Making New Friends - Building New Relationships
July 16, 2014 Edition
Traveling America and Going Home for the 4th of July
Part Two
Part Two
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| Oscar Crawford |
Life is consistently full of surprises. I got some surprises during my trip back home. I learned things about people I went to school with more than 40 years ago. I also learned more details about a car accident I experienced. I discovered relatives I did not know I had. My parents have matured to the point that that the only thing that has not diminished between them is their love for each other.
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| Gamaliel High School Graduating Class for 1969 |
There was a set of bullies in my high school. I had learned that to avoid their not so pleasant treatment, I feigned appreciation of their comradeship as a means of self - protection. It did not always work. I learned they were all dead as well as one adult who had caused me harm during that time. To say that I was pleased would be an overstatement. I am never one to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
The details of my mother's family was a closely guarded secret. They were sharecroppers of a white man's land between Scottsville, Kentucky and Bowling Green, Kentucky. The owner of the land shared a temporal engagement with my mother's mother. Details passed on do not suggest the experience was consensual.
I always wondered who the white man was who came to grandmother's house every Saturday afternoon. He would knock. Grandmother would answer the door. They spoke a few words between them. When their short conversation was complete, he would hand to her a brown paper bag. Only upon this man's death, did I discover he was my mother's father, a grandfather I would never know.
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| Wendy and Joe Woods |
My sister married a man three years ago, this past July 7th. I performed their ceremony. Two years later, while she talked to her husband about mom's dad, a startling discovery was made. His family was related to the grandfather we never knew, making us not so distant relatives. I met my brother - in - law Joe Woods Family while in Kentucky. Our family is the one only God could bring together. I met his sister - in - law, Jennifer who had lost 100 ponds. Jennifer's 12 year old daughter Jaley wants to earn a scholarship to play softball for the Alabama Crimson Tide. She wants to be Neurologist specializing in Genetics to make discoveries to better service children with Down Syndrome and Autism.
On June 10, 1968 at about 10 PM, my basketball career ended. I was in a car accident. I do not fully remember the experience only some images of my high school baseball coach and neighbor driving crazy. Flashes of memory going 100 miles an hour emerge as well as seeing coach thrown from the car, a 1964 2 Door Hard Top Impala. My younger brother was also in the car. I was hospitalized for seven weeks and had to learn to walk again.
I had always imaged going down with the car and telling people we hit a rock at 110 miles an hour after losing control. I was informed I was thrown from the car into a field. I do not know the facts. I do know I was in the back seat of the car of one person who took me to the hospital. My only memory of the ride was seeing a big hole in my arm shooting blood. I obviously survived. I am not ready to explore this further.
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| Couple on Right - My Parents July 4, 1951 |
To my honorable mother and father, Clyde and Betty Crawford, they never cease to amaze me. They are now married more than 63 years. I have watched them love each each other all of my life. They have weathered many storms, not the least of which are five children, all of our children, and great grand children.
Both of them have diminished capacity of mobility and my mother is living with Alzheimer's Disease. Both of them compensate for each other's lack. They still talk to each other of their love for each other. I listen to them and try not to at the same time. It is an honor to be their first born. I am a blessed man.
In Part Three, I will be sharing my time with many new and exciting people I met while away. Until then, do your best to love God properly, love yourself properly and love others properly. It is a good life when you live like that. Enjoy your life. Live it!
