June 7, 2022 (Tuesday)
The feedback from my blog includes suggestions that the subjects might be more personal. Theology and practical Christianity are helpful, but “we like your blog better when you write abut yourself and your life experiences.” OK, for those who feel that way the remaining four blogs this week will be about my jobs and callings, and you might discover some repetition from former blogs. But, who knows, you may find them interesting, even if you have read them all before.
I was born in Houston, Texas. Time was when Galveston was better known and bigger than Houston, but that was a long time ago. Houston has swallowed up nearby towns, so that “Greater Houston” now boasts 6.5 million residents. If you think that’s something great, I suggest you talk with anyone who just took a trip on a freeway in that place. Too many cars and not enough roads. Even experienced freeway drivers are unhappy about traffic nowadays. Of course, when I was born, there were no freeways in Houston. The first one was “Gulf Freeway,” named in 1948 by the winner of a naming contest (Ann Yancy, who lived in the Heights, won $100). Before then, there were only common streets, but there were some pretty busy streets with many traffic lights before freeways in Houston.
At my youngest, I saw horses on brick streets, oyster shell streets and gravel streets (and muddy or sandy streets as well). At one of the places where I lived, neighborhood kids played “baseball” in the gravel street with broomsticks for bats and pieces of gravel as balls (that street is now a one-way thoroughfare — Elysian).
Houston has demolished every building on the east side of Maury street where I lived from 1942-1944. Plans are to extend a toll road replacing Maury Street south from 610N to downtown. The project seems to be stalled.
The church I attended on Liberty Road near Jensen Drive is long gone and only the concrete baptistry remains visible on satellite photos. Most of my old Houston landmarks have disappeared one way or another.
I never lived anywhere but Houston as I grew up, and visited only Freeport (to fish), Lufkin (to see relatives), San Antonio (for school stuff) and Galveston (to have fun) before leaving for college.
I tried going to college at ETBU in Marshall, Texas, but had to drop out because I was sick most of the time, so I started over after Thanksgiving at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. I first lived in a dormitory on campus, but lived after that in various houses located near the campus. The last house I lived in was directly across the street from my classrooms in the famous Old Main.
When I was a student at Baylor, 18 years old, I became a staff member of the First Baptist Church of Groesbeck, and spent each weekend in a room provided by a sweet elderly lady. I rode the shuttle bus for Groesbeck and Waco. (Met Wanda on that bus). Eighteen months later, after becoming pastor at Oletha, 15 miles from Groesbeck, 30 miles east of Waco, Dwight Dudley drove me in his Model A for many weeks. I soon bought a “repo” wreck of a car. I spent weekend nights with church members who volunteered their homes, and one full summer with one dear family. After resigning the church and graduating from college, I went back to Houston for the summer, working at a grocery store and serving sometimes in churches, singing or preaching.
Next stop, Fort Worth, where I enrolled in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. For about six weeks, I stayed in a room rent-free provided by Dwight Dudley’s family in “Cowtown.” Then Wanda and I got married, and we lived in an upstairs apartment in Cleburne, Texas, where she was teaching school, for the remainder of the seminary semester. During this time, I worked at Vandervoort’s, where we made ice cream.
We then moved to Lampasas, Texas, where we lived in a parsonage provided by a mission church that had called us to be their pastor. We stayed there one and one-half years before moving back to Fort Worth to attend the seminary. After one and one-half years we moved to Briar, Texas, a community northwest of Fort Worth. We rented a house there. I had begun working at General Motors in Arlington when we had moved back to Fort Worth, and had found juggling work and classes to be very difficult. After moving to Briar, Wanda resumed teaching. The church at Briar called me as their pastor, I resigned my job with GM and began full-time classes at the seminary, graduating two years later.
We then moved to Kosse, Texas, where I became pastor of the First Baptist Church for almost two years. We lived in the church parsonage. After that we pastored the Vickery Baptist Church in Dallas for three and one-half years, living in their parsonage. Finally we moved to Rockport to become pastor of the First Baptist Church, and where we have lived for 58 years. At first we lived in the parsonage downtown near the church for six years, moving to a new parsonage in 1970. The church put us on a housing allowance in 1980, and transferred ownership of the house to us.
I retired from Rockport after 31 years and then did interim pastorates in Refugio and Ingleside for the next 25 years, supplying pulpits of other pastors, during which time I lived in Houston twice to pastor the Timbergrove Baptist Church, living each time in church-owned properties. In between those two stints at Timbergrove, I returned to Rockport in 2006-2007 as Interim Pastor. In 2010, I returned to Rockport to become interim pastor at Bethel Baptist, Ingleside one more time before retiring for good as the pandemic got its start, in January, 2020. Other than our time in Houston, I continued living in the same house I have lived in since 1970.
So, let’s see. I started this blog to tell you where I have lived throughout my life. And how many places. Here goes. Houston, 18 years (at least 13 places), Marshall (2 places), Waco etal(6 places), Fort Worth (3 places), Cleburne (One place), Lampasas (one), Briar (one), Kosse (one), Dallas (one), Rockport (2), Refugio (one, my motor home), Houston again (two), finally back here in Rockport, to stay. That is 35 different places. I also stayed somewhere when I made mission trips and conducted revivals, but I’m not counting those. Of the total of 90 years, I have lived in Rockport 65% of my life.
Someone may say to me, “You’ve called at least 35 places your home for a while, but what do you call “home?” I dearly love the song, “Sweet Beulah Land,” written and sung by Squire Parsons in the video below. It begins, “I’m kinda homesick..”