My First Christmas Tree

I was five or six years old when I realized that I should have my own Christmas tree.

My friend Mike and I looked all over the neighborhood for a good tree. It had to be a pine tree (obviously). It had to be small enough to carry home, but big enough to decorate. Most importantly, it had to be on a vacant lot so we wouldn't get in trouble. It seemed like we looked forever. We went further from home than I ever remember having gone without Mom or Dad. Finally, two or three streets over from my house, we found the right tree. It was about two feet tall, and it probably looked like Charlie Brown's tree. I loved it. 

I realized that my plan for getting the tree had been short-sighted when we started to cut it down. It's hard to cut down a tree when you don't have an ax. Or a knife. Or anything sharp. Going home wouldn't solve the problem because, even at that age, I could foresee how the conversation would go.

“Mom, can I have an ax?”

“No.”

What to do? We looked around for a sharp rock or something, and found a short piece of pipe that had been abandoned in a ditch. Perfect! After a few minutes of bludgeoning and wrestling, we managed to separate the tree from its roots. I carried the tree home and Mike helped me set it up on the deacon's bench that served as my toy chest. I decorated it with tinsel and a few blue ornaments from the family tree.

Silver and blue have been the colors of Christmas for me ever since.

Jack “Charles Schultz” Parker

The Memorable Thanksgiving

I don't have any particular memories of Thanksgiving until one year when my family did something completely unexpected. For reasons that I didn't understand then, and don't remember now, we decided to go to Piccadilly Cafeteria for Thanksgiving instead of doing something traditional.

I thought it would be really cool to go to a restaurant on Thanksgiving, and looked forward to it. Since I was just a kid, I didn't realize that I would feel the loss of seeing my parents carve the turkey, and couldn't imagine that I would really miss seeing that nasty cranberry sauce on the table; but I did. I enjoyed eating at the restaurant, of course. Piccadilly is one of those places where you go through the line and get what you want. Who doesn't like getting exactly what they want?

I didn't realize until then that Thanksgiving isn't about getting exactly what you want. It's about family, about community, and about gratitude for shared blessings. You can't really understand Thanksgiving if you get exactly what you want because it is all about being part of a the blessings that come from and are shared by a larger community. To this day, my family pauses prior to the annual meal to express our gratitude to the Lord for His blessings on the family as a whole and on the nation in which we are privileged to live.

We never went to a restaurant for Thanksgiving again; but it was a good lesson.

Jack “William Bradford” Parker

My Friend Spongebob

I don't remember his name, or much else about him except that he had buck teeth about as big as Spongebob's would be forty years later.

It all started when the horn on Dad's car stopped working. The story started, that is. I assume that Dad's horn wasn't the cause of my friend's buck teeth.

One morning, Dad pulled out of the driveway and started to drive to work. As he headed slowly up Mimosa, Dad saw Spongebob riding toward him on his bike. Dad stopped the car. My friend was riding fast, and had his head turned backwards so he could yell at someone. He couldn't see Dad's car. With no horn to honk, and no time to back up, Dad had little choice but to watch my friend ride right into the bumper of the car, fly into the air, and land face-first on the hood.

He left a perfect imprint of his two huge front teeth in the hood.

Jack “Squidward” Parker

The Bedtime Story

I looked forward to bedtime because, right after it was announced, I would say “Tell me a story.” This always garnered Dad's rendition of “Tell Me A Story.”

“Tell me a story, tell me a story,

Tell me a story, remember what you said

Tell me about the birds and bees

And how do you make a chicken sneeze?

Tell me a story

And then I'll go to bed. “

Then I would get a story. Most nights, Dad or Mom would read the story; but on some nights, I would get a story Dad made up.

Always, always, always take the time to tell your young children bedtime stories – even if you're exhausted. One of them might be life-changing for your children, like one was for me when I was in first grade.

“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack. He came home from school one day and went into his laboratory.” In the story, this boy made a great discovery that would completely change the space program – he discovered a rocket fuel that would allow the X-15 (my all-time favorite rocket plane) to take off under its own power and go all the way to orbit! Imagine that! NASA hadn't been able to do that, but I could! I knew I could accomplish anything, if a little boy named Jack could make such a great discovery.

Almost 50 years later, NASA still hasn't figured out how to achieve Single-Stage-To-Orbit.

And I still haven't figured out how to make a chicken sneeze.

Jack “Wernher von Braun” Parker

The Eagle Has Landed

There is no way to describe the excitement I felt. It was July of 1969, and we were going to land on the moon. It was the biggest thing ever to happen in The Rocket City. The moon rocket that Wernher von Braun designed, that our friends and neighbors built, and whose tests routinely shook our houses, was going to the moon! Even a 6-year-old could understand that it was big.

It was Sunday, and Apollo 11 was going to land on the moon. I had watched it lift off on Wednesday morning, and had waited for what seemed like forever for it to get to the moon. I watched Walter Cronkite explain and update. It was a heady week. Since I was 6, it never even occurred to me that we wouldn't be successful. We were going to win the Space Race!

