Surrender

By Sonnie Chamberlain

I stood there and it was silent except for the tires exploding from the fire. His tractor burned, his trailer burned, and my trailer burned. After they got the fire put out they found three people inside the prime truck. It was a father, a mother, and their nine-year-old child. It was during spring break and I guess the mom and dad took their kid with them for a week so the family could be together. Little did they know that they would also die together. I was the only one that lived. After such an impact my tractor was still roadworthy. My trailer was destroyed. The paramedics took me to the hospital and I had a few disks in my back that were messed up. Other than that I was fine. Well physically anyhow! It really bothered me that the family had been killed. State troopers came to the hospital to check my logbook. I was lucky because my logbook was up-to-date. If my logbook had not been right they would've thrown me in jail

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sonnie Chamberlain
• Release date: Jul 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476289892

Sonnie Chamberlain

My name is Sonnie Chamberlain I am a truck driver and the father of world renowned drummer Matt Chamberlain. I was born in a shack along side some railroad tracks in southeast Missouri.I spent eight years in Navy. In. the 60's. After Navy was a drummer with some bands in Calif. Started doing drugs and that lead to my involvement with the motorcycle gangs. Had a violent temper and that lead to many encounters with the police. I deserted my family and after many years I excepted Jesus Christ as my savior and my life turned around.I tried to reestablish myself with my son but the damage had been done. I have other children but only one son. It is sad but i guess time will take care of it.

Book preview

Surrender

Sonnie Chamberlain

Copyright 2012 by Sonnie Chamberlain

Smashwords Edition

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This book is dedicated to my Savior Jesus Christ. Without his hand of protection over me and his loving kindness drawing me to him I would be totally lost. I am so glad Christ is my Savior and the son of God of the universe.

Surrender by Sonnie Joe Chamberlain

It was raining outside and the wind was blowing very hard. The sun had not come up yet. The old man lay in bed, snuggled up in his blanket nice and warm. All of a sudden that terrible alarm clock went off. The old man thought, ‘I am going to shoot that alarm someday.’ He laid there for a second and then, grouching and grumbling, threw the blanket off as he got out of bed. It was time to go to work. The old man thought, ‘will work ever stop? Probably not till I die or something bad happens and I can't work. Oh well I'll worry about that when it happens.’ He had been traveling up and down the highway for over 30 years in that old truck. The old man put on his clothes and bundled up to make the trip across the parking lot and into the truck stop. The truck stop was busy, a lot of trucks coming in and out. With the rain and wind it was hard to get across the parking lot and dodge all the big trucks. It was hard for the drivers to see everything all at one time in the truck stop because there was so much activity. The visibility was so bad with the rain in the dark so you had to watch out for yourself. But the old man made it into the truck stop.

He grabbed a cup of coffee and a sandwich that had enough preservatives added to embalm you and headed back out to his truck. He climbed back into the cab and went back into his sleeper to take his medicine and start the day. He turned the ignition on, started the truck, released the air brakes, put it in gear, and headed out of the truck stop to the open road. It was still night and with the rain and wind it was hard to see. This is a job he's done thousands of times over the years. It took about 5 min. to get the truck on the open road and up to speed so he could set the cruise control and relax. He was heading home, but first had to go to St. Louis, Missouri, and unload. It was a trip that he made several times a month. He was very thankful to God to be able to still make a good living at his age. ‘I know 70 years old is not real old but it's getting there,’ he chuckled to his self. As he headed down the road with the windshield wipers beating out a monotonous beat on the windshield he almost went into a trance thinking about his life. Thinking about how life had been unfair to Him. Thinking about the things he wished he would've done. About all the regrets he had and wished he could go back and do it all over again to try and make up for the mistakes he had made. ‘Oh well,’ he thought ‘it's water under the bridge. No need dwelling too much on the mistakes because we all make mistakes in life and hopefully we learn from them.’

My name is Sonnie Joe Chamberlain and I am 70 years old and a truck driver. I haven't always been a truck driver. But that's my occupation for the last 30 years.

