the way to New York I sat by Cary Dean, a businessman from Atlanta. I told Cary I was flying first class using frequent flyer miles but that Mark was flying coach. Cary gave me some upgrades with the thought that Mark might be able to use them. I’ll never know how but Mark used them not only to go business class to Europe but all the way back to Los Angeles in first class. 

We flew to Frankfurt then took a train to Nuremberg for a good German lunch of wienerscnitzel and pork with sauerkraut and then a train to Prague.   

My first visit to Prague was in the mid 70s when communism ruled. What a difference now that this lovely city is free and fast returning to the lively days of old. We had a good three days in Prague including lunch with old time friends, the Cizkousky family and then headed for Tallin, Estonia via Helsinki by air and then by ship to Tallin. Our friend Valerie met us at the port in Tallin, drove us to our hotel and later to Riga and Vilnius, the capitals of Latvia and Lithuanian, and on to Belarus.   

I have experienced cold weather in Alaska and while on a winter holiday in Quebec City, Canada and another at Chateau Montebello near Ottawa, Canada and in January in England where we experienced being chilled to the bone. But never have I known such cold as we encountered in Vilnius! When we arrived we found that a squabble between Lithuania and Russia had resulted in Russia shutting off gas supplies to the former satellite. There was nothing to heat with in Vilnius.

We found a nice hotel and were given a 50% discount because there would be no heat. But the cold in Vilnius was the worst. I slept in my pajamas and jacket and pulled all the cover and my top coat over me. It wasn’t so bad as long as I didn’t move and disturb the pocket of warmth I had created around me but turning over was agony and going to the toilet was even worse.   

Back in Tallin we were ready to head for Moscow. Our friend said he would purchase our sleeping car tickets for us because he could pay in rubles with the result that our overnight trip in a nice bedroom coach cost us less than $10.00 each. 

Friends of Alec Steen, a friend in Nottingham, England, met us in Moscow and took us to their rather large and nice apartment in a pleasant part of the city. The husband works for an Irish company based in Kiev, Ukraine and receives his pay in western currency so they are far better off than those Russians paid in rubles. 

After lunch they took us to our hotel, the Ukraine, a massive 1500 room building typical of those put up during Stalin’s days in power. An ugly place outside but with very nice and large rooms inside. When we checked in the lobby seemed to be a center for every kind of underworld activity. Because our Russian friend was with us we were able to get registered quickly and approved for entry through the lobby on to the elevators and up to our room.    

We found that every floor had a security desk where the woman at the desk keeps her eye on everything going on. We had to leave our key with her when going out and we feel she checked our room regularly. Our hotel was on the bank of the Moscow River opposite the Russian White House where Yeltsin stormed the building with tanks as he took over from Gorbachev. We would walk across the bridge spanning the river, turn right and head into the city. 

We especially enjoyed the Kremlin area, especially the onion doom churches that are part of the square, and the Bolshoi Ballet. We secured tickets on the street for about $8.00 US. The performance was tremendous but barely exceeded the beauty of the theater. We tried to eat at the Moscow McDonalds but found the line waiting to get in was three blocks long. 

We settled for the Pizza Hut where at the line outside at the take out-window we could buy at low prices using rubles. We went inside because we didn’t have time to wait out the long line outside. 

This was followed by a great dinner at the Metropole Hotel. We could afford the expensive dinner but not the $350.00 and up room rates. We had been told about a Georgian restaurant where the food was great. The owners and most of the customers were from the Republic of Georgia, a boisterous and wild sort of people we were told. The food was good and plentiful and inexpensive but we had a bottle of wine and found it was more expensive than the food. We didn’t have enough rubles to pay so the owners said we would have to pay the tourist price with dollars thus increasing the cost by about a ten multiple. 

What to do? The owner was beginning to threaten when a man from South Africa walked up, asked the problem and said he would pay the bill. He was highly insulted when we wanted to reimburse him with dollars. So we thanked him, let him pay and left.  

