Getting Here Part XI: You Got to get Down to get Up

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.

Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins. James 5: 13-20 (NIV)

I stood by the bed saying words I would never have expected to say.

"Maybe we should give church a try again."

I expected an argument and a rejection. Religion was the past long gone.

"Where," she asked in a whisper.
"I don't know? How about that new church down the road?"

Just a few weeks ago this new church opened on the Balckwood-Clementon Road, down the hill from us and just a bit from our street. I knew nothing about it not even which denomination. It looked like many Protestant Churches, steeple on top, big cross on the front.

"Okay," she said.

What was left at this point. We had talked in the hospital and it seemed decided she would have her tubes tied while there. This was the end of the road for that dream, that persistent hope of hers to have a child of our own. I had given that hope up five years ago. Where do you go when you wake up from your dreams and find they are all nightmares?

She had wanted children and a home of her own. This didn't appear to be on the menu of our life. Children were officially an impossibility and although I had a descent job, we had not put anything away in the bank. Remember, we were going to have fun and worry about that later when we got old. 

I wasn't even writing much anymore. My last published paid article was in "Animal Lover's Magazine" a year ago. I had been promoted so-to-speak at Welded Tube. I say so-to-speak because I was still Assistant Controller, but Computer Systems Manager had been added to my duties. Between my added responsibilities, which had me on-call 24/7, and our party-hardy lifestyle there wasn't time to squeeze in any writing.

There was nowhere to go from where we were. Lois was in the deep doldrums of depression and I just didn't have any enthusiasm for anything anymore. Where was any help for us? More sex and more drink, was that the escape from misery? Most my life I was confident in myself to overcome any adversity. I was a loner, who constantly plotted my own course in life. Now I felt like a captain of a boat lost at sea in high waves, a think fog with a broken rudder and a leaky haul. Yeah, it was that bad.

But there was a God. I heard his voice in that baby's heartbeat. I didn't know much about Him, but I felt that maybe church might help in finding out. What was the worse that could happen, more disillusionment? So the next Sunday we went.

We sort of dragged ourselves up the walk that day. I guess we both thought about our past experiences visiting churches, but at the door were a couple of people who smiled and asked us our names. Another man came and handed us a bulletin and led us to a pew halfway down the aisle. It was a compromise. I like to sit down front, Lois prefers the back, so we sat in the middle. Another man came over and introduced himself and welcomed us. No one was glaring at us as if we were interlopers on their private island.

It was then I glanced at the bulletin. At the top was the church name, Laurel Hill Bible Church, which really told me nothing. It was the next line that really caught my eye, "An Independent Fundamentalist Church". 

Whoa, baby, what had I gotten us into? My immediate inclination was to get up and run for the exit, but that would be too embarrassing. We'd just sit and ride it out if somewhat nervously. My idea of a Fundamentalist Church was people rolling down the aisles and kissing snakes. These were going to be a  bunch of Bible-thumping fanatics, brainwashed zombies, pie-in-the-sky freaks.

Although, no one looked very freakish. No one was waving some tract at us. People were just saying good morning and nice to see you and being just plain friendly everyday people.

The Pastor gave a sermon on James 5 that morning. I sat stunned. I sat sweating. I sat feeling he was preaching directly and only to me. I had never felt that way in a church service before in my life. How could this man know so much about me? At the end he gave an alder call, something I learned he always did. No way I was going to walk up to the front. That would have been so humiliating, but when he asked if anyone felt the need for prayer I did raise my shaking hand.

It was on the next September 1975 Tuesday afternoon I went into my little writing den at our apartment. I got down on my knees. I felt like crying. My whole body was quivering. I wasn't certain what to say. When I was 14 and in the Boy Scouts one of my patrol members was also a friend. His name was Jim Dawson and he was pretty religious. He often talked about Jesus during campouts. Once he gave me this card to put in my wallet. It said, "If you were to die tonight where would you be tomorrow?" This was followed by H______. You were supposed to fill in the blank as either Heaven or Hell.  I asked him, "How am I supposed to know that?" I was kind of angry about it.  I told him I thought I was a pretty good guy, so I would hope heaven, but didn't see how you could really know. 

I guess I remembered some of what Jim had said way back then because I stuttered out a pretty disjoined prayer asking God to forgive me and for Jesus to come into my heart.