I'm a little short on the details of the mission. Reading the actual history of it gives me things that I don't remember, like Wednesday morning and Sunday afternoon for the launch and landing. For young children, time is especially fuzzy.

I do remember the feeling, though. I was absolutely space crazy. I wanted to be an astronaut. The feeling that rock stars produce is only a weak comparison to what I felt about the manned exploration of space. 

Neil Armstrong's words were perfectly clear from a quarter-million miles away - “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” I don't need Wikipedia to help me with those. I will remember those words on my deathbed.

I watched every minute of the landing with my aunt Gloria. Mom and Dad had let me go to Gloria's house to watch the moon landing, because she and William had a color TV.

It was broadcast in black and white.

Jack “Neil Armstrong” Parker

A Future In Rocket Science

It was the late '60s. The space race with the Russians was on, and we were losing. Since I was in Huntsville, we lived with the sound of Saturn rocket test firings and the ardent desire to get to the moon before the Russians did. My plan was to become an Air Force test pilot, fly the X-15, and then become an astronaut.

I knew you didn't just become an astronaut without going to school, so I picked up rocketry as a hobby while I finished first grade. My parents gave me an awesome water rocket, and I learned how to fly It. I'd fill it about halfway with water, then attach it to the air pump. I'd pump and pump until it was ready to go. When I released the rocket, it would fly higher than the house! I was a real rocket engineer and astronaut all rolled into one. I was Alan Shepard. I was John Glenn. I was Wernher von Braun.

Everyone should learn the principles of rockets. I just learned them a little earlier than some do. One day Dad came home from work during the day, and before he went back to work he said he'd shoot off the cherry bomb that we'd had in a drawer for awhile. I thought this was great news - no one has ever said “cherry bomb” without getting me excited. He got an empty coffee can and the cherry bomb, and took them out to the front yard. He put the cherry bomb under the coffee can and lit the fuze. Boom! The coffee can sailed even higher than the water rocket!

Was there ever any doubt I'd become a missile engineer?

Jack “Homer Hickam” Parker

Talent Of Shakespearean Proportions

In my previous post, I said that I blamed barbed wire for my cut foot. Not true. In fact, I blamed “bobwire”. This was the earliest indication of my future literary genius. Like Shakespeare, I have displayed a tremendous talent for creating words.



Shakespeare is credited with having invented worthless words like “bedroom,” and “advertising”. These are hardly as majestic as the words I invented. In addition to the previously-mentioned “bobwire”, I invented two masterpieces: “sheekwok” and “brocteyew”.



Sheekwok is an adjective that is pronounced “sheikh-wok”, and has nothing to do with Arabs who take up Asian cooking. Sheekwok is used exclusively to describe walls that are slightly crooked. My pastor must have heard me use it because one day he said that a stapler was good to use if you wanted to affix a sign to a sheekwok wall.



Brocteyew (pronounced “BROCK-tuh-you”) is a word that means “sponsored”. It became famous after the television announcers somehow learned of my invention. They began describing television shows as being “brocteyew by Gillette,” and “brockteyew by the Ford Motor Company”.



To this day, it's hard for me to believe how much I influenced the English language as a 5-year-old.

Jack “Just Call Me William” Parker

Mister Ed

Her name was Dolly, and she looked nothing like Mr. Ed. She was Papaw's plow horse. She was, in my memory anyway, a gargantuan white-and-brown draft horse. She was the gentlest horse on Earth, and she was partly responsible for my conviction that horses want to kill you and stomp your body into the dirt.



Papaw was Earl Leon Luke, my mother's father. He owned about a hundred acres of Mississippi farmland and woods in Coy, Mississippi – right outside of Philadelphia. I loved spending time on his farm because I was a suburban kid from what I thought was the big city, and it was awesome to do “farm things.”



Whenever Cathy and I showed up, Papaw would drag the bridle and saddle out and get Dolly ready for us to ride her. I loved riding Dolly. She always walked slowly and smoothly. Because of her, I thought that all horses were gentle and safe.



One day when I was about four, I walked up to pet Dolly on the nose. When she saw me coming, she walked up to meet me. Unfortunately, my bare foot ended up underneath her enormous, ironclad hoof. My foot was cut in a pretty spectacular fashion. I ran into the house screaming and bleeding. When the adults in the house asked how I'd gotten hurt, I told them I hurt it on barbed wire because I was afraid Dolly would get in trouble, and I didn't want to tell on my good friend.



You'd be surprised how loyal four-year-olds can be.

Jack “Not A Stool Pigeon” Parker

Elton John Cat

His name was Sywacket, and he looked nothing like Elton John. He looked like a bigger, leaner version of Pyewacket. At least I didn't have to ask why his name was “Sywacket”. His name was “Sywacket” because it sounded like “Pyewacket”. Duh.


