THE SINISTER KID

A TALE OF RECKLESS ABANDON AND RIDICULOUS GRACE

D. Gene Strother

PREFACE

In 2002, I wrote my first book. The Preachers Kid is a semi-autobiographical slice of American pie. It is a story of love, loss, and love lost and found. Its my own special tribute to my favorite childhood storiesMark Twains Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

I was itching back then to tell a story. My story. But I was afraid. So, I told a tale that was almost true, or partly true. I comingled the fantastic and facts the way tellers of tales do. I enjoyed writing it and I enjoyed hearing that others enjoyed reading it. That was a story from my head, my imagination. This is the story from my heart. This is the story I wanted to tell you then, but I was afraid. This is my story. This is my song.

Honestly, I am still a little uneasy. Aw, Heck. (Im not gonna cuss in this one, Momma. Just Baptist cuss.) I am scared to death. In many ways, I have made such a mess of my life that I would as soon not look into that mirror. I am afraid I am not who you think I am, and when you find out who I really am, you wont like me much. Or, I am afraid I am exactly who yo u think I am and this will just confirm your dislike. But I am not as afraid of that as I was in 2002. I dont need to be liked the way I used to. I am comfortable with the fact that no one has universal appeal and a few of us hardly appeal at all. Shoot, I dont like me either. But I do like my life. In fact, I love it. That is something I could not always say.

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So, why the title? Why The Sinister Kid? Is it really all that bad? Good question. Yes and no. Some of the bad is really bad and some of the good is as good as it gets. A friend of mine introduced me to a two-man rock band whose music I enjoy, The Black Keys. They have a song by this title and it somehow resonated with me. It is not that I identify with all the lyrics or the entire story of the song. But I do feel its vibe and I do see myself in its chorus, at least:

A sinister kid, is a kid who Runs to meet his maker A drop dead sprint from the day he's born Straight into his makers arms And that's me, that's me The boy with the broken halo That's me, that's me The devil won't let me be Yeah. Thats me.

Besides, I like the symmetry and the irony of this title against that of the book that almost told a part of my story. I am The Preachers Kid. I am The Sinister Kid. I am the boy with the broken halo. This is my story. This is my song. And I am still praising my Savior all the day long.

Without further ado, explanation, or apology, I give youme.

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[CHAPTER 1] AHEAD OF THE CURVE

As far back as I can remember, which is not as far in some cases as I would like, I have been in a hurry. Patience is a virtue I was born without. (Not that I have known many patient newborns.)

I knew very early I was meant to be a preacher. I come from a family of preachers. Most of my youth was spent with either my mothers father or my own father serving as pastor of the church we attended. I have an uncle (my mothers only brother) who is older than me by three years and change. He was a kid preacher. One of moms sisters married a preacher. There is no denying the influence these influences had on my desire to preach. How early is unclear. I usually tell people I have been preaching since I was 12. Mom says I was four years old when I first began to arrange my sisters dolls into a little congregation and preach to them. We attended Jessie Simons church at the time. Brother Simon was a fire and brimstone preacher. He was like a one-man, one-act play. Big, strong, athletic, and blessed with a voice that sounded something like a slightly out-of-tune piano key down on the bass end of the keyboard, Simon was mesmerizing. But there was substance in his sermon. He wasnt all slobber and snot -slinging. He was a man of the Book. He knew it well. He lived it passionately. And he preached it without apology. On any given Sunday afternoon, mom says, I could be found re-preaching Brother Simons morning sermon. She still tells with amazement how her little preacher boy would remember and re-preach the sermon with pinpoint accuracy, using the same gestures and tone of delivery. I wish I could remember that. I dont.

What I do recall is that I settled on the story that I was 12 when I surrendered to preach to thwart some of the raised eyebrows and rolling eyes of those who might think I wasnt called at all; I was just mimicking the people I most admired and wanted to be like. (I have doubted many things in my lifeand had plenty of questions for God. I have never doubted my calling or my gift. (I have counted it more a burden than a blessing at times, but I have never doubted the call.) The Sinister Kid by D. Gene Strother Page 3

Something else I recall. I must have been about six, maybe seven. Dad was pastor of a little Baptist church in Sansom Park, a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas. I remember having gone to the altar to pray with dad about how I felt God wanted me to be a preacher. Such a pronouncement puts a dad/pastor in a quandary. I remember that he told me if God really wanted me to be a preacher, there was plenty of time for Him to make that clear to me. Nevertheless, Dad soon announced to the 30 or so members that I would be bringing a sermon the next Sunday evening. It was not Dads intention to give me the whole evening service, of course. He would bring the real sermon. I dont remember what my text was, nor what I might have had to say about it. I do remember I had to stand on a chair to see over the pulpit. I also recall that my text included the word abomination, which I took several stabs at reading before Dad finally said it for me. What a six or seven year old knows about an abomination remains a mystery to me.