I was born in 1941 in a shack next to the railroad tracks in Farrenburg Missouri. This was after the Great Depression and at the beginning of World War II. I can remember my sister Reba telling me that just down the railroad track, there was a hobo camp. She says she used to go down and play with the kids of a family that lived close to the camp. She told me they weren't bad people. They were just regular folks with no jobs and no place to live. I guess those times were very hard on people with no work. My sister Reba said that our mom used to put out food to help feed some of the people. In return they would chop wood and do chores around our home so they wouldn't feel like they were begging. That's the way it used to be. Everyone worked and people were ashamed to take a handout unless they could give something in return. Not like today where everyone wants something for nothing. People were poor in those days but they were proud, hard-working, God-fearing folks.

There was a lot of talk about a light that was seen on the railroad tracks, and it's still there even today. It's been on a television program called Unsolved Mysteries. The following story is about other people’s experiences with these lights.

All my family is from this area, so I've been told many stories about the Farrenburg light.

Many of my family members have seen this light. I have been told it looked like the light of a conductor’s lantern walking the tracks, as you walked closer to this light it would disappear, and when you turned around to walk back from where you came from, it would reappear in front of you again. I was told it was the conductor looking for his head, I was also told once they removed the tracks it was never seen again. I have tried to see this light myself over the years but had no success. A lot of my family members have seen this. I was always told about it growing up. Everyone who saw it always described it the same way, as a small bright white light about the size of a softball. I was also told it would be about 300 yards from you, and as you got closer, it would disappear and sometimes it would reappear behind you. I don't know of anybody that has taken a picture of it. I'll do some asking around for any pictures and to see if anybody has seen it anymore. My parents live only a few miles from where it has been seen in the past.

These lights don't have a whole lot to do with me other than the fact that I was born in that area, in a little house right next to the railroad track where the light was. I guess I could make up a story about those lights but it wouldn't be true so I'll just leave it at that.

My father was a sharecropper, which meant he farmed somebody else's land for a share of the profits. I don't remember anything about living in that area because I was just a baby.

I've heard lots of stories from my grandmother, mom and dad. You know, having been born in such humble settings. My family had no idea of our heritage. My father's name was Jess Chamberlain and my mother's name was Thelma Boone. Both sides of my family were of English descent. Little did I know, but my grandfathers were kings of England. One of my grandfathers was King Edward III and another was King Edward II, King Edward I and William the Conqueror was also a grandfather. Not that that makes any difference because my family would never ever have a chance of holding the crown again. There are quite a few that can trace their ancestry back to King Edward lll. So if you happen to be one of those people don't get snooty about it because your one of many. Don't run around thinking you are a king or a prince or anything. It is interesting to know though. But that's okay I wouldn’t want to be king anyhow. What a pain in the butt that would be. There also a lot of noblemen and ladies, in the bloodline. But here's an interesting thing. One of my grandfathers on the Boone side of the family was Benjamin Boone. He was a brother of Squire Boone, who was Daniel Boone's father. So I guess I'm related to old Daniel Boone. He would've been like a distant cousin of some sort. Who knows, maybe that's the reason I have had such a rebellious spirit most of my life. It's in the blood!

Here is something to keep in mind. If you’re a Christian you have a inherdance in heaven. You will be a king and royal priest. We have a father in heaven that IS KING OF ALL KINGS AND LORD OF ALL AND HE IS OUR FATHER.

When I was five years old we moved to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and that's where I lived until 1959 when I joined the Navy. I went to the same school that Rush Limbaugh went to, just different years. It was called Central High school. The fighting Tigers! I was not much of a sports fan back in those days. I was very small and sports were not for me. Those big guys would have killed me. So my thing was motorcycles. I love motorcycles, no doubt. I have been riding them for over 50 years.

The times have changed so much since I was a kid. The things we used to get away with back then we would be imprisoned for now. I can remember we had a rock quarry in town. The quarry wouldn't operate on the weekends sometimes. So we kids would go down to the quarry. We would look around for big boulders with wires coming out of them and when we would find some; there would be dynamite that had not exploded inside that rock. So we being the energetic little kids that we were, would dig the dirt out of the holes in the rock and pull the dynamite out. Bing, bang, boom we would have dynamite. Now what do 10 or 11-year-old kids need dynamite for? Well we thought about it and decided to blow up a crapper with it. So we kids went down to the city dump and there was a creek that ran through it. Some boards were stretched over the top of the Creek with an outhouse sitting on top of the boards. So we decided to plant some dynamite under one of the boards. We ran some wire from the blasting cap that was in the dynamite to a safe distance away from the toilet. We had a 6 volt battery we could use to set off the charge. So we hid behind a lot of debris in