"A Divine Sighting Caught With The Naked Eye"

I remember quite a lot about my childhood years.  My family lived in Greensville County, Virginia.  One house we lived in was a big yellow house, with an upstairs and downstairs.  At five years old my father would take me riding with him, and we would go to the liquor house.  Only a handful of people would be there most of the time, telling jokes that only they thought were funny and then head to the kitchen to get a drink, as if a drink of liquor was the prize for telling their jokes.

I remember one lady, browned-skinned and pretty, very well because my father would talk to her and she would do the cheek-grabbing thing and saying, “He’s so cute”, talking about me.  That’s what they all say when they are trying to get into the father’s pocket.  My father would give me liquor to drink and it would make my chest burn.  I know now it was corn-whiskey because it was clear, and also my mother told me that was a type of liquor they use to drink.  Parents don’t ever give your kids alcohol thinking that it's funny, or cute.  I remember my father telling me to be a big boy and not to complain about the burning sensation in my chest.  I would then be left sitting on the couch while my dad and the “pretty brown skinned” lady would disappear into the back room.

My father was married to my mom at the time.  Where my mother was, I don’t know, she was either at work or at home taking care of her other kids.  There were six of us, one of my brothers died at the age of four.  The devil is to blame for most of these unfortunate pre-mature deaths.  His job is to destroy families, don’t let him destroy yours!  There are a couple of situations that happened in “that” big yellow house.  I’ve asked my family about certain things, but they don’t remember much.  All I know is that God has preserved my memory through all the mental, physical, alcohol and drug abuse that I endured.  I know now that His reason was because He wanted me to write about it.

There was another house before the big yellow house, which house had a barn in the back, chickens running around and we also had a dog named Bingo.  My father was attempting to beat me one day and I ran outside, there was a square hole in the side of the house and I crawled under the house.  The opening, I suppose was for whoever wanted to go under the house and check the pipes.  Whatever the reason, I’m glad that it was there, because I was afraid and he was very angry.  My father kept telling me to come out and he wasn’t going to beat me, even though I was young, I knew that he was lying.  I must have worn him down by not coming out from under the house for a while; because I don’t remember getting a beating on that occasion.

I don’t know if I had done anything to deserve the punishment that his anger represented, but I didn’t want to find out.  I laugh now, but it wasn’t funny then.  Alcohol can lessen your tolerance for things that you would normally be able to deal with, I know first hand because it was when I was drinking, that I shot and killed someone.