From Moscow we took another overnight train to Kiev in Ukraine. I greatly enjoyed the train ride along the Dnepr River as we approached Kiev. The trees along the river were in full color and the view of the farm land across the river was inviting. In Kiev we had Chicken Kiev three of the days we were there and to my surprise while I was buying a newspaper in one of the hotels a young lady asked if I was from the U.S. As we talked I learned she was a missionary in Ukraine and had gone to school with the daughter of a family in our church fellowship.

Still following our noses we decided to head for Odessa, a port city established in 1794 by order of Queen Catherine. With St. Petersburg it was to serve as a window on the west. Trade developed rapidly and Odessa became a cultural center known for its theatre and opera and ballet throughout Europe. 

The writer A. Pushkin lived in Odessa in the early 1800s and wrote “Eugene Onegin” while there.

Great wealth accounted for the grand appearing two-story mansions with forecourts, wrought iron grills and porticos indicating he entrances.

As we left Odessa bound for Istanbul, our way led from the city level down what I learned were the Potemkin Stairs. I was glad our way was down not up the stairs. There are 192 stair steps arranged in ten flights and flanked by a 6 foot wide parapet. The grandeur of the stairs is enhanced by the top stairs being 30 feet wide and gradually increasing to 60 feet wide at the bottom. The stairs led to the harbor area where we were to board ship for the overnight trip to Istanbul. 

My grandson Mark Congdon who writes under the name Mark Bamford for TV and movies and has now, along with wife Suzanne, written, produced and directed two movies, one a short movie and the second a full length movie. I think he has our departure from Odessa in mind for a future movie, a comedy. 

We had visas for entry into the USSR but had not bothered to use them since we were not asked for them on entry from Tallin into the USSR nor when entering what was then The Ukraine, now Ukraine. However when we went through customs prior to boarding ship the authorities wanted to see our entry visa for The Ukraine … we didn’t have one. 

Our major concern was that I had taken $10,000.00 in cash just in case some sort of profitable business deal materialized. To stay within banking laws I carried $7000.00 hidden away and Mark carried $2500.00 hidden away in his clothing and $500.00 in his pocket for day by day expenses.

We were told we must have an exit visa but there was no agent at the custom office to issue you one. They would send for one but we feared he would not arrive in time for our departure. As we waited the customs people began to ask questions including how much foreign currency do you have.

It had been a cool and rainy day. Both Mark and I were wet and bedraggled and tired because in our short time in Odessa we tried to take in the whole city. 

Mark indicated he would do the talking since he knew a word or two of Russian. But the agent turned to me and asked how much money I was carrying. Mark said, “Pop, look dumb!”

That wasn’t very hard to do. Somehow, Mark got it across that I was his pitiful old grandfather and didn’t know much, that he was along to take care of me. I could tell he was enjoying that part of it. 

Meanwhile the customs agent had arrived and was ready for us. The men questioning us then told Mark to put his money on the table. He took the $300 still in his pockets and laid it on the table. I don’t think they had ever seen so many greenbacks and were duly impressed.

By now the custom agent was hurrying us so the men returned the money to Mark and allowed us to get our visa and board ship. However the visas were $50 and we only had hundreds and two twenties. I tried to settle with the custom agent for the two twenties but he refused. We finally made a deal. We would leave $100 with him, go on board, get change and come back. Pay him the $50 and retrieve the hundred. We wondered if we would ever see him again.

On board Mark had to go to the Captain’s office to get change and permission to leave the ship. But first the Captain insisted that he knew Mark from somewhere and must have a visit and drink with him. The Captain also called in his First Mate for a drink and said, “You remember Mark, our friend.” 

Obviously the Captain had already had too many drinks but he did finally tell the First Mate to take care of the money changing for his friend Mark and anything else his good friend needed including leaving the ship to retrieve our $50.

And we departed for Turkey.