He was a male Siamese, and I doubt he had been fixed. I thought he was awesome. He went where he wanted, and did what he wanted. When you're five years old, the idea of doing what you want is pretty appealing.


He may have been my original motivation for becoming a fighter in later life. I noticed that he went out on Friday nights, and he invariably came home with wounds from the Friday night fights. One day he came in with another cat's claw embedded in the top of his head. I was very impressed.


He was just like Elton John in “Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting”.


Except on Friday night.

Jack “Nothing Like Elton John” Parker

Magic Cat

Her name was Pyewacket. Since I was four or five years old, I didn't question why this was her name. It simply was.

If I had bothered to ask, I'd have learned that “Pyewacket” was the name of the witch's familiar in the James Stewart movie Bell, Book And Candle. I didn't learn this until I was 52 years old, when my wife looked it up, and I discovered that our Siamese cat looked exactly like the one in the movie. Pyewacket was also one of the names of a witch's familiar from the Salem witch trials (it was an imp rather than a cat in 1644 ). If I'd had a middle-aged sense of humor when I was five, the idea that my family would have named anything after a witch's familiar would have sent me into hilarities of irony - you will never meet a family as Baptist as we are.

It turns out that the cat was magic, though; and I remember the night I learned that she had mystic powers.

I had looked everywhere for Pyewacket, and I couldn't find her anywhere. She had disappeared. This, of course, is perfectly normal behavior for a cat; and nothing to be remarked upon, so I headed off to take a bath. After I had my bath, I opened the door to the linen closet to toss in my towel, and discovered her laying on top of the dirty clothes. She was cleaning up a brand-new litter of kittens. I could not imagine where those had come from. She had somehow created them out of thin air!

I was very impressed by this, and continue to be.

Jack “The Amazing Mumford” Parker

Menagerie

I'm not really an “animal person.” I like animals well enough... I guess I should really say that I like dogs and cats; but I'm suspicious of other creatures. Those things are out to eat you.

I hasten to add that this is not my parents' fault. I grew up with dogs and cats, hamsters and parakeets, an unfortunate rabbit, and other small animals. My parents took me to my grandparents' farm in the summers where I could spend time with chickens and cows. With an upbringing like that, you would expect that I would have grown up to be a veterinarian.

I blame my sister.

She was critter-crazy. She didn't just love dogs and cats, hamsters and parakeets. She loved everything. She rode horses when she got the chance (horses want to kill you and then you stomp your body into the dirt). She loved rabbits (some strange kind of love that involved trapping the terrified bunny with a lawnmower so she could hold the wild, rabies-ridden thing). She loved lizards (and she didn't love lizards in some normal way that involved putting the lizard in a cage - she would get two small lizards to bite her on the earlobes so that she could wear them as earrings).

I'm sure you can understand how living with a lizard lunatic would put me off my game. I'm convinced that was the thing that made me suspicious of anything with fur, feathers, or scales.

And that stupid hamster bit my finger.

Jack “Siegfried and Roy” Parker

My First Book

I apologize for the blog disruption, but I've spent the last three months co-writing a novel with my friend Keith. Writing a novel turned out to be an all-consuming venture. Not counting my day job and my night job, writing a novel took all of my time.

I was very surprised by this because writing a book hadn't always been so time-consuming for me. I suppose that's because I wrote non-fiction up until now. Well, that is to say, I've only written one book before now, and it was non-fiction. It was a history of the Second World War.

I was six years old. I was a World War II nut, and I knew everything there was to know about the war. No one knew as much about it as I did, so I thought I should write a book telling people all about it. After all, I loved reading books, so how hard could it be to write one?

I knew it would take a little time, maybe all evening, so I got my grandmother's “portable” Royal typewriter and put it in my room. I sat down to the typewriter and thought hard. There was no way to put the immense amount of knowledge I had into one book, so I would have to organize my thoughts and only give the most important information - things the reader really needed to know.

Herewith, the complete text of “World War II” by Jack Parker:

“This book will not be complete. It will, however, be accurate.”

It only took me a couple of hours. I still can't figure out why the novel took so long.

Jack “Count Leo” Parker

Mom Passes Out

Last week I talked about my bicycle trying to kill me. This wasn't unusual at all for me. I spent a lot of time in doctors' offices and emergency rooms as a child. I suppose it was a reflection of my grace, balance, and athleticism – I was a klutz. What I didn't mention was Mom's routine reaction to me trying to murder myself.

I was six years old, and it was a summer day like any other. I was at my friends' house down the street; but, for some reason, their mother had kicked us out of the house and insisted we play in the back yard. We cast around for something intelligent to do and settled on the plan of running around the tent their father had erected as a test before going camping. We had been told not to go into the tent, and not to touch it; so, of course, it became the central focus of our lives. In 1969, no one used wimpy, plastic tent pegs. Oh, no. Tent pegs in that day were good, solid iron a half-inch wide that would survive the nuclear holocaust when the Russians attacked. These, by custom, were pounded into the ground so that four or five inches were left above ground. That way, you could get a good grip on them when it was time to decamp.

