Holbrook Campground

Recently, I attended my great aunt's funeral. She was my Papa R.C.'s only sister and lived a wonderful, loving, Christian life for 94 years. Her death ended a generation. All of the siblings of my four grandparents (also all deceased) are now gone from this Earth.

Following the funeral service, I made my way to the graveside service. My aunt Ellorie was buried in the same cemetery as my mother's parents and my daddy. The graveside service was short and then I visited with friends and family, celebrating my aunt's life.

And, that led to a conversation with my cousin Terry, my aunt Ellorie's oldest son. Terry told me about his mom's salvation experience as a young girl under a large oak tree in the Big Creek community of south Forsyth County, GA. The tree, now designated by the University of Georgia as the "revival tree," was the cornerstone of my aunt's faith experience. In recent years, Terry took his mom back to the revival tree, and she went to the exact location where decades earlier she was touched by the Holy Spirit and gave her life to follow Jesus. She knew exactly where she met God.

In Brookwood Road, I use two chapters (23 & 30) to communicate my own coming to faith. My faith story began with the death of my Papa Paul Yarbrough, and his death began a lot of questions. Then, I wrote about our family's annual summer visit to Holbrook Campground and its 10 days of worship services. It was there, when I was about eight years old, that in a supernatural way my questions of faith were answered. And, they were not answered by men, but by the very real presence of the Holy Spirit (God in spirit form) settling in and on my life. I was baptized a few months later at the First Baptist Church of Cumming, GA (now Cumming Baptist Church, pictured).

But, Holbrook Campground remains holy ground for me.

It's fresh on my mind this week because annual camp meeting services are occurring for the 178th consecutive year. Gatherings for 10 days of prayer and worship began in 1838.
Like my great aunt took her son to the exact location of her conversion, I could this very day take you to the exact location of my own conversion there within the open-air arbor of Holbrook Campground. I can even tell you - 48 years later - that the preacher that night used Matthew 19:14 as part of his preaching text, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them . . ." Pictured here is the Holbrook Campground arbor during an evening service. While this photograph is from more recent years, I would have been sitting in the back left corner of the arbor as you look at this photograph. Hundreds and hundreds of men, women, boys and girls have come to faith under the ministry of this annual camp meeting and its sawdust floor arbor.

I believe, as many believe, that the experiences of my aunt and me aren't that unusual. So life-changing is the conversion of an unbeliever to a follower of Jesus, every believer should be able to put a finger on the general details of his or her conversion. You may not remember every single detail - I don't - but every believer should be able to say, "It was at this place, about this time of year, about this age, when I knew for a fact that Jesus was real and I made the decision to follow Him."

Cynics scoff at it - this supernatural miracle of faith. I am sad for them. I am not a naive person. I know it's real, and I am prepared to share my story with anyone and everyone who will listen.

Order Brookwood Road, my boyhood memoir written as a novel, at Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle formats. The book is also available at the Humpus Bumpus Bookstore in Cumming, GA and the Rainy Day Pals Bookstore in Lexington, SC.

Johnny Horton & The Sound Of Music

This past weekend I drove seven hours to Northern Virginia and, a few days later, I drove home again. On both legs of the trip I listened to my music library, which contains a lot of 1970s hits from when I was in high school and 1980s hits when I was a single journalist and newlywed. Like you, I can hear a song and two things happen - I go back to a specific time in my life and I remember something about that time.

Music defines us in a lot of ways.

Several readers have commented about enjoying the times when I listed a song's lyrics within the book. These readers have said the lyrics remind them of the time the book was written, but that the lyrics also call up memories from their childhood or young adulthood.

We were not a musical family, but music was important to us. We listened to AM pop radio - as it was - during the 1960s as we made the 20-mile round trip to our hometown of Cumming. I was not yet a teenager when I received that tape recorder for Christmas and also received some pop cassette tapes to play with it. Paul McCartney was one of my early favorites. Then, I was introduced to Grand Funk Railroad and never looked back. But, it's funny: I also had a Carpenters cassette and - forgive me - but I still enjoy listening to the late Karen Carpenter sing.

My Granny would walk through her house singing hymns of faith, and certainly music was a part of our faith life through our local church. I was in choir until I graduated high school.