What an experience to enter The Bosphorus, the 20 mile long strait which joins the Sea of Marmara with the Black Sea and separates the continents of Europe and Asia. It runs through the center of Istanbul, past several Ottoman palaces, fortresses, forested hills and shore villages with Ottoman architecture.  

I learned that Bosphorus according to Greek legend got its name when Zeus had an affair with a woman named To. Hera his wife learned of the affair and turned To into a cow and created a horsefly to sting her in the rump. To jumped all the way across the strait. Thus bous = cow and pros = crossing place, so Bosphorus = crossing place of the cow.

While still on board ship we passed the Golden Horn, a 7 mile long inlet that separates old and new Istanbul. 

We marveled at the Grand Bazaar, said to be Turkey’s largest covered market with, we were told, 4000 shops … we didn’t count them. But it seemed any item one could imagine was offered for sale. 

The most astonishing site for me was the Yerebatan Sarayi, an underground cistern in the heart of Istanbul. Built in the 6^th century by Justinian to provide water for the city in the event of an attack, it holds over 21 million gallons, measures about 220×440 feet with its brick arches supported by 336 marble columns. No longer in use, it can be visited and walked through on wooden walkways.

Nearby another cistern houses a good restaurant where we enjoyed a meal. Entered from ground level, stairs lead down about 70 feet to the floor level and the restaurant and kitchens. 

In 1993 Julia and I, along with Stephen Kangers, made a trip to Alaska.  We three must have seemed the odd trio, 17 year Stephen, Julia my daughter whose age you must guess and me, a 73 year old codger as grandson Mark calls me. After two summertime visits to Alaska I wanted to see that beautiful state in a colder season. My plan was a December visit but a couple of calls to customers in Alaska indicated it would be too cold to get out and see much at that time. This led to an October 27 departure and a November return.

Steve and I flew from Asheville, Julia from Long Island. We arrived about midnight and found a light blanket of snow had made the evergreen trees into Christmas trees. The street lights and the lights from cars and shops produced a Christmas scene often imagined but seldom seen.

As our days went by we gave them names descriptive of the events and impressions that came to us. Day one was eagle and iceberg day. We drove from Anchorage along Turnagain Bay to Portage Glacier. I believe the names Turnagain Arm and Turnagain Bay came out of Captain Cook’s turning from what is now Cook’s Inlet in the Arm and the Bay and then having to turn around in order to get out. My wife and I once visited Cook’s home town on the east coast of England and thought about the journeys he made from that tiny place and in those small ships.

Down a side road that leads to the glacier we saw several eagles, one a majestic beauty that flew just a few feet above our car as we stood outside looking up. Seeing eagles in TV nature programs gives no indication of the tremendous size of these birds. Later as we drove toward Exit Glacier near Seward we saw so many eagles we lost count. One in particular held our attention as, standing on a limb, he held a small animal or a fish under his claws. He didn’t seem to notice or care that we were watching him. 

At Portage we had a good view of the glacier and the icebergs that fell off, calving I believe it is called, and floated in the lake below. 

On the way in we had noticed a moose as it walked across the road in front of us, entered and walked across a stream, turned to look at us, nibbled a bit of grass and walked into the woods. Farther along we saw an enormous bull moose and a cow. We sat for a good while watching the two magnificent creatures.

From Portage we drove the 100 miles or so to Seward where we had lunch that included fresh Prince William Sound oysters, seafood chowder and a crab meat sandwich. The seafood in Alaska coming from crystal clear water and always fresh, is surely among the world’s best. 

It is difficult to describe or properly convey the wilderness aspect of Alaska and the size of the place, so large it could easily be a country given its size. With well under a million people and perhaps half of them in Anchorage it is sparsely settled. The state seems empty of people but full of beauty in the form of mountains including Mt. McKinley, standing over 20,000 feet high, and the Alaska range that runs at least 30 miles down the center of the state. In November this range was one snow covered peak after another. In between ranges are valleys filled with glacier fed rivers and wetlands. The result is a feeling of being overwhelmed by the beauty and the magnitude of the place.

