God's Hand Has Always Been Upon Me

By Dewey Chapman

In this book, I am sharing a great deal of my life. You will read of many instances of God's protection in my life. This book gives readers a chance to understand that no matter what they are going through, God knows and cares for them and is able to supply all of their needs.

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--Dewey Chapman

From many exciting adventures of a small southwest Virginia boy growing up in an age before computers and computer games were invented to a grown man with a deep love for God, this book is a true account of the life of a southwest Virginia man from a young child to an adult.

Come join in on many fun childhood adventures all the way to several life-threatening experiences as the boy grows into a man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639619825

Book preview

Lick Skillet

Lick Skillet is a small community that sits on a mountain in Southwest Virginia.

When you are leaving the Lick Skillet community at the bottom of the road, you will come to a four-way intersection. The road to the left is called up the valley. The road to the right is called down the valley. The road straight ahead is called Allison Gap Road. The road leaving Allison Gap leads to Saltville, Virginia.

About a quarter of a mile below my house that I was raised in, located on Lick Skillet, there is a small road that turns to the right. This road is referred to as the back road or doggie road. The reason this road is sometimes called doggie road is because there were a lot of dogs on that road. If you were walking down that road, you had better be a good runner. I didn’t worry about walking on this road because I was a fast runner. That’s how I got one of my nicknames, Speed Weed.

The doggie road goes around in a half circle. It comes back out on the main road on Lick Skillet near the Allison Gap School. This main road leads to the stop sign at the bottom of Lick Skillet at the four-way intersection. At the bottom of Lick Skillet Road, on the right, sits a church called the Church of God of Prophecy.

The Lick Skillet community is shaped like a skillet. That’s how the community got its name. That is a good name for it. I remember when I was little, after I ate all of my pancakes, I would lick off all the syrup that was left on my plate. That’s what I call licking the dishes clean.

People did not waste much food when I was growing up. We ate what we could get and was thankful for it. I thank God for the food that we had. He took care of us and supplied all of our needs. God’s Word says that it will rain on the just and on the unjust. If God lets it rain on a just person’s garden, he will also let it rain on an unjust person’s garden as well. Bless the Lord.

I would like to thank you for reading this story. I would like for you to read all of the stories in this book because you will never read another book just like this one. I am the one that the things in this book happened to. No two people have all of the same experiences in life.

I thank God for helping me to remember some of my life’s adventures. I would like for my book to be read all over the United States, Canada, and the whole world. I feel like God has given me things to say in this book that will inspire you. Perhaps some of the things I say will inspire people who are not saved to turn their hearts over to Jesus Christ.

May God bless you and be merciful unto you. Amen.

My Baby Sister Was Born

My baby sister was the youngest child born in our family. She was the only child in our family to be born in a hospital. She was born at the Thomas McGhee Hospital in Saltville, Virginia. The rest of us were born at home. I was about two years old when she was born.

When my sister was about one year old, she and I both developed a really bad cough. The cough seemed to get worse at night. It got so bad that it nearly took our breath away when we started coughing.

Mommy sent one of my brothers to our next-door neighbor’s house to ask for some groundhog grease to rub on our chests. When she rubbed it on our chests, it helped our coughs to ease up.

Our neighbor loved to hunt groundhogs. His wife would save the grease when she cooked a groundhog. She would pour the grease in a jar and let it set up like lard. They would always send Mommy some groundhog grease whenever she needed it.

I remember Mommy and Daddy gathering around our bedside and praying for us while we were sick. Many times, after they prayed for us, we would start to feel better, and our coughs would stop. After praying for us, Mommy would bring us some milk to drink. We would drink our milk and then go to sleep and sleep all night. When we would wake up the next morning, Mommy would make us put some socks on our feet as soon as we got out of bed. She didn’t want our feet bare on the cold floor.

I know Mommy and Daddy’s prayers helped us when we were sick.

This is the beginning of my short stories telling how God’s hand has always been upon me.

Always remember that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man or woman availeth much.

It is because of prayer that I believe that I am still alive today. I thank God and my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, for helping me throughout my life.

I am going to try to write these stories for people to be inspired and helped. I know people will never read stories just like this again. These are true stories. I hope my stories will inspire people to want to serve the Lord, just as I was inspired to serve my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Photo of Garland Chapman Photo of Edna Chapman

Our Childhood Sicknesses

Iremember when my baby sister and I were very small, it seemed like she and I would catch most of the sicknesses in our home.

One time, chickenpox was going around. She and I both came down with the chickenpox. Mommy sent some of my brothers to gather a certain herb that she used to treat our chickenpox. I don’t remember the name of the herb that she had them to gather.

After Mommy got the herb, she boiled it in water for a while. Then she saved the water and put it in the refrigerator to cool. After it was cooled, Mommy gave us some of the water to drink. She told us that it would help the chickenpox to break out better. It has to break out on your body as much as possible. It wouldn’t be good for it to not break out very much and to stay inside of your body. We both drank as much of the water as we could. It tasted terrible.

