OMNISEED

By C. L. Standon

Roy McKnight is in the hospital at the end of his days. As Roy's time on this earth nears closer to its end, he is given an incredible gift: an angel who guides him on a journey through the past. Here, he learns the stories of the people he encountered and the beautiful effect he had on their lives. A humble man, Roy is touched to learn how he helped others in ways he never even considered. He also gains insight into some of the key people in his life and explanations for things that he spent his entire life wondering about. He is on the journey of a lifetime as one chapter of his existence comes to a close and a new one begins.

Omniseed takes you through the life of Roy, a plumber whose life was rich, not necessarily with money but rather with something worth far more than that: people and love. Roy touched the lives of family, friends, and even strangers, often without knowing it.

Omniseed tells the story not only from Roy's perspective but also from the people whose lives he has impacted. It will give the reader thought to pause and consider the seeds they sow in their own life and how those seeds can be far-reaching for years to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888321607

Book preview

cover.jpg

OMNISEED

C. L. Standon

ISBN 979-8-88832-159-1 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88832-160-7 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by C. L. Standon

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Roy

Zadok

Ronnie

The News

Harlan Rodgers

Roy and Rose

Manuel

Ruth

Dreams

Michael

Tina

Patty, Gary, and Brody

Doris

Natalie Rose

Ted

Matthew

The Finger

Greg

Pop

Road Trip

Memories

Family

Transitions

About the Author

This book is dedicated to my family and close friends who have sown seeds of love in my life and in the lives of many others.

A special thank you to Big Cuz, Gary Goldy, for chauffeuring me around as I researched geographical areas in my book.

And most of all, I thank the LORD for His gift of life.

Chapter 1

Roy

Sleep was ebbing, replaced by an awareness of pain—a hot, burning pain that entered his lungs with each breath and minimized ever so slightly on exhalation. He fought to stay in the deep realm of sleep where the pain was held at bay by thin cobwebs of soft darkness.

Roy? Honey, it's Rose. He heard the soft voice close to his ear. The delight of her familiar scent—a light floral perfume she'd worn for years—was dampened by the acrid burning in his lungs. He struggled to cough, to force the pain from his lungs and loosen the tightness of his chest.

The nurse is giving you some IV medicine right now, Rose reassured him, soothing him with her voice.

As he waited for relief from the medication, he was aware his hand was being held by his wife, his faithful mate of over sixty-seven years. Oh, how he loved his Rose. His mind gently drifted to their first meeting, and just like an actor on the big screen, there he was again in the late spring of 1950.

*****

What a perfect day, Roy said aloud to himself, feet resting in the water, fishing pole in hand. He was sitting on a boulder, fishing from Deep Creek, one of his favorite fishing spots close to home. He had hiked up to the Deep Creek swimming hole a few times over the years to enjoy a swim, but his favorite part of this place sat below the swimming hole where trout were just waiting to be caught.

On Sundays, right after early morning church services, he liked to spend his free time doing the things he most enjoyed, like fishing. And today was an exceptional day for fishing. The weather was perfect—not too hot or too cold. The Santa Ana winds were blowing gently, just enough to cool things comfortably. There was no stirring of their powerful gusts on this day, gusts that often would reach up to forty miles an hour, with the capacity to send the tumbleweeds tumbling and dust flying. Roy had a feeling that he was going to hook something extraordinary on this fine day.

All week long, including most Saturdays, he worked as an apprentice plumber for his uncle Mac. Mac's Plumbing had been in business for twenty years and had an excellent reputation for dependable service in their hometown of Victorville, California, and the surrounding areas. Roy loved the work. After three years of working part-time while he finished high school and now more than two years of serving full-time under his uncle as an apprentice, he was hopeful Uncle Mac would be announcing his promotion soon. He could hardly wait to earn the title of a journeyman plumber and be a standing member of the local union. Just the thought of it pleased him more than he would ever admit.

Roy figured his love of plumbing came partly from the stories his uncle had shared over the years, including some plumbing history about a man named Thomas Crapper who invented the ballcock, a mechanism for filling the toilet tank and stopping overflow. As a young boy, Roy found the plumbing stories very amusing, especially with Uncle Mac's gift for embellishment. Uncle Mac loved to delve into some of the more odorous tales, though he usually reserved them for just the men as the fairer sex failed to find them appealing or humorous.