We decided it would be a wonderful idea to run as fast as possible around the tent, jumping the tent pegs like hurdles. The one who could do this the fastest won, and devil take the hindmost. It was a lot of fun! I had a great time until my bare foot caught one of the spikes. I ripped a huge gash in the top of the foot and then headed for home. As I walked home, I turned around and looked at the blood in the gutter. I remember thinking how strange it was that blood was running in the gutter instead of rain; but my musings didn't last long because I needed to get home.

When Mom saw me, she yelled at me to go back out on the porch. “Don't bleed on the floor!” was the memorable phrase of the day. She got her keys, and wrapped my foot in a towel. She put me in the car and drove me to the doctor's office, where she held me down while they stitched me up. Then she drove me home and cleaned up all of the blood that I had gotten everywhere. When I had been taken care of and everything had been done that needed to be done, she went to her room, laid down on her bed, and fainted.

This became a theme in our family. Mom always took care of us and cleaned up the blood; then she fainted. 

I Believe I Can Fly

It took forever to get rid of those training wheels.

When I was five or six years old I believed, like Calvin, that the stupid bike was trying to kill me. Saying that I'm not graceful, or imbued with a natural sense of balance, is like saying that the most distant galaxy is a long way from the earth. In addition to my clumsiness, I was deterred from losing the training wheels by my highly-developed sense of self-preservation. The ground is hard, and concrete is even harder. In addition, asphalt is rough and will strip the skin off of your bones in an instant. Face it - the Earth wants to kill you and eat you.

Dad tried. Heaven knows he tried. He took the training wheels off and gave me a push. He ran beside me while holding on. He shouted encouragement. On a good day day I could make it most of the way across the yard; but I always made him put the training wheels back on because I simply couldn't get the hang of it. He and Mom encouraged me, bribed me, and did everything else they could to make me push through my fears and brave the terrors of a carnivorous earth; but it was no use.

In the end, the taunts and jeers of my friends pushed me to it. I simply couldn't let them keep calling me a baby because they had their training wheels off and I didn't; so I had Dad take the training wheels off. It was wonderful - I could ride my bike! I was free to ride up and down the street with the wind blowing through my hair. No longer a baby, I was an undisputed Big Kid and the master of all things with two wheels. I couldn't understand why I hadn't done this sooner.

A week or so later, I was riding up the street enjoying the freedom that a bicycle gives when, for no reason that I could detect, the Earth grabbed my front wheel and threw me over the handlebars to land face first on the asphalt. I broke my nose, and the Earth ate most of my face.

I told you that stupid bike was trying to kill me. 

Birthday Party!

“You get to go to your friend's birthday party! He's going to be five years old! You're going to have cake and play games; and you're going to give him a present! Doesn't that sound like fun?”

Well, most of it sounded fun; but I had to weigh the pros and cons carefully. Even at four years of age, I knew that there is no such thing as a free lunch. There was a cost hidden in that allegedly happy announcement – a big one; and I had a hard time believing that Mom was so excited about it. Of course, adults are strange creatures. You can never tell how they're going to react. I sat down and thought carefully, and decided that I would be willing to do it because he was one of my best friends. It was a hard decision, though.

What do you give your friend for his 5^th birthday? You can't give him some baby toy. Five is a big birthday – just ask anybody - so it's got to be a really good toy. I was a little reluctant; but I opened the lid to the deacon's bench that served as my toy chest and began to search. I took out all of the things that were broken. Those were clearly not good enough to give him. I took out all of the things that had pieces missing. Those weren't good enough, either. The little toys were eliminated because my present had to make a splash. After ages of searching, and a lot of internal struggle, I finally chose which of my toys to give him for his birthday.

Mom looked into my bedroom and asked what I was doing.

“I'm picking out which toy to give him,” I said.

“No, son. You don't have to give him one of your toys. We'll go to the store and get him a new one.”

Why didn't she say so to start with? Let's go!

Kindergarten - The Anchor Holds

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. - Proverbs 4:7

Recently, I was at West Huntsville Baptist Church talking to the pastor, who has been a friend of mine since I was 13 years old. We were in his office when he asked whether I had gone to Kindergarten at West Huntsville. I said yes, but thought it was an unusual question. I don't often get asked about my Kindergarten credentials. He pointed behind me. I turned around; and there was a very old sign for West Huntsville Baptist Kindergarten, hanging on the wall. I looked around the office and realized that, due to the vagaries of remodeling over the intervening 46 years, I was standing in the very room where I attended Kindergarten.

Years don't slip away in life like they do in novels; but my eyes briefly stopped seeing things as they were in 2014. The well-decorated office slipped away and the walls moved to their proper places. I looked out the window and a house with a giant shade tree replaced the parking lot. The walls were industrial green cinderblock again, and the floors were green-flecked asbestos tile. I couldn't feel 1967, but I could see it clearly enough. This was the room that had begun what was to be over 20 years of education in elementary schools, high school, and a variety of universities. My church introduced me to school, as it introduced me to almost everything else of value in life. If everyone had an introduction like mine, education would be a lot more popular.