After we drank the herb water, I talked to my sister. She was young, but she could understand what she was told. I told her that the water tasted bad. She nodded her head and agreed with me.

The next day, I could hardly believe myself. I had bumps all over my body. My little sister looked the same way. Mommy told us to be sure to not scratch the bumps. She told us to leave them alone, and eventually, they would scab over. I was old enough to understand what she was saying, but I didn’t know if my little sister understood her or not. I kept an eye on her and tried to keep her from scratching. When I would see her starting to scratch, I would tell her to stop. Mommy said that after the bumps scabbed over that they would fall off on their own.

I knew that Mommy and Daddy were praying a lot for us. After a few days, the chickenpox scabbed over. After a while, when we took a bath with the lye soap that we used, the scabs fell off. The lye soap helped to bring the scabs off of us as we bathed. Our skin looked so much better. There were some marks left on our skin from the scabs, but they eventually went away.

Mommy used to take lard made from hog fat and render it out. She made lye soap from the hog lard. We didn’t have sweet-smelling fancy soap to use. We always used lye soap that Mommy made when we were growing up.

We recovered from the chickenpox. It wasn’t too long, though, before my little sister, my older brother, and I took the measles.

The measles looked something like the chickenpox. Once again, Mommy sent some of my brothers out to gather more herbs. This time, it was an herb used to treat the measles. Again, she boiled the herb in water and saved the water for us to drink. After the water had cooled in the refrigerator, she gave all of us some of it to drink. I don’t think my brother liked it very much. My little sister and I had already drunk some herb water, so we knew what it tasted like.

My brother had already started school at this time. He was in the first grade. I was not old enough to go to school yet. You had to be six years old before you could go to school then.

I asked Mommy if the measles would break out like the chickenpox did. She said that they would, and she was praying for us that everything went well.

Sure enough, we all three soon broke out in little bumps all over our bodies. Again, Mommy told us not to scratch the bumps after we had broken out.

Once the bumps and sores were all gone, we were very thankful to God that it was over. I was sure glad that the measles were gone.

Later on, I got the whooping cough. This time, I was the only one that got sick. The rest of the family escaped this sickness. I began coughing really bad. Mommy rubbed groundhog grease on my chest. But I still kept coughing. It just wouldn’t let up.

Mommy asked Daddy (whom she called Gar instead of his full name, Garland), Gar, what are we going to do for Dewey?

Daddy told her that this was a very serious cough that I had this time. I was also running a fever. Mommy and Daddy decided to take me to the emergency room at the Thomas McGhee Hospital in Saltville the next morning.

The next morning, I got dressed, and we left for the hospital. I thank the Lord that I had lived through the night. My cough was really bad.

When the doctor checked me and heard how I was coughing, he told my parents that he would like to keep me in the hospital for a few days. My cough was very serious.

I was admitted to the second floor of the hospital. I was in a semiprivate room. I remember Mommy asking me if I knew what had brought such a cough on me. I told her that I believed it started when me, my brother, and a friend of ours had gone fishing. This friend was one of our neighbors that we played with a lot.

During the time that I got the whooping cough, it was trout fishing season. Our friend’s daddy had taken us trout fishing (this man was the one that I had been named after). He took us to a place called Big Tumbling Creek to fish.

While we were fishing, he would keep us all close to him. He didn’t want us to fall into the creek and drown.

As we were fishing, there seemed to be a fog or vapor coming up off of the water.

I breathed in this vapor, and it seemed to have an effect on my lungs.

Our neighbor was a very good fisherman. We all threw our lines into the water, and every now and then, we would catch a trout.

We were tickled to death every time we caught one.

We took the fish to our neighbor’s home, and his sister cooked them for us. She was a great cook. My brother and I stayed at their house until the fish were ready to eat. Then we sat down and had a very good meal with them.

While we were eating, I began to cough. My neighbor noticed how I was coughing and asked me what was wrong. I told him that me and my little sister would have a cough pretty often. I thought that was all it was.

We went home, and I told Mommy and Daddy all about our fishing trip. I told them that we had fished at Big Tumbling Creek. Our neighbor had brought us some lunch to eat while fishing that his wife had packed for us. We had a really good time that day!

I was still coughing every now and then. Mommy worried about my cough because she knew it would probably get worse when it got dark. It always seems like sicknesses get worse when the darkness of night sets in.

I went to bed that night. After I laid down, Mommy was listening to me cough. She came to my bedroom and got into bed with me. It made me feel good to know Mommy was by my side. She helped me to pray. Mommy then prayed and asked Jesus to help me.

All that night, I kept coughing. Mommy rubbed groundhog grease on me, but it didn’t seem to help. So that’s how I ended up in the hospital with whooping cough.

The doctor who admitted me into the hospital came to see me. He tried to ask me questions, but I was coughing so hard that I couldn’t answer him. He told me that he was going to give me a shot to try to help me with the cough.

All of this happened during Easter time. Mommy brought my Easter basket to me in the hospital. There was an older man in the same room with me there. I offered him some candy from my basket.

