On God's Path My Journey From The Outhouse To The Courthouse

By David Henry Maring

On God's Path My Journey From The Outhouse To The Courthouse is a memoir that traces David's life as he confronts trials and tribulations until he finds success on the path God had chosen for him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350921199

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Copyright © 2023 by David Henry Maring

On God’s Path My Journey From The Outhouse To The Courthouse

All rights reserved.

No portion of this novel may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the author or the publisher.

Print ISBN: 979-8-35092-118-2

eBook ISBN: 979-8-35092-119-9

Printed in the United States of America

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT WOMEN IN MY LIFE.

My mother, Maude Lois Marshall Maring, helped mold my philosophy of life in the personal and public arena. More importantly, her guiding hand sent me down the path to salvation.

My wife, Judy Kay Maring, influenced me to strive to become a better person, and she toned down my tendency to be eccentric. During strife, conflict, and challenges, she provided me with a home that was a safe haven from the turmoil of public life.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

MAMMA SAID THE FOLLOWING ABOUT OUR LIFE IN THE BEGINNING

OUR ROOTS AND STORIES FROM THE PAST

LIFE AS A YOUNG CHILD

STORIES FROM ASHLAND AVENUE

THE BIG HOUSE

THE FARM

THE GULF STATION

THE PHILLIP 66 STATION

WILLIAM CAREY COLLEGE

RETURN TO ANDREWS

LAW SCHOOL

THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORP RESERVES

ESTABLISHING A LAW PRACTICE

THE RACE FOR PROBATE JUDGE

LEARNING TO PRACTICE LAW

THE SOUTH CAROLINA NATIONAL GUARD

DARK DAYS IN THE PRACTICE OF LAW

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF A LONG TUNNEL

GENERAL SESSIONS COURT

FAMILY COURT MATTERS

ON THE PERSONAL SIDE

BECOMING A TRIAL LAWYER

A COUNTY FAMILY COURT

BECOMING A MUNICIPAL COURT JUDGE

CONFLICTS WITH INFERIOR COURT JUDGES

A NEW PLACE TO PRACTICE LAW

COURT APPOINTMENTS IN GENERAL SESSIONS

PURCHASING OUR FIRST HOME

BECOMING POLITICALLY ACTIVE

BECOMING A PART-TIME PUBLIC DEFENDER

My Days As An Appellant lawyer

EPILOGUE

THE AUTHOR

DAVID HENRY MARING

COURT REFORM

FOREWORD

As I have looked back on my life, the knowledge that God has blessed me has been in the forefront of my thoughts. I was a man raised by good parents. And I had five siblings who were honest, trustworthy, and kind. I had a particularly strong relationship with my brother, Waldo Alexander, despite the six years difference in our ages. We always shared a common interest in history, politics, and later public service.

As I grew older, I was blessed with not only a wonderful wife, but with three children. In time, there were four grandchildren to share my love. I praise God for my family.

Since I became a Christian at ten years old, God’s hand has been upon me. On many occasions, I resisted the guidance of the Holy Spirit, though never the comfort that was always available during dark days.

Any talents that I had were from God, and I can therefore not claim any credit for them. The same can be said for the good things that I accomplished in my public service. God deserves total credit for the massive amount of positive changes that I brought to the judicial system as a lawyer and later as a judge. As I often faced uphill battles from politically powerful obstacles, God swept them aside by various means. Waldo Alexander once commented that he would not want to be my enemy because God seemed to punish those who stood in my way. And there was some truth to his observation.

In December of 2019, I found out that I had a rare type of leukemia that was not curable, nor did there exist the possibility of remission. Of course, my God has the power to intervene. If He does, I will praise Him. But if He chooses not to intervene, I will still praise Him. I have complete faith in His judgment.

On the final day, Jesus will be my judge, as He will be with all mankind. I know that God has cancelled and marked satisfied in full my sin debt as He has for all Christians. He has marked it paid in full because we have accepted His son, Jesus, as our Savior, allowed the Holy Spirit into our hearts, sought the Spirit’s guidance, and asked forgiveness of our sins because we have had a change of heart not just remorse. My own change of heart came about when I was Born Again by being washed in the blood of the Lamb as a child.