I didn't know I was being introduced to Education (Capital E). I went to Kindergarten on Monday in the room that, on Sunday, was my Sunday School room. I didn't know I was Being Educated, because I couldn't separate what I learned during the week from all of my other education in that room on Sunday mornings and evenings. Adults that I loved, and that loved me, taught me to see God, the world, and others with an appreciative eye. There was much to learn from the world, much to learn from books, and much to learn about one another. Language was particularly important to me, because it held subtleties that weren't always obvious. One of the things that I remember learning in Kindergarten is how the words “nephew” and “niece” work. It turns out that they are governed by one's own gender, not by the gender of one's parent's siblings. Ergo, I am my aunt's nephew, not her niece. This was amazing.

Did I receive a religious education in my Baptist Kindergarten? No. I had already learned by the time I was 5 that there was no such thing as “religious” education and “secular” education. Whenever I learned about God, I was enabled to see His creation in a new way through the lens of my new knowledge. Whenever I learned about the world, or the people in it, I was able to understand Him better by understanding the new information that I had gained. As a result, I have always approached academic pursuits as attempts to understand both God and His creation. Some of my most significant spiritual realizations were made much later in the Physics department as I studied quantum mechanics and relativity.

With an anchor in education that digs as deep and holds as fast as that, it's little wonder that I have never stopped learning.

War! The Invasion Of Mimosa Lane

We left the BatCave behind when I was about four-and-a-half (Don't forget how important those “and-a-halfs” were). We departed for a house on Mimosa Lane in the northwestern part of town. I thought it was so cool! Not the house – the fact that there was actually a mimosa tree at the end of the street, as you turned off of Mastin Lake Rd. The synchronicity, to a 4-year-old, was staggering. I thought it the most improbable occurrence in the world that a street named Mimosa would also have a mimosa tree on it. The mimosa tree was the most exotic sight imaginable to me. The seed pods looked like beans, and let us pretend that we were farmers. With serrated green leaves protecting ethereally wispy, pink flowers, the mimosa tree was a gift of beauty from another world; and it seemed a harbinger of peace in our new home.

It was not to be. The kid two doors down from us opposed both the idea and the fact of me landing in his neighborhood. In order to live in peace, I had to declare war and take my my new land from the hands of a rapacious enemy by force of arms. Since we weren't allowed to leave our respective yards, we had to conduct our warfare with long-range projectiles fired from our home bases. We deployed along the battle lines defined by the property of the intervening house and threw rocks at one another for two days. After unremitting warfare against a clearly inferior but inexplicably intransigent foe, I declared a truce. With a ceasefire agreed upon, we settled our differences and became good friends.

Later, when he smashed my head into a brick wall, I didn't even tell on him. It only cost me two stitches, and hardly seemed worth ruining a good friendship over. 

The Wizard And The Minister Of Music

“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” - Winston Churchill. Nothing is as hard as seeing the future from the past, and nothing is as rewarding as seeing the past from the future. Life at The Bat Cave was filled with precursors to and causes of my adult life. Last week, I talked about my future career as a non-prodigy physicist. This week, I'll tell you how my future as a minister of music looks through the crystal ball of the past.

Children learn from watching what people around them do, and then reenacting what they see in play. When I was a kid, I “played” everything. I played war. I played baseball. I played Batman - which was easy since I was Batman. I played “Work” - which was a boring game since I didn't understand what Dad did when he went there. One day, a friend of mine and I cast around for something to do; and we decided to play church. It was a reasonable thing to decide, since we spent hours every week sitting in church. The pastor, the minister of music, the choir, the pianist, the organist, and the Sunday School director all got up on the platform every week and did things that we didn't always understand; but that we could always predict. The pastor stood up and talked forever. The Sunday School director went to the pulpit and told how many people had been in Sunday School. I remember being very excited when my Aunt Gloria told me that the number of people he reported included children because I thought only the adults counted. The minister of music directed all of the singing.

To me, the minister of music was the most important and amazing person in the church. He had the ability to control the actions of every single person in the church by simply waving his arms around. When he moved his arms in a certain way, everyone stood up. When he moved his arms a different way, the pianist and organist played music. When he moved his arms in a slightly different way, everyone sang. No one ever did anything other than what the minister of music made them do with his arms. He was like the wizard in Fantasia! Naturally, when we decided to play church, I made my friend be the pastor. I wanted to be the minister of music. Singing was fun; and controlling a building filled with people by simply waving your arms was a mysterious, wonderful ability!

My favorite song was Power In The Blood.  

Isaac Newton And The Motorcycle

Life at The Bat Cave was filled with precursors to and causes of my adult life. In hindsight, my love of reading, adventure, intelligence work, science, music, and my future as a minister of music could all be told from the year that we lived there. When I was about four years old, I learned about physics.