I remember that night I coughed so hard that I could not hardly get my breath at times. My lungs began to hurt me. The man in the room with me turned the light on and saw the condition that I was in. When I coughed, I would make a whooping sound.

The man called the nurses to the room. They hurried in and gathered around and started working with me. My cough was serious. I didn’t know if I would live through the night.

I began to turn blue all over. A nurse came in and gave me a shot. I can still remember the whooping sound I made as I coughed.

I thank God for having compassion and mercy on me. Jesus, God’s Son, is our healer.

I started to cough less. Thank God I finally went to sleep that night.

I wasn’t coughing much the next morning. I was even able to eat some breakfast. The nurses were very proud of how well I was doing. God had been very good to me. People were praying for me. Prayers work! God does not practice medicine. He is the Great Physician. He made the blind to see, the lame to walk, and raised the dead.

When Mommy and Daddy came to see me that morning, the man in the room with me told them I had a hard night. He told them I had whooped all night with the whooping cough. Daddy said that he had been praying for me through the night. He was asking the Lord to be merciful to me and to heal my cough. Thank God for people that pray for us!

I cannot mention everyone’s name when I pray, but I know the Lord knows the number of hairs on each person’s head. He knows our hearts. He knows all things. He has all power. There is nothing that God cannot do. The only thing that is impossible for God to do is sin.

When the doctor came in that morning, he checked my chart. He saw that I had a hard night. He checked me and was pleased at how much better I sounded. He told me if I was still doing better when he came to see me the next day, he would let me go home.

The next morning, when the doctor came to see me, I was still doing good. He let me go home. I was so happy to go home!

God has brought me through so many hard things in my life. There are many more stories I want to tell you.

I want to meet everyone in heaven. It will be a wonderful place.

If you are not ready to go to heaven to be with the Lord, get yourself ready. All you have to do is when the Lord knocks on your heart’s door, open the door and let Him come into your heart. Jesus said He would come in and sup with you, and you would sup with Him.

When you ask the Lord to come into your heart, and you know that you have sinned, ask Him to forgive your sins. He will save you.

God does not want anyone to go to hell. People choose to go to hell on their own. Whatever you do, please don’t miss out on the first resurrection.

The Red-Letter Words

My little sister and I were the last two children in my family to start school. At that time, not all of my older siblings were still going to school.

When I was small, our home wasn’t very large. Some of our house was made from logs taken from a cabin located at a place called Clay Hill. This was the cabin that my mommy and daddy had lived in when they were first married.

Sometimes, four of us children had to sleep in the same bed. Two would sleep at the head of the bed, and two would sleep at the foot of the bed.

My oldest brother had been born at the old cabin where Mommy and Daddy lived at Clay Hill. After a while, Daddy decided to move the family to Lick Skillet. He tore down the cabin they were living in and used the wood to build our house on Lick Skillet.

While Daddy was building the new house, he added one very special room for Mommy. It was her special living room.

As time went on, one of my older brothers began working for the Olin Matheison Company at their chlorine plant. He had dropped out of school but later finished high school through the GED program. He enrolled in college courses from home. At the chlorine plant, he became a chemist. He worked with mercury, a material that was used to keep the machines there cooled off. Mercury always stays cool.

I remember when we were children, some of my friends and I would go to a place called the Muck Dam. This was a dumping place for Olin Matheison. It was located in an area called Perryville, a small community near Saltville. It wasn’t very far from Lick Skillet. The muck that was dumped there had set up and dried. You could walk across it. We would go there to gather mercury if we could find it.

Mercury has many uses. You can take old coins that were made with silver and shine them back up using mercury.

One day, my friends and I went to the Muck Dam to gather some mercury. We dug around in the muck. Muck is what the waste from the chlorine plant was called. We found a puddle of mercury. We gathered it with a spoon and put it in a bottle.

While we were gathering the mercury, two men from the Olin plant came by and told us that we were not allowed to be there. We told them we were gathering the mercury to use to shine up old coins. The men asked us what our names were. I told them my name and said that my daddy and two of my brothers worked for Olin. The men told us to take our mercury and go home.

That evening, the police came to my house. They asked my mommy to come outside so they could talk to her. I was listening through our screen door.

The police told Mommy that I was caught gathering mercury at the Muck Dam. They asked her to tell me not to go back there anymore. It was a dangerous place and also posted property.

The police also told Mommy to make sure that I didn’t swallow any of the mercury because it could be deadly.

I was always very careful when I handled the mercury. If I dropped any of it, it would roll around. Then I would have to scoop it up with a spoon to put it back into the bottle.

Back to Mommy’s special living room. It was a beautiful place. She put her nicest things in this room. She had a really nice coffee table that she had bought from the Olin Matheison company store.

Olin had a store in Saltville for the families of the men who worked for them. Employees and their families could charge things there, and the money owed would be deducted from the Olin employees’ paychecks.

Mommy didn’t charge a lot of things there because Daddy didn’t make a lot of money. I remember seeing one of Daddy’s weekly checks. It was for fifty dollars. That seemed to be more money back then than it is now.