The stories were great, but it was the tools of the trade that enthralled Roy the most: things like threading machines, blowtorches, snakes, pipe cutters, spanners, and such. He had pestered Uncle Mac at every opportunity to show him how the tools worked and what he used them for. Uncle Mac would patiently demonstrate things like melting lead with a blow torch and sealing the galvanized pipes that were used in the days before copper pipes became popular in the 1950s. And one demonstration was never enough. No, indeed, Roy asked to see the same thing repeatedly until he was eventually old enough to try his own hand at it.

As Roy grew older, Uncle Mac would occasionally take him on odd jobs during summer breaks or on the weekends when he wasn't in school, and his love for the vocation grew.

Uncle Mac Lindsey was his mom's older brother, married to a red-haired beauty named Stella. Roy always thought Aunt Stella looked like the screen goddess Rita Hayworth even as she aged. Uncle Mac and Aunt Stella had four children, all girls and all older than Roy. Roy wondered if Uncle Mac wished at least one of his offspring had been a boy, but he never said anything to indicate he was unhappy with a brood of females. In fact, Uncle Mac loved all his little ladies and often showed off their photographs to his customers. Each one of Roy's cousins was just as attractive as their mother, and Mac Lindsey took pride in pointing this out.

Roy was happy to step in as an honorary son and help with the plumbing business. Roy's dad, William McKnight, worked driving a truck for the Southwestern Portland Cement Company—called Victor Valley Cement by the locals—but truck driving wasn't a career Roy wanted to pursue. Yes, sirree, plumbing was his passion, and he owed Grandma Lucille for inadvertently stirring that passion.

Grandma Lucille McKnight, who lived out her days on the Slash X Ranch in Barstow, California, used an outhouse and chamber pot until the day she went to heaven. Roy loved visiting his grandma as he was growing up, but he never enjoyed her bathroom facilities (or lack thereof). She did have running water for the kitchen sink but refused to spend money on an indoor toilet when the outhouse functioned just fine for her needs. She kept a chamber pot under her bed for use at night and would empty it in the outhouse the next morning. She never seemed bothered by the extra work this caused her and claimed that having to go outside in the fresh air was good for keeping her healthy. And she was probably right about this as she had lived to the nice old age of ninety-one.

As a youngster, Roy avoided using the smelly outhouse and opted for a short walk into the desert and the tallest Joshua tree he could find for privacy. It made him appreciate his family's bathroom, complete with a large, claw-foot bathtub, hot and cold running water, and a flushing toilet that didn't need lye dumped down it as the outhouse required.

Grandma Lucille also used an extra-large tin washtub for bathing up until the end of her days. The washtub hung on a large iron peg in the back porch area, and she would bring it into the kitchen and place it in the far corner. Here, Grandma Lucille had constructed a privacy screen that was bolted to the wall and pulled out into a V shape, offering moderate privacy for the bather. The privacy screen was wood-framed, and inside each panel, Grandma Lucille had used a thick, earth-toned brocade fabric with swirls, leaves, and vines. Roy would hide behind the screen when he was young and make out different images on the brocade—things that looked like a man's face with a big nose, a horseshoe, an owl, and even a rifle. Grandma Lucille would look all over the house for him, calling out his name and saying, Now I wonder where Roy could be. She never could find him, and eventually, he would sneak out from behind the screen and yell, Here I am! He thought it was great fun to startle Grandma Lucille this way, and she always reacted with surprise and wonder how he just appeared out of nowhere.

Growing up, Roy was fascinated with Grandma Lucille's hot water source. She had a water holding tank in the kitchen that had cold water piped in it from the well. The well sat a moderate distance behind the house and was on a hillside, one of the only hillsides to be seen for miles. There was no electrical pump in the small well house as gravity provided the water flow. In the kitchen, galvanized pipes went out the bottom of the holding tank and traveled up into her wood cookstove, through the firebox, and back out, attaching midlevel to the holding tank. Heat, cold, and gravity made the water flow through the circuit of pipes. The water would get warm as it piped its way through the firebox and back into the tank and rise to the top. The cold water stayed low in the tank, piping into the stove to be warmed.

It was a very functional setup but an uncomfortable one when the desert temperatures were soaring, and the wood cookstove was burning. During the heat of the summer, Grandma Lucille would start a small fire in the early morning, keeping it burning just long enough to percolate a pot of coffee and cook breakfast and then again in the evening to cook dinner. If it was a bath night, she would keep the fire going long enough to warm the water to a tepid temperature.