I dont tell you this so you can make judgments about the merits of parents accommodating the career aspirations of a first grader. Whether you think it is sweet, weird, or downright scary is beside the point. I dont judge you for thinking that tow-headed kindergartner of yours is the next Alex Rodriguez, nor for your pushing him to pursue his dream of baseball (or soccer, or gymnastics, or football) glory. So, I will kindly thank you to cut my good parents some slack. You think your kid has it. So did they. And who were they to stand between God and whichever kid He decided to anoint? I tell you this to illustrate the fact that I hit the ground running. Always in a hurry. Denouncing abominations from a pulpit too tall to see over was just the first indication of my impatience to be somebody and get somewhere.

You have heard of the Bell curve? FreeDictionary.com defines it as A symmetrical bell-shaped curve that represents

the distribution of values, frequencies, or probabilities of a set of data.1

To be ahead of the curve means you are out in front of the accepted norm. When I was in first grade, I wasnt up to much. Just trying to get ahead of the curve, is all.

The Free Dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bell+curve

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[CHAPTER 2] BEFORE THE BEGINNING, PART ONE: LITTLE GRANDDAD

My wife is a cook. A good cook. Most of our marriage, meals have magically appeared, hot, fresh, aromatic, delicious, ready to consume. On the rare occasion, however, I have found myself in the kitchen, working as her sous chef (a fancy term for the number one lackey in the kitchen, which I learned by watching Food Network with said wife). When filling this role, I have been obliged to observe that complicated dishes do not just miraculously emerge. They take preparation, planning, timing, and care. So many ingredients have to come together in just the right way, just the right mix, just the right temperature to make a meal fit for a kingor a Gene. Just so, imagine the genetic wonder that is an individual. Before I was me, the Chef was in the kitchen, adding a pinch of this and a pound of that, mixing this bloodline and that one, this physical trait and that personality quirk. For generations! So and so married so and so and they begat so and so. Any genealogical dig inevitably becomes a head-swimmer, like reading through I Chronicles in the Bible. Speaking of which, let me stop and preach a minute. If you think those biblical genealogies have no meaning or are just tedious recordkeeping, best skipped over, think again. Besides giving us the genealogy of the King of kings, these so-and-so begats remind us just how unique every individual is. Your background, your lineage, your exact genetic makeup is yours and yours alone. You are not some colossal, cosmic accident. You are a masterpiece of the one, eternally divine Chef.

Because before the beginning is how the beginning began, I will take you to the Abilene, Texas hospital where I was forced into the world by a forceps-wielding sadist of an obstetritian and let you ooh and ahh over little David Eugene and his temporarily warped head (thanks, Doc), born September 28, 1961. But then we have to move on, push a little further back in time, where we find William Daniel Strother, a man who almost didnt marry at all.

Dan Strother was an oil field worker and a cotton-picker with a touch of wanderlust and a streak of independence.

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Dan was born in 1899. His only son, my Dad, William David, used to tease him that he was older than time itself, because he was always a year older than whatever year it was. Dan was born to John William (aka John W) Strother and Mary Oler Craig Derryberry Strother, if that aint a doozy. Dan was the second of nine siblings, with three sisters and five brothers. His sisters were saddled with names like Minnie Myrtle, Bessie, and Susan Tennessee. The boys were George, Otto, Thomas Jefferson, Archie Dale, and Glyn. I remember all of them but George, of course, who died at the age of five, leaving Dan the oldest of the surviving siblings. Otto never married. I remember him as the reclusive uncle from Cisco who came to visit a time or two when we lived in Mineral Wells. I remember his vintage station wagon that was not in vintage condition, his suitcase that was at least as old as he, and the ashes that hung precariously from the cigarette dangling from his weathered lips. I remember the cigarette-burnt holes in his navy blue Polyester pants. I remember the way his car smelled like a musty old $10-per-night motel room. I also remember the kind twinkle in his eye and the good nature that seemed the antithesis of his brother, Dan. Otto never seemed to have much going on, but he didnt seem to mind. Susan Tennessee was affectionately known as Aunt Tenny. She was married to Shirley Stephenson. As a kid, their names confused me. Was it Uncle Shirley and Aunt Tenny or Uncle Tenny and Aunt Shirley? Neither seemed right. But they were both fun and we spent at least one Thanksgiving at their house. I will never forget waking up Thanksgiving morning to the smell of cigarettes and bacon. Tommy Dale, Shirley and Tennys son and Dads favorite cousin, was in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette and stirring the gravy. He had one of those chest-rattling laughs that might make you worry if you were old enough to worry about such things. He couldnt have been out of his 30s at the time. I thought Susan Tennessee had the coolest name and I thought Tommy Dale was about the funniest fellow I knew. It wasnt the most religious Thanksgiving I ever spent, but it was funand the Cowboys won. Glynn, Dans baby brother, lived in the coolest place of them all, at least for awhile. When I was about 14, we went to visit him in San Diego, California. He had Palm trees in his front yard. He lived just miles from the beach. He worked for a newspaper. I figured Glynn had about the perfect life. He was not married at the time, but I believe he did get around to marriage some time thereafter. That business of marrying late seemed to be a thing with those boys. I remember Bessie, Minnie Myrtle, Archie, and Jeff, but only in nondescript, faded snapshot memories. The Sinister Kid by D. Gene Strother Page 6