I'm sure what I said wasn't elegant, but it worked. I knew it the moment I stood up. It would be hard to make someone who hasn't experience it understand how different I felt. I felt lighter. I also soon discovered other changes. Now I wanted to read the Bible. I did still have one about the place. More amazing, when I read it I was understanding it. I knew a lot of the stories, of course, I had been forced to Sunday School and I had seen those Hollywood movies like the Ten Commandments, Samson and Delilah, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba ( oh yeah, that movie was real Scriptural) and King of Kings. Reading the Bible was a struggle with all those thees and thous, begots and begats and other arcane words that I didn't understand. The Bible had been mostly gobbledygook to me. Now it made sense when I read it. I could understand it, not just the surface stories, but the shades of meaning in every verse.

On the next Sunday, humiliating or not, I walked down the aisle at the alder call.

Now some might discount any real miracle here. I don't see it that way. If God could open my eyes to His Word, then he could do anything. I was to find out that was true in the next few years. What God was to do in Lois and my life was impossible. If nothing else, what was to happen is proof positive of the power of faith in Jesus Christ and the mercy of God.

To be continued...

The song, "Help Me" written by Larry Gatlin of the Gatlin Brothers (partial lyrics below) seemed so apropos to where I once was and how I asked that I have shared it here. The little video is Johnny cash singing it and I think cash captured that voice of the desperate man calling out to God better than anyone.

Oh, lord, Help Me walk
Another mile, just one more mile;
I'm tired of walkin' all alone.

And lord, Help Me to smile
Another smile, just one more smile;
Don't think I can do things on my own.

I never thought I needed help before;
Thought that I could get by - by myself.
But now I know I just can't take it any more.
And with a humble heart, on bended knee,
I'm beggin' You please for help.

"Help Me" by Larry Gatlin


This is Johnny Cash singing Larry Gatlin's song "Help Me, which captures the essence of a broken man turning to God. 

Getting Here Part VI: Change is Blowin' in the Wind

1965 was a pivotal year. Time fired change our way with the rapidity of a machine gun. Rat-a-tat-tat, we were hit by another blast. We had lost our house, been threaten and moved in with my father-in-law, an uncomfortable situation. Within the course of those months I was to be drafted, have four separate jobs, something of a nervous breakdown, give up totally on religion and have a dust-up with the powers that ran Upper Darby. Change wasn't just blowin' in the wind, it was a bloomin' hurricane. No wonder we were wondering where in the world we were.

It wasn't long after we moved that President Johnson, near the end of August 1965, ordered the drafting of married men. (I wonder how many marriages that broke up? A number of men had rushed into marriage during the early years of the Vietnam War because marriage gave them a deferment.) Funny how the letter started off with "Greetings" as if it was a Christmas Card. I had to report to 401 North Broad Street for a pre-induction physical. I wasn't thrilled about this. I knew exactly where I would end up and it wasn't a safe place. However, to make a long story short, I suffered from psoriasis. It had appeared in childhood. At this time it was pretty light, but there was one patch on my shoulder and that was enough to get me classified as 1-Y. [Registrant available for military service, but qualified only in case of war or national emergency. Usually given to registrants with medical conditions that were limiting but not disabling (examples: high blood pressure, mild muscular or skeletal injuries or disorders, skin disorders, severe allergies, etc.).] I would have been the rare bird thanking God for a skin disease, except back then I didn't thank God for anything. In fact, around that time I pretty much dismissed God altogether from my life.

Lois and I began looking for a church. Things had obviously went a little south in our lives and suddenly we got interested in religion. But we weren't so much seeking God as a sanctuary from reality. We were looking for a warm and fuzzy place, not a Savior. After all, we were very nice people a bit down on our luck and in need of some commiseration.

We didn't find it. We didn't find anything. We started by visiting a number of "mainstream" churches in the area (Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopalian) and one big Methodist Church, even though we were trying to avoid the denominations of our parents, which were Methodist and Lutheran. These churches were not very welcoming. They were actually rather intimidating. No one spoke to us. Some people even glared at us. Was it my long hair? I don't know, but we distinctly felt unwelcome.

