Crazy Days Of Summer

By TOM MORTON

Remember the good ole days of summertime when you were out of school and could continue to go barefoot after being in school without shoes? Now that’s not allowed these days for some reason.

I remember going to school, even in the first grade, without shoes on my feet but I had on my denim overalls and felt like the king of the hill. But my first-grade teacher brought me back down to earth when the bells rang out at Indian Springs Elementary. I would soon learn that I would be sentenced to Jackson Elementary by the time I got to third grade; I was under a very good teacher, Mrs. Comer, wife of the agriculture teacher (FFA). While my three brothers took “ag”, I did not because of the fight I had with polio beginning at age nine. I missed all the work (and fun?) of building things in the shop which my brothers enjoyed, but I did get “punished” by having to “chop” around the large sweet potato patch of my oldest brother.

My two very best friends, Morton and Wayne, continued our friendship even after I was separated from them when I was sent to Jackson Elementary, but they remained at Indian Springs, only to join me later when Indian Springs closed for good, eventually becoming a furniture store.

I remember the good ole days when my dad had the BEST garden around the neighborhood. He and my mom provided for us in many sacrificial ways even though we were poor but rich in love for each other. Since school started in the middle of September (unlike today when school starts too early for everyone, especially the teachers), Mother would order our new school clothes from Sears-Roebuck: two pairs of pants, two sets of underwear and socks, two shirts for each of her four sons, making payments on a monthly basis. She would buy our shoes locally because we tended to outgrow or wear them out fast.

Among the summer trips we had to include times spent with our maternal grandparents until we got too old to visit with them. (Even now my memory takes me back to those times I had with my maternal grandfather in those long walks to the corner grocery store for a Coca-Cola and a bag of Tom’s peanuts.)

On one of those special trips to Louisiana to visit my mother’s only brother to reach adulthood, Uncle LeRoy took us around the area, ordering a ton of fish for a fish fry later that weekend. (Sadly I would retrace that trip when my younger brother Gene, Aunt Leone and Aunt Ruth—two of our mother’s sisters—and I made the trip west for Uncle LeRoy’s funeral in September 1982.)

It was during these important growing-up years that my mother started going back to the church she joined right after she and my Dad had married; Mother had already united with Shiloh Baptist in Jasper County and moved her membership to Macedonia Baptist at Stark. I say this because it opened the door for us four sons, who were already going to a church in Jackson with friends who would come by and take us with them. I firmly believe I was saved at that church but really made my public profession of faith at Macedonia.

So in a revival service, my Dad, three brothers and I made professions of faith and were baptized on Easter Sunday night in 1955. Thus began my lifetime of service to God through His church, being licensed and ordained by Macedonia to be pastor of Adgateville Baptist just south of Monticello, Mother again playing a role even in this as she called me in New Orleans to tell me that Adgateville needed a preacher and they were looking for me.

I came out to preach in view of a call to pastor that church, and I became pastor and eventually ordained in September 1972. The Lord God has been so faithful to me in answering prayers when I really need some serious answers and as He always does, He delivers beyond our wildest expectations. The prime example of this proof is that I needed to work to continue seminary; so on a trip out to Georgia to borrow my brother’s truck to move my belongings back to Georgia, a school system was trying to get me to teach at their high school! Talk about timing, God is always on schedule!

I have learned that Mother’s prayer and God’s will have to be met with positive responses on our part. To those who say there is no God must learn before leaving Planet Earth that God is more real and personal than the people we call family. At the ripe old age of 76, I am still seeking to please God, for it is by faith we come to know Him and the power of His resurrection through the foolishness of preaching (Romans 1:16-17 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”)

To those who deny or say there is no God—no Jesus Christ—I say “Suppose you’re right, what have either of us lost? The answer of course is nothing we have lost.” Then I say “What if I am right? What have we lost? I have lost nothing, but the unbeliever has lost everything!”

So I challenge all who do not know Jesus come to know Him as Savior before you pass from this earth. You will be more than glad if you did. TO GOD BE THE GLORY, GREAT THINGS HE HAS DONE! No Jesus, no peace! Know Jesus, Know peace!