You have to go all the way back to my grandfathers grandfather to find the last Strother in my lineage to be born outside of Texas. Richard James was born in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana in 1840. But he had the good sense to get to Texas and that is where the next five generations of this particular Strother strand stayed. (Well, mostly. But I will get to that.) I have Texas in my blood. My ideas and ideals have been shaped by this rugged, beautiful place and its salt-of-the-earth people. My people had dirt under their fingernails and callouses on their fingers from tilling, hoeing, picking, and planting. They had holes in their jeans and oil stains on their shirts from rough-necking, wrestling the black gold that fueled the American industrial revolution from the sun-baked Texas clay. Some of the fields they farmed were their own, but most were not. None of the oil was theirs. They toiled and sweated and laughed and loved and lived the best they knew how. Each generation passed the Strother name, unsullied, to the next. Then, I got hold of it.

Back to Dan. He was my granddad. My siblings and I named him Little Granddad, because moms dad, who also figures prominently into my tale, was Big Granddad. By the time I came along, Little Granddad was old and wrinkled. He was balding, too, but you would only know that if you happened to catch him without his signature fedora. He wore that fedora and walked with a cane. He was seldom seen without either. He also wore a white dress shirt, with the top button fastened, even though there was no tie attached. He had a permanent scowl. His lips curled slightly downward and a valley ambled out from each corner of his mouth. He chewed Red Man tobacco and sometimes it ran in tiny streams in those valleys in his cheeks. Picture an aged Bear Bryant, only more slight of build and grizzled, and you have Little Granddad. LG (as we will call him, for short) was ornery. He never smiled because even his smile was a frown. That is not to say he was never happy. He was, I think. He was never more happy than when he accompanied my dad to the shop. For several years, dad owned a car repair shop in Mineral Wells, where I mostly grew up. D & F Battery and Electric was the family business. Little Granddad was the unofficial greeter and time-killer. While Dad and his crew fixed the customers car, Little Granddad regaled him with interesting topics like the weather and the ridiculous price of gasoline, which must have been pushing 50 cents. Never mind that LG, by that time, neither drove nor had a car of his own. The Sinister Kid by D. Gene Strother Page 7

LG liked biscuits and gravy, a fried egg, bacon and black coffee for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner, too, if you please. He split his time between our house and Shannons. Shannon is Dads younger sister. She and her husband Gerald are the kind of people that good people call good people. LG lived with us more than with them. And he always bragged about their kids. I got the impression that he truly loved my cousins, Tommy, Steve, and Terry, and only tolerated my siblings and me. He never once told me he loved me, or even that liked me. He did, however, tell me that baseball was a mans sport, not like football, where you have a bunch of guys in pads ganging up on one man to tackle him. I disagreed vehemently with him on the subject, but we did spend a few evenings listening to the magical way baseball comes alive on the radio when people like Vin Scully, Ernie Harwell, Harry Carey, and local legends Mark Holtz and Eric Nadel call the Great Game. It was not until we buried him in the west Texas town of Cisco, which is where Mr. Hilton built his first hotel, and which was always LGs favorite place to hang his hat, that I learned in conversation with my cousin Tommy that when granddad was living with them, all he could do was brag about me. It was a great day.

