This is a photo of a post card, which shows the Orton Court and Restaurant in Leland, North Carolina. My dad managed this business in the early 1950s; therefore, this was one of my many childhood homes. I had already lived in at least three houses in Morehead City, North Carolina, parts of Los Angeles, California (Hollywood Hills, Glendale, and Chevy Chase communities) and Rutherglen, Scotland, and we would soon move to Miami, Florida, where daddy would manage a different motel, and then back to California again.
I was in the first grade, and I lived like a little king. When I would get home from school I would walk into the restaurant and order whatever I wanted and the waitresses, often high school girls, would bring it to my table. I also had my first job, delivering ice water and newspapers to the motel guests. (They would tip me.) I was one of those working kings.
There was a Lawn Jockey statue in the middle of the complex. I would go out there, put an arm around his shoulder and talk to him, as if he was a real person. I would tell folks he was my brother. Okay, so I don't seem to have been very bright, but neither had I been taught to be a racist. I know the thought of this statue will trigger the Liberal Social Justice Warriors, but y'all need to chill out. Not everyone in the South was brought up with bigotry, and there was racial bigotry everywhere, contrary to Yankee ignorance and propaganda.
We lived in a house on a hill behind the motel. It was there that I imagined a make-believe friend, who was as small as my thumb and rode a make-believe horse. When our family moved back to California he went with us, riding his tiny horse outside the car, through the Texas plains and Mojave Desert.
I understood that the statue was not my actual brother, and I knew there was no pocket-sized cowboy riding a horse, and I knew that Santa was only real in the realm of make believe, but I did know Jesus personally, from the time I was three years old and asked Him into my heart. In fact, it was at the age of three that God called me to be a preacher. Jesus and my call were never imaginary. And remember, my childhood did not include an evangelical Biblical Christian influence.
Oh, by the way, the powder blue Plymouth in the photo belonged to my uncle. He probably stopped by while stationed at Fort Benning, in Georgia. He was in the U.S. Army Tank Corp during the Korean War. I mention the car because many years later, after I turned sixteen, he traded me that car for my bicycle. He was married at the time and had a couple of little children. I drove that car to and from WCHS, sometimes carrying others with me (including Little Raymond, Cornwallis, Ida Francis and maybe my cousin Tana) in 1965.
Well, enough of memory lane for awhile.
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