My parting advice to fellow Christians is to Trust the God of Abraham, Trust His son, Jesus Christ, and Trust the Holy Spirit. If you trust there is no need to be concerned about physical death or the afterlife.

MAMMA SAID THE FOLLOWING ABOUT OUR LIFE IN THE BEGINNING

We were living on Dorchester Road on the outskirts of Charleston in 1945. Your father worked at a filling station in downtown Charleston owned by your Uncle Hazel. It was during the war, so everyone used ration stamps to purchase items. Your father had an old car, but he used a motor bike to travel to work to conserve the gas stamps.

The Dorchester neighborhood lay in a bad section. That made me nervous at night when your father was not home. One evening after dark, someone came up on the porch and tried to get in the front door. I put the broom stick under my arm and stood behind the thin curtain draped over the window. I screamed out, If you don’t get away from the door, I’m gonna shoot. I heard feet scampering down the steps. The shadow he glimpsed through the curtain made him think that I held a rifle. After that, I kept my hot iron close-by in case he returned.

After Emily was born the doctor told me not to have any more children. ‘You have a bad heart, and will die if you have another child, he said. But I wanted another child, so I chose to ignore his advice.

When I carried you there was a constant intense desire to read. The only books in my possession were Shakespeare’s plays, and three volumes on The History of the World. I read them several times. My desire to read became so strong that I even began reading printed materials on the vegetable cans in the pantry.

During the afternoon of July 21, I went into labor. There were no telephones in the area, and I was alone with Bobby and Emily. I knew your father would be home at six that evening. I had no choice but to wait. But he was delayed by work and didn’t get home until after seven. Everyone got in the car, but it wouldn’t crank. Although I was in labor, I had to get out and push it from the back bumper while your father pushed from the driver’s side. Once the car was in motion, he jumped in and double clutched it. This caused the engine to turn over and start. We went directly to Riverside Hospital. They took me immediately to the labor room. You were born ten minutes later. Your father went down to the first floor afterward to fill out the paperwork. He told the lady behind the registration desk that his wife had just given birth to a baby upstairs, and he needed to sign in.

Your wife can’t do that until you fill out this paperwork, the woman behind the desk told him. After a verbal altercation, she finally let him register me as a patient. I named you David after Aunt Shama’s child who died as a baby. The middle name, Henry, was after your Uncle Henry, who was named after Henry Hill – your Grandmother’s father."

OUR ROOTS AND STORIES FROM THE PAST

My father, Robert Leigh Maring, met my mother, Maude Lois Marshall, while working at a service station in Pamlico: a small rural town near Florence. Both apparently had a rebellious streak in their youth. That was why my father left home at sixteen and why at the age of nine, Mamma was sent to live with grandmother, Julia, a strict disciplinarian.

Julia didn’t spare the switch, Mamma said. I had to make the beds and sweep the rooms every morning with a home-made broom created from the straw that grew wild in the fields. A year after I went to Grandmamma’s, I ran away. Your Great Aunt Edna and her friend found me. After a chase across a field, I fell jumping a ditch, and they grabbed me and took me back. When she found out about my attempted escape, Mamma let me come home.

When we would asked Mamma where she got the name Maude, she would always laugh and say that she was named after a mule on her father’s farm. Of course, we knew she was kidding us. In my old age, I think that perhaps I have discovered where my mother’s name came from. She would tell us many stories of growing up on the farm and the people she encountered. One of them was about a Black woman named Maude Clardy. She was close to my grandmamma, Eunice Feagin Marshall. Apparently, Maude Clardy’s parents had been slaves before the Civil War. It seems that Eunice and she were raised up together, and she became part of Eunice’s household help after the marriage to Charlie Marshall. I think Eunice thought so highly of this Black woman that Mamma was named after her.

Mamma’s philosophy when she graduated from high school in Florence is best summed up by the statement beneath her picture in the high school’s graduation book. It reads as follows, To Strive, To Seek, To Find, But Not To Yield. I believe that up to a certain point she lived that philosophy. During my senior year, I adopted this adage as my motto.

***

My Grandfather, Waldo Earl Maring, was an American (Northern) Baptist minister living in Pennsylvania at the time Daddy left home. Only five feet six inches, he called himself God’s little preacher. When I turned thirteen, I became afraid that I would not be taller than grandfather. Every week I measured myself against the kitchen door frame and marked it with a pencil. This continued until I was 6’2. Mamma left it up there until after I finished college when she painted over it during a kitchen renovation.

