Locking the Door on Monsters

I spent my formative years outside Monticello, Florida, a small town in north Florida known as “the most haunted small town in small town in the United States.”

The first home we live in was in a neighborhood on a hill about one mile from Bassett’s Dairy, where my father and, eventually, my mother, worked. It was a huge one-story house that, along with two other homes in the neighborhood, had once been part of what we had been told by someone was a converted Army hospital. Although there may have been soldiers that had died in the house, I never saw a ghost in it. My sister, Debbie, after watching Dracula, or something like that, on TV, woke up in the middle of the night and looked outside her bedroom window one evening and see the devil. When I looked outside the window, I saw the menacing face of what she had seen. I saw a pine tree and laughed.

The next home was a different story. It was also near Bassett’s Dairy but it was next to a cemetery. On some cool evenings, the front door would open by itself. This became so common that I jokingly began saying, “Come in, ghost.” I am sure that it was just something structurally wrong with the house.

Some evenings, I would hear Ben Lamar, the cowboy at the dairy, rounding up cows and shouting at them. A family, who had lost a son in a boating accident, used to come out to the cemetery in the middle of the night and pray for God to send their family member back to them. One night, they were out there when Ben came to round the cows up. They heard the noise he was making and got scared and never returned again. My father said Ben heard them, too, and went home and didn’t return to round up the cows.

During warm summer evenings, since we did not have air conditioning, windows were left open. The front door was left open. The screen door was not even latched. All this changed following January 15, 1978, when a killer was loose in the area and he had struck less than 30 miles away, at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University.

No ghost, no poltergeist, but a real monster made me start locking the doors to my family’s house. Before, there was no reason to lock the front door. No one was going to break in. As it turned out, there was no reason to fear Bundy breaking in either but I wasn’t going to take a chance with my mother and sisters in the house.

I didn’t believe in ghosts back then and I still don’t believe in ghosts today, but this world is fractured thanks to Adam and Eve’s fall in the Garden of Eden, so there are bad people in the world, so I keep the doors to my family’s house locked and dead-bolted today. I wish that it were possible to keep the front door open and not have to worry about thieves or my family’s safety today. 

A Different Approach

Today has been a somber day. Twenty-seven people dead, seven of them children, in the tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn.

My day began with a childhood friend from Monticello telling me that the father of three more childhood friends had died that day. I was also praying and remembering my first cousin, Rick Sealey, who is in a hospital in Tuscon, Ariz., showing the fighting Marine spirit embedded in him as he battles to get well. I was also praying and thinking about my friend, Jean Carroll, who fell the other night and broke her shoulder and her ankle. On top of that, my father and brother have been battling their own illnesses.

Decembers always seem to be eventful months in my family. For the last four years, I believe, someone has been hospitalized with something serious and life-threatening. My father and my brother, in years before, and myself last year after going into cardiac arrest. All four times, God has shown up and performed miracles for my family.

I know there are some sad people right now in Newtown, Conn., that need their own miracles to happen. They need emotional healing. There are people around the nation, including myself, who are hurting for them. While we can sympathize with them, we can’t really empathize with them and feel the same hurt and anguish that they are feeling.

The area where I live in north Florida has never experienced a school shooting. While bad things happen at the schools, as they have for years, no one has drawn a gun out and decided to kill the people they are angry at or kill little children. It does not mean we’re immune from it, however.

Love him or hate him, Mike Huckabee made a valid point when he said he wasn’t surprised because we are “systematically removing God from America.” We have taken Him out of our public schools. We have taken Him out of public places, such as courthouses and county commission and school board meetings. We do not even allow HIm in prayers before football games anymore.

A few years ago, the ACLU got upset and had prayer removed from Madison County High School Cowboy football games. However, a brave group of students decided the prayers would be said from the stands at each game. Nothing could be said because the prayers were not initiated by the school. Students did it on their own. Still, such groups cry out that we, as Christians, are violating other people’s rights when we do such things as pray in Jesus’s name. They try to break our resolve and say Christians are to blame for every thing, while they see nothing wrong with music and video games which glorify raping women, murder and cursing God.

I’m also positive that the gun control advocates will begin shouting that guns need to be outlawed, but the emphasis should be on a different approach. Shouldn’t we look to what we are doing wrong, in schools, in Hollywood, in the music business, in the video game business, in the choices we make? Why don’t we fall to our knees and ask God to forgive us as a nation and bring back Christ into our homes and into every facet of our lives, including school?

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14

My Crush On Kathy Ireland

         I used to have this really huge crush on Kathy Ireland. Okay, I’ll admit it. I still have a slight crush on Kathy Ireland, but not in the way that you may think or in the way that my huge crush was.

            These days, I don’t go all gaga over Kathy Ireland’s beauty or her pretty green eyes or her long legs. (I call it being more mature. I’m sure that you’re thinking that I’m just getting old.) What attracts me to Kathy Ireland these days is more her viewpoints and her stance on some things and the fact that she has taken a pair of socks and parlayed them into millions of dollars.