Electrical outages never bothered Grandma Lucille. She still had hot and cold water, could still cook, and could even bathe without electricity. She kept an oil lantern in each room and always had a supply of wooden matches available. Roy loved it when she would light one of the lanterns at night just for him and turn off the electrical lights. He'd beg her to tell him a ghost story by lantern light. The flickering glow of a lighted wick made the tale that much better and more frightening. Grandma Lucille only knew three or four ghost stories, but he didn't mind. He enjoyed them over and over again and many a time went to bed, afraid to move, lest a ghost should notice him. He would lie on his back, frame stiff, eyes wide open, and would take very tiny breaths, trying not to disturb the dead.

Roy laughed out loud remembering those days. Why he loved to be scared, he didn't know—but it sure was fun.

A whimpering sound, human in nature, interrupted Roy's thoughts of plumbing and ghost stories. He sat up straighter and cocked his head a little to the left to listen more intently. There it was again, faint, but a distinctive whimper. He sat his fishing pole down and slowly stood, surveying the area. His eyes caught sight of a dark-haired girl, almost hidden by brush and tumbleweeds. Slipping his loafers on, he made his way closer to the girl.

Miss? Are you okay? he asked when he was close enough to see that the girl stood frozen with a look of fear on her face, her eyes pasted downward.

Snakes. He heard her whispered reply.

Hold still, Roy commanded softly. He quickly went back for his walking stick, a five-foot-long solid Mesquite staff he had whittled and sanded himself. His walking stick had come in handy on more than one occasion when he happened upon a snake. Making his way back to where the girl was, he moved in closer and saw she was standing on a bolder about a foot off the ground. Directly in front of the boulder and a little to one side of it were two coiled rattlesnakes, tails poised and vibrating ominous warning sounds.

I'm going to get the snake closest to you with my stick, Roy quietly informed the frightened girl. When I say ‘now,' I want you to turn around and leap as far away from the boulder as you can.

The snakes had both spotted Roy, and he knew it was time to make his move. Now, he commanded.

He used the walking stick to snag the rattler closest to the boulder and fling it far to the side. The second rattler struck out toward him and missed his leg by mere inches. Before the snake had a chance to strike again, Roy was out of his way and running to catch up with the dark-haired girl. She had stopped a good distance away and watched with big round eyes as Roy made his path toward her.

He was grinning from ear to ear, adrenaline pumping through his veins, as he reached her side. As he faced her, he could see she was shaking, and he noticed her full bottom lip trembled ever so slightly. She had to be one of the most beautiful girls he had ever laid eyes on. She had enormous green eyes with tiny black speckles, flanked by thick, dark lashes, a full mouth, a pert little nose, and a thick head of shiny, dark hair that waved halfway down her back. She was petite, the top of her head level with his shoulder, but her body was that of a woman. She wore a simple straight-line navy-blue cotton skirt, a white sleeveless blouse tucked into the skirt, and a yellow cardigan that draped over her shoulders, sleeves tied below her collar bone, and a pair of brown-and-white oxford saddle shoes adorned her feet.

Roy was enthralled by her beauty and did the most natural thing a man could do in a situation like this; he dropped his walking stick, took her into his arms, and pulled her close.

It's okay. You're safe now, his low voice reassured her. A womanly, floral scent assaulted his nostrils with pleasure, and he felt his gut quiver in response. Before he had time to fully appreciate the assault to his senses, a hand was on his chest and a strong shove sent him backward a step. Surprise flooded his eyes, and laughter rolled from his mouth.

You are a strong little thing, he laughed and held out his hand for a proper introduction. My name is Roy. Roy McKnight.

The girl reluctantly accepted his outstretched hand and gave it a brief shake. I'm Rose Blackburn, she replied. I suppose I should thank you for saving me from those snakes, she offered a bit ungraciously.

I suppose you should, Roy agreed, unable to wipe the grin from his face. This day was turning out to be a mighty fine day indeed!

Thank you, she uttered with a mere hint of sincerity. I'm sorry to have interrupted your fishing.

They haven't been biting today anyway. Roy shrugged. Besides, saving a beautiful girl from deadly snakes is much more fun than catching an ole' trout.

Rose delicately snorted in reply, her nose lifting high in the air. She turned from him as if to leave.

