A Part of a Family, Part II

The summer of 1967 found me in Ontario, California with my maternal grandmother and my aunts and cousins. I had spent summers with them from the mid-fifties on. Once there, I began to haunt record shops looking for old timey music. Through one of these I connected with a man who led a bluegrass band and began playing with them at jams held in his home. This band had cut a record with a label called "Rural Rhythm Records" and was slated to do another that summer. This looked like an early break into a music career. I began playing rhythm guitar and singing lead with this group. They really were an accomplished bunch of amateur musicians. We had a fine banjo picker, a female vocalist, a dobro player, while the leader played upright bass, mandolin, and flat-pick guitar. By this time I had memorized over a hundred songs as well as writing several of my own. Don't misunderstand me, these were not great songs. They were the standard, "you, untrue, blue" variety of country songs. But, some of the melodies were unique and quirky, and this is what record producers are looking for. I met the then owner/producer of RR and performed some of my songs for him. He was mildly impressed, probably in part because I was fifteen years old.

The leader of the band was one of the most disgustingly immoral men I have ever known. He was unscrupulous and manipulative. I was always uneasy with him and this increased as the summer waned. I came to believe he was stealing my songs and promoting them as his own. When I became convinced of this, I walked away. Full stop. This has always been my way of dealing with people I am convinced have betrayed me. I walk away...full stop. In one way, it has been easy for me to do this, given my frequently interrupted young life.

This is not to say I wasn't disappointed. I was crushed. We were weeks away from doing the record which would involve our covering standard bluegrass favorites as well as including one or two of my songs. I was also embarrassed because I had told people at home that I was about to cut a record with this band.

I quit my job, bought a plane ticket (my first), and flew back to Dallas on my way home. When I got home, my grandparents were dismayed. There was no work for me there and I had left a decent job, and they had enjoyed the peace of not having to worry about me and put up with my shenanigans. This only added to my depression and sense of failure.

On the first Sunday after my return, I rose early, cleaned up and dressed in my best music playing clothes, and asked my grandfather to drive me to church. My grandmother nearly floated above the ground she was so pleased.

When I arrived at the little Baptist church there were many whispers and nods. I tried to sing the hymns, which I did not know. I bowed my head when they prayed, stood when they said stand, sat when they said sit. I endured the sermon because my friend, the Rev. Spann was the preacher. He was the reason I was there. I needed a friend. He was a friend, a true friend who could be trusted.

At the end of the sermon he gave the customary Baptist "invitation" for people to come forward "to be saved." I found myself strangely moved and with great deliberateness, went forward.

Over the intervening forty-plus years, I have looked at this experience through every lens available to me. I know it can be explained in purely psychological terms. I was a prime candidate for a "conversion." William James would have smiled wryly at it all and quietly explained it as typical. I would now agree with nearly everything he would have to say.

But, I would go on to say this: That was a watershed day in my life. It was the point from which the rest of my life would take its trajectory. I believe that I encountered God on that hot, July day. I believe he encountered me in that little village and in that ugly little building. I am what I am today because of that encounter. The rest of my life would be spent in living out that initial encounter and trying to understand its ramifications.

Well, I don't have to tell you, if you have followed this story up to this point, that I took hold of this new life the same way I had always taken hold of things: with hammer and tongs.

Soon thereafter, I would "surrender to a call to preach the Gospel," and in the tradition of earlier Southern Baptists, would become a "preacher boy." When I preached my first sermon later that summer the whole place was packed and they had to bring in folding chairs. From that point my preaching career was launched. I began to preach in some little place every weekend.

I was as ignorant as a box of bolts. I was a new convert. But, what I lacked in understanding, not to say wisdom and experience, I made up for with sheer exuberance, zeal, and personality. I had found my place and it had the commendation of God. I had also entered into a very dangerous place, spiritually and morally. It is but for the sheer and tender grace of God that I did not go down in a tragic shipwreck of faith and morals.

It was at this time that I met the Wynn family, the family I would come to live with in Okemah, Oklahoma. They saw my gifts, my potential, and came to love me. They also saw the lack of discipline and oversight in my young life. They were living in Healdton, Oklahoma at the time. Without notice of any kind, I would just show up on their doorstep, having hitchiked the fifty miles or so to get there. During this time they were "called" to Okemah and invited me to go with them. They spent an evening talking with my grandparents and receiving their permission for me to go. Mama and Papa were old and tired by this time, and, while it grieved them to see me leave, I am sure, in one respect, they were relieved to see me go. They also were hopeful that a better school and social situation could improve my future prospects. So, on that warm, sunny November morning, I loaded my rocking chair, my books, and my clothes into Ken Wynn's pickup and headed for a new life.

To be continued...