Friday, June 23, 2017

Memories of Daddy, part 3: Hearing Daddy preach and Goodnight, Johnny
by Bill Jones
Trustee, T. B. Maston Foundation

Daddy was often away from our church on Sunday, "supplying" in another pulpit. I occasionally went with him, especially when I was very young and we were in Dallas. My cousin, Devin Dodson, also went with us sometimes. Devin loved hearing Daddy preach. We usually sat on the front pew. My only specific memory of one of Daddy's sermons is one he preached on Jesus' teaching that He is the Good Shepherd who knows His sheep, and the sheep know His voice and follow Him.

I also often went with Daddy when he spoke to church groups about witnessing to their Jewish friends. Much of this involved educating Baptists on the Jewish people, their faith and culture, and knocking down any stereotypes about them. I guess I was a weird kid, but I loved going with Daddy when he did this and listening to him speak. Sometimes, if he was using slides to illustrate his presentation, I would work the slide projector for him.


Read part 4: OBU, My Faith Crisis, and a Loving Dad

Read part 5: To Hug or Not to Hug; Late-Night Talks; 'the Night of the Three Jasons'; and a Devoted Marriage

Daddy once gave me a project to catalogue his books. There were, of course, no word processors back in that day, no electronic databases, etc. I used the Remington typewriter - which he gave me, by the way, at my request, several years before he died - that was on his desk in his study. I typed the information - title, author, copyright date, publisher, etc. - on index cards. Then I placed a little piece of paper sticking out at the top of the book, to indicate that the book had been catalogued.

That experience came in handy 15 or 20 years later, when my own library grew into the several hundreds (over 1,000 today) and required cataloguing. (Of course, today, that catalogue resides in an Excel file.)

One special memory of my growing-up years that I must insert here - whenever it wasn't a school night, such as summer, etc., I stayed up and watched Johnny Carson's Tonight Show with Daddy. I would usually be sitting on the couch or in a chair, but Daddy's favorite place to watch Johnny was the living room floor, where he usually drifted off to sleep about halfway through. I can't begin to count the number of times Johnny went off at midnight, and I got up & walked over, jostled Daddy, and said, "Daddy, Johnny's over. Time to go to bed." Little things like that are special memories.

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