So, I took my brother’s advice and went with the flow. It was a little hard at first, but that’s what churches are good for. You get thrown together with a lot of people right off, and what you have in common is that they’re kids too, and they go to the same church. And most of them would probably rather be some place else too, but their parents want them to have religion.
It was a small community, a farm community. Much smaller than the town I came from even which was only population 1000. This town had only 350…and we were pretty well out in the middle of nowhere. One of the first things I noticed was the difference in TV. We had lived close enough to St. Louis that we could get all their channels without extreme measures. In this new town, everybody had forty foot tall TV antenna towers, with rotors so you could direct the antenna toward the different towns with TV stations. I really didn’t know places like that existed. just never thought about it. But there I was, right in the middle of it.
And in the long run, it wasn’t so bad. I needed some new experiences in my life. And I think I made it through my high school years admirably. Graduated in the top 10% of my class, and didn’t really get into too much trouble along the way. It wasn’t the best of times, it wasn’t the worst of times. Made a lot of friends that I still think fondly of. Looking forward to a reunion later this year, and trying to maintain contact with the old friends from those days.
Would you believe that gets you right thru my high school years? Oh, there are lots of stories I could go into, and I probably will some day, but they seem kind of unimportant in the scheme of things.
For whatever reason, I’m still looking toward the future. I’ve got a lot of stuff that I’d still like to do in my life. Not a bucket list, more of just a “to do” list. Things that I want to accomplish before I get to the point that I can’t do them anymore.
A lot of people at this point in their lives seem to want to travel, go places and see things they never had the chance to see earlier on. I kinda like to go places too, but its not really at the top of my list…unless I can write as I go. And with computers these days, that is a real possibility. But that’s what I really want to do with whats left of my life. Even if I get to live into my eighties, three-fourths of my life is behind me. I feel like I’ve spent most of that time…just getting ready for now. And unfortunately, I’m afraid I’ve still got some getting ready to do…because I can’t stop my 40 hour job and concentrate on writing like I’d like to. I guess that means I’ve still got things to learn.
It was different learning to be a preacher’s kid after not having been one until we moved to Geff. People had expectations of preacher’s kids. I’m sure I fulfilled their expectations as they saw me. If they wanted to see a nice respectful kid, I was that. And if they wanted to see the not so good side of a preacher’s kid, I was that too. I did what I had to do. But really, I was just another kid.
I went off to SIU Carbondale in the fall of 70. Robbed my parents of the joy of taking me off to college by riding to school with friends from my high school. I didn’t know at the time I was doing that. But they let me do it without a fuss. Just one of life’s lessons learned too late to change things.