Waldo E. Maring’s father, Lee, was a singer sewing machine salesman and an alcoholic. He deserted his family just as his alcoholic father had a generation earlier. When Grandfather’s mother died of tuberculosis shortly after his desertion, Lee’s mother took custody of the children. She lived on a farm in up-state New York. But there were just too many children for her to take care of, so my grandfather spent many years in an orphanage.

My grandmother, Emily Hill Maring, was a first generation American. Her parents had come to this country from Wales. Her father, Henry Hill, had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and later in life served as a professor at Oberlin College in Ohio. My grandmother was a college graduate, an unusual thing at that period of our history. Her siblings were also college graduates. Grandmother was teaching when she met my grandfather. Despite the fact that she was seven years older and from a higher social class, they had a good marriage that produced four sons named Norman, Robert, Henry, and Edward.

My grandfather had accepted Jesus as his Savior before he met Grandmother. Apparently, before his conversion, he was traveling on the wrong path of life and living in sin. His conversion when he was Born Again was a dramatic event to him. He always found it hard to accept the fact that grandmother did not remember the day she became a Christian. She said that she had been a Christian as far back as she could remember.

Grandfather felt the call from God to become a minister of the gospel. His father-in-law, Henry Hill, a minister as well as a professor, encouraged him in this pursuit. Under his guidance, grandfather graduated from the seminary at Crozier in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. In the late 1930’s my grandfather received a call to pastor a Southern Baptist Church in Pamlico, South Carolina.

A year before the move south, Daddy had left home after a confrontation with his father. My grandparents did not know his whereabouts. They only knew that once they moved from Pennsylvania, they would lose contact forever with their son, Bob. So they ran newspaper and radio ads saying they were departing for South Carolina and to get in touch with them. Daddy was working on a dairy farm when he heard the radio message. He joined them on their journey.

The Baptist Church must have been desperate for a minister to ask a Yankee to serve. Whatever their reasons, they got a dedicated Christian. One of the few things my Dad said about his father was that he never took into consideration the size of the church or the salary. He always went where he thought God had called him to preach. Dad also said that he lived in eleven states before he left home at sixteen.

Your Grandfather pastored across the country from New York State to Washington State and many places in between, Mamma said. Your father had to change schools frequently. In every new school, the other students would make fun of your father’s crippled arm. That’s why he quit in the eleventh grade.

According to Mamma, my father’s arm was deformed because when he broke it at age eleven, the doctor set it wrong. Though my Dad always wore long sleeves shirts, I had on occasion seen the arm. The lower part looked normal, but the upper part was small and devoid of muscle.

Mamma had nine brothers and sisters. As a result, I had numerous first cousins from the Marshall side of my family. My Dad had three brothers, and there were six Maring first cousins. Most of my contacts were with the Marshall side of my family. And it was frequent. They would show up unannounced. No one on the Marshall side seemed to know how to make a long distant phone call, or perhaps it was cost prohibitive. Our family would visit Mamma’s people in Florence several times a year. It was always on Sunday afternoons, and we never called in advanced to let them know we were coming, even after we had a phone.

When Mamma’s people came, the house was full of laughter, with an open display of affection, and great storytelling. This was a common trait among them. Before the end of their visit, the topic would always turn to The War Between the States, and their ancestors’ participation in it. They would argue the pros and cons of the conflict, and why the South lost the war. This was a subject I knew a great deal about from reading on my own. It was never discussed in my school by the teachers or the students. Probably because most adults were World War II veterans, spouses of those soldiers, or children of those who wore the uniform during that conflict. Unlike the Russians we never called it the Great Patriot War. But in fact it was such an event. As a result of the war, southern nationalism and love of the Lost Cause was at a low ebb. This nationalism would be reignited during the battle over the civil rights movement starting in the 1960’s.

Daddy must have felt excluded when near the end of each visit the topic turned to the Civil War. But he never commented about it except one time. That is probably why I remember the incident so well. He got up from the kitchen and walked to the doorway. He stopped and turned to face my Uncles and Aunts at the kitchen table. But we beat you, he said, and then left the room. I guess that was a fact they could not deny.