There was a large Roman Catholic Church a few blocks from where we lived then. I began to go there in the morning before work and attend Mass. I bought a book on Catholic beliefs, a Rosary, a miraculous metal. This was what religion should be, I thought, all this ritual and objects to handle. I felt since I was doing something I was earning my way to Heaven. We ( I talked her into it) decided to join the Catholic Church. I knew this would give both our families fits, but by this time I was doing a lot of stuff for just that reason, to gave my family fits.

But the night the Priest was supposed to meet with us to start the process he didn't show up. He stood us up without so much as a phone call.  So that was it for Catholicism. If the Priest doesn't care, why should we?

Our search didn't end here. We just moved a bit further from the religious center. The Unitarians were our next stop. I had no idea what that name meant, but a church was a church to me as long as it claimed to be Christian,  but that requirement ceased with the Unitarians. This was a church in downtown Philadelphia. We attended their service, but this was really a big pep rally for the next protest to be held. We sat on the floor in a big room and talked strategy for our march for civil rights or against the war or to save the earth or to save a rare flea endangered by a highway project, whatever was that particular weeks reason for anger. Now Lois and I were already getting involved in protests we didn't need more. This wasn't what we wanted from a church.

Having believed we had exhausted Christianity at this point, we turned to the Ethical Society. We went to their Sunday morning service. We entered and some music was played as in my old church, a kind of prelude. Some songs were sung at times as well, but none of this music was a hymn. They were Classical pieces. Someone said something corresponding to a prayer, but it was a poem. A text was read, but it was a piece by one of the great philosophers. A sermon was given focused on the greatness of mankind, saying that the problems of the world would eventually be solved by the technological advances made by man. Everything was on the unique quality of humans to do good and save the world, like humans had did such a wonderful job of that so far.

It was all I could do not to laugh. When we left I said it was a joke. If you don't believe in God and think mankind is the end-all and be-all, why are you parodying what could easily be a Methodist service, simply replacing anything that smacks of God with some human produced babble?

There were sudden changes in my work situation during the remainder of 1965 as well. I had been doing quite well and become the supervisor of my unit, but I had grown restless. I had also learned when I first took a job in this unit I had made a tactical error. It was a service division, not a clerical one. I learned from others this was a dead end. There was a stigma against people working in the service divisions and once there it was very difficult to get a position in the clerical areas, but those were the areas where advancement was possible. Of course, I was just eager to make some more money and was getting bored with what I was doing because it had become routine to me. I applied for and got a job as Traffic Control Clerk.

It was a grade level improvement and more money, but it was located in the back of a warehouse at the refining yards. My job was basically handling the paperwork and dispatching the various trucks in and out of the refinery. I was on the job two weeks and I had a breakdown. I am not certain why. Maybe the isolation and dreariness of my office, but more likely I was dealing with men much like my father. At any rate, I came to work one morning and I began to cry and I couldn't stop. Totally embarrassing, especially around the type of men I worked with there. But they didn't make fun of me. They were concerned and the boss sent me home.

I was sure my career at ARCo was done. I was depressed and worried and thought I would be fired. Personnel, (you know, what they call Human Resources today) called me back in after a week. They gave me a job as a Parcel Post Clerk back in the mailroom and told me I would be offered the next Level 6 job that opened. That was the Level of the Traffic Control job, so not only wasn't I fired, I wasn't even going to be demoted.

About a month later I was offered a position in Accounts Receivable. So in the course of less than two months I had been Supervisor of Addressograph, Traffic Control Clerk, Partial Post Clerk and Ledger Clerk.

Then that winter Lois announced she was pregnant again. The Doctor warned her to be careful. Given her history with the first baby and his examination, she had a number of problems that could put the pregnancy at risk.

Near Christmas there was a bad snowstorm. Two blocks away a stop sign was knocked down when a car skidded into it a couple weeks earlier during another storm. Despite the snow my parents came down to visit on Christmas. My father was a professional driver, snow didn't deter him. However, they almost had an accident because of the downed stop sign had still not been replaced. They had no way of knowing the traffic on the cross street didn't have to stop, because it looked like the street they were on was the right of way.

Then a few days later, Lois fell on a sidewalk nearby because it had never been shoveled and the snow had packed to ice. What angered me was this sidewalk was at the home of the Local Committeeman for the Republican Party, which at that time had a stranglehold on the government in the borough. It was the law that sidewalks be cleared of snow within 24 hours of the end of a snow storm. I had shoveled (picture on right is me in that 1965 snow doing just that). Everyone on our street had shoveled, except this politician.