From Seward we drove to Exit Glacier, parked and walked the half mile to the base of the glacier. We were able to look into many of the cave-like openings of the glacier and were dazzled by the many shades of blue reflected by the sun shining into these openings. The glacier reached from where we stood up the mountain as far as we could see and then, according to our map, continued on for thirty or forty miles as the Harden Ice Field. On the walk out we saw moose tracks in the snow and other tracks we couldn’t identify. 

From Exit Glacier we drove to Cooper Landing, a place with a handful of stores, motels and the Kenai Princess Lodge. The lodge includes the lobby building and restaurant and a number of cottages all made of logs and each cottage has its own wood burning fireplace. Steve enjoyed the outdoor hot tub while looking out at the snow covered mountains. After a nice meal and coffee by the lobby’s stone fireplace we were ready for the good night’s rest that followed. 

Day two was moose day. We had seen three moose the day before, but this day we saw a total of 16! Near Sterling we came across a mother and her young grazing in a field near the highway just a few yards from us. I should explain that a young moose is not a small creature. I suppose the ones we saw were born the previous spring making them about seven months old. Even these were larger than most full grown deer I have seen. We were amazed as the young moose got down on his front knees in order to reach the grass more easily. Continuing on we wanted to see the small Russian community of Ninilchik that had been settled in the late 1800s, and we wanted to see the nearby frame church built by the community about 1900. Ninilchik has just a few houses, one or two stores and a bar. There are three buildings that go back to the late 1800s, built of logs and having the look of villages we saw when we were in Russia. From the village we made a wrong turn and ended up on a little road that got so rough we had to stop after about 100 feet. We walked another 75 feet hoping to see the church but instead came upon a moose cow and her young. The moose were startled and so were we. We looked at the moose and they looked at us as we took pictures. 

After we left Cooper Landing our next stop was the town of Kenai on the Cook Inlet. From Kenai we could see across the Inlet to the snow covered and volcanic mountains on the other side. The road onward follows along Cook Inlet with wonderful views including whales when the tide is in.

At Anchor Point we could see Homer and across the Kachemak Bay the town of Seldovia and the snow covered mountains with glaciers reaching down the sides to the water. To the west was the Bering Sea and beyond that the Pacific. Homer is a most interesting town and once the site of coal mining. A company from England first mined he coal, shipping it eight miles by rail to Homer and then by boat to the once flourishing mining towns of Hope and Sunshine that were located on Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet. It was the next day that we lost Hope. No, we didn’t give up. We just couldn’t find the deserted town of Hope. We finally found it but never did find Sunshine.

Homer is known as the halibut capital of the world and, like many places in Alaska, offers excellent seafood of every kind. Homer is also the sight of what is called the world’s longest natural spit. No, the folks are not great at expectorating. The spit, about 8 miles long and wide enough for shops and such to line each side of the street at its center, is a narrow strip of land extending out into Kachemak Bay. The ferry terminal and the Lands End Hotel where we ate are located near the end of the spit. 

As we drove around Homer we would stop to watch sea otters catching their lunch and then floating on their backs while eating. We were told that otters have a favorite rock that they rest on their stomachs and use to crack the shellfish they eat.

Driving north from Homer we saw three moose on the side of the road. We stopped of course. As we watched they crossed the road and meandered into the woods on the other side of the road. We were concerned they might be hit by a car, especially the two young ones, for they seemed intent on nothing more than following their mother. We were relieved that drivers slowed for the moose and blew their horns.

Just beyond Sterling toward Cooper landing we saw two young moose to our left. When we noticed that they kept looking toward a clearing that was only partially in our view we backed up to get a better view. Sure enough, once we had a clear view we saw the mother and a male munching away.

Back at Cooper Landing we had dinner at the Princess Hotel and a good night’s rest.