Mommy found a large thick Bible with the Old and New Testament in it. It was a King James Version of the Bible. On the front of the Bible was a beautiful picture of Jesus. She set the Bible on the coffee table in her special living room.

One day, one of my brothers told Mommy that a truck would be coming to the house to make a delivery. When the truck arrived, there was a beautiful new living room suite for Mommy on it. My brother had bought it for her for her special living room. There were also new lamps to go with the living room suite on the truck. It all looked so good placed in the living room.

Mommy always kept her family Bible on the coffee table. She wouldn’t let us touch it unless she was there with us. She didn’t want us to tear it. She only let us go into that room when she was with us. That was her special room for company. She had given us orders to play in the family living room, not in the special one.

The family living room had a radio and television in it. We had to run a line to an antenna way up on the hill behind our house to get a picture to come in on the television. We didn’t have cable television back then. We only got two stations at that time. They were Channel 5 and Channel 11.

Every once in a while, we would have to go up on the hill and twist the antenna until we could get the picture to work right on the television. One of us boys would stand on the porch, and another would be inside, watching the television. Another of us would go on the hill and twist the antenna around. When we got a good picture, the boy watching the television would signal the boy on the porch who in turn signaled the one on the hill that the picture was good.

On Fridays, Mommy would call a taxicab from Saltville to come to our house to pick her up and take her to the grocery store in Saltville. On her way to Saltville, she would stop at the Olin office and pick up Daddy’s check. After she finished shopping, the taxi would bring her back home.

During this time, we had a small farm. We had quite a few animals. We had milk cows, ducks, turkeys, and chickens. We had three different garden spots to grow our vegetables. All of us children had chores to do around the farm.

I remember at times I would go to Mommy and ask her to read the Bible to us. Mommy had told us that the black letter words in the Bible told us about the things of God and His miracles. It told of how Jesus was born into this world and how He suffered for us. It also told of how Jesus had died for us and of His resurrection so that we could have hope.

Mommy said that the red-letter words were the words that Jesus Himself had spoken. Jesus talked directly to the people. I liked all of the words in the Bible, but I liked the red-letter words best.

At times, Mommy would gather all of the children that were home and take us into her special living room where the family Bible sat on the coffee table. She loved this room. It had a large picture window in it.

Mommy would then open up the Bible. She told us that it was a King James Version of the Bible. She said that hundreds of years ago, King James hired special Bible scholars to put together a Bible from the old scrolls that were the true Word of God. God had moved upon King James to have this Bible written from these scrolls. It is the true Word of God.

Every time Mommy would read to us, I would ask her to read the red-letter words. I loved how she gathered us around her to read to us. She would turn to the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and read us stories of Jesus. It was very special to hear all of these things about Jesus. She read of how Jesus didn’t come to earth to do His will, but He came to do the will of His Father. Jesus is the only one who lived on earth and never sinned. There was no guile found in his mouth.

Mommy read to us the story about where people were buying and selling in the temple. Jesus became angry when He saw that happening. He turned over the money changers tables. He plaited a whip and beat them out of the temple. Jesus told them that the temple was a house of prayer, but they had made it a den of thieves.

Let’s always remember to respect God’s house. It is not a place to turn into a cafeteria or restaurant. There are all kinds of worldly things going on in the house of God these days. If we attend a house of God that has a good pastor leading the people and teaching the true Word of God, we won’t see all of these worldly things going on.

Thank God for the red-letter words in the Bible. I always felt that someone should come up with a song about the red-letter words.

I finally heard someone on the radio singing a song about the red-letter words.

I hope you have enjoyed this story. I hope it has been inspiring to you and that it will do your heart good. Remember when you read the red-letter words in the Bible that they sure are special to Dewey Chapman.

Daddy Builds an Old Country Store

My daddy was not an educated man. He could not even read his own name. But when it came to knowing the Bible, he knew it from one end to the other.

Daddy liked to build things. He decided to build a country store for the family because there weren’t any stores where we lived on Lick Skillet. To get to a store, we had to walk or get a taxi. We were a long way from town.

I’m glad that Daddy got the idea to build the store. Our neighbors also thought it was a good idea. Everyone had a long way to go to get groceries.

There was a garage beside our house. Daddy decided to remodel the garage and turn it into a store building. He didn’t have any new materials to work with. He was working for Olin at the time, and they gave him old boards and other materials to use to build the store. He would get someone that had a truck to haul these materials home for him.

The old boards he brought home had nails in them. We had to pull them out. Daddy worked hard using these used materials for the store.

When Daddy got started working on the store, we asked him what he was going to make. When he told us about the store, I thought, Praise the Lord! We were tickled to death!

I told Daddy that I wanted to help build the store. He showed me how to pull the old nails out of the boards he had brought home from Olin. He needed to reuse these nails. He showed me how crooked the nails were and told me they needed to be straightened out. He sat me down on a rock and gave me a hammer and a can full of bent rusty nails. They were still very stout. Daddy showed me how to straighten the nails out using the hammer. He told me to be careful and not hit my fingers with the hammer.