My wife's family (she had several living on the street) were upset. They knew my wife's condition, plus they were also already angry because snowplows had plowed out the streets of the upper-income sections of the township, but not our streets, resulting in the trash trucks being unable to come thought and the garbage was piling up. They said we should all write letters to the Mayor complaining about this Committeeman and the lack of plowing. Well, you know how it goes, I wrote a letter and no one else did. I wrote about the stop sign and the trash and especially about my pregnant wife's fall.

Next thing I know the Committeeman is knocking on the door. He accused me of lying. Then he said I didn't even know where he lived. I said, "Come on" and led him outside and up the street to his house, which still hadn't been shoveled. He was furious. He called me a name and I though he was going to hit me, but he turned and stomped into his home.

Not long after my wife gets a tearful phone call from her aunt. Her uncle had a patronage job with Upper Darby, now someone in government called and said if her niece's husband didn't stop writing letters they were going to fire her husband. She begged Lois to tell me to shut up. I tried to get her family to band together, but in the end I stopped for their sake. This was not to be my last confrontation with bad politicians. (Probably why I don't like them much even today.)

My wife did end up losing that baby, too. It wouldn't be the last.

These winds of 1965 were to blow us in an entirely different direction in our lives and eventually to a very dark place.


TO BE CONTINUED...

Getting Here Part II: Losing My Religion

Most people are born into a religion. Given the time and place of my birth it is not surprising that religion was Christianity. I was Baptized several months later at the Methodist Church where my parent's had married.

My family had a religious history. My mother's had a long affiliation with the Methodists on her father's side and the Reformed Church of Christ on her mother's.

My father's paternal ancestors had landed on these shores in 1683. They were among the Welsh Quakers chartered part of Chester County, Pennsylvania by William Penn. His mother's side, which had arrived from Scotland in early 1774, were longtime Presbyterians.

Although many of my ancestors were very devout, not much of that religious background was apparent in my life. No one was going to church on any regular basis, perhaps on Easter or Christmas. We said grace at Sunday dinner, a task that fell to me once I was able to talk well enough. My prayers were pretty short and repetitive.


In 1950 we moved back to Downingtown from the swamp.  I had left that town halfway through first grade and came back halfway through third, a mere two years that may as well been 200. These were years during which my old classmates formed cliques and bonding.  I wasn't there thus was left out of that process.  My best friend from earlier days had moved away. The boys I once considered friends now made fun of me, even bullied me.

Some girls I knew from before remained friends, but playing jacks and hopscotch with Iva and Judy hardly won the other boys over to my side. At recess I was one of those left dangling to near the end when sides were chosen for games. I didn't know the fundamentals of most team sports, except soccer for some reason. Soccer was not the game of choice in town; it was football and baseball.

Religion started off every day at school.  In those times the school day opened with the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, The Lord's Prayer and a reading from the Bible. No, I wasn't sent to some Christian academy, these were public schools. Any Christian Love espoused by any of those passages didn't last beyond the closing of the Bible and first bell. I remained some kind of pariah to most of these kids.

Also, once back in town, it was decided I should go to church.  Each Sunday I was dressed in my one suit and "good" pair of shoes and sent walking the length of Washington Avenue to attend Sunday School at the Methodist Church. I hated it. For one thing the direct route took me through the territory where a gang of older boys always came after me if I was spotted. For another, no one else in my family was going to church, why me? I found Sunday School terribly boring, plus I wasn't excepted in with the kids there either.

I didn't see much value in any of this religious stuff. It was something to be endured because adults made you do it. God wasn't answering any of my prayers. I woke up in the morning and my enemies were still there.

As I aged it only got worse. I was tall, thin and gangly, with a slightly hunched back. I was sometimes called "Quasimodo" or worse. By seventh grade I also had to wear glasses, so "four-eyes" got added to the insults.

These things drove me more into myself. I was perfectly happy being alone. I began to write and spent a lot of time in the town library. When I began Junior High I stopped going to Sunday School. I just made such a fuss about it my mother gave up trying to force me.