Day three was Dall Sheep Day. As we drove toward Anchorage we saw three or four people outside their car and looking out over Turnagain Arm. We stopped and found they were just enjoying the view but Steve, our eagle-eyed one, spotted an eagle sitting at the very top of an evergreen tree. We had such a good view and the setting was perfection. The tree was a beautiful specimen, the water reflected the sun, across the water were snow covered mountains and surveying it all as though it were his private domain was Mr. Eagle. Julia exclaimed, “This is quintessential Alaska.”

The people outside the car told us they had seen Dall sheep up the road so we moved on. A few miles up the road we saw, on a high hill above the road, 8 or 10 sheep. They were right on the edge of the cliff and one ram seemed to be showing off, walking as near the edge as possible … any farther and over the side he would have gone. We had to view these with binoculars, but just around a curve we came upon a mother and a young one. These were so near we could see them in detail without binoculars. Then a little farther on we saw several more and finally there was one real beauty relaxing on a ledge just above where we stood. Ignoring us he went right, looking south over Turnagain Arm, causing us to wonder if he was disputing the eagle’s claim to all he saw.

The rest of the day took us through Palmer where we visited one of our customers, then along the Glenn Highway and through some of  Alaska’s wildest mountains and valleys with a view of the Chugach Mountains and the enormous glacier that can be seen for miles. We encountered snow on this road and wondered if we wold make it through. On to Glennallen and a turn south to Valdez, the terminus of the Alaska pipeline. This drive took us alongside the Wrangell Mountain Range that was to our left. Beyond these mountains lay the Yukon Territory of Canada. The snow really settled in as dark approached and we neared Thompson Pass. We made it over the pass and just beyond encountered a small avalanche that had covered the northbound side of the road. We made it into Valdez a bit excited as a result of having caught glimpses in the fading light of evening of three beautiful waterfalls. We anticipated seeing these the next day as we headed out for Fairbanks. In Valdez we checked into the Westmark Hotel, had more Alaska Seafood for dinner and went to bed tired but with minds filled with thoughts of the wonderful day we had experienced. 

Day four started as sleep late day but ended up as seal and otter day. Rain and snow were forecast. A look out the window confirmed the report, but things had gone so well the previous day we were able to start out with a spirit of optimism. At the boat terminal we walked out on the dock and saw a number of otters out in the water of Prince William Sound. Then right at our feet, in the water at the edge of the dock, we saw an otter on his back and, by all appearances, greatly enjoying his shellfish meal. We could hear the crunch as he chomped down on his meal. 

We had heard about an eagle that claimed a tree in the center of Valdez as his own. We were told that he would perch at the top of he tree and watch for small animals to come in sight and then swoop down to capture his meal. Sure enough, as we drove though town we saw him occupying his lofty perch and waiting patiently for his meal to appear.

On the way out of town we had waterfalls near the road on our right and a body of water on the left where a number of otters were playing. Near the water’s edge were two seals, their heads above the water and apparently looking us over. We looked back. They would dive and then upon surfacing check to see if we were still looking. They didn’t grin but we did.

So day four was seal and otter day but in reality these had to share billing with eagles and moose. On the way out of Valdez and back across Thompson Pass on our way to Fairbanks we began to see eagles alongside a small stream. More were on rocks in the stream and on stumps and in trees by the stream. We began to count but soon gave up after seeing three together in one tree, then four and even more in the same tree. They must have finished their meal of fresh salmon for they seemed to be preening and drying out their feathers.

Down the north side of Thompson Pass we came upon Mountain View Lodge offering rooms and meals. We managed to drive into the parking area over deep, rutted and frozen snow and walked into the lodge. It was a trailer (mobile home) that had been roofed over and had extensions added at odd points around it and a 55 gallon metal drum made into a stove to heat it. 

We had coffee served by the woman owner, a woman Steve and I agreed we would not want to tangle with. I bet she could whip a bear. At least she looked and talked like she could. Tough as nails she seemed, but in her way very nice and friendly. But she didn’t like it when hawks began flying in near her chickens that somehow survived the cold outside the trailer. The woman ran out of the trailer, grabbed a stick and went after the hawks. She told us they had moose that often came calling and a pack of wolves that lived just behind the trailer.

