Blog 2958 – 12.06.2023
Meet Samantha 1904 – Chapter 3
In today’s installment of Meet Samantha 1904, Samantha meets her new friend Nellie, a nine year old servant girl who has come to work next door. Though their lives are vastly different they make a connection.
I recall meeting a a boy when I was a teen at a church youth outting. I was only there at the invitation of a girl I was sweet on at the time, my first great heartbreak l, Rebekah Sue Brogdon. For a few brief months in the late spring and early summer of 1965 we held hands and kissed. Becky and I had homeroom together, English grammar and literature class in the ninth grade, the last year of what was called Junior High School back then. She lived less than two block from where I did so I walked her home from school and spent the summer mornings and afternoons at her house till mid August when she turned fifteen and was able to get a work permit and start her first summer job. My birthday was not until November so I could not work afterschool till almost Christmas.
Becky attended a different church and her youth group was having a picnic at Lake Chicamauga, a reservoir created by the TVA’s (Tennessee Valley Authority) Chicamauga dam on the Tennessee River near Chattanooga. The group played softball and had a picnic lunch at a park next to the dam on the lake side. There I met Becky’s church friends. One boy, Gilbert, a couple of years older than us also had a crush on Becky. Everybody loved Becky. She collected boys hearts the way some girls pick flowers. I remember this young man worked out and developed his upper body so much that he could hardly swing a softball ball. But when he connected he sent the ball into the lake abruptly ending the softball game.
Becky had already started work at this time and had met a boy who would be a senior soon at City High where we both had planned to attend. Raymond would be the great love of her life as I had hoped to be. Becky had already fallen for Raymond Young at the time of the picnic so the muscle bound batter and I were both just hanging around her hoping for another at bat so to speak. That summer afternoon fifty-eight years ago I meet another of Becky’s friends though that opened my eyes. I spent the better part of the afternoon in conversation with a kindred spirit who I never saw or spoke with again, but knew in just a few moments was one of the most impressive and important persons I would ever meet. He would later marry Carol, Becky’s next door neighbor and best friend.
What was it about the young man that caused me to almost immediately recognize him as someone I had always known? He was a mirror reflecting back a most clear image of me. I have taken the better part of three quarters of a century, this go round, getting to know this fascinating individual that isn’t that really but a part of the One, the Whole.
A song Becky’s youth group sang or would shortly after that time had lyrics that have haunted me through my Christian years and after: “We are One in the Spirit, we are One in the Lord, and we pray that our unity will one day be restored…” That reunion has already begun for me since I realized that every man, woman, and child is but a reflection of the great I Am.
The one you have been looking to find all your life is you. And you look marvelous!
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White
https://drive.google.com/file/d/125lbELBbA_l0TSSL1yp9fPDS-2BvkEV3/view?usp=drivesdk
Meet Samantha 1904 – Chapter 3
Charlene – I’ve Never Been To Me • TopPop
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