I learned to straighten the nails out pretty good. I was very young. I was around five years old. I hadn’t started grade school yet. What we call elementary school now was called grade school back then.

My daddy was a big hardworking man. He was wonderful. He was also very stout. He was just a regular laborer. He did not have any degrees in school. Mommy always stayed after us to finish school and get our high school diploma. It was very important to her for her children to finish school.

Mommy was happy about the store. She asked Daddy if she could help run the store after it was finished. Daddy told her that she would be the main person to take care of the store.

During this time of his life, Daddy had backslidden on the Lord. He had stopped going to church. This only lasted for a short time. It wasn’t long before he came back to Jesus.

Being in a backslidden state is one of the most horrible lives you can live. I wouldn’t advise any Christian to backslide on the Lord just to find out how horrible it really is.

Jesus said that He is married to a backslider. Later on in my stories, I will let you know what a backslider’s life is all about. I’m not proud of it, but I want you to know this.

God has always provided for my family. We always had three meals a day. Mommy would work hard to prepare them for us. She fixed supper late in the evening. When she finished cooking supper, she would go outside and yell for us to come home and eat. She knew we would be close to home. Soon, she would see all of us children heading home. We all gathered around the table to eat our supper.

After supper, before we went to bed, I would sometimes tell Mommy that I was hungry. She would go to the refrigerator and get out the pitcher of buttermilk. She would fix me cornbread and buttermilk to eat. That was so good.

Getting back to building the store, when Daddy was driving nails into boards, he would spit on the nails before driving them into the board. While he was working, he would tell me that he needed more nails. I would go get them for him. Sometimes he ran out of nails and had to go to the company store and buy some more.

My daddy was a very good carpenter. Actually, I learned to do carpentry work by helping him with his projects.

Daddy finally got the store finished. He had built shelves and a counter. Behind the counter, he kept candy and potato chips. In front of the counter sat the pop coolers. There was a Pepsi cooler and a Coca-Cola cooler. The pop companies let Daddy use the coolers for free to advertise and sell their pop. This helped Daddy because he didn’t have to buy the coolers.

We also had moon pies for sale. The man who delivered our bread for the store would bring big plastic containers filled with big oatmeal cookies. These cookies sold for a penny. Everything was much cheaper then. You could take a quarter and buy a meal with it. You could buy a bag of potato chips, a pack of nabs, a moon pie, a pack of peanuts, and a bottle of pop all for a quarter. At that time, a bottle of pop only cost five cents.

A lot of people would buy a bottle of pop and drink it while at the store. If they took the pop with them, it cost them an extra penny for the bottle. If they took the bottle of pop with them and later brought the bottle back, Mommy would give them a penny for the returned bottle.

We had an old potbellied stove in the store for burning wood and coal to keep it warm in the winter. It kept the store very warm. People would gather around the old potbellied stove to get warm when they came in from the cold.

I remember when the state of Virginia started charging a state tax on all items sold in stores. At first, the tax started at one cent on each dollar. The tax eventually got higher with each dollar.

Our little country store did well. It seemed that God had blessed our store. Even though Daddy was not serving the Lord at this time, the store seemed to prosper. Daddy was not a bad man. He just needed to get right with the Lord. Mommy always talked about the Lord and prayed with us children.

I’m glad Daddy came up with the idea to turn the old garage building into a country store. People came from all over the community to our store. Most of all, what I liked about the store was that every once in a while, Mommy would give me a bottle of pop. She also had an ice-cream cooler with different kinds of ice cream in it. She would give us children an ice cream sometimes. That was really good.

This is just another demonstration of how God can be so good to us by giving our family this country store.

My Brother Comes Home from the Army

This story is about my oldest brother returning home from the army. He had been in the Korean War. He was there at the end of the Korean War. There was still some fighting going on during this time, and we worried about him a lot. Daddy and Mommy prayed for him. So did the rest of the family and also our neighbors that knew him.

While he was in Korea, he would write to us at home and let us know how he was doing. It was still dangerous to be there, even though the war was phasing out.

Finally, on one summer day, we saw a taxi cab pull up in front of our house. My brother was sitting in the taxi. We were happy to see that he had come home. He was safe. Thank God! We all ran out to the taxi to help him unload his luggage.

He had brought back quite a bit of luggage. We carried all of the bags up to the front porch. We didn’t go in the front door that entered into Mommy’s special living room. We always used the other door that was near our pumphouse. We always respected Mommy’s special living room.

My brother was glad to see us. He told us what it had been like in Korea. I asked him where Korea was. He told me it was way across a big ocean. He told me that the ocean kept going as far as my eyes could see. There was no land out in the ocean. I had never seen water like that. The most water I had seen was in the small creek behind our house.

God had answered our prayers and brought my brother home.

My brother told us that he had brought all of us a surprise. He started going through his bags and pulling out gifts for us. It was like Christmas! He gave each family member a gift. I don’t remember what he got everyone, but we were all happy with our gifts. Our gifts had come from Korea.