Paxson is on the way from Valdez to Fairbanks, really just a junction where the road from Denali ends at the road to Fairbanks, but there is a nice restaurant with motel rooms upstairs. We had hot soup and good bread and thought about stopping for the night, especially since we had seen a car stuck in the snow just outside the restaurant. But, as Steve said, we decided to mush on.

We were glad we did. Just beyond Paxson we saw a magnificent bull moose just off the road to our left, not more than fifty feet away. He had a tremendous rack and snow was beginning to stick to it as he stood looking at us and we at him. He was a beauty. Then we heard a sound and a rush of hooves as another moose, a cow, came into sight. We hadn’t realized it, but beyond the piled up snow along the side of the road  the bank went straight down. There out of our sight the cow must have been eating. She was just fifteen or so feet below us. We were excited at seeing her so close and she must have been excited, too, as she ran up beside the bull. What an experience! A few miles farther on we saw two more moose before darkness set in.

On we went through North Pole, Alaska, Delta Junction and its big military base and past the northern most Hardees Restaurant into Fairbanks.

Day five was hot tub day. Julia had found out about Chena Hot Springs and the lodge located there. We drove the 56 miles from Fairbanks to Chena where the road ends. To the east is Yukon Territory and the part of Canada that leads to the Artic Circle and the North Pole. To the south from Fairbanks is the road to Anchorage, to the west the 500 or so miles of wilderness without roads to the Bering Sea and beyond to Russia. To the north there are no roads, just open land up to the Artic Ocean. We had no trouble sensing the isolation of Chena.

No question, we were comfortable and secure in our warm rooms, the heated swimming pool, the hot tubs, the big fireplace in the lodge and a good restaurant. We were in the middle of nowhere well aware it is now nothing like it was in 1905 when Chena was discovered. 

I haven’t watched it, but Julia and Steve told me the TV program Northern Exposure is set in Alaska and attempts to portray the people of Alaska, especially those in the bush, as being the sort who like to sit and talk and chew and smoke and so. Well, the housekeeper came by one evening after we had dinner, sat down on the hearth of the fireplace and started talking to Julia and me. It really wasn’t a conversation. The woman just volunteered her life story and showed no desire to be interrupted. From her living in the bush she had stories to tell. Once she ran out of tobacco and money. I don’t think she minded being out of money but being out of tobacco could not be tolerated.  She told us she went out, trapped animals and prepared the furs, and once they were ready for sale she took the next bush plane to a town. She traded the furs for fifty pounds of tobacco and some cash, bought a pipe and headed home to the bush. Oh she talked! Before we headed to our rooms she told us she didn’t like Northern Exposure because it depicted Alaskans sitting around talking. 

Our waitress at the lodge was not so much a character as a case. A case of what I am not sure. Maybe you will know. We asked her about the Northern Lights that are sometimes visible from Chena. Did we get a discourse on Northern Lights! It seems there is indication that the first people to settle what became Alaska attached spiritual significance to the Aurora Borealis. If this is true our waitress must have been influenced by the early arrivals. 

It was after dinner and the waitress, off duty, had settled down comfortably to talk to us. She told us the Lights like to be talked to and sung to. Steve was told that he might arouse the Lights and get them to show themselves if would go out into the night and sing and dance for them. He didn’t, but she said this had worked for her when the Lights seemed to be reluctant to show themselves. One night the Lights had formed a circle around her, according to her story. This was a bad sign but she didn’t tell us how she was able to ward it off and we didn’t ask. She told us she also talked to the moose. The moose had a made a trail through the lodge grounds as they moved about seeking food. A ditch had been dug one day resulting in a pile of dirt left in the path of the moose trail. The waitress knew what to do. She said,  “I went out and told the moose to follow me and I’ll take you around the dirt and we’ll make a new trail for you.” After a bit of hesitation she said the moose followed right after her.