The Marings were an entirely different breed from the Marshalls. Whether this was a result of their Dutch and Welsh heritage, I do not know. But they had little sense of humor, and when expressed, it was of such a dry type that you were not always sure whether they were joking. They rarely showed outward affection. But they were solid types. The ones I knew had a strong sense of right and wrong, leading many to say they were somewhat hard-headed. I was never close to Dad’s side of the family. Probably because we rarely saw them. Of course, my grandparents and their son, Edward, were in South Carolina, while the others were in Pennsylvania and Washington State. Later, I got to know my cousin, Marshall Maring, when he came to live with my parents after I was grown. We had a good relationship. His father, Henry, came to live in Andrews for a couple of years when I was practicing law. We developed a friendship because we shared a love of politics and history.

LIFE AS A YOUNG CHILD

According to Mamma, when we left Dorchester road we lived for a year in a rented room at the Big House in Andrews; a home built by her grandfather, Preston Brooks Feagin. We had joined other renters who lived there. My Great Grandmother, Julia Thompson Feagin, and her daughter, Edna, inherited the house when Preston Brooks died. They lived in the area downstairs and all renters were restricted to the upstairs.

We moved to a house in the country when I was four years old. It was located in Williamsburg County, several miles from the Georgetown County line. This house was the last place Mamma had lived before her father, Charlie Marshall, lost everything in the depression when she was twelve. She always said, We went from the top of the pile to the bottom overnight. My father went temporarily mad. I remember him firing his shotgun into the air many nights. Finally, he packed our family into his Ford Model T, and we moved to Florence. His downfall came about because he served on the Board of Directors at the Andrews Bank. When the bank collapsed, the board members were responsible to the depositors. My daddy lost three farms, a country store, his sawmill, and our home. The bank president committed suicide.

***

My first memory in life was the outhouse in the country. It was a wooden structure some distance from the home, or so it seemed to me when I visited it at night. I suppose terror is the reason that it made such an impression on my young mind.

I can testify that the old stories about people having a Sears catalog as a substitute for toilet tissue in outhouses are true. I have vivid memories of the space between the two boards where you sat over a deep, dark, smelly hole; the depth of which I could never fathom. Every time I went to use it, Mama would say, David Henry, watch out for snakes. Everyone knew outhouses were a favorite environment for snakes of every species. They were also an attractive place for bees to gather, and I received my first sting there.

We were not at Mamma’s old home place for long. But during that year, my Dad got bit on his backside by a black widow spider while seated on the boards in the outhouse. He missed ten days of work at his place of business, a Gulf service station in Andrews. After he almost died from the bite, we moved to Ashland Avenue in Andrews. Like the house in the country, it had no running water. But at least it had a hand pump, so we no longer had to drop a wooden bucket into a well. This street would be the center of my world until I entered the fourth grade.

STORIES FROM ASHLAND AVENUE

My Daddy worked seven days a week to make his station business in Andrews a success. At night when he came home from a long day, he worked installing water pipes under the house. He did this without any help, despite the fact that he had a crippled arm. Soon after moving, we had inside water for cooking and bathing. No longer would we need the previous owner’s outside pump and outhouse. We had moved up a notch in society.

The front of our house bordered a dirt street which ended near Andrews Grammar and High School a quarter of a mile away. When school commenced that first year, I wanted to go with Bobby and Emily. But I had to wait another year until I turned six.

Across the street from our house was a ten-acre fenced pasture. There was never any livestock in it, so the neighborhood kids used it as a place to play. We built forts out of the tall vegetation, played soft ball, tag, and other games. This was a happy time in my life.

In our backyard there was a small barn with a loft. Attached to the outside of this structure was a chicken yard. A milk cow and several chickens were there. Daddy got rid of the cow quickly because he didn’t have time to milk it every morning before going to work. But we kept the chickens, and they were tended to by Mamma.

***

One morning we woke up to the sound of heavy equipment. Looking out of the front window, I saw the men beginning the process of paving the street. For over a week we could not use it to play on. But soon they laid a thick layer of tar down. One day when the tar was still soft, Bobby ran in the front door crying. Two older boys had held him down and stuffed soft tar in both ears. Mamma was furious. She ran outside and spotted one of the culprits standing beside the street. Seeing a lump of tar nearby, she picked it up and placed it on the boy’s head. The child went screaming toward his house. As her anger quickly subsided, Mamma realized what she had done. She was so embarrassed by her conduct that she did not leave the house for a week.