Because I was born during the great television explosion of the 1960s, we were exposed to a lot of variety shows and sitcoms with big theme songs. In the book, I give a nod to those by listing more than a few of the lyrics from Petticoat Junction. I actually know the lyrics to Bonanza even though the show's musical intro never included them.

When we went camping with other families, we children went to sleep listening to our dads sing around the campfire. (That's all I'll say about that).

Music was everywhere.

That's why it was no strange thing when my daddy used a song to help me remember two state capitals: Johnny Horton's The Battle of New Orleans. (Chapter 21 - The Capitals Test) And, what a great song. I've heard from so many people who have said, "I sing that song all the time" or "I've taught my children that song." It's a great, fun song.

And, driving up I-77 last weekend to Northern Virginia, Horton's song came through my radio during my music shuffle. And, I could just hear my Daddy sing it. I would lie if I told you I didn't cry riding up the road.

All Things Baseball

Clearly, there are two large macro themes within Brookwood Road: Faith and Family.
If I could pinpoint an under-theme or a micro-theme it would be how much we boys loved baseball. Throughout the book there are these baseball seeds that keep coming up.

The book communicates how we created our own baseball games, playing in the yard with imaginary opponents. I loved the Saturday afternoon MLB Game Of The Week on Saturday afternoons because usually we got to see an American League team play. When the Tigers played, I loved to stand in front of the television and mimic 30-game winner Mickey Lolich pitching a baseball.

In the book, there's also mention of how we tried calling Henry Aaron, dialing up every Henry Aaron we could find in the Atlanta telephone directory. We even tried calling a few Tommy Aarons, believing if we stumbled upon Hank's brother then Tommy might hand the telephone over to Hank. (Despite being grown men, we assumed the Aaron brothers lived together just like we boys did). I have an autographed Hank Aaron baseball though I got it as an adult. Here's a picture.

Chapter 12, "The Baseball Card Locker" introduces how crazy we were about collecting baseball cards. We were introduced to baseball cards by our uncle, Buddy Yarbrough, who collected cards as a boy. We found some of his old cards one afternoon visiting our Mema. I'm not sure whatever happened to those cards, but I remember three of them - Gil Hodges, Carl Furillo and Roy Campanella. Furillo made a big impression on me because the photograph in the 1956 card made him

look so cool. Campanella entered the Hall of Fame in 1969; Hodges should be the but isn't; and Furillo should probably be there, too. (Tim has the 1956 Furillo card, pictured left).

When we boys realized our baseball heroes were on collectible cards - we went crazy for those cards. And, the card locker story came out of it. And, it's all true. I did work for my Papa R.C. to raise money to buy a card locker from a friend at school, and Papa R.C. did forget to pay me.

I still have that green baseball card locker, and it's pictured here. I still have the box it came in. It was one of the first things I really worked to have.

Chapter 18, "The First-Baseman's Mitt" is one of my favorite stories. As I stated in the book over and over (my editor said too many times) we only received gifts at Christmas and on our birthday. We might get a little trinket here and there, but largely we had two times each year to cash in (though that's all relative). That's why Christmas was a big deal. That's why our birthdays were big deals. It wasn't just us - our friends lived the same way. I remember Mema bringing me a small gift one year at Tim's birthday. She brought it as kind of a consolation prize. My mama told her she had to stop it. She did.

So, when my daddy surprised me with a first baseman's mitt during one of the years I played organized baseball, it was significant. I remember him giving Tim and me BB Guns one fall, and that's the only other time I ever remember getting gifted like that. My daddy just wasn't a gift-giver, and so for him to buy me something and to do it off the calendar was pretty darn special.

For me, that first-baseman's mitt was always a tangible expression of how much my daddy loved me. That mitt went with me to college (where I used it to play softball), and it's been with me along every stop of my life. It's been long retired from use, but several years ago I took it to a sporting goods store here in Columbia. I had it re-strung with new leather because the old strings were just rotted away. Here are some photographs of it today; I keep it on the side of my desk along with a catcher's mitt I used during my 20 years of coaching boys' baseball.

I still love baseball. I love to watch it live and on television. I love to throw a ball around with my boys though they are now grown. And, on occasion, you might find me standing in front of a television, winding up like old Mickey Lolich of the Detroit Tigers, and pretending to pitch to the Cardinals' Lou Brock. And, when I am really pondering something; deep in thought it's not unusual to find me wearing that old first-baseman's mitt while I do.