He reached into one of the bags and pulled out two beautiful little silk coats. They were for me and one of my brothers. We were so excited when we saw them. My coat was made from blue silk and had a bald eagle with its wings spread out flying on it. I loved my coat. I thanked my brother for getting this for me. My brother’s coat was red and had a tiger on it. These coats were hand sewn by Korean women. I knew that Mommy could sew good, but I said that I didn’t think she could sew like that. Mommy laughed and said that she didn’t believe that she could sew that good either. I wore my coat proudly and showed it off.

We were all very proud of our gifts from my brother. But the most important thing was that he had returned safely home. He was home for good.

While my brother was still in the army, he bought a house just down the road from our house on Lick Skillet. He bought the house from Daddy’s brother. When he came home, he had the house rented to a family. The family had two children. I used to go and visit this family and play with the children. They continued to live there for a while after my brother came home.

The people who lived in our community got along well. I’m glad God gave us these types of neighbors. Today, there are people who live side by side and don’t even know each other’s names.

People used to respect the Sabbath when I was growing up. People used to visit each other. It doesn’t seem that way anymore. People who are related hardly visit each other now.

I believe it is almost time for the Father to look over at His Son and tell Him to go get His children and bring them home. Only the Father knows when that time will be. We read in Matthew, chapter 24, about the signs of the end-times. Jesus said that this world will come to an end after the Gospel has been spread throughout the whole world.

As I said earlier, I used to go to the neighbor’s house that my brother owned to play with their children. The neighbor had a sister that would come to visit them. The sister became acquainted with my brother. They started seeing each other. After a time, they got married. God knew this would happen. There is nothing that God does not know.

I thank God for being my heavenly Father. I thank my Lord Jesus Christ for being my Savior and my friend. I have a big brother in heaven. He is sitting at the right hand of the Father. His name is Jesus.

I wanted to show in this story how good my brother was to us and also that he fell in love and got married. That’s the way God meant for it to be. I knew when I was a little boy that when I got old enough that I was supposed to marry a woman and not a man. The way the world has changed and is not following the way God meant for it to be has become an abomination. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality.

One day, God will destroy this world. In the book of Revelation, John saw the heaven and earth roll away like a scroll. There will be a new heaven and a new earth.

I plan on being in heaven throughout eternity with my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and with my heavenly Father. I am proud of what Jesus has done for His people. He is waiting for whosoever will to come to Him. It doesn’t cost anything to be saved. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you have; God is willing to save your soul.

After my brother and his girlfriend got married, they moved into the house he had bought. I was glad they stayed in the neighborhood.

My Oldest Sister Gets Married

Ihad known for a while that my oldest sister was dating someone. She would go to town on Saturday nights with some of her friends. Later on in the evening, a man that she had been dating would bring them home.

She always came home pretty early on Saturday nights. Back then, people didn’t stay out until two or three in the morning. People would usually be home by ten o’clock at night, no later than eleven o’clock, even on the weekends.

Mommy and Daddy were very strict about that. During this time, most parents were strict like that concerning their children. They didn’t allow their children to stay out very late on a date.

At times, my sister would help Mommy and Daddy run the country store. She was good at being a store clerk. Both she and my brother’s wife were good at taking care of the store. Sometimes, Mommy needed help with running the store. There were things she needed to do at home.

My sister kept dating her boyfriend for a while. One day, she went to Mommy and Daddy and told them that she wanted to get married. She told them that she was going to live in Bristol, Virginia, after she was married.

Mommy was familiar with Bristol. She told my sister that it was a long way away from Lick Skillet. Mommy wanted to make sure that my sister knew what she was planning to do and if that was what she really wanted to do.

My sister agreed with her. At that time, the interstate that we now use to get to Bristol was not yet built. They were working on it, but it was not finished. People had to drive down a road called Route 11. It took a lot longer to get to Bristol that way. But she still wanted to get married and move there.

I thank the Lord that my sister had found her boyfriend. I liked him. Now he was to be her fiancé.

Before we knew it, my sister had got married and moved away. Most of us children didn’t get to go to her wedding. I’m not sure if Mommy or Daddy went either.

I really missed my sister. I missed getting to see her every day.

After a while, she came back to see us. The neighbors came and congratulated her on her marriage. All too soon, it was time for her to go back to Bristol. I waved to her as she left. I was sad for her to leave. When she still lived with us, she would take care of me as if I was her own child. I missed that.

Time went on for a while, and I had not gotten to visit my sister at her new home. Finally, me, Mommy, Daddy, and my oldest brother were going to go to visit my sister at her home. We traveled down Route 11 to get to Bristol. We had to drive through different little towns to get there. As we neared the Bristol, Virginia, and the Bristol, Tennessee, line, there were red lights everywhere. I told Daddy to look at all the lights and stop signs.

I had never seen so much traffic before. There were a lot of people walking on the sidewalks. It was a thrill for me to see all of this. I was used to living and playing in the mountains. This was a city. I didn’t know what to think about it all.

