The Stranger

A few months before I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our town. From the beginning Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him home to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world when I was born a few months later.

As I grew up I never questioned his place in our family. Mom taught me to love the Word of God, and Dad taught me to obey it, but the stranger was our storyteller. He could weave the most fascinating stories, which included adventures, mysteries and comedies and these became our daily conversations. He could hold our whole family spellbound for hours after each evening meal.

He was by this time like an old friend to the whole family, everyone like him very much. He took Dad, me and my brother Bill to our first major league baseball game. He was always encouraging us to see the movies and he even made arrangements to introduce us to several movie stars.

This stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn’t seem to mind, but sometimes Mom heard enough and would quietly get up and retire to her room to pray and read her Bible. The rest of us were completely enthralled with one of his stories of far away places with strange sounding names and people. I wonder now if she had ever prayed that this stranger that has by now so encompassed and captivated our family would leave.

You see, my Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but this stranger never felt an obligation to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our house – not from us, from our friends or adults that visited our home. Our longtime visitor, how ever occasionally used four-letter words that burned my ears and caused my to Dad squirm. To my knowledge this stranger was never corrected or confronted.

My Dad was a teetotaler who didn’t permit alcohol in his home, not even for cooking, but the stranger felt like we needed exposure and needed to be enlightened to the other ways of life. He offered us beer and other alcoholic beverages quite often. He made cigarettes and cigars look tasty and manly and pipes to look distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely at times) about sex and his comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive and generally embarrassing. I know now that my early concepts of the man/woman relationship were influenced by this stranger.

As I look back, I believe it was because of the Grace of God that the stranger did not influence us more than he did. Time after time he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked and never asked to leave. More than thirty years have passed since this stranger moved in with the young family on Morningside Dr. But if I were to walk into my parents den today you would still see this stranger sitting patiently over in a corner, just waiting for someone to listen to him talk and tell his stories of adventure and excitement, and watch him draw his fascinating pictures. You may be familiar with him or at least have heard of him?

His name is a household word and is known by millions, everyone calls him by his first name –

TV

FAR AWAY PLACES WITH STRANGE SOUNDING NAMES.

Author unknown.
Edited by Joe Pottle Sr.