4/1/2020
Once again more than one song has flitted through my head today. the one I liked best came to me as I walked out of the bedroom and down the hall to the living room. It was a song my father sang as he worked: “Precious Lord, Take My Hand—Lead me on, help me stand” “I am tired, I am weak, I am worn….” written in 1938 by Thomas A. Dorsey (not of orchestral fame.) It’s been song by everybody, claimed in arrangement by everyone from Elvis to Joey&Rory. A pleasing melody and message, and I think I prefer my father’s arrangement best.
Ever wonder what a recap of the first 10 years of your life would be like? Birth to 10—the days of my life – How’s that sound for a book title? Oh, not a very big book,… maybe just a couple of blog pages. Let’s see what I can remember.
Of course, nothing about being born, although I’ve been told some things. I was told I came into this life about 7:45am, Sept. 5, 1942, the 8th child to a father and mother of Kentuckian heritage. My mother said my name was Jerry and my sister Roberta(18 at the time) suggested Ebert as a middle name and it stuck, however inappropriate it sounds. (All 6 boys my mother birthed were given middle names starting with the letter E: Elvin, after my father, Edward, after an uncle, then Eugene, Ellis, Emil, then me.) Born at home, in Johnson County, Indiana, on the side of a hill a few miles South of the little town of Trafalgar.
The farm was a hundred acres with the hill having several acres tillable on top and several “bottomland” acres along Indian Creek and Indian Creek Road. Rich soil which raised alfalfa, corn, wheat, with a few acres of rich pasture land. (I still love driving this 2 mile stretch of countryside when I visit there. The trip isn’t complete without it.)
My earliest memory after birth is of my mother carrying me down the hill in front of our home, sitting me down at the well, and going out into the field where two of the older boys (a teen and a twelve year old) were trying to disc a wet field. The horses couldn’t pull the disc through the wet ground and had laid down. Don and Ken couldn’t get them up. My little short(4’11”) stocky mother took those reins, yelled at the horses, whipped them, yelled, whipped, and suddenly they rose up! She led them out of the mud, yelled “Whoa!” slapped Don with the reins, and said, “Don’t you do that again!” Came back over to me, jerked me off my perch and led me back to the house. My only other memory of the team of horses was Don letting me ride to the water trough with him.
Don was the “farmer” of the bunch. When I was almost 5, we sold the farm and moved into town. Don had a jersey cow and found a “town barn” to keep her in and until I was 10, we had fresh milk and churned butter from the little jersey. My last memory of the farm was a neighbor boy, younger than me, was there one day and he stuck a little round rock up in his nose. My mom and his mom used pepper till he sneezed it out, as I recall. How’s that for an odd memory?
Two pretty quick things to happen when we moved to town: I tried to turn a cartwheel like a little girl down the street did and threw my shoulder out of place. I was afraid to tell anyone till her mother saw it, a sweet lady named Mary Miller Kelly, who pulled me to her lap, stood me between her knees and put my shoulder back into place. I’ve wondered if that’s when I became left-handed, I dunno. The other thing was our dog, Tuck, got hit by a car. He was a great dog, but he was a farm dog, not used to cars going by so fast right in front of his house.
A sad note in this decade of life, happened when I was in the 2nd grade. My mother was very ill and had to be taken to the hospital one morning. I didn’t want to go to school but my sister made me go. I was noticeably sad, so at recess Mrs. Deer told me to come stand next to her. After a moment went by, she gently put her arm around me and stood quietly. Somehow she knew that was comforting to me. Though they wouldn’t tell me what was wrong with her, I later learned my mother had something wrong which was female in nature. I never asked again.
But, on a happier note my first two girl friends (I thought I was in love) happened between 8 & 9 years old. the 8 year old one was from Alert, IN, such a big town they had a post office AND a grocery store! I can’t remember her name now, but she sure was purty! The second when I was 9 lived really close to Lick Spring Baptist church, her name was Donna Ford. I saw her again when we were 15 years old, but I was too shy to tell her I had once been in love with her.
For more than one year, but less than 4 years (??) my father was an evangelist with a tent. He bought a flatbed truck and a 40ft X 40ft, single pole tent and began to schedule week-long revivals in every town he could. I can’t remember how many he did, but a couple of days I remember really well about setting the tent up and preparing for the services. (We seemed to always have a piano, but I can’t remember loading or unloading it; maybe so, maybe no. I wasn’t very big, but there was always things I could do to help.
We’d unroll two halves, each 20 x 40 feet and lay them stretched out where we wanted the tent to be. Then, we laced them together (one side having a flap the whole 40’ length), then tie the flap down to stop as much water leaking in as we could. The pole (4 x 4 wooden pole with a large spike on one end) was placed on the ground so the the spike was at the center laced point. Then, someone small like me would crawl under the tent to be sure the pole would stay put in the grommet in the center of the tent while it-the pole- was slowly being raised up by all the strongest men in town would push and pull till the pole was standing upright.
The corners would then be stood up by corner posts, and a rope from the corner post top would be drawn taut to a stake driven into the ground at about a 45deg. angle. Smaller poles w/spikes were place all the way around the tent with their spike going into smaller grommets and a rope drawn taut to a smaller stake—I think that made the ceiling about 6ft at the edge and the center pole about 15ft high. We had side curtains which would roll up for ventilation.
My father had made portable benches by making wooden braces to fit with 1 x 12s for seats and 1 x 6s for a back slat. What held the boards up in the shape of a pew was the joining of two braces about every 4’ going across. These were called h and A pieces—the bottom of the A fitting in the back leg of the h and forming a triangle with the front leg of the h. For some reason it worked. I can’t remember anyone falling are any collapses. I never knew if this was his invention or he found it somewhere, but it worked.
That wasn’t everything I can remember about the first decade of my life, so perhaps there will be more added later.
Thanks for reading, the Elder
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