Soon, we arrived at my sister’s house. She had a little boy now. She brought the baby and came out to greet us. Her son was Mommy and Daddy’s first grandchild.

While we were there, my sister cooked us a meal. Mommy told her not to cook because we would have to leave to go back home soon. But my sister was so glad to see us that she wanted us to eat with her. She told Mommy that if we ate with her, we wouldn’t have to stop on the way home to get something to eat.

We had a good visit with my sister that day. Everyone enjoyed being together and having a good time. We didn’t get to see my sister’s husband that day. He was at work, and we had to leave before he got home. We wanted to be home before dark.

Being a young boy like I was at the time and traveling such a long distance, I felt a lot like something one of my uncles had talked about. Someone had taken my uncle on a small trip, maybe twenty miles from where he lived, and he told them that he knew now that we live in a big world. He had never been very far away from home before. He was used to staying in the mountains and not traveling very far.

I was glad we had such a good trip to my sister’s house that day. We all thanked God for our wonderful visit. Daddy had prayed and asked God to give us a safe trip. I realized that day that I was an uncle! I felt like I was growing up.

When we got home that day, the rest of the family wanted to know how our trip had gone. I told them I had never seen anything like I had seen that day. All of the many people and the traffic were different from what I was used to seeing.

When my sister needed to talk to Mommy, she would call our next-door neighbor and ask her if she would go to our house and get Mommy to come and talk to her on the telephone. That was how she could keep in touch with us. We didn’t have a telephone in our house at the time. My neighbor was glad to do that for them. Later on in years, we finally got a telephone in our house. I thought we were stepping up in the world to get a telephone in our home.

My brother and I still liked to go into the woods to play. The girls didn’t like playing in the woods. They were afraid. I knew Jesus would take care of us. We had a guardian angel with us. I wasn’t afraid.

The Bible tells us that there is an angel encamped around them that love the Lord. If you are a Christian, think about what you have with you. An angel sent from God! If you are not a Christian, think about what you could have around you if you would only accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. You could have an angel encamped around you, watching over you, and taking care of you. Jesus wants us all to be saved and have Him in our lives.

A little while later on, my sister and her family came to our house for a visit. We ran to greet them as they got out of the car. We were glad to see them. My sister had never learned to drive a car, so her husband had to do all of the driving wherever they went.

As soon as they got out of the car, my sister and brother-in-law told me and my brother to come and see what they had brought us. We ran to the back of the car to see what it was. When they opened the trunk of the car, there was a cage inside. Inside of the cage were two fuzzy little animals. I didn’t know if they were rabbits or some kind of a rat. Neither my brother nor I knew what they were.

The two small animals had long fuzzy hair and little short tails. None of us had ever seen anything like them before. My brother-in-law told us they were guinea pigs. I had never heard of a guinea pig before. I knew what guineas were. They were like chickens. I knew what a pig was. Mommy raised them, and they grew into hogs. But these guinea pigs were different.

My brother-in-law opened the cage, and we got one of the guinea pigs out. It was very friendly. Next, we got the other one out of the cage. We loved them. We thanked my sister and brother-in-law for getting them for us. They were glad to have done this for us. My brother-in-law liked us.

We set the guinea pigs beside of the rock wall that was in front of the tall building that I had tried to parachute off of. When I told my brother-in-law about me trying to parachute off of that building, he laughed. He wasn’t making fun of me, but he thought it was funny that the parachute had beat me to the ground. He said he was thankful that I had not gotten hurt really bad.

There were some really big rocks around that building. We set the guinea pigs at the rock wall close to some of the big rocks. One of them went over to the rocks and started digging. Guinea pigs are a lot like groundhogs. They dig under rocks and live in the holes they dig. We didn’t want to keep them in a cage. I knew they would like living in the holes that they dug.

Most of my family came and looked at the guinea pigs that day. Some of them were working and missed seeing them dig their new homes.

We kept the guinea pigs for quite a while. One thing we did not do was to let the guinea pigs live in any handmade concrete houses. We had learned our lesson from the baby duck episode.

My sister and brother-in-law stayed and ate supper with us that day. When it started getting late, it was time for them to go home. I waved to them as they drove down the road. I can remember I had tears in my eyes watching them go. My sister was leaving me again. She was on her way back to her new home.

God made families to love each other. That’s the way God wants it to be. God also wants us to serve Him day and night all of the time, not just part of the time.

Thank you for reading this story. I hope you got something out of it.

God’s hand has always been upon me. God has kept me safe through all of my experiences throughout my life. If you don’t know the Lord, I hope you will come to know Him. If you do know the Lord, please keep Him down deep in your heart. If you are not saved, please ask Jesus to come into your heart and save you. Repent of your sins and be baptized. Get your name written down in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

We can all go to heaven to be with our heavenly Father one day. We can live with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, throughout all eternity.

A Strange Man

One evening, while Daddy and I were at our country store, a strange man walked inside.