***

When I was six, it seemed like every child I knew was losing a tooth, except me. This was important because when you put that tooth under your pillow at night, the tooth fairy would bring you money. Though Joe, who lived next door, said the tooth fairy had left a chocolate fudge ice cream under his pillow instead of coins. I was so jealous, I tried to pull a tooth out but was unsuccessful. Not to be deterred, I found the jawbone of a pig in the chicken yard. Getting a hammer from the house, I knocked a tooth out. I proudly showed it to Mamma and told her I was going to put it under my pillow that night.

You can’t fool the tooth fairy, she said.

She was right. The next morning I woke up early and with great anticipation, I looked under my pillow. The pig tooth was gone. The tooth fairy had taken it. But alas, she had not left me a dime or a fudge ice cream. I didn’t realize that Joe was lying about the chocolate fudge.

***

Julia came to visit us and stayed several days. She was Mamma’s grandmother and lived in the Big House on Farr Street with her daughter, my Aunt Edna. She spent her time sitting in a rocking chair by the fire in the living room, or if it was a warm day, on the front porch.

When I was a grown man, my father reminded me of the times Julia came to stay with us on Ashland. One day as she was sitting on the porch my father said, the days must go by slowly for you. She replied, Bob, when I get up, I have a piece of toast with my coffee, and the next thing I know it’s time for dinner and then supper. When you get old, time goes faster and faster. You wake up on Monday morning and the next thing you know it’s Monday again. Dad said, I didn’t believe her at the time. But now that I’m old, I know she spoke the truth.

There were several things that made permanent impressions on me during these visits. She had a bad hip that made it difficult to walk. One day while sitting in her rocker, she told me to do something. I did not jump to the task. She grabbed her walking cane and came down hard across my shoulder, Young man, you move when I tell you! From that point on, my six-year-old mind calculated the distance she could reach with that cane, and I was sure to never come within those perimeters.

Julia dipped snuff. To a young child it looked like chocolate. One day when she was on the porch, I stole her can of Railroad snuff and went under the house. I put a large amount in my mouth. By the time I realized how awful it was, some had already gone down my throat. I gagged, turned green, and threw-up.

During her stay, Julia would tell us stories every evening about her life. Most have evaporated from my memory. But I do recall that she was born in 1858, and that the first memory she had of her father was when he came home from the Civil War. There were also tales about the horrors of Reconstruction when Black militias roamed the urban areas. In rural Williamsburg County where she lived on her father’s farm, there was also no law and order. Former-Confederate soldiers, whose bonds had been sealed by serving in the same units of the rebel army, banded together to protect their families and possessions. She remembered White rule returning when she was sixteen in 1876. General Wade Hampton had become governor, and Reconstruction ended as Union troops departed the state along with the many carpetbaggers whose wagons were loaded with so much loot that some broke down in North Carolina as they headed North.

***

Near our school was a small store where children would stop on the way home if they had a coin to spend. Emily and I rarely stopped because there generally was not a cent between us. But since Bobby delivered the Charleston News & Courier, he always had money earned from his paper route. He and other boys of his age would frequently hang around the store owned by Mrs. Long. She had a young man named Belton Eaddy who worked there in the afternoon when she was not present. One day Bobby came home and told Mamma that Belton had thrown a bucket of water on him. Mamma dressed up in her Sunday best and even put on her white false fur coat with black bear claws. I can still see her on the back of Bobby’s bicycle as he petaled her down the street to the store. She repeated the story of what happened so many times that I remember it word for word.

Mr. Eaddy, I understand that you threw water on my son.

You don’t have to call me Mr. Eaddy, you can just call me Belton.

I’m sorry, but I don’t know you that well, Sir.

Mrs. Maring, he was with several boys in the store causing a ruckus.

Mr. Eddy, if you ever have a problem with any of my children just let their father or me know, and we’ll take care of the problem. But don’t you ever mess with any of my children again. If I wasn’t born and bred a lady, I would mop this floor with you.

Then she left, and Bobby petaled her back home on his bike. Years later