The housekeeper and the waitress   …we don’t know if there are more like them in Alaska.

There were just few Americans at the lodge. Most of the guests were Japanese and German. I had a nice conversation with two ladies from Hanover, Germany where I have visited but couldn’t communicate with the Japanese.

Steve tried out cross country skiing. We all enjoyed a nice walk before an excellent dinner in the warmth of the lodge.

Day six was Great One Day. No, not Gleason or Gretzke. We were hoping for day six to be bright, clear and sunny but the day started out overcast and with a bit of snow. We were concerned because we hoped to see Mt. McKinley, North America’s highest at well over 20,000 feet. The natives call it Denali, meaning the Great One.

The Alaska Range, running for about 30 miles on the way south, is made of up one snow covered peak after another all looking down on the beautiful valley below. As the morning passed the day began to clear and by the time we reached McKinley we could see it from ground level to the very top! 

I had once seen McKinley from about 10,000 up to the top as our pilot flew twice around it so we passengers could get a good view but below 10,000 feet clouds hid everything from view.

On to Anchorage, Coho salmon and Alaskan Crab Legs for dinner. A night’s sleep and departure for home.

Throughout the trip we started each day with a reading from Psalms and Proverbs and a time of prayer. We believe the Lord was with us, that we had His protection and guidance. I remember that Bert Starnes, about 20 years my senior and now with the Lord, reminded us it was the Lord who told the ravens to feed His prophet and it was surely the Lord that spoke to the fish that came and overloaded the disciples net when they could catch nothing the night before. And, Bert said, it must have been the Lord who told the fish to turn up at the right time with the money in its mouth that Peter needed to pay his tax. So, it wouldn’t surprise us to learn that the Lord turned up the eagles, moose, otters and seals we so enjoyed seeing.

A good trip and good to be home again with family, fellow believers and friends. You just can’t beat home.

My earlier mention of Agra, India came out of a trip Julia, Mark and I made to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka in 1993. This was after my son, Tom, had become interested in the work of Nepal Leprosy Trust, Kathmandu, Nepal. This led to my visit there with grandson Mark and daughter Julia. Before going to Nepal we had spent a few days on business in India. On the way to the airport for departure to Nepal, Mark left our ongoing tickets from Nepal in our taxi!  Julia and I prayed. It just isn’t possible to find airline tickets that were left in Indian taxi!  But we did. 

It seems that taxis are often attached or assigned to a hotel.  Mark called the hotel we had just left. He learned that the driver had turned in the tickets in the hopes of a reward. Arrangements were made to reward the driver, have the tickets delivered to the airport and sent on to us in Nepal. A great relief when they came.  

We have had the opportunity to get to know Eileen Lodge, the founder of NLT, and Patrick Lynch, who succeeded Eileen as Director, and Patrick’s family. Nepal, closed so long to the outside world and now home to many Tibetan refugees, but feeling inroads of the present, is really a study in contrasts. It is a poor but beautiful country.   

1993 added to the business difficulties we were already experiencing as a result of the sanctions and finally the embargo against Haiti. 

First, in January of 1993 an employee who had been dismissed for what we considered good cause filed charges against one of our managers for sexual harassment and against another for religious discrimination as the cause for dismissal. Shortly thereafter a second employee, also dismissed for what we considered good cause, filed sexual harassment charges against the same manager. Then a third employee, also dismissed as were the others, filed charges for age discrimination. This employee was less than forty-five years of age. Finally, a fourth employee who agreed it was best to end her employment with us then filed charges for gender discrimination. 

We felt that these charges filed against us presented a major threat to the company, not because our managers were guilty but because of what we felt was the prevailing environment at that time.  We brought in outside attorneys to investigate the matter. They concluded that our managers were not guilty just as we had. We were not at all sure, based on what we were seeing in similar situations, that the agency of our government handling the matter would be impartial. To state it clearly, we didn’t feel safe in the hands of our own government. Sad, isn’t it?   