My friend and I were standing in the front yard, throwing rocks across the road. To a four-year-old arm, the tiny, almost-two-lane blacktop was an enormous distance from side to side. We thought that our throws were tremendous feats of athleticism, even though I doubt we ever got one all the way across. Suddenly, we had a problem. A motorcycle was coming down the street. To the best of my knowledge, it was the first motorcycle I had ever seen; but a motorcycle is something that you instinctively understand, because it looks like a bicycle. We knew that we shouldn't throw any rocks at the motorcycle. After all, throwing rocks at people was bad – this had been clearly explained at some point. Since I could see that the motorcycle rider was not the Joker, or the Penguin, or the Riddler, he had nothing to fear from riding down Batman's street, indeed, right in front of the Wayne Mansion. The only problem was how long it was taking for him to pass by us. It seemed that it took hours for that motorcycle to cover the hundred or so yards between Governor's Drive and my position in front of The Bat Cave. With a sudden insight, I realized that if I would throw my rock before he got to me, the rock would go across the road before the motorcycle got there! Brilliant! I threw the rock when the motorcycle was a good eight or ten feet to my left, and was astonished to watch the motorcycle drive into my rock as it flew across the street!. It seemed that the rock had somehow curved into the driver.

In 1966, there was a socially-agreed-upon response to kids who threw rocks at motorcycles. He stopped, knocked on the door to my house, and explained matters to my mother, who beat the tar out of me. Throughout the whole episode, I was trying to understand what had happened. I was mystified. If I threw the rock before the motorcycle got there, how did I manage to hit it? Eventually, I realized that the correct answer to this extraordinary physical conundrum was simple: Don't throw rocks when motorcycles are anywhere near because the moving motorcycle will run into the rock (I wasn't exactly a child prodigy physicist). I also generalized this to cars and bicycles (I was cautious).

It was my first exposure to Newtonian mechanics. And leading your target. And motorcycles. 

Superman!

There is no way to write about my childhood without talking about my Aunt Gloria, whom everyone always called “Gloria”. My father's sister, she lived with us while we were at the Pine Avenue house; and I thought she was the greatest thing ever. Gloria was 4'4” tall, and didn't loom like the other adults. She had a huge personality, and she thought I hung the moon. How could I not love her?

Gloria had moved to Huntsville from Mobile in the wake of the Brookley AFB closure, and she got a job with NASA as a secretary. She lived with us while we were at The Bat Cave on Pine Avenue. When she met William, whom she later married, she would even take me on dates with him. I thought it was awesome, because they would let me have Zero candy bars. (Mom and Dad wouldn't let me have them, because I didn't actually like them, and never ate the whole thing. But, really, a WHITE chocolate bar! How cool is that?) Occasionally, if I was very good, Mom and Dad would let me sleep in her bed. She would tell me bedtime stories, when I did sleep with her; and the young Batman thought her repertoire was huge. I learned to love scary stories from her. I don't remember the stories now; but one was called The Little Devil Story, and it scared the pants off of me. The Big Devil Story, on the other hand, scared me so badly that I had to be in a particularly brave mood to listen to it. I wasn't that brave very often. I loved them! Ever since then, scary stories have made me happy.

Gloria would read to me, and play with me; and I looked forward to her arrival every day after work. One day something happened that she talked about for years. When she got home, I saw that she was wearing a red dress that had an exceptionally large collar in the back. I greeted her with, “Gloria, let's play Superman and Batman! You don't have to change clothes. You already have a cape on!”

I never lived it down.  

Snake!

I need to take you back to Hollinger's Island, when I was around 3 years old (before the move to Huntsville), because I forgot that I remembered something. I suppose that's better than remembering something that never happened; but it's not as good as remembering something that I had forgotten.

Anyone who knew me before I was 35 years old knows that I was afraid of five kinds of snakes: big ones, little ones, live ones, dead ones, and play ones. Make that four kinds of snakes. I never saw a little snake. This story probably explains why I thought all snakes were at least 12 feet long.

We were living in a brick house behind Hollinger's Island Baptist Church, which wasn't right on a canal or river; but it's impossible to get very far from water on Hollinger's Island, and water moccasins love it. Dad was in the back yard fighting a water moccasin (cottonmouth) with a hoe. Mom, Cathy, and I were standing at the sliding glass door watching this unfold. The door was open at least a little bit and the dog, whose name I don't remember, decided that she should run out to see Dad. Cathy and I started howling, Mom started calling the dog back, and Dad yelled at the dog to go away. No dice. The snake was between Dad and the dog, and the dog didn't see the snake. The snake's mouth opened so wide that it seemed it could swallow the world, and we could see that the inside of its mouth really was as white as cotton. The snake struck the dog on one of its front paws. This apparently distracted the snake long enough for Dad to chop it up with the hoe. The next thing I remember was looking at this strange goo oozing out of the dog's paw. I was very upset, and I suspect I cried a lot. I don't remember who took the dog to the vet, but the vet didn't do anything. He said the dog would either live or die, and there wasn't a lot to be done one way or the other. The dog lived, but hair never again grew where the snake's fangs had injected venom into the her paw.

