"Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.” Lamentations 5:21
January 25, 2016 - This 1939 picture of my brother, Bill (Travis William) was taken when he was 8 years old….and I was 6. He is armed with our weapon of choice, a sling shot with a “2- stock” cut from a forked tree branch, a flap from the tongue of a leather shoe and rubber bands cut from a genuine rubber pre WWII inner-tube. Mother took the picture with her Kodak 620 camera in a time that few pictures were taken because folks were still trying to survive The Depression. We lived near the Elementary School in Mr. Manor’s rent house in Center, Texas. Buttermilk biscuits cooked in our wood stove with syrup and fresh cow butter made our breakfasts something we looked forward to every morning.
We were too young to realize that a world war was brewing but Mother explained it to us one day after a soldier had burst into our outhouse while Bill was in it. When he fled to the house with his overalls half-up, Mother assured him that it was a practice battle between the Army Reds and Blues and that they weren’t shooting real bullets. “They’re practicing how to fight Hitler”, she said.
Eventually our family grew to five boys and five girls, but in the late thirties, it was just Bill and me. We caught “mud cats” under the Iron Bridge on Arcadia Road and weren’t afraid to swim with water moccasins because we were told they couldn’t bite us in the water. Our sling shots and overalls filled with rocks were all we needed for a day of fun in the woods along the banks of Sandy Creek.
Bill crossed The Jordan ten years ago and I was left with so many good memories of him and our way of life back then. It’s hard to imagine that few people ever locked their cars or homes and no one talked about rape, drugs, same sex marriages, abortion or Muslim terrorists. And even though those were hard times, we had a sense of safety and security.
I love my country and miss the days we were honorable and strong….
…and pray that we’ll see those days again.
