8 (cont). Frankfort holds a special place in my childhood memory. In the early days there were condemned buildings to sneak into. There was the old boys dorm and the old chapel with a walk in freezer. There was the basement of the old administration building with things in formaldehyde. I remember something shocking in a jar--was it a brain?
There was softball, exploring in the woods. There were corn fields. There were Frankfort friends that I only saw once a year. In the early years, there were my Dad's parents. There was my mother's family, including my favorite Uncle Paul.
I have few memories of my first four years living in Indiana. One is of spending the night with my sister Patricia and her then new husband Denny Waymire in a trailer at Frankfort Wesleyan College. It must have been late summer 1971. They had just returned from their honeymoon. Probably not a good idea.
9. The evening services at Frankfort were very formative. Most services ended with an altar call of some sort. There would be a final song in which those who needed to get right with God would walk forward to the front of the "tabernacle" and kneel at a long bench that stretched across the front of the building. Eventually, these altar calls would become a matter of great inner turmoil. I was a painfully shy child. The idea of stepping out in front of this mass of people was terrifying, paralyzing.
I may have gone once. One time I went up to the second row after the thousandth verse of "Just as I Am" was over. Not that I had anything I knew to confess or repent of. The question of being willing to go itself became the struggle--as well as the fear that I did have some sin in need of forgiveness. It was quite an unhealthy process about which I'll say more in the next chapter.
It was easy growing up to get a sense of "two trip-ism." It's the mistaken sense that the heart of being a Christian is checking off two boxes for two trips to the altar. [1] First, you go forward to get "saved." Then you go forward to get "sanctified."
You could of course go forward for other things as well. If you sinned or were struggling with something, you could go forward for forgiveness or to ask for the power to become victorious over the sin. You certainly might want to pray for a need or have a "burden" on your heart about something. People sometimes would surround you to help. They might lay hands on you.
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| Wesleyan Village If you turn left on the main street at bottom, the second building on left on the end toward the field is the apartment my Dad always tried to get for district conference. |
At Brooksville was a waning collection of retired general officials and other all stars of my church's past. These were my heroes of the faith--and those of my parents. It was at Brooksville that I saw former Wesleyan Methodist General Superintendent Roy Nicholson. These were people like P. F. Elliott, Arthur Bray, Flora Belle Slater and Daisy Buby. Foster Piatt was still district superintendent. He pretty much founded the district with his own hands. Eventually J. D. Abbott settled there.
Brooksville and Hobe Sound seemed to me like vestiges of the old Florida. Hobe Sound had armadillos. The roads were not paved. Micah Travis and I have a childhood memory of him, me, and his older brother coming across a snake just off the Brooksville grounds on an abandoned railway track that was no longer in use by then. District conference was where I met the Bodenhorn sisters Stacey and Stephanie in my early high school years. Some guy sold rocks in a house in the furthermost road. That was long before they expanded the village.
11. Looking back Fort Lauderdale and Wilton Manors where we lived still seemed young. My parents bought our house in 1971 for $25,000. Integration had not been without conflict around 1960, but I did not perceive any struggle once I arrived. Sunrise Middle School was very integrated.
For much of my elementary school years, I walked the two blocks home from school every day. My mother took me in the morning, as I recall. She worked as a volunteer in the nurses office.
My years at Wilton Manors Elementary School were mostly happy. Mrs. Giddens for kindergarten, with Mrs. Stokes for music. I hid under the bed before the first day of kindergarten, still four years old. I was afraid to leave the safety of home. Mom had the choice of putting me in early or waiting a year. She thought it was better to get me started. I guess I cried the whole first week but then gladly went from the second week on.
Mrs. Welsh for first grade. One of my first friends in the neighborhood was a boy named David Dibble. He lived near the first banyan tree I had ever seen. It was fantastic to climb in! For my part, we had a mango tree in our back yard (I wasn't able to climb it yet in the first grade), and a River Birch on the front right side I called the paper tree. My dad loved mangos, although his diabetes would interfere with his consumption soon enough. I hated mangos because of the afterbite. The only mango I have liked was in Sierra Leone, a green one.
Another early friend was named Joseph. He was horribly jaundiced and I think eventually died of leukemia. At church there was a boy named Joey Fancher, who I think also died when I was in college.
12. There was a tree on the side next to the flat roof over our shed. At a certain point of growth, I jumped from the roof to the tree. I think I jumped from the roof to the ground once, about ten feet. There were times of exploring during elementary school. At one point my next street neighbor friend Steve Corso and I (I think it was him) crawled under the elementary school. Another time we climbed up on the roof of the Grand Union grocery store and found a trampoline in someone's yard on the way down. I felt horribly guilty about doing these things, but they were exhilarating.
At one point we dug a pit in the back yard by my swing set and covered it with a board. The sand was soft white once you got down a foot or so. I got in the pit and Steve or someone covered the board with sand. He went and got my mother and asked her if she knew where I was. Of course I was there! Once I told her I was forbidden from doing that again.
There were other trees on Steve's street that were great to climb because you could go from one to the other down the line. It was a field owned by the Presbyterian Church on 26th street. Of course it's hard to recognize these things today without a keen eye, the place is so overgrown with people. The library is still there on the corner of 5th ave and 26ths, I believe.
There was a 7-eleven where 5th ave hit Wilton Drive. It's where I later bought my comic books and could play Asteriods and later Galaga. I had boundaries, 26th on the north, Wilton Drive, the road west of the elementary school. Every once and a while I would propose an expansion of boundaries to my father. He really didn't care, I don't think, but he would sign the proposal and notarize it.
