Childhood in the Appalachian Mountains

I was born on April 4^th, 1957 deep in the mountains of Appalachia. Clinch

Mountain was the name of the mountain range I looked at each day. It was a tall mountain that faced our little four-room mountain house. As soon as I was old enough I climbed to the top of the mountain and did so at least once a year. My dad owned a couple hundred acres of this mountain land that lay right behind a little white country Methodist Church. There was a saw mill up in the mountains and as a small child I remember how we would travel up there to watch them cut the wood. There was an old logging road that went almost to the top of the mountain.

As I grew a little older, I spent a lot of summer days with my dad in the mountains spraying brush killer on briars and shrubs. This was a continual job each summer to keep the pasture lands clean. The smell of mountain flowers in the early morning was sweet. There were countless wild roses along little creeks that ran out of the mountains. I carried my smaller sprayer while my dad had a big one that went on his back. We would go our different directions and return every hour or so to the main barrel to refill. Even in these times I was really able to connect with God in a way that most of my friends had never experienced. I learned to have conversations with Him.

My first real conversations with God began in the summer of 69. I was 12 that summer and one of my older friends told me I needed to give my life to God. He said this would save me from the fire. My childhood sweetheart had just been saved from a house fire. She lived right beside the little Methodist Church. As her house was burning, her mother sat her and her little brother on the steps of the church and went back to get her younger sister. She had to break the window to get her out. I remember walking up there afterwards and seeing her little doll there in the charred remains of the house. So, I definitely wanted to be saved from the fire.

I began walking to church on Sunday mornings after a couple of invitations. It was about a-half-a-mile walk. A neighbor lady had kept inviting me. Then one day the pastor stopped and invited my brother and me to come to Sunday School. We were busy playing in the creek near the road when he pulled over and started talking to us. Lots of my summer days were spent looking for crawdads and building little dams in the creek. There was a sense of accomplishment to look at the nice rock dam backing the water up and allowing us to have a small swimming hole. Then a storm would come along and wash the dam away. But, that never seemed to matter. It was a joy to have the swimming hole for a day. It was during one of these purposeful days that the pastor invited us to come to church. His name was Richard Hale. Our family didn’t go to church but everyone in the community liked Pastor Hale. He was young and he was a good speaker. It bothered everyone when he was moved after a few years. The new pastor was Claude Grace. So, it was a common joke that we had traded Hale for Grace. But, the people didn’t like Pastor Grace as well. He was older and slower.

It just so happened that there was a revival going on in the little Methodist Church in the summer of 69. Although I had only been going on Sunday mornings, I decided to go to some night services. My only problem seemed to be that I was afraid of the dark. There was a little country store owned by my Uncle Russell between my house and the church. My dad went there every night and sat on a big log beside the store building and talked with the other farmers for hours. Most nights there were around twenty farmers there and my dad was usually the last one to leave. I would sit there with him, and I remember as the night got cooler I would pull my arms inside my shirt making me look like I didn’t have any arms. This was my method of staying warm as I patiently waited for the conversations to end and we would start the walk up the hill to the house. My plan was to go to the revival and I hoped my dad would still be waiting at the store so I wouldn’t have to walk up the hill by myself. He must have sensed my fears because one of the nights he waited on me although the other farmers must have decided to turn in early.

On Tuesday night the visiting minister spoke about the woman who had been sick for twelve years and reached out and touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. The invitation was for anyone who wanted to touch Jesus. If this was our desire we were asked to come forward. I was the first to step out. I remember four things about that night. I had on a pair of penny loafers that had come apart at the toe but if I held my toe just right no one could tell they had come apart. When I went to the altar I didn’t know what to say so the minister told me to just talk to God and then he prayed with me. There was an older lady who came over beside me and she was crying really hard as she gave her life to God. This kind of distracted me, but I was alright. The most important thing I remember about that night was that I felt brand new. The next morning everything looked new. I was filled with excitement. I remember that day as if it was yesterday. I went with some of my friends to spray thistles on their farm down the road. Wow, did I feel good!