Easter Sunrise Service

In the book, I briefly reference that my mama woke me early on Easter morning, and she and I made a 20-mile round trip drive from Brookwood Road to a Sunrise Service on the shore of Lake Lanier at Bald Ridge Marina just outside the city limits of my hometown, Cumming, GA. It was the first - not the only - worship experience of our day.

If you are wondering why my two younger brothers and my daddy didn't make this pre-dawn journey, well, I have no idea.

That was almost 50 years ago.
That very same Sunrise Service continues to this day.
If you are a follower of Jesus, there's more than a little irony in that with all the seismic changes to my hometown of Cumming, GA (in the Atlanta metroplex) and to the Brookwood Road area - one very real constant is the Easter Sunrise Service at Bald Ridge Marina. (You know . . . the more our Earthly surroundings change the stronger the reminder that the love of God through His son Jesus remains constant).

The Sunrise Service has always been an ecumenical service. It is hosted by the Cumming United Methodist Church and open to all. Per the church's website, the Sunrise Service will begin this year at 7 a.m. and church pastor Jeff Ross will officiate it. The chapel at Bald Ridge Marina has been upgraded, and here's a photograph of it today. Here's a link to the chapel website.

******

To make that 7 a.m. service back in the 1960s, my mama would have to wake me about 5:45 a.m. because it took 20-30 minutes to make the drive from Brookwood Road to Bald Ridge Marina.

She would allow me to have one quick look in and through my Easter basket before we left home in the pre-dawn darkness. I loved those malted milk bird eggs, and I dug around in my basket until I had a handful of them for the trip to the Sunrise Service. I did notice the deck of playing cards that I received every single year as if my future was to be a Vegas Black Jeack dealer. Among the malted bird eggs, the marshmallow bunnies, the big hollow chocolate bunny, and M&Ms there was usually a Matchbox car or a puzzle. (I love jigsaw puzzles though I disdain group puzzling.) There was always a baseball or a wooden 28-inch baseball bat in or on my basket. Each year, I either got the ball or the bat, and my brother Tim got the other.

We got home from the Sunrise Service by 8:30 a.m., and Daddy usually was far along in his preparing a pancake breakfast. He loved pancakes with melted butter oozing down between slices in the pancakes. We had to leave home by 9:30 for a return trip to Cumming, where we attended Sunday School and worship at the First Baptist Church. The rest of the day was spent eating and hunting eggs with family and then with friends. It was a full, full day.

And, we wore our brand new "Sunday clothes" all day long because at any moment someone might shout, "Let's have a picture" and we would jump in formation as if it was the first Easter photograph of the morning. For 55 years, I've been a part of a family Easter photograph occurring just before or after Sunday church services. It's a big deal. Even today, no one changes clothes until the family photograph is taken.

Hope you and yours have a blessed Easter 2015, and celebrate the Resurrection of our Savior, Jesus. SDV

Surrounded By Readers

I wrote my first short story when I was in the first grade. It was about a boy playing football. It was not very long; it was not very good. I'm pretty sure it was written phonetically and without grammar, but I'm also pretty sure it was understandable. I don't have a copy, but I remember the gist of it. This boy wanted to play football, the team would not let him, and so he got mad about it.

Not exactly Rudy Ruettiger, who overcame lots of obstacles and persevered to dress with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in 1975. My character, Johnny, walked off kicking a can.

I was never confused with the academically gifted. I was not a prodigy in the first grade. I was able to write that story - on ruled tablet-style paper - because I was surrounded by a family of readers, who loved reading to me and my brothers.

I bet I spent a hundred hours sitting on a sofa next to my granny, while she read books like "The Little Engine That Could" or read the notes inside Christmas cards sent to her by friends and relatives. (She may have started reading The Little Engine That Could after my rather dark tale of the sulking football player.) In my book, Brookwood Road, I write about Granny helping me pound out a letter to my mother, who was in the Forsyth County Hospital giving birth to my brother, Russ. That was June 1964. I was a few weeks short of being five years old. Granny was investing in me, and looking for every opportunity to do so.