That's why all snakes are 12 feet long. 

Dr. Seuss

As I mentioned last time, we moved from The Pink Palace into The Bat Cave. Mom tells me we only stayed at The Pink Palace for about six months, so I would have been three-and-a-half during that January or February of 1966 when we moved to the house on Pine Avenue (aka The Bat Cave). We lived there for only a year, but I remember so very much from that year. Never, ever believe that the time you spend working with small children is wasted or forgotten. They will remember things that you never expect, and they will learn things that they don't consciously remember. My mind is filled with a million things that I did, or saw, or learned that year. It's as if I came alive while I lived there. Fortunately for me, one of the most important things that happened to me while my mind was coming alive was that my parents subscribed to a book club that delivered Dr. Seuss's books directly to our house.

If you, or your children, or your grandchildren can't quote Green Eggs and Ham without looking at the book; then follow the link this instant and buy it from Barnes and Noble. Do not buy a Nook or Kindle version, and do not buy a video. Buy a real, live book; then sit down with your young person and prepare to read that book until you are so sick of it that you try to sneak out and bury it. If you are very, very fortunate, the same thing will happen to them as happened to me: they will learn to want to read. Yes, someone has to teach them to want to read.

Dr. Seuss created a burning desire to be able to read. I still remember the sheer joy that surrounded the arrival of the latest Dr. Seuss; and I knew that only people who could read were admitted into the magic that was contained within the pages of the book. I had to wait for someone to be willing to read it for me; but they could pick it up and see what was inside any time they liked. I memorized the stories so that I could look at the pictures and know what was happening; but, oh, to be able to pick up any book I wanted and know what was happening anytime I liked! I couldn't imagine a more amazing power. Next to that, all of my Bat-powers were trivial. For people my age, and for people a couple of decades younger, Dr. Seuss opened a world of pure imagination and endless possibilities. He defined life as something to be lived without fear of the unknown. We could walk down Mulberry Street and see amazing things. Even a rainy day could see the arrival of Thing 1 and Thing 2. Anything was possible!

He never did get us to eat things that looked funny, though.

Batman!

We moved from The Pink Palace after six months, and moved to Pine Avenue (just off of Governor's Drive in Huntsville). It was at this time, shortly before my 4^th birthday, that I answered Gotham City's call for a fearless crime fighter. The Joker, The Riddler, The Penguin, and other mange-minded mayhem-makers were threatening the peace and tranquility of Gotham. I decided to come to the rescue, and thus I became Batman. Please don't misunderstand - I wasn't pretending to be Batman. I was The Real Batman. You may have seen stories from my life. Adam West regularly pretended to be me on television and, in later years, many famous actors brought my stories to the screen. My impact on American culture was significant and, to this day, I have a fondness for the songs that I inspired; but I digress from the tale of Batman's origins.

I knew that I had to have some faithful assistants in order to create my alter ego, since even Bruce Wayne must have his Alfred. I enlisted my parents, hoping that I could trust them with a secret of this magnitude. My mother made my Bat-costume. She made a black cape, with hat and ears; then she attached fringes to a pair of black gloves. My father was in charge of creating the Batmobile. He converted a child's pedal car into The Batmobile by painting it black, putting the Bat-logo on the side, and installing an atomic reactor for a power source. I enlisted both private industry and the US Government in the creation of the all-important Bat Utility Belt. We sent in about a billion breakfast cereal boxtops and ordered a spy utility belt, which was then transferred to the US Post Officefor delivery. In order to make a full transition from Bruce Wayne to Batman, I had my mother put the Bat-Logo on everything: pillowcases, t-shirts, and underwear. With my Bat-Identity complete, I embarked upon a career of crime-fighting that was unmatched in modern history.

I remember the utility belt especially. We had just gotten in the car to go somewhere when the mailman brought the package up and handed it into the car. It was awesome. It was a beautiful yellow, made of that wonderful, high-grade, molded plastic that they use when making toys that you can order with box tops. I thought how great it was to be the only person in America with a utility belt like that. I used that utility belt to hold all of my amazing Bat-tools: a Batarang, the Bat-cuffs, the Bat-laser, Bat-signaling devices, and many more. My imagination was the only limit to the tools I could put in the utility belt.

I fought crime and foiled evil plots until someone stole the Batmobile.  

The Pink Palace

We moved to Huntsville, AL from Mobile in July, 1965. Dad had lost his job at Brookley Air Force Base because President Johnson, in a piece of political comeuppance, had closed the base. Alabama had had the temerity to vote for Goldwater in the recent presidential election, and Johnson was nothing if not vindictive. That wasn't the reason the President gave for the base closure, of course; but no one in Mobile could be convinced of anything else. Dad got a job at Redstone Arsenal, and so North we went – away from 360 frost-free days a year, away from the coastal culture, away from the French Catholic mindset, and away from the oldest Mardi Gras celebration in America. Most significantly, we went North away from the most interesting batch of relatives since the Mobile Indian tribe attacked Hernando DeSoto in 1540.