Now, I don't want to paint  a picture of being a totally pathetic figure huddled in some dark garrett. It is not that I didn't make friends, but they were generally considered "different" too. Stu was the only Jewish kid in town at the time, a fact that exposed me to anti-semitism. Ron was as thin and gangly as I and threw like a girl. Dave wore glasses and had weird hair. Franny was black and thus I also became exposed to racism. He wasn't even allowed to visit my home. Bill was small. Sam was a girl; a Tomboy. None of my friends reflected much in the way of religious beliefs, except Stu and his were mocked by my father, who wasn't altogether approving of my friendship with a Jew. He didn't even know about Franny.

Overtime I took part in various activities that I enjoyed, Boy Scouts in particular. I also began going to MYF meetings in Ninth Grade. A boy in my class invited me, but I only went because they were going to a favorite restaurant of mine at the time, Dick Thomas' Brick Oven. I thought I'd go that one time, but I enjoyed the evening and began going regular.

The Pastor decided we should know about different religions and over several weeks a priest, a rabbi, a whatever would come and speak to us about what they believed. I found it very interesting, but it did nothing to bring me closer to God. They all seemed very sincere. How was I to know which was right? Maybe none were? I asked the Pastor one day, "If God made the universe, then who made God?" He gave some stock "with God everything is possible" and left it at that. I thought I had him; I thought I was pretty smart.

Boy Scouts, MYF, Babe Ruth Baseball and my paperboy job all came late in my junior high years and before too many months of involvement with any of them my parents moved us out of town again. After years of living with my grandparents or renting a house nearby, my parents managed to buy a home of their own. It was several miles north of Downingtown out in the country.

I was back into a form of isolation again.

Much to my surprise and chagrin after moving my parents began to go to church, and of course, expected me to begin so again as well.  I was 15 when we moved. I was forced to join them in the pew every week, but when I turned 16 and got my driver's license I made a deal. I would go to Sunday School, but not Sunday Service.

It was not that Sunday School thrilled me. It was even more boring than the one at Downingtown. However, when Sunday School ended I came home to an empty house while my folks were at church. I wanted to have that alone time. I had some special magazines hidden away in a back spot of my closet I wanted to read, or more precisely, magazines with pictures I wanted to look at.

If religion was supposed to make you feel good, then I had a new religion and these magazines were my bibles.

I soon made another deal with my parents. I would go to MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship) rather than Sunday school. MYF met on Sunday evenings. It was more fun than Sunday school. Yeah, we had lectures about the Bible, but then we played games. Sometimes we had outings, hayrides or cookouts.

As it were, I was elected President of MYF. I actually had power over the agenda of our meetings. I changed the lectures to discussions. I would introduce some Bible story each meeting and then play Devil's Advocate to get the arguments going. The meetings were pretty lively and our membership began to grow. I was being praised because of this, but in reality I wasn't just playing Devil's Advocate, I was trying to ridicule these stories.

The move from Downingtown changed much in my life. My social circle had widened. I still was friends with Stu and Ron, but now I had other friends and we spent our spare time on cars, girls and parties. Days were for souping up our cars and nights were for drag racing up and down Pottstown's main street.

Life had changed for me at my new school as well. The first year I remained a fringe character, although I wasn't being subjected to the constant put-downs I had experienced in Downingtown. I was sitting at a typewriter many nights that first year, typing out short stories and poems not yet knowing this would make me popular in the next year. Writing had been an escape from the world, now it was to become a door into the world.

When you are a loner who has lost your religion stepping through the door into the world can be a dangerous step.

Getting Here: Part 1 - Making of a Loner

This is the first of a malt-part series on how God found me and made me believe. I know it is material I've presented several times previously in different ways, but it doesn't hurt to tell the tale again for those who may be new to me. It doesn't hurt to retell for those who may have forgotten and put it out of mind, which could even include myself at times.

I thought it wise to tell how I first got lost, how I found myself in an empty black hole and how God rescued me.

Part 1: Making of a Loner
Part 2: Losing My Religion
Part 3: On the Obverse
Part 4: All-American Dream Couple
Part 5: Desolation Row
Part 6: Change is Blowin' in the Wind
Part 7: Hippie Writer
Part 8: Peep Show into my Soul
Part 9: Atheism Has No Holy Days

Part 10: God But a Heartbeat Away

And so we begin at the beginning.

Just before my parents wed, my father lost his job at a scrapyard. They couldn't begin married life together because they were too poor. Each remained living with their parents. In my father's case this meant his mother and two younger brothers. His father had died during his late teens and he had supported the family by joining Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corp.