My parents invested, too. They bought us a subscription to Dr. Seuss books, and a book arrived each month by mail. The first one in that series was Hop On Pop. My favorite was Look Out For Pirates! Early on, before we could read really well, Mama and Daddy tag-teamed every night, reading books to us. As we got a little older, we started receiving a subscription to Scholastic's Weekly Reader. Because book stores were not readily available to us, Scholastic made paperback books available for mail order through elementary schools. My parents bought 3-4 books every time and we read them.

(Here's a photograph of Piper's 1961 edition of The Little Engine That Could and a 1964 edition of Iris Vinton's Look Out For Pirates! I have both of these displayed in my office).

My Mema was a school teacher. You can only imagine. She bought us books by the set.

When you add my Papa R.C.'s story-telling over all of this reading, well, it wasn't a big jump for me to become a story-teller and to enjoy seeing those words on paper. As reading helped my vocabulary and sentence structure, my stories began to come easily. They weren't necessarily better quality, but they were legible and made my friends laugh. (I know some of them were laughing at me, but Papa R.C. used to say, 'Better they laugh at something than not laugh at anything.')

Then I discovered the school library under the direction of Mrs. Frances Mize, and later the Forsyth County Public Library. Mrs. Mize had me and my friend Lynn Raines (now McClure) reading 3-4 books every week. Mrs. Jean Potts, at the public library, encouraged me to read and write, read and write, and read and write. I spent hours at the library each summer with Mrs. Potts while my parents worked.

Then it happened. One day in the fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Carolyn Hicks asked to read one of my stories (which I was probably writing during math). She asked me to read it during class. I did. And, she encouraged me to write and read my stories aloud all the way through seventh grade, when I became editor of the school's newspaper, FOCUS. My seventh-grade English teacher, Mrs.Teresa Day caught me drawing / designing / writing a one-page school newspaper. She encouraged me to make copies and sell them for a dime. I did that. Then, she encouraged me to pull together friends and put together a real school newspaper. We made enough profit that year to buy Mrs. Day a $20 wall clock.

The success of the newspaper led me to serve as editor of the school yearbook in eighth grade. Our yearbook sponsor, Mrs. Mary Daniel, pushed me to write and contribute to the local newspaper, The Forsyth County News. I ended up working there throughout high school; graduated and studied journalism at the University of Georgia. (I learned to type in the eighth grade, taking a summer school class at Forsyth County High School. Mrs. Wanda Bruce and Mrs. Gayle Martin (now Haight) taught me to type. I could not wait to type my stories, and I still have some of them.)

Fast-forward . . .

When our son Andrew was born in 1988, the late Bobby Gilbert was the Forsyth County tax commissioner. I ran into Bobby one day at the court house, and he congratulated me on being a new daddy. Then he said, "Never refuse to read a book to your children. Always make time to read to them."

I have never forgotten that. Every time my boys came to me with a book, I stopped whatever I was doing to read to them. And, I told them bedtime stories every night. I know that's what many people did for me. I was surrounded by readers . . . and a lot of encouragers, too.

Chapter 24: A Fish Story

Of all the book's stories, one of the most unblemished (or completely true) is the story of the Sunday afternoon Tim and I (Jack and Frank) were allowed to go fishing by ourselves. My grandfather's old lake had long been ignored by fishermen, and the catfish therein were apparently starving. Of all my childhood tales, when I think of what brotherhood means, I think of me and Tim on an independent mission together . . . enjoying success and celebrating proudly with one another. On many levels, it was a great Sunday afternoon. Somewhere there is a photograph of me and Tim with all the fish we caught. I hope to find it this summer.

*******

The old lake was built in 1955, and opened to the public for fishing on Saturday, June 15, 1957. (Daddy was 18, almost 19; I was born in 1959). The opening was chronicled by Bill Allen a staff writer for The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. Mr. Allen wrote a regular column titled, "Outdoor Georgia." (Above is a photograph of an original copy of the story that I have. Papa R.C. is pictured holding his own catch). On Saturday, June 1, Mr. Allen visited the lake and went fishing with my Papa R.C. and my daddy, Doug. In the newspaper story, Mr. Allen claims their fishing party caught 200 fish in five hours. He also applauds my Papa R.C. this way:

"R.C. Vaughan and his son, Doug, both enthusiastic fishermen, for a long time wanted a pond. This one is about eight acres large, and now it is in such powerfully wonderful health that they must open it to the public to (ensure) its future and continued productivity.