The employees bringing the charges that had not been in any way substantiated were represented and supported by an agency of our government at no expense to themselves. We, the employer that had done nothing wrong, had to employ an attorney and pay dearly to defend ourselves against charges that we knew were groundless, charges that had not been proved. Instead of what Americans understand to be their constitutional right we were not considered innocent until proved guilty. We were told of the charges and in effect told to prove they were not true. In other words, it was said that you are guilty, now prove you are not.   

We were not put in this position by individuals claiming we had wronged them. Nor were they paying to press their charges. It was our government and its employees doing this, employees paid by the government in part with our money (tax money). 

When the first charge was made we asked the people in our church to pray for us and we asked friends in the U.S., India and England to pray for us. We really felt that we had to have a lawyer but that the Lord was our real and only defense.   

In February, 1993, after the first two charges had been filed against us, Tom, my son, and I asked five men of our church to remain after the Sunday morning meeting and pray for us. As they prayed for us we felt they had touched the Lord on our behalf, that the Lord had taken up the matter and would keep us from harm in the situation. 

There were times when our confidence wavered, when fear and anxiety would take over, but somehow our faith, strengthened by the Lord of course, held and on December 9, 1994 almost two years after the first charge was filed against us, we were completely cleared of all charges. Praise the Lord! 

I have mentioned that Lenward Wiggins is a long time friend and travel companion. In 1994 we decided it was time for a visit to South America. We had been to Argentina, Paraguay and the marvelous Iguazu Falls in Brazil but now felt it was time to see Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia. 

As Lenward and I were headed back toward the U.S. after our visit to Chile we stopped in Asuncion, Paraguay for a look around the city and a drive into the country side. We did not find this stop to be one of great interest to us. 

Bolivia was different. And a great bit of news reached me in La Paz, Bolivia. At that time my youngest grandson, Eric Donald Congdon, was living in Oakland, California. I stay in touch with our office when I am travelling. Eric had left word for me to call him. I did and heard him say, “Pop, you are going to be a great grandfather! And I am! Lydia Brynn Congdon was born to Eric and Marian October 30, 1994. 

Now Eric is with our business, Mills River Industries, and they live in Hendersonville. Emily Ruth Congdon was born January 7, 1996 after they moved here.  

We have known Jonathan Souray and his family in England for some time. Jonathan and I decided it would be in the Lord’s purpose if I visited him and while there witnessed to his father, Richard. So, I decided to go to England. Then Julia and I thought it would be good if we went to Paris on the way to England. We wanted to check out the Paris Gift Show. At the Gift Show we saw a booth with products that looked, to Julia, like those produced by Lionel Pressoir in Haiti.

Some years ago Mr. Pressoir had done production for us and this led to a good relationship and an ongoing friendship. We walked over to the booth and there was Mr. Pressoir. The result of this meeting was that we agreed to meet in Haiti in April, 1995 and explore the possibility of again working together. Now, in October, 1996 we have been together for well over a year with pleasant results for both parties. 

Among the side benefits of working with Mr. Pressoir are invitations for dinner in his home. He is an excellent cook. He has a home in Port Au Prince, a real Gingerbread beauty, and another near Kenscoff on the mountain overlooking Port Au Prince. In both homes the food is outstanding.  

From Paris I went to London and on to visit Mr. Souray, Jonathan’s father. We seemed to hit it off very well. We were born the same year and had a lot of similar experiences in WW II, and we both had interesting visits, at different times, to Sri Lanka. I stayed overnight in his home and had an excellent opportunity to share with him my experience with Jesus. Jonathan and I feel that Richard came to the Lord during the visit or shortly after. I am glad I followed Jonathan’s impression and mine to visit Richard because he died about a month after I was there. 

Thus ends my eighty years here on earth and the beginning of another decade. How fortunate I have been to be born a citizen of the United States and what a debt I owe those who were used to establish and to sustain our nation. And how grateful I am for parents who introduced me to Jesus Christ and for Jesus who made the way for me into the family of God.

Amen!