Faith

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In an effort to let readers get to know me a little better; over the next 17 days I am going to share my life with you up to January 2011, one chapter at a time. Here's the first Chapter.

The Early Years

As a youth my family moved around a lot. My father was a country music musician for many years and we moved quite often as he tried to make a name for himself in the music industry. I remember in the first grade alone I went to four different schools. I started at Forest Hill High School when it was K-12. The Woodville Heights Elementary School in Jackson, Mississippi was just built, so they transferred elementary students in our district there. Then we moved to Byram, a suburb of Jackson, so I went to school there for a while. Finally, we moved to Nashville, Tennessee, the home of country music, and I finished out the year there.

Over the next five years we moved several times in the Nashville area, living also in Smyrna and Hendersonville. At age ten, while living in Nashville, is the first time I recall ever going to Church. Park Avenue Baptist Church had a bus ministry who came by the apartments where we lived and picked up my two sisters and me. I can’t recall much because shortly after that we moved to Smyrna. There we lived on an old Air Force base. Nearby was Smyrna Church of Christ who also had a bus ministry. During the week of August 6th through 10th, 1973 they came by and took my sisters and I to a week-long vacation bible school. It was during this week that God first began dealing with me. I can’t recall all the details but wrote back home to my grandmother, who was living in Jackson, about the amazing week we had. In the letter I told her that when I grew up I was going to be a preacher. Little did I know!

Shortly afterwards my dad decided to move us back home to Jackson. My father found out that trying to make a living in the music industry with a wife and four children was just too tough. We moved back home the summer after my 5th grade year. When we got home, church took a back seat to sports and hanging out with my cousins. What had happened in Tennessee soon became a faded memory as the only time I ever went to church the next several years were when I would spend my weekends with one of my cousins. I had two cousins who I did almost everything with. Gary was about six months older than me and the one I mostly looked up to. His father was my mother’s brother and was quite the business man. He ran several paper routes on the side as he and his wife began building a very successful business called Sarrett Builders and Reality. He became a home builder and his wife sold the homes he built. This always provided for them the nicer things in life and I loved hanging out at their house because there were always things to do. They built their first home on ten acres of land just outside the Jackson City Limits. The land also had a pond where Gary and I would fish and woods where I learned to hunt. They had multiple motorcycles and we would spend hours upon hours riding around those 10 acres. They also had a ski boat which we would take to Robinhood Lake on some weekends. We had a grandfather who lived there and Gary’s parents also had a cabin on the property next door. Needless to say we had some amazing weekends and summers.

I can honestly say I owe a lot of my work ethic to Gary’s father, Jerry Sarrett. From around age 12 he allowed me to work with them doing paper routes. We would have to get up extremely early and go to the Clarion Ledger in downtown Jackson. Then load bundles of papers in his truck and ride to local businesses and deliver papers for them to sell. He always paid me very fair and allowed me to have spending money. Then once he started building homes he always let Gary and me work for him. We started off just doing labor work but in time actually learned to build houses. My uncle sadly passed away a couple of years ago from cancer. When he got sick Gary then took over the business which he still runs today.

My other cousin’s name was Craig and he was six months younger than me. Craig’s father, Jackie Sarrett was also my mother’s brother and he was a Fire Chief for the city of Jackson. Craig only lived a couple of blocks from me so I actually went to his house quite often. Unlike Gary, who lived many miles away I could actually walk to Craig’s house. So when I wasn’t at Gary’s I was usually at Craig’s. Craig had a very nice family and I enjoyed going to his house when I was younger. They did things like sit down together as a family at dinnertime. Neither mine nor Gary’s family did much of that so that was a nice change.

Once I hit my teen years I started to get a wild streak and I remember one night I got in trouble when I spent the night at Craig’s house. Craig had invited me and a couple neighbor boys to camp out in his tree house in his back yard. His parents strictly told us not to leave the yard. Well, being the rebellious teen I as becoming we decided that after everyone went to bed we would sneak out and go roaming through the neighborhoods. I think Craig sensed trouble and decided to go inside and sleep in his room. After everyone was asleep, the neighbor boys and I left the tree house and went walking up and down McDowell Road. As we were walking, some police officers stopped us and asked why we were out on the streets that time of the morning. They asked us where we were staying and we told them. They then took us to Craig’s house and woke his parents up and told them they found us walking around. I remember the look on his parents face as they sent the other boys to their home down the street and sent me to Craig’s room. I felt so ashamed that I had betrayed their trust and after that didn’t spend the night with Craig much.

Once Gary turned 15 and got his driver’s license the three of us started hanging out. This was the first time I remember drinking. There was this place on Highway 18 that would sell alcohol to minors and we would go there and buy quarts of Miller beer. We would then go to the bowling alley and park on the side of the building and down the quarts. This would always give us a good buzz and we would go in the bowling alley and look for girls to fool around with. As time went by the quarts were not enough and we started drinking 8-pack ponies while we rode up and down McDowell Road which was the thing to do back then. Gary always had a hot rod of some type and loved drag racing so he was always looking for a race. He had a 340 Duster that was one of the fastest cars around. Gary had become somewhat of a daredevil as he raced motocross and was quite the trick skier. I was often the passenger in these races and alcohol was usually involved. It is nothing short of a miracle that I ever made it through these years. Some of our friends had also introduced us to marijuana when I was around 14, so getting high and drinking beer became a normal part of our weekends.

I don’t remember the exact moment or the reason why but Craig started distancing himself from us. He probably saw us going too far in the wrong direction and wisely found other things to do. My final year of baseball when I was 17 was the last summer Craig and I spent together for many years. We had a great summer on a championship team. I pitched and played first base and Craig played second base. Craig had started playing for Wingfield High School and gotten pretty good. That summer we went undefeated and had a great time on the field. But off the field I was living on the dark side which kept Craig at a distance.

It was about this time that the three of us also started finding new friends and hung around each other a little less. I know Craig had his friends from Wingfield and Gary was a year older and had some new friends from his class. I too found a new friend who lived at the end of my street named Addison. Addison was a year younger than me and his brother James was a year older than me. I would go down to their house and lift weights, play baseball and football. James and I played football together the year before and he was a really good wide receiver. I was the quarterback and had thrown him several touchdowns passes that year. He could run like the wind and I loved throwing him long bombs. By age 15 I could throw the ball well over 50