"After two years of watchful management and invaluable aid from state fisheries' biologists, the water now produces pound-plus bass and 1 1/2 pound bream wherever you pitch a book."

Of course, throughout the story, he spelled our last name incorrectly. You spell it Vaughan - not Vaughn. Darn newspaper people.

Papa R.C. opened a pier and a bait shack / concession stand at the lake. I barely remember it. In collaborating with daddy for the book, he said they got tired of the traffic and watching out for the safety of people. But, I do remember - later as a boy - going with Papa R.C. to visit fishing hatcheries in northwest Georgia and Alabama. He took me, Tim and our cousin Jeff on some of those trips, and I'm sure that's how the catfish came to be in the lake during our childhood.

Today, the old lake (pictured top in 1981 during my senior year at the University of Georgia) is the last landmark remaining from our life on the farm. All of the farm's buildings and roads were destroyed in recent years, giving way to a monstrous subdivision as Atlanta's sprawl continues its northward march. Today, the lake is located at the end of Raskarity Lane, which is the formal name given to what we called the unpaved lake road. The road was formally named after my Papa R.C. sold the property. Homes now surround the lake's shores. Here's a screen shot, right, from Google Maps that shows the lake today as Vaughan Lake. That's Google's formal name for it - not ours, necessarily. I am pleased with the extended courtesy, however. I put a star on the map where our home used to be.

In next week's post I will tell you about Stozier's Woods, which lined the lake road and was one of our favorite places to play.

Second Chances: Morning Exercise

Most of my research pointed me to a 100,000 word writing goal for a Memoir.

I wrote 103,000 words.

The editors - sifters - were kind, but would not let it slide. They pulled things back to 95,000.

During rewrites, I was able to ease back toward 100,000 words.

It's a struggle: What to keep and what to take out.

My son William said, "Look, dad, every writer I know understands that you might have to lose some of your babies." Don't wig out. It's a metaphor. Some stories, some tangents and some anecdotes just need to be left on the sifting table. It was painful.

But, I kept everything that I cut in a separate file. So, we'll call these periodic posts - Second Chances. They won't be presented in full chapter form, but as simple little tangents.

Morning Exercise

My Papa R.C. used to laugh and say, "We are genetically lazy people. And, we are really good at what we do." That was his way of saying, "Work smart and don't work hard," which you've probably heard from more reputable sources.

As boys, I can tell you that we weren't lazy. We had a huge yard to mow - one that took three little boys all day to cut working in shifts. We also had household chores to do. As we got older, we were asked to help out around the family meat house.

I don't know what caused my daddy to think that we three boys were becoming slothful, lazy bums. I think he was manipulated by the media (that's our go-to excuse for everything, right?) into believing - in 1968ish - that all young people were becoming drug-crazed hippies. We were in Atlanta one Saturday, at the Fox Theatre, and driving down Peachtree Street, daddy slowed and said, "Look at those damn worthless hippies."

I think he probably decided then and there that we were not going to become hippies. Not under his watch. Mind you - none of us had even reached puberty much less considered running off to California with Jefferson Airplane. I was in third grade before he let me have anything but a buzzed haircut. He buzzed it himself. (More about this in the 2016 sequel to Brookwood Road).

"We are going to start getting up every morning at 6 a.m. and running down the road," he announced one night. "I think it will be good for you to exercise and stay healthy." We thought he was crazy. I actually thought he was trying to run some pre-adolescent weight off me, and disguising his motive by forcing my brothers to run, too.

So, the next morning, no kidding, he rousted us out of bed, marched us out in the cold and dark to Brookwood Road. We began a forced jog up the road toward our grandparents' house and back. Daddy ran with us.

The next morning, he overslept and forgot to get us up.

The morning after that, he said we would just run in the late afternoon. I remember that it rained. We wanted to run in the rain. He said no. Dang.

And, I don't remember ever running more than that one morning.

In fact, honestly, the word exercise never came up again.

"Are we going to run anymore?" I asked him.

"Don't you have recess in school?" he shot back.

- Scott