September 12, 2014 (Friday)
The blog of September 4 explained how I came to be living temporarily with Grandma Fake as school began in the fall of 1945. I was in the 9th grade and the school campus was only a short drive from Grandma’s house, but too far to walk, so I had to ride the bus, which meant going downtown by bus and transferring to another one to get to school. I chanced to see my cousin, Clinton Attaway, one day and he suggested I apply for a job where he was working, at the Majestic Theater downtown. I applied, and was hired. I then became one of twenty-one male ushers (there were also about as many usherettes). Hours were 5-10 after school. I was already taking the bus home to Grandma’s house, so it was just a matter of delaying the second leg of the bus trip home. I made 35¢ per hour, 5 hours a day with longer hours on weekends. (All of the movie palaces in Houston back in those days have now been demolished).
It was during this time that Mother and Joe bought a house and we all decided it would be best for us kids to move there into their new home in the south part of town. Because my mother and stepfather owned some restaurants, I started working in them as I was needed, making it necessary to quit my theater job.
My father and stepmother became proud parents of my dear sister, Brenda, abut this time. My mother and stepfather already a son, born a year before–my brother Joe. I had helped out a lot in caring for him and staying with him in the parents’ absence before this time, so it was an easy matter to continue to do that, and much easier since I was now living there. My twin sisters, Elva and Melva, followed later, but eventually Melva moved back to live with Daddy and Dorothy; Elva stayed with mother and Joe. At times Melva would alternate living with the two sets of parents.
When I was a senior in high school, mother was expecting a baby (my brother Jimmy, born January 1949), and there was more room for me with Daddy and Dorothy than with Mother and Joe, so I moved across town to live with Daddy and Dorothy for my last semester of high school. After graduation, I moved back with Mother and Joe, because I worked that summer full-time at one of their restaurants. In the fall of 1949 I was off to college, never to live in Houston again until 2004, when Timbergrove Baptist Church invited me to become their pastor. Mother gave birth to my sister, Mary Ellen, in July 1953.
It was during the summer of 1948 before my senior year of high school that I was led by the Spirit of God back to the Conner family, the Liberty Road Baptist Church, and commitment to Jesus Christ. Like the Prodigal Son, I came back. By the end of the summer, the pastor asked me to preach for him in his absence. During the next year, I preached whenever and wherever I could. After that year, the Lord led me to Waco for college, where Herb Zimmerman, “preacher boy” from our Houston church, was a Senior student and a pastor. He took me to his church 30 miles away on Sundays as his helper until the First Baptist Church of Groesbeck made me their Associate Pastor. After one and one-half years there, in late 1951 I became pastor at Oletha, 15 miles away.
I met Wanda 
there and at Baylor. We married after I graduated, in 1953. (Wanda had already graduated a year before. She went through college in 2 years, 9 months. That girl was really smart!) Together we pastored churches in Lampasas, Briar, Kosse, and Dallas before settling down for 31 years at the First Baptist Church of Rockport, retiring in 1996 (Wanda from Music Director and Charles from Pastor).
Since “retirement” 18 years ago I’ve been pastor twice in Houston and Interim Pastor 6 times here in South Texas. Wanda passed away in 2002. God blessed us with five children, 12 grandchildren, and now one great grandchild.
I guess my subconscious motive for writing all this must be that the story needs to be told again before I forget it all. Hopefully, that won’t happen, but one never knows. I will be 83 this month. There’s an old gospel solo that I sang many times through the years, “Jesus Led Me All the Way.” I’d like to think that applies to my life.