            Some of you may remember all the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues that she was in during the 1980s and early 1990s. Some of you may remember seeing her in the movie, Necessary Roughness, or in the movie, Miami Hustle (renamed from Hello, She Lied.) I remember all this stuff.

            Kathy took her fame and opened a clothing line with Kmart. Later, she got into the furniture and home design business, with a Midas touch that turned everything she touched to gold.

            While I admire her as a smart businesswoman, I admire her most as a Christian. She is a wife and mother and she has taken a staunch stance against abortion. She also proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ through a website named “I Am Second” (www.iamsecond.com).

            During a conversation on Twitter once, I complimented her on the website. She responded to me, “Thank you. http://iamsecond.com  is my truth. Grateful they captured it and that it speaks to your heart.”

            Despite being six months older than me, Kathy has kept her beauty and it glows even more because her inside beauty (with the love of Christ) is so much more beautiful than her outward appearance. 

Spanish Moss, Concrete and Asphalt Carpets and Florida State Memories

Strange interludes of madness seem to softly walk by me. Memories of yesterday blend in with now and create the fabric of which my life is made.

Memories of Tallahassee begin to flicker like the beginning of a motion picture in a darkened movie theater; memories of Spanish moss hanging from oak trees, near Lafayette Circle; memories of canopied roads off side streets down Mahan Drive.

As the motion picture begins to start, and the memory becomes less clouded, canopy roads and Spanish moss give way to a carpet made of asphalt and concrete, surrounded by curtains of steel and bright lights.

The city becomes more clinical looking each day, but parts of it still retain a rural, genteel Southern charm. There are still women who say, “Bless your little heart,” old men who call all women “honey” and young people who answer their elders with “yes, sir,” “no, sir,” “yes, ma’am,” “no, ma’am.”

As Mahan becomes Tennessee Street and you go farther into Tallahassee, you come up on Florida State University. Turn down Macomb Street and then College Avenue and you will see the Westcott Building with its historic fountain. Memories of being a student at the College of Communication seem to emerge on the silver screen, as I watch frat boys in a Jeep drive by and throw a pledge into the fountain and drive off. Minutes later, the frat boys are back, throwing another pledge into the fountain. (At least, I hope they were pledges and not students the guys had decided to kidnap.)

I also see the scene where I was thrown into the fountain by three girls but that was pre-planned as a stunt for a TV show (1800 Seconds) that the students produced for WFSU-TV. Unfortunately, that footage never aired because there was too much background noise from the fountain.

The fountain that the unfortunate students and I (who actually had fun being thrown in by three cute girls) were thrown in was replaced by an exact replica of the original fountain in 1988 because of failure in the support structure of the original. I remember lazy days spent sitting at the fountain, talking with friends. I even remember sitting there, talking to my friend, Nicole (Nicky), on my birthday.

I was a student at FSU during 1986 and 1987, transferring from North Florida Junior College (now North Florida Community College). Football reigned, although FSU was struggling like a newborn calf to find its legs to stand on. Bobby Bowden was the head coach but he had not yet reached his legend status. Mark Richt, current University of Georgia head coach, was a grad assistant for the Seminoles, having formerly been a backup quarterback for the University of Miami.

On the evening of Saturday, Sept. 13, 1986, FSU did not have a football game. A 21-year-old starting offensive tackle for the team was shot following an argument at a dance outside of Montgomery Gym. Pablo Lopez died at the hospital at 1:30 a.m. the next day. Nicky and I spoke briefly that Monday about the death of the young man who she knew but that I never met.

A longer conversation about Pablo’s death took place between Mark Richt and Coach Bowden and Richt gave his heart to the Lord. Today, he is an example to young men everywhere, especially in Athens, Ga.

It has been a long time since I have been back to FSU but I will return next Saturday as the Seminoles continue their proud football heritage under Coach Jimbo Fisher. It will be my birthday and I hope to celebrate in victory as the Seminoles defeat Murray State. Go, Seminoles!

Larry the Cable Guy and the Hot Dogs

I just saw Larry the Cable Guy at Love’s Travel Stop in Lee. His credit card wasn’t working and I bought two hot dogs for him. For $2.39, Larry got a blessing but I got a bigger blessing from God because actually, it was a truck driver. It was an honor for me to help him out because as Merle Haggard sang in the theme song to the TV show, “Movin’ On,” “The white line is backbone of this country.” Let’s support our American farmers, American businesses and American truckers. And, the guy actually looked like Larry the Cable Guy. How cool is that?

Great Movie: A Mile in His Shoes

I watched a movie entitled, “A Mile in His Shoes.” It is a very inspirational movie based on a young pitcher with Asberger’s Syndrome. I loved the movie, as well as this song  by George Canyon, which is the theme song from the movie.