My father was a high school dropout and rapscallion as a boy, not the best credentials for entering adult life. Now wishing to live with his wife, he was forced to beg a home from his grandfather and namesake, who held the sins of his parents against him. His grandparents all but disowned him and berated and insulted him through his youth. But his grandfather, who owned most property about the town of Modena, did allow him to rent a bug-infested apartment next to the train tracks. This became my first home.

It didn't remain so for long because of that bug infestation. My parents rescued me from the insects nightly dinner plate (my crib) to the country climes of Whitford, moving in with my maternal grandparents, who rented an old house (pictured left) on the estate of George Thomas III, a prominent member of Chester County's founding families. This had been my mother's childhood home. It was not to become mine.

In December of 1941, for reasons I have never learned and probably never will, we moved again,   grandparents, parents, Nellie my mother's dog and me, to Downingtown. The picture atop this page is me, age 3, sitting on the front steps of the new home my grandfather rented for us. My grandfather was a carpenter and eventually repaired that floor. By the time of this picture my father was in the South Pacific fighting the Japanese.

From all accounts, I was a happy, outgoing, friendly, trusting lad then. I always looked so in my earliest photographs prior to 1947.

An event occurred at the beginning of that year that was to change the child I was into something different. After 1947 I would become an often unhappy, withdrawn, socially awkward, suspicious, but self-dependent boy. In the prior year my dad returned from the war and eventually got a job as a long-distant truck driver. He had been away for two years and now he was seldom home during the week. Our relationship grew as distant as his weekly delivery destinations. But even more affecting upon me was he moved us into the swamp house (pictured right).

He got it rent free from his employer and because he was a returning vet. It was in the country, removed from nearly everything and everybody I knew. It sat down a long lane partially surrounded by a marsh. Behind was a cornfield and to the other side a cow meadow. The nearest neighbors were a mile up the highway and none had children near my age. My father was on the road all week and my mother didn't drive. It was desolate isolation.

It is not completely true there were no children my age. There were three boys, brothers, one a year older, one a year younger and one just right. But I only knew them the one summer. Their father was killed in the war and they attended the boarding school in Hershey three-quarters of the year. In that summer we became "best" friends, playing cowboys at each other's place. They had a sister. She was the youngest, about four. I witnessed her death on the highway, going with her brothers from my place to hers on the last day of summer. The boys went back to Hershey and I never saw them again.

We lived in the swamp for two years, until my dad changed jobs again and we lost the house. I wasn't unhappy living there. For a child with my imagination and curiosity it was almost a Garden of Eden. There was so much to explore and the close changes of environment, swamp here, open meadow there, a sledding field behind, a woods in walking distance, made for great adventure in my imagination.

And I was free from many restrictions other kids had. Traffic was no concern as long as I stayed away from the highway. There were few rules imposed upon me. I explored at will. I was generally left to my own devices, entertaining myself by inventing games and stories. I grew very self-sufficient.

I wasn't completely cutoff from civilization. I went to school, of course, to a school I remember nothing about as an adult. It has been erased from my memory for some reason. School apparently was not the center of my life at the time. I also was shucked off to my grandparents on weekends when my dad came home. I would be dropped off Friday night and taken home Sunday evening after dinner. Obviously an arrangement that did little to bring me and my father together.

I spend many of those weekends in the company of my grandfather (pictured left), who I loved dearly. He was the father and man figure in my life. He was a gruff man, well-known about the town and well-liked. His delights were cigars, whiskey, chewing tobacco, fox hunting, boxing matches and telling the occasional dirty joke. He had an admirable vocabulary of cusses as well. He took me on many a fox hunt and to the dives and dingy bars that dotted the county. Probably if I actually didn't spend most of my youngster days in the company of the womenfolk I would have glommed onto his habits, but despite my affection for the man, his delights did not become my own. He died from the ravages of alcoholism with I was sixteen.

At the beginning of 1950 we moved back to Downingtown, back in with my grandparents at first. I was back on the old block and in the school where I had begun first grade. I was now in third grade with the same children I knew then, some of whom lived on that same block and were once my closest friends. Everything seemed the same, but that was an illusion. I was different.

Living in the swamp I had learned to be alone. Back in town it didn't take my contemporaries long to show as far as they were concerned that was all I was and should be, a Loner.