excerpt from 'Memoirs'

  I have died or should have died 3 times in my life. I know that is a hard statement to accept, but I believe it to be true. The three incidents all happened in an approximate 2 year time frame from the age of 8 to 10. The first time was when I was in 3rd Grade at the LaSalle Elementary School. It was recess, there were some old concrete barrels on the playground. They laid on their sides and stood about 4 ft tall. There was probably 6 of them in a row and they were separated by about a foot, you had to jump to go from one to the other. Thinking back I believe they must have been old storm drains or sewer piping but to us kids they were just fun. You could hide inside or you could pull yourself up on top and run and jump from one barrel to the next. In today’s world they would never be allowed on an elementary school playground, totally unsafe and dangerous, but back then people didn’t care as much about those things they let kids experiment and figure out what was safe and what wasn’t. I was jumping from one barrel to the next when I must have slipped, I don’t remember slipping or falling, all I remember was being in a very dark place with a light and a figure standing in the light. I remember feeling that I wanted to go to that figure but then I opened my eyes and I was back on the playground, laying on my back and all the kids were standing around staring at me. Then the bell rang for the end of recess, I got up and we all went back to our classes. I or none of my classmates said a word about it to our teacher and I never told my parents so that was the end of it. The second time happened in my back yard, when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I was swinging on the swing set we had in our yard and it was my habit to get swinging as high as I could (without going upside down) then jumping out of the swing and landing on my feet, usually falling down. This time I jumped from the swing, just as I had done hundreds of times before, but this time all I remember was my legs going higher and my body starting to go upside down, and then nothing. When I came too, our next door neighbor, Mrs. Donna Smith, whose son Jack was my best friend, and the wife of a Nazarene Pastor was holding me in her arms with tears streaming down her face and talking in some strange language. Many years later I would come to understand this as ‘talking in tongues’, which the bible talks about as being a very special prayer language between our souls and God. When my mom came running outside Mrs. Smith stopped talking and she told my mom what happened and then everything returned to normal. Many years later in the winter of 2010, I had the chance to visit with Mrs. Smith, who was by now a widow, and I asked her if she remembered that incident. She got a faraway look in her eyes and quietly said “yes, I remember” and didn’t say another word. I could tell that she didn’t want to talk about it so I never brought it up again. The third time was a little bit after the swing incident. My friend Jack (Mrs. Smith’s son) and I were on the same little league team, the Braves. We used to have practice at Bertrand Elementary School which was about 2 or 3 miles from my house. Jack and I used to ride our bikes to practice and then stop at the A&W Root Beer Stand on our way home (it was on the way, lol). We were riding to practice and had to cross a busy intersection (3^rd St). We stopped and I remember seeing the car, but for some strange reason I mindlessly started riding across 3^rd street. I remember Jack screaming “NOOOO!”. I looked at the car and it was almost on top of me, I had no time to react or do anything. Then it was like everything was moving in slow motion, I remember the front of my bike being picked up and my bike being turned sideways, just as the car went whizzing by, inches away. I remember Jack staring at me, similar to the way the kids on the playground had stared, and then we continued on to practice like nothing happened. I don't think kids ask many questions about things like that, they just accept and believe.

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