When people on Facebook look at one of my photos and tell me it wouldnt kill me to smile it, I always answer, I was! Just like Little Granddad. When folks complain that I tend to be a little too negative and always see the dark side of a situation, I tell them, Its a Strother thing. You wouldnt understand. You werent there. I think of Little Granddad, who was always dressed for church, but hardly ever darkened its doors. I think of his permanent scowl. I think of the little moments when he let me see his softer side. And I think about that black fedora that is, at this very moment, in its original box in the top of my closet. It was not his every-day hat. It was the hat he kept for special occasions, like a wedding or funeral or Easter. He called it his Go-to-thunder hat. Any man can wear a hat like this, he told me, can tell the whole worl d to go to thunder. I cant deny that I have wanted, more than once in my life, to tell the whole world just that.

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[CHAPTER 3] BEFORE THE BEGINNING, PART TWO: BIG GRANDDAD

Speaking of granddads and churches Little Granddad is not one I would associate with a church at all. But I can hardly think of church without thinking of Big Granddad, named William Austin Henager by his parents, and known to the world as Bill. Big Granddad was a west Texas cotton farmer who found Jesus and a brand new passion. He was 40 years old when he left his 1,000 acre farm for a pulpit. What Big Granddad would become was an independent, premillennial, fundamental Baptist pastor. The Sign in front of the church he served the longest said as much. It was the First Bible Baptist Church of Mineral Wells, Texas. It was not the first Baptist church in the town, but Big Granddad was pretty certain it was the first BIBLE Baptist church. His brand of Christianity was dipped in grace and smothered in law. He knew there was hardly any worse sin in the world than pants on a woman or long hair on a man. He preached separation. Now, he was a once-saved, always-saved and saved-by-grace preacher. He just figured the Christian ought to be different. And by different, he meant the women ought to wear dresses or skirts of modest length and the men ought to keep their hair off of their ears. By different, he meant that people ought to be able to pick you out of the crowd as a Christian without doing any more than looking at the way you were dressed and such. Granddads brand of Christianity was as hard as kerosene. There was little ambiguity involved. You were right or you were wrong and he knew which it was and was perfectly willing to point it out. That is not to say he was a mean man. He had some sharp edges, sure. But he was as likely to be found under a church members car, changing out a bad starter, as in his study, preparing a sermon. He might be fixing a young, struggling familys frozen pipe in the dead of winter or mowing an elderly widows lawn in the heat of summer. If BG was awake, he was working, and he woke at 4am most days. Big Granddad had a sixth grade education when he entered the ministry. He ultimately earned a college degree and had a doctorate conferred upon him. But if you didnt know he was Dr. Henager, you wouldnt know it. Unlike the title -mad hirelings adorning so many pulpits these days, Bill Henager cared nothing for titles or The Sinister Kid by D. Gene Strother Page 9

accolades, and that is the gospel. He never sought out anyones praise. He never pined for personal glory. He just wanted people to love Jesus the way he loved Jesus. If they did love Jesus the way he did, then the women wouldnt dress like harlots and the men wouldnt look like women, with their long hair. I never bought into BGs brand of Christianity. The things he emphasized and marked as sins just didnt resonate with me. They still dont. What did impress me was his passion for souls. His hard edges were hard to find when his heart was breaking and he was fighting off tears in the pulpit. His people knew he loved them, because he demonstrated as much in tangible ways. People were not a means to an end with him. They were vulnerable sheep in need of a shepherd. They were souls bound for eternity in need of a heavenly compass. I wanted to be that kind of pastor, the kind you knew loved you and would fight for you. Another thing that impressed me was that BG could seemingly do anything. He was as good with a garden hoe as he was with a cow. He could butcher that cow and carve the steaks out of it and cook them up, too. If it was broke, he could fix it. He might not be able to find any of the tools he used afterward, since he had some absent-mindedness to him, but he could fix it, brother. Maybe nothing had such a lasting impact on me as the way BG did the Lords Supper (Communion, for you non-Baptist Protestants). He baked his own unleavened bread. It was not in perfect little cubes or round wafers. It came out more like a Pizza Hut thin and crispy pizza crust. It snapped when you broke it. I can still hear him solemnly, reverently reading Matthew 26:26, And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. I can still see him take a piece of that bread and snap it in two as he says, His body, broken for you. Shortly after I assumed the pastorate of the Victory Baptist Church in Paris, Texas in 1992, we planned a communion service. I drove from Paris to Mount Pleasant, where my aging grandfather was leading the last church he would serve as pastor. Together BG and I baked unleavened bread. It was the most precious time I ever spent in his company. When I broke that bread the next Lords Day, a wide -eyed kid on the front pew jumped. I saw him and remembered me All those years ago, on a hardwood pew in a whitewashed, steeple-laden church, jumping inside when Big Granddad broke bread. But I am getting ahead of myself. Lets go back to before the beginning. Back to the 1930s and the Great Depression. Back to the shotgun house where Bill Henager lived with his parents and 14 brothers The Sinister Kid by D. Gene Strother Page 10

and sisters. Back to when you hunted squirrel, rabbit and possum for the pelts and the meat. Back to when a bad day hunting or fishing meant a long, hungry night at home. Back to when the sky was reddened with Dust Bowl dirt. Back to when a dollar was hard to come by, and those who came by it let go of it reluctantly. Back to where young Bill was becoming the man he would be when he would be my Big Granddad.

