Sometimes people put significance on the first memory a person can recall in their life. I can't say this is my first memory, but it is an early memory and unquestionably has had the most impact on me from my early childhood.
In the Summer of 1948 when I was 5 years old I went to stay with my paternal Great Grandfather—and my namesake-- and Great grandmother Timothy Arthur and Frankie Jones in Dawson Springs, Kentucky. It was the end of World War II and my mother, a daughter of a 1st generation immigrant from Lithuania and my father, a man of Irish heritage, arrived in Dawson Springs just long enough to drop me off for the summer. I didn’t know exactly why mom and dad dropped me off at Great Grandpa’s house. I had never remembered seeing these relatives before in my life.
Being a War baby, I was shuffled between relatives, neighbors, and friends’ houses my first five years so that my mother could work as a factory turret lathe operator in the Chicago area making parts for tanks to support us while my father served in the wartime Merchant Marines. War times were hard enough for a young boy to understand, but now was doubly perplexing. Dad had a job, mom was working in retail and the country’s economy was just beginning the recovery from the war. This new predicament certainly didn't foster any feelings of importance and of being wanted—more like abandonment, actually. Why didn't they want me around? Had I done something wrong?
Dawson Springs, Kentucky was a far cry from Chicago! I was dropped off at the doorstep of a small white house. The little wood house with peeling white painted siding perched up on cinder blocks, high enough for little inquisitive five year old boys to crawl underneath, no problem. However, this particular five year old was not inclined to do this too often because I detested the bugs and spider webs that called it their domain. A small hand pump stationed next to the kitchen sink was the only form of plumbing in the house. The ‘bathroom’ was a 2-seater outhouse located 50 paces out back from the little house. Meals were cooked on an old coal-burning stove. Simple wood floors that were bleached parchment white from diligent scrubbing decked the house and a small porch with two cane bottom chairs graced the front door that was always open to anyone who came by. Even for 1948, the living conditions were rustic and humble. Were they a thrifty people? Downright poor would be more accurate! Poor they may have been, but dirty they were not! My Great Grandmother Frankie kept the little place tidy and spotless as if it were the Whitehouse.
My Great Grandfather,Tim Jones I., had been a coal miner most of his working life prior to retirement. His mother had come to America from Ireland as a single mother and had worked most of her life on the King Ranch in Texas. Tim was a lean, wiry guy of tall stature. Even in retirement, he was a hard-working man, raising hogs and chickens and planting crops, well into his 70’s and beyond. He had a mule named Mike. Yep, Mike the mule! He harnessed Mike the Mule to plow the field out back where he raised corn. He did his own slaughtering and hung the hog carcasses in a smoke room out back to cure. Every day or two Great Grandpa Jones walked a wheelbarrow up the hill a mile or so to the coal mine, filled it up with coal, and wheeled it home to use in the cook stove.
Great Grandpa Jones was a good man, not harsh or abrasive, but stern. He didn’t take any guff from a 5 year old upstart, I can tell you firsthand. One time he chased me up a tree after discovering I had done something mischievous. I sat on a tree limb relishing my triumph at outwitting him and escaping the punishment. But Great Grandpa, I'm afraid, got the last laugh as he stood, switch in hand, just underneath the tree and painted the more realistic picture for me: “You might as well come down, boy. I can wait a lot longer'n you can”.
One day a bunch of people came over to the little white house. Great Grandpa put ice and salt into a wooden bucket as I looked on, enthralled. Then he put another container with a handle into the first. All the kids took turns cranking the handle. After every child had a turn, Great Grandpa took the top off and everyone had a share of the most delicious ice cream I have ever tasted!
Great Grandma Frankie Jones was hardworking as well. She awoke before the first glimmer of dawn each morning and baked biscuits for her husband's breakfast. In addition to being industrious, she was also a woman of faith. Every Sunday she walked up a dusty dirt road to a little white steeple-topped church to worship. While I was staying with them, she took me along as well. One typical hot Kentucky summer Sunday I watched my great grandmother fanning herself through the church service with her hand-held paper fan on a stick, and I remember asking myself, “What are we doing here?”.
That was the beginning of the thread of God’s working in my life. That simple question and the image of Great Grandma Frankie sitting there in the sweltering heat became the first of many such spiritual mile post markers in my life before I came to know God, the Father as my savior. Who knows what strikes each person as significant? For each of us it is different, but for me seeing my great grandmother sitting there in the stifling heat told me what she was doing was important enough to to her to endure the heat for some reason and I wanted to understand that reason.
Over the decades, I have come to also realize that it was the prayers of this faithful relative that stood out as beacons for my soul. I am forever indebted to Great Grandma Frankie and others who laid the groundwork for my entering the Kingdom of Light, even when what they saw in the natural was anything but encouraging as I walked through some black decades and should have been dead many times over.
“The effectual and fervent prayer of a righteous man [woman] avails much” James 5:16 NKJV
Copyright©2007 Timothy and Kimberly Jones
No comments:
Post a Comment