Wait! Roy caught hold of her wrist, turning her back toward him. Have lunch with me, he urged. I packed a couple of deviled ham sandwiches, and I've got an apple we can share. Seeing her reluctance, he added, It's the least you can do, seeing how I just saved you from two mean rattlers.

Roy knew he was being a bit unfair, playing on her emotions, but he was determined to spend a little more time with this lovely creature, and he'd use whatever means needed to keep her there even as a guilty obligation.

Rose sized him up and down for several long seconds, making him uncomfortable as he pondered what her response would be. Much to his surprise, Rose flashed him a coy smile that made him weak in his knees.

Okay, I will.

Roy wasn't sure what prompted her acceptance, but he figured it had to be his handsome good looks and the fact that he really had just saved her from the snakes.

*****

Is the medicine helping, Roy? he heard Rose ask and felt the squeeze of her hand in his.

Slowly, he blinked open his eyes, returning from a sunshine-filled spring day in 1950 to the present. He was lying in a bed at the hospital, and there was his Rose, her chair as close to the hospital bed as she could get it, looking at him with concern and love in her still-beautiful green eyes.

Roy managed a smile and squeezed her hand in return. Rose, I've never asked you what made you stay and have lunch with me on the day we first met at Deep Creek. You acted like you didn't like me very much when I introduced myself. What changed your mind?

A soft smile emerged on Rose's face, and she gave a little laugh. Oh, Roy! What made you think of that?

I was just remembering the first time I laid eyes on you. You were the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. I was a lucky man to have been fishing that very day you were at the creek and frightened by the snakes. He felt Rose give a slight shudder at the mention of the snakes. To this day, Rose Ann Blackburn McKnight was terribly frightened of snakes. Why did you agree to have lunch with me? Roy persisted.

I suppose it was because you had just saved me from the rattlesnakes, Rose answered. I didn't like the fact that you were laughing at my fear of snakes, but I knew I had to be polite just the same.

I wasn't laughing at you, Rose. I was on cloud nine because I had just rescued the most beautiful girl in the world. There are few things in life that give a man more pleasure than being a knight rescuing a damsel in distress.

Well, you certainly are my McKnight, Rose quipped lightly.

Roy chuckled, enjoying their exchange. He'd been ill for days, and most of their recent conversations had revolved around illness, medicine, and the hospital medical staff.

Are you sure it wasn't my good looks that made you stay and have lunch with me? he teased, a twinkle in his eyes.

Rose batted him very lightly with her hand. You've got a mighty high opinion of yourself, she admonished. And if you must know, yes, I was very attracted to you, and that just added to my unease. I wanted to get far away from you, and I wanted to stay—all at the same time.

I'm glad you stayed, Rose.

So am I. She smiled at him. So am I.

Nurse Esmeralda swept into the room just then and announced it was time to check her favorite patient's vitals. Roy knew the routine and extended his arm for the blood pressure cuff. You're looking perky today, Roy, she observed as she pumped the cuff.

Perky? Roy scoffed.

Yes, perky, Nurse Esmeralda confirmed, adjusting the stethoscope. When she finished taking his blood pressure and pulse, she asked him to lean forward so she could listen to his lungs. Roy followed her commands and struggled to take in a deep breath at her request. She finished her ministrations by plumping his pillows and tucking the blankets in around him. She then logged onto the computer that was against the wall and updated his electronic medical chart. Can I bring you some soup? she asked as she finished with her documentation.

I could try some, he answered. He wasn't hungry; he'd had no appetite for several weeks, but he knew his refusal would worry Rose. She would be very upset to know that he had to force himself to eat what little he could and that nothing tasted good. In fact, food in general had lost its taste, and no amount of salt, pepper, or seasoning seemed to help.

Nurse Esmeralda smiled her approval. I'll be right back with that soup.

As she left the room, Roy turned his attention to Rose. Are you hungry, Rose?

No, I had a sandwich from the cafeteria while you were napping, she answered. Michael called when I was in the cafeteria. He said he would be here tomorrow afternoon with Ginger. They are going to stop and pick up Matthew, Holly, and the girls on their way. I'm sure glad they got us this cell phone for Christmas. It would be so hard to keep in touch with everyone without it.

I never thought I'd see the day that we caught up with the technology age, Roy commented.

Rose laughed. I don't think we are caught up yet. We don't own a computer.

Roy had no interest in buying a computer and spending hours in front of it as he knew many people did. Rose thought it might be nice to have one to keep in touch with the family, mainly the grandkids, and he