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[CHAPTER 4] BEFORE THE BEGINNING, PART THREE: GRANKY

My grandfathers might have been hard-knuckled men who loved you pragmatically and felt it unnecessary to tell you as much, but my grandmothers were, by all accounts, angelic beings. And by all accounts, I do mean all accounts. Little Granddad didnt marry, as I said, until he was 40. But when he did, he married an extraordinarily kind and loving woman named Maude Mae. She doted on her kids and loved her husband without reservation. As many days as not, when my Dad was a boy, he would come home from school to the sweet smell of a freshly baked pie. That probably was not the best thing for him, but it was made of more than dough and apples or chocolate. It was made of love. There is little doubt that the appetite for sweets my Dad developed as a boy helped send him to an early grave, due to adult-onset Diabetes, crystallized arteries, and unwillingness to make the necessary adjustments to his diet. My sweet grandmother may have literally killed him with love. But that isnt how she meant it. I was less than two years old when Grandma Strother died, herself the victim of Diabetes. I wish she had lived longer. Mom tells me she would not stand for my parents disciplining me. They had to go somewhere else to do it, because it could not be done in her presence. I could have used her advocacy a few times in the ensuing years, God rest her sweet soul.

Maude Maes early departure left me with one grandmother. Nova Dean Henager was only 14 when she married Big Granddad. He was 20. Today, that would be a jailable offense. He would be a registered sex offender and would have likely never become a preacher or pastor and who knows how the family dominoes would have fallen? But since those days were different and they were allowed to be in love, they embarked on a marvelous journey together that lasted more than 65 years. There is little wonder why Bill fell for Nova Dean. She was as brilliant as her name. Her beauty was timeless. So much so that when we buried her in 2007 at the age of 81, she

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was still a beautiful woman and could have easily passed for one 25 years younger. She was enough to remind you of the biblical Sarah, Abrahams wife. Nova Dean had two cool names. Her parents were obviously way ahead of their time, naming her after an astrological phenomenon that wasnt even fully understood at the time. They knew it had to do with a sudden starburst and this little baby girl must have seemed like that to them. They could not have been more right if they had been prophets. Oh, how she did shine! She was only 35 in 1961 when she became a grandmother. Since she married at 14 and her oldest daughter, Freda Jo Henager, my mother, married at 17, it was bound to happen. She insisted she was, in fact, too young to be anyones grandmother and did not wish to be called grandma. That motivated my dad to teach his firstborn to say grandma as quickly as possible. I was just a toddler. Words like grandma didnt come easy to me. But for Dads sake, I gave it the old college try. When I did, I gave her a name that would stick with her for the rest of her life. Her grandkids, her kids, her friends and family, the members of the churches where she served alongside her preacher husbandeveryone would call her by the name I gave her. Granky. Granky told her grandkids monkey stories. They made no sense at all, but the way she told them had kids of all ages in stitches. She baked rolls, the equal of which the world has never known. She made homemade cinnamon rolls that exploded with goodness. Whenever you cut into one, cinnamon, butter and sugar would run out onto the plate, ready to be sopped and savored. She snapped peas and canned tomatoes. She picked up ragamuffin kids and took them to Sunday School, and then taught them all about how Jesus loved them. She also ran a granny route, picking up widowed women and taking them to church. Even in her seventh decade of life, her favorite thing in the whole world was to spend a week at summer youth camp with her church kids. I knew plenty of people who took exception to Big Granddad and his hardline religious fervor, but I never knew of a single person who knew Granky and did not adore her. She loved her husband and followed his lead, wherever it led. She was loyal. She was energetic. She was as pure as the driven snow. Sure, I may have the blood of ornery granddads coursing through my veins, but somewhere in there is a drop or two of the blood of my sweet grandmothers.

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One could do worse than to have the indomitable, always-bright spirit of Granky and the kind, nurturing spirit of Maude Mae in them.

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