I only remember lying twice in my first ten years of life. One was when I asked mom if I could go to 7-eleven. I knew she would assume it was the one on Wilton Drive. But I meant the one near K-Mart up 6th ave. I confessed that evening because I felt guilty. The other one was not quite so blatant. I didn't correct someone who thought I had intentionally given the wrong answer.
I started "The Fighting Team" during those years. I would later feel convicted about the name and would put out a fleece. If I could find a hammer that had gone missing, I would change the name. I later found it in the mango tree, just where I'd left it. I changed the name to The Future (organization) Team, so I could keep the letters TFT.
It eventually became TOFT Electronics, a subsidiary of Schenck Enterprises along with Schenck Airlines and The Schenck Medical Foundation. There might have been one other subsidiary.
I drew up papers for the business and, of course, always had my dad notarize the signatures. My cousin Tim LeBaron would be in it. At some point I buried the papers in a box with a map to find it. I think I later dug it up, but that box was eventually lost and never found. It's of course possible it was thrown away. Then again, it could still be buried somewhere on the east side of the house at 547 NE 24th St, Wilton Manors, Florida.
My friends and I played superheroes and I tried to draw them. Captain Universe was the strongest (with an orange towel for a cape). His father was Captain Grenade, and he had a son called the Lightning Kid. I found school horribly boring. I did a lot of drawing and fantasizing in my head.
13. Somehow I had a bad experience with my initial second grade teacher. Don't remember who that was. They moved me into Mrs. Standard's class after Christmas. The fall teacher, as I recall, reacted to my shyness and fearfulness with harshness. It's interesting that my daughter Sophie had a similar experience in the first grade and switched teachers too.
I had Mrs. Baker in the third. She seemed gruff but was going through a divorce. I remember passing notes by putting them in books along the window for someone else to pick up (Kim Kirkpatrick? David Roberts?). Some of my Wilton Manors friends and acquaintances would graduate from high school with me (Cathy Laurenzi, Clark Trainor).
Mrs. Geyman in the fourth and Mr. Guinn in the fifth. I really liked Mr. Guinn although I struggled with his multiplication speed drills. Speed at thinking was not my strong suit. I believe it was David Roberts and I who raced to see who could read more Hardy Boy novels. He pretty much won. He was so much faster than I that I wondered if he was fibbing a little. But, then again, I was a horribly slow reader at that time. I would say there wasn't much to distinguish me as a student or thinker at school in elementary school.
Mr. Guinn was a runner. I was awestruck that he ran five miles every morning before school. He was perhaps my inspiration to start running later on. Between my parents and me, we somewhat stayed in touch and he would later express congratulations for my achievements in high school.
14. My Grandma Shepherd came to be with us a little in the mid 1970s. My grandfather had died of bone cancer in 1963 and after Frankfort College closed in 1972, it must have been somewhat of a lonely place. At some point she moved out of the house in front and rented it out, living in a tiny place in the back. It flooded at one point and many memories were lost.
My great aunt Nora lived for a time in a silver, metal trailer on my grandmother's property. Aunt Nora was born in 1880, which seemed astounding to me at the time. Grandma Shepherd was my grandfather's second wife. His first wife and he had been Quaker ministers in Michigan, but she died in 1916. He was 11 years older than my grandmother.
At one point Grandma Verna came to live with us in Florida for a spell, along with Aunt Nora. I remember Aunt Nora for her vanilla wafers, for having me memorize the presidents of the United States and for the goodnight saying, "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite."
She was a hyper-Republican and at least one of her three husbands had been involved in politics in Sullivan, Indiana (she outlived them all). Of course my great-grandfather had fought in the Civil War from the north, so our family was firmly the party of Lincoln. No doubt they couldn't see the inconsistencies of the side the Republicans came to take in the civil rights era. From the 1960s on, the Democrats were more reflective of Lincoln on those issues, and there was a strong migration of southern Democrats to the Republican party from 1950-1980 (e.g., Strom Thurmond).
Aunt Nora had a picture of the three (at that time) presidents who had been assassinated--Lincoln, Harding, and McKinley. It used to sit upstairs in Fort Lauderdale.
Aunt Nora ended up in California, dying at the age of 97. Grandma eventually went back to Indiana to a home in Rossville, where she would die in 1979 (a year before her son Paul). I wanted to build her a plane to take her back. I started nailing wood together. My mother told me I couldn't build a plane like that. I was rather annoyed with her for dashing my dreams.
15. There would be many other projects that my father patiently bore, none of which reached its intended conclusion. There were the worms I was going to raise. (He must have regretted buying me subscriptions to Popular Mechanics and Popular Electronics for the ads in the back for such things). We didn't get beyond buying a tub. I had a paper route that he and mom ended up doing most of the work for.
At one point I wanted to build a remote control airplane, but I lacked any knowledge at all to do so. I was going to use the aluminum from cans for the exterior. In the late 70s, my dad bought a volume a month from Grand Union of the new Funk and Wagnall's encyclopedia for me. But it didn't say how to build a remote control airplane.
I loved my parents, both of whom were smart people, but I felt like if I had only had someone who could teach me these things. I felt like I had no one to guide me in my scientific ambitions. My youngest children have suffered a little with my delight in the math and science they have studied. Unfortunately, I'm afraid they may have felt pushed a little in that direction. That's thankfully all cleared up now with them headed in the directions that are appropriate for them.
16. Although I clearly was a fearful child, those were blissful days. The religious bubble in which we lived afforded me a sense that we were incredibly special to God. We understood God on a level that the vast majority of people did not. I didn't grow up thinking that there were many Christians outside of my small Wesleyan bubble. From the perspective of my worldview, the other kids at school were not Christians. But these were times of blissful ignorance--I didn't think much about it.
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