Not everyone felt my enthusiasm. I told my cousins I had been saved. They were preacher’s kids so they informed me that “that” didn’t mean I was going to heaven. They said I had to live a good life. I wasn’t real sure what that was. That was the beginning of many long years of trying to please God. With each mistake I felt I had to be saved again. I wore the hills out making rock altars and places to go and rededicate my life to God. Reaching puberty about the same time was a collision course that kept colliding.

After a couple of years, I decided that baptism would take all the wrong desires out of my heart. Pastor Grace wanted me to be baptized. I avoided him sometimes because he kept asking me when I was going to be baptized. Finally I went to the River knowing my days of struggle would end when I came out of the water. The struggles didn’t end. I was always thinking about sex. The two things I thought about most were God and sex and these two were a million miles apart in my thinking. The next few years were filled with overwhelming guilt.

Soon after that, I began leading youth meetings. I had a strong passion to lead but I had a big handicap. My voice was really weak at 14. When I was born my mother suffered from post-natal depression. I was the sixth child and was born when she was older. She hadn’t wanted another child. Her reaction to all of this was to demand silence. Our house was a house of silence. For example, if my dad and I wanted to talk we had to go out to the truck and sit and talk. When my mother wanted something she would point or make motions to convey to me what she wanted. A stomp on the bottom step of the stairs meant it was time for me to awake and get ready for school. There were very few conversations with my mother in childhood. This resulted in my voice struggling to develop. I talked with my friends and dad but my voice was weak. Sometimes I would try to say something and nothing would come out. In my speech class I was allowed to write my speech because of the weakness of my voice. I remember the embarrassment during some of my classes – how when I would read the entire class would laugh.

Another Pastor came to the little Methodist Church named Fred Morgan. His wife Nell thought the world of me. She didn’t have any children and she gave me so much attention. I was really shy and bashful. I had really bright red hair and I was really skinny. I was scared of people, but I liked her because she seemed to really care for me. She began teaching me how to speak and thereby began the development of a stronger voice to sing and speak. One Sunday night, I sang with a couple of other young people. I remember the song was called, “This is What Heaven Means to Me.” It was a beautiful song and captured the Irish sound of the mountains. My mother was Irish and so were a lot of the people in these mountains. The sound that was coming forth in those days was kind of a sad song mixed with escapism. Everyone seemed miserable and looked forward to Heaven. Songs about Heaven were really popular. The TV station in Bristol had a Telethon each year to help handicapped children. We auditioned for that but didn’t get accepted. My voice was still really weak and sometimes I spent more time swallowing than singing. However, inside of me were a determination and a resolve that I was going to do the most I could in life for God. I would have to overcome some major obstacles, but it was my determination to do so.

By the age of sixteen I was speaking in youth meetings around the area and I was elected the president of the sub-district youth meetings that were held each month in different churches in the region. I was still battling with perfection and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t overcome carnal desires. Near the end of my high school years I decided to just be bad for a while and see if I could just get it out of me. I drank a little and went to a rock concert. That was the extent of the bad-boy times. In the summer of 75 at the age of eighteen I went back to the altar in the little Methodist Church and re-dedicated my life to Christ. A couple of months later I announced my call to ministry and I began speaking regularly. A year later I was doing interim pastoral work for some small churches and within three years I was at my first Methodist Pastorate in Cleveland, Virginia.

How would a 21 year-old pastor a church? I wasn't sure. Cleveland is deep in the Appalachian Mountains. The mountains are big and the town is low in the valley with a river running through it. It has a railroad. It was a coal-mining town. When I got there in the early 80’s it was almost a ghost town. But, for a young minister ready to have the world for breakfast it was a joy to begin the work. Visiting the homes and listening to the older people talk of life in the mountains was priceless. They talked of the ministers who couldn’t read or write well but their passion built the churches scattered throughout the mountains. It was my privilege to minister to the children of the mountain preachers who founded the churches. What an honor. They were proud of their heritage and they were ready for new growth. Soon, the little Cleveland Methodist Church was bustling with new energy. A good-sized choir was put together and the attendance doubled. Youth were coming and excitement was in the air. The first river baptism the congregation had seen in years happened on a sunny summer afternoon. Life was sweet.