A few days later during recess I fell down and skinned the palm of my hand. Bits of blood sprouted around the embedded fragments of gravel.
Mrs. Black halted the games and inspected my wound. "Oh. It isn't very bad. Wait one moment, Stephen, and I'll get some Iodine."
At the mention of Iodine I began to tremble. I had no idea what that was, but it sounded like medicine. I considered running home, but stayed rooted to my place on the playground. When she returned with the Iodine I began to cry, and hid my hand.
"Does it hurt so very much," she asked, seemingly perplexed.
I shook my head, but beyond that I couldn't answer for myself. I would not let her have my skinned palm.
She turned to my brother David, "What is the matter?"
"We don't believe in using medicine," David said.
She understood then, and returned the lid to the Iodine. "Just run some water over it, Stephen. It's not a very bad scrape after all."
I stopped crying almost at once, relieved that I had not transgressed. My scrape wasn't even throbbing, I'd just been scared of the Iodine being put on me, sure it must be medicine.
And why was medicine so bad?
It is the after effects of synthesized medicines that is the real danger, and what people do not consider, but they can be worse than what you were treated for to begin with. Fear causes man to trust the corporate doctor and his drugs, but our Faith has no negative side effects!
- The Family That Doesn’t Exist
My grandfather has always had a knack for telling stories and making them real. When I was little, I would bring all my hard theological questions to him and he'd answer with a story from the Bible or his childhood. When my curiosity grew a little larger he helped me find my first Strong’s concordance and King James Bible.
Eventually I took on the mantel of story-telling, too. But always his stories gave fodder and excitement to my own, and even to my life adventures. As I began to travel and understand our family heritage and appreciate everything about what had made our family the way it is I began to beg him to write down these stories he'd shared over the years. Not only did I want to know more of why we didn’t have social security numbers, I wanted his wild tales preserved.
Last year he let me know he had finished two volumes of his life stories—from the time he and his brothers ran across quicksand to peer into some vacated mines to his run-ins with game wardens while fishing to without a permit to support their large family.
What a delight it has been to read over and edit these precious words of my grandfather. Nearly a year later, I have them ready to be sent to an editor.
Our father was seriously concerned with David’s and my spiritual welfare. We’d all watched what had happened to Daniel when he left home. First he got a social security number, then he signed up for the draft. Was this merely the beginning of the same for the rest of us?
“I’m not going to get a social security number.” I tried to convince my father I wasn’t like Daniel.
He looked resigned to our loss though. “It will be too difficult for you on your own in the world. You won’t know how to survive and you’ll give in.”
“I am twenty years old now,” I said. “I am responsible for my actions and my faith is strong…
- The Family That Doesn’t Exist
It reads like a Tom Sawyer-esque fever dream. It might seem impossible—it’s the true memories of an old man who lived his childhood well.
He shares his account of his father, his mother, and their twelve siblings pioneering a faith-filled life in the most extreme manner by refusing to accept the social security numbers when they were first issued. Through eccentricity and a love for adventure, they managed to break ties with evolving modernity. They home schooled before it was cool and made money through honest toil. They would not be subjects of the state even through a 9-5 career.
Perhaps their decision to remain separated from the corporate world and welfare state may seem unnecessarily bizarre, but there is a beauty in the perseverance of simple folks and something to admire in the way they chose to live the American Dream.
Here out on the five mile canal between the three lakes, Nathan and I caught our first alligator. We’d found an old abandoned wooden bridge a few miles from camp. As we crossed it, looking for a place to throw our fishing line, we noticed an alligator sleeping under us. I let my lure down about twenty feet through a hole in the wood, and began to work the hook into the creature’s upper lip. It did not take long and I had this alligator hooked and on his way up toward the hole of the bridge. I suddenly realized that the alligator was too big to go through.
Nathan and I checked the bridge boards. They were rotten and tore away easily. We took off a large plank and made a hole big enough to keep pulling the snoozing alligator through.
I now tugged at the string quickly. The alligator was about three feet long and still asleep. But it might wake up at any moment I realized. I looked at my brother.
“Grab it and take the hook out.”
Nathan stared at the snoring, live monster. He had other ideas. “I won’t be touching that thing for anything. If you want it you take the hook out of its mouth.”
“Funny,” I grumbled. Funny, funny.
No way I was touching it either. The only thing to do was let it back down into the water. Unless we could think of some way to keep it without danger to ourselves…
The alligator decided the situation for us by waking up. It writhed and flopped right off the lure, and fell down, disappearing into the murky waters with a final plop.
What a sound sleep. Nathan and I laughed. “How did it stay asleep all that time?”
- The Family That Doesn’t Exist
I hope to have this available on Amazon for purchase by late March/ early April. I currently need to raise some funds for basic costs: $50 for the cover design and approximately $200 for professional editing fees. If you’d like to help fun the process, you can donate money here:
If you give over fifty dollars, please email me your address and I’ll send you a paperback copy once they print. If you share over seventy-five dollars, I’ll make sure Grampa signs it! If you’d prefer to donate via PayPal or Venmo, email me for more information on how to do so
Any updates on this book?
Is there an update on the book? :D