There was a picture hanging on the wall in the store. It was a picture of a woman holding a bottle of pop. The strange man asked Daddy what the woman in the picture was holding. Daddy told him that it was a bottle of Coca-Cola pop. The man asked Daddy how much the pop cost. Daddy told him that it cost five cents. He told him that if he took the bottle with him, it would cost him six cents.

The strange man left the store and walked up the road. He was visiting one of the families in the neighborhood.

The next morning, my sister-in-law and I were watching the store. We built a fire in the potbellied stove because it was cold.

We had gotten the store good and warm when the strange man walked in. The man reached into the pop cooler and pulled out two bottles of Coca-Cola.

I was sitting on a bench, watching him. The man walked over to the counter where my sister-in-law was standing and handed her a dime. Then he walked over to the potbellied stove. When he did that, I got up and walked over to where my sister-in-law was standing behind the counter. The strange man opened the door to the stove and threw both bottles of pop inside the stove. Then he shut the stove door.

My sister-in-law and I ran out of the store very fast. The man was still inside the store when we heard a very loud blast. It sounded like a big shotgun had been fired. The bottles of pop had exploded!

My sister-in-law ran to her house. She told me to run home quickly. As I was running through my yard, there stood my little sister between the house and the store. We stood there in the yard as I told her what had just happened at the store.

Just then, the strange man came out of the store and headed up the road toward the house where he was visiting. When he saw us standing there, instead of walking on up the road, he walked toward our house and picked up a mattock that was lying in the yard. He started walking toward me and my sister.

My sister and I turned and ran. I yelled to my sister to run to the back door of our house. Instead of running to the back door with me, she ran to the dairy that was behind our house.

I ran through the back door and told Mommy what was happening. My sister had run around the dairy, and then she ran in the back door of our house. Mommy hurried and locked the door behind her.

The strange man went around the dairy, looking for my sister. The dairy had a room over the top of it where Mommy kept the chop for our hogs. The door to the top of the dairy was standing open. The man went inside the door, looking for my sister. Thank God, instead of going into that room, my sister had run on by and come into the house where we were. If the man had found her in the room over the dairy, he would have killed her with the mattock.

Mommy was watching the man from a window in our house. She saw him come out of the top of the dairy and throw down the mattock. Then he headed on up the road toward the house where he had been visiting.

In a short while, a deputy sheriff came driving up the road. Someone had undoubtedly called the law on the strange man. The last time I ever saw the man, he was sitting in the back seat of the police car going down the road. Later, I heard that he had been admitted into an asylum.

I thank God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, for saving me and my sister that day.

I Start the First Grade of School

Iturned six years old in the month of June. It was during the summer before a new year of school started.

Before it was time for school to start that fall, I had to go to the Allison Gap Elementary School to get my required school vaccinations.

When I got to the school, the children who had to come and get their vaccinations were lined up on each side of the school hall. The boys were on one side, and the girls were on the other side. We were all sitting in chairs. We had to remove our shirts and cover ourselves with towels.

One at a time, we were called into the principal’s office. In the office were the principal and a nurse. Finally, it was my turn to go into the office to get my vaccinations.

One of my good friends was in line to go after me. We had grown up together this far and were very good friends. He lived down the road just a short distance from my house. We were going to start school together.

The nurse gave me a shot in my right arm. After a while, a scab was supposed to form on my arm where I had gotten the shot. When the scab fell off, I was supposed to have a round scar on my arm.

The shot didn’t hurt very much. I had already had shots given to me when I had been in the hospital with whooping cough. Even though the shot didn’t hurt much, I still said, Ouch!

As I was about to leave the room, my friend was brought in to get his shot. What happened next sounds unbelievable, but it really happened.

The nurse pulled my friend’s towel down from his shoulder and gave him his shot. When she gave him the shot, he jumped backward a little bit. It must have frightened him. All of a sudden, he fell onto the floor. The nurse and principal was scared. They were afraid that the shot had reacted badly on him.

The nurse grabbed my friend and laid him on a little cot that was set up in the room. She asked him if he was all right. He laid there for a little while, then told the nurse that he was okay. My friend told the nurse that the shot hadn’t reacted on him at all. He told her that when he jumped backward, someone was standing on his shoelace, causing him to fall in the floor.

Everyone got a laugh out of that. The nurse told him to go back out into the hall. I will never forget that. We all got a good laugh out of what happened to my friend.

In the fall, when school started, I went to the Allison Gap Elementary School. When I got to the first grade room, I met my teacher. She was a nice teacher who was good to all of her students. I grew to really like her.

Each morning, when the bell rang, we would take our seats. Our teacher would go down each row of children in the room, checking our hair for lice. During that time, lice was a common thing in schools. She also checked our hands to make sure there wasn’t any dirt under our fingernails. She also looked behind our ears to make sure that we had washed behind them.

During our reading time, we sat around a round table. We each got a reader book. I always enjoyed sitting around the reading table. I remember the first book we learned to read was about Dick, Jane, Sally, Puff, and Spot.

Reading and arithmetic were two very important subjects in school. Being able to