If you move to a new city, you have to get a new house; and we got The Pink Palace, which is nothing like the one in Hawaii. It was a tiny, horrid, pink thing on Patton Road just outside the gate of Redstone Arsenal. I don't remember much about it; but no one in the family ever called it anything other than The Pink Palace in honor of its grandeur, and of Pepto-Bismol. We didn't stay there long, for reasons that never occurred to me as a child; but that's where we were living when I selected the man that would be the family's doctor for the next 20 years. I was jumping on the bed one night when I fell and hit my head. I don't remember any of this, but Dad says that we went off to the emergency room where Dr. Bernie Moore tended to my cracked head. If you keep reading this blog, you are going to see a lot of stories that include the words “emergency room,” and “stitches.” There have been some scurrilous ne'er-do-wells who have intimated that I was clumsy and and accident-prone as a child, when anyone who is clear-eyed and wise can see that I was adventurous and fearless.

I only have one memory of The Pink Palace. One night Mom and Dad told me to go to bed, so I went into my room and did as I was told (which proves that I was very wise as a child). The next morning, when I got up, they were sitting on the couch in the same place that they had been when I went to bed. I was amazed! They had stayed up all night long, and hadn't even moved! It was incredible that anyone would sit in one spot for that long! I was very impressed.

Perhaps that explains my penchant for sitting on the couch for long periods of time...

I Was Born At An Early Age

I was born at a very early age*; but I don't remember it. Dad tells me that we moved from Hollinger's Island to Huntsville in July 1965. That would make me 3 years and a few weeks old when we moved, so there are only a few snippets of memory from the very earliest years of life on Hollinger's Island, which is a few miles south of I-10 on Mobile Bay. Whatever has happened since then, started on Hollinger's Island with Jack Edward Parker, Sr., Delma Key Luke Parker and my sister Cathy (Debra Catherine, whom no one ever calls Debra).

I remember only two things from that time. The first doesn't mean anything. The second made me what I am today. I remember standing behind the first house that we lived in, which Dad calls “The Canal House”. I looked across the canal and saw a small island with an open area surrounded by trees and bamboo. I've no idea what was happening, if anything. It's like looking at a snapshot in my mind with the water moving sullenly past a small island where the water moccasins would sun themselves.

The second thing I remember is standing in the Hollinger's Island Baptist Church singing “Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing”. There is no way I could have understood the song at that age, of course. It is a song with deep meaning and rich, Biblical imagery that takes years to assimilate. However, the melody stuck in my mind; and it remains a favorite to this day. I am convinced that these experiences at a church that I don't really remember, hearing a song that I couldn't possibly understand, set me on course to eventually become a minister and music director. Deep faith and profound music work themselves into your heart, from which they are not easily removed. If the people around you are wise, loving, and patient, they can become the treasures of your life.

----

*Apologies to Groucho

Inaugural Post

My wife and children are always saying, “You never told me that!” They have claimed, through the years, not to have known that I knew four murderers, or that I was friends with a Secret Service agent, before I mentioned these things in public. The number of things they don't know about me is simply staggering, especially when you consider that my wife has known me since I was 13 years old. In spite of talking too much, I apparently don't say anything. This bugs them all a lot because, for some reason, they think that they should know what has happened to me during my life before I start talking about it from the pulpit.

I thought that this was an unusual state of affairs until I thought about my mother's parents. How much did I really know about them? I assumed it must be a lot, since I spent time on their farm growing up. Then I realized that I didn't know how they met, where they lived before the farm, or how they lived. My time on their farm had produced many memories that included them, but weren't really about them. I was self-centered as a child, in the way that all children believe that the world exists for them. I was confident that the world would never change, because I could not imagine it being any other way. It never occurred to me that parents and grandparents were really people in the way that I was, because they were godlike creatures. They had no beginning that I could remember, and I could imagine no ending for them. They didn't come from anywhere - they simply were. A teenaged Papaw or a child Grandmaw were thoughts that the child never imagined thinkable. At any rate, I never learned who they were before they were gone.

In the last year of her life, my Grandmaw Luke began writing down some of her memories; but she became too ill to continue. She finished four pages of her memories. Four pages. That is all that I have left that is not corrupted by the years since her death. It occurs to me that I want my children and grandchildren to know my stories as I have lived them. There are a few things that I want to set the record straight about. To wit:

• I didn't burn the campground down.
• Nothing happened to my Grandmother Parker's 70^th birthday cake. Nothing at all.
• My uncle's head didn't even need stitches.
• I did break that girl's finger, though. 

This won't be Tolstoy's “Childhood”; but I'll tell my stories in more or less chronological order, and I'll be more or less honest.

Blessings!

Jack

Dad

Grandpaw

JP