15. TWENTY NINE AND STUBBORN AS EVER
Let me stop and briefly summarize what has taken place in these first 29 years of my life.
Life started off wonderful, with two loving parents and an older brother. This was short lived by a major bout with polio. After a struggling recovery, I began living what I thought was a normal life.
I think there was always an unction in me, an urging for me to hurry up and grow up. To a little kid, 12 was the number, to a 12 year old it was 16, then 18, then 21, and the insurance companies said it was 25. Since we couldn’t trust anyone over 30, maybe that was the magic number. Then it shifted to you can’t trust someone over 40. Fact is; even at age 40, I still didn’t make it to manhood.
Through all these years, manhood was either what I was striving for or something I knew was an important part of life.
Though these 29 years were fun, exciting, and adventurous, they were also sad, scary, and at times very lonely. Having such a devastating disease, played a major roll in most all of my decisions. But it also helped in my personality to nudge me into independence. Having overcome many obstacles and surviving several personal problems, I developed an attitude that failure was not the worst thing a body would fear.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I had no fear of failure, so I’d try things, build things, dig into stuff, turn over rocks, (so to speak), and set my goals just a little higher.
But, when it came to relationships, I was afraid of rejection.
My parents raised us to be clean, proper, and with manners, but they didn’t have that loving, cuddling, or closeness to us. Don’t think I can remember my Dad ever showing affection, to us or even for that matter, my Mom. We were loved, but really never learned how to show it. We felt loved, but were never told.
So, having a beautiful family of my own, I wanted to give to my children what wasn’t given to me. I sure was proud of Andrea, Susan, and Matthew and I gave to them all the love that I had, which was a lot, and I did it the best I could. My well wasn’t very deep, and I didn’t have an abundance to draw from. In other words, I too didn’t know how to share the love I had for my family. But I told them.
Also I pushed the kids and Nancy a little too hard. Wanting them to be the best they could be, I pushed ‘em to go a little farther, get a little higher and do a little better. If the kids came home with A’s and B’s from school, I’d fuss at them for not having all A’s. I know now that this wasn’t right, but back then I figured I was doing the right thing or the best thing in the best way.
I really, really wanted to be a man, but I was not. It was inside of me, but I knew, I was still just a boy.
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I went to work at Union Carbide owing everybody something, and having nothing. But, this was a good job, and very good for me.
I worked in the centrifuge program separating the isotope 238, and building the very large machines that did it. All the people that worked there, for the most part, were neat to be around. I had a satisfying job, and enjoyed going to work every day.
This was not a demanding job, and for the most part I worked in the computer room. And having this job, we had plenty of time on our hands, with very few demands, so most of us played checkers, or Rook every day.
Mostly though, I read, sometimes for five or six hours of a shift. I would read the scriptures. Not that I was doing wrong, the boss’ let us, since we had alarms that would go off if anything was to go bad. This, I had the privilege to do for about seven years.
A few years earlier, I was attempting to move to the Y-12 plant. My uncle Roy was the plant manager, and after talking with me, said he’d help me get whatever job, that I decided to go into.
Having this clout was starting to get into my head, and I began to brag about it. The word of the transfer got back to the head office and someone (a supervisor that I didn’t see eye to eye with), secretly wrote a letter to employment about my work habits.
Trying to explain this letter or the reason for it is going to be a little difficult. But Uncle Roy told me he couldn’t hire his mother with a letter like this.
I know, you want to know what the letter was all about. So here we go: We worked in research and development, and had groups of important people that would tour the building and our jobs. Back then I had a full beard, as many people did, but it wasn’t very well accepted. Seeing how we entertained senators and congressmen and all sorts of important individuals, management did not want to be embarrassed over some hippie-looking employees. They come up with this plan to call beards a safety issue, and told us we had a week to shave them off.
I wasn’t really a rebel, but I knew what was right and what truth was. The facial hair was not a safety factor, nor did it interfere with our job.
So, being a man of principles, I called a meeting with the big-wigs.
“Sir’s, I said”, “Safety is the responsibility of every employee, and no one has any more power than any other. Right?” Their response was; “Right.” “If anyone, no matter how low down the ladder he is, sees a problem, it is his requirement to fix that safety issue the best way possible. Right?” Their answer was “Right.” “Then the next time I see a senator or congressman or even the governor himself that is wearing a beard, I will personally grab him by the collar and immediately escort him out of the building.”
I wasn’t stupid, I realized that I was pushing this issue pretty far, but they didn’t have a leg to stand on.
So to retaliate against me, they came up with this idea to make us computer room guys; not put their feet on the desk, because it was a safety issue.
So, here we go again. “Sirs, safety is the responsibility of every employee, and no one has any more power than any other. Right?” Their response was; “Right?” I continued, “If anyone, no matter how low down the ladder he is, sees a problem, it is his requirement to fix that safety issue the best way possible. Right?” “Then the next time I see any employee, whether the department manager or any supervisor under him, that has their feet on a desk, I will personality knock their feet off the desk.”
To say the least, I made it hard on myself. But, this was the reason they wrote that letter to the Y-12 plant.
In their eyes, Ross wasn’t a very good employee, but I managed to stay there at K-25 for several more years. One time they gave me a reprimand for backing into a legal parking space. Said if I did it again, they’d send me home for three days. Imagine that: Send me home, for a parking ticket. A $300.00 fine for a parking ticket! I don’t think so.
Well anyway, three years later the whole department was shutting down. Everyone had to look where he could to get a job to stay in the plant. Everyone, including the department heads.
For some strange reason management said that I’d become a model employee. Imagine that, Ross, a wonderful person, hardworking, very nice, friendly and easy to get along with, and still had an uncle overseeing the only place any of us could go to, Y-12.
You’d never guess what happened. Yelp, I wrote a letter to Uncle Roy.
I never could figure out how some of them guys never did get a transfer to Uncle Roy’s plant.
Sometime in 1984, we had an incident that came along that would help strengthen us for many, many, years to come.
We were all attending the country church right down the road, and I had been teaching a Sunday school class of adults, and occasionally preached from the pulpit. When one of our lessons was on ‘unknown tongues’ and I admitted that I had been speaking, or maybe, should say praying, in a prayer language, which many refer to as ‘speaking in tongues’.
When word got around, some would say that this phenomena was of the devil, many others just thought I was nuts. Anyway, it didn’t sit very well in a Baptist setting, (you know, one of them religious things), so there was a little mocking, and a little ridiculing going around. This didn’t bother me because I knew what I knew, and it was a major part of my growth, that I had received six years earlier.
One day while mowing the front yard with a push mower, four cars pulled into the driveway. It was the preacher and seven deacons, so I stopped, welcomed them to my home, and one of the deacons asked if they could speak with me.
All nine of us stood in the driveway, and one right after the other, were asking me one question and then another. Hey, these questions were coming so fast, there was no way to answer one before I was slapped with another one.
Do you believe this and do you believe that, just what do you believe? WOW! Holding my hand up, I said I’d be glad to answer any and all questions, just give them to me one at a time.
This wasn’t going to happen. Finally, I squatted on the ground and it was like buzzards on a carcass. It felt like a trial with the Sanhedrin wanting to take me to the “place of the skull”.
Nothing was getting accomplished at this point, so I asked if they’d pray with me and ask God’s guidance in this matter. Two or three turned their backs and even the preacher walked away. It was a short prayer, and yes, a couple of them did pray with me. Then we got down to the nitty-gritty.
The head beagle (maybe I shouldn’t make fun) spoke up and said; “We not only want you to quit going to OUR church, we want you to sell your house and move away.”
I did neither, I continued as always, and was told that I could no longer teach class, but that I could be a substitute teacher. A year or so later they took that from me.
You know, maybe I shouldn’t say they took it away from me, I’m thinking God did, and I’ll explain this a little later in the book.
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My daughter Andrea was baptized by a minister friend, about two years earlier, and she still wanted to join this assembly, which was just fine with me. So she did, stood up there with her profession of faith, and then afterwards she did a lot of shaking hands and howdying. She was twelve at the time, but smarter than her age. I was glad for her. Voted in, and on the roll, she was now an official member.
The next Wednesday was ‘business meeting night’, but we never went to the silliness of what went on in a business meeting. The next day though, we found out that the meeting was about Andrea, and one woman made a motion to ex-communicate her, and got a second to the motion by another woman in the church. The vote was taken, and Andrea was out.
A twelve year old, was kicked to the curb, because her dad sought God at every level. Their reason was that their preacher didn’t baptize her.
You know, this was not a bad time for us, we all knew what was going on, and continued to grow and rejoice in the Lord.
The next Sunday our daughter went back up in front at the end of service and announced that she would get baptized by the preacher. I sure was proud of her and still am. Sad thought that a twelve year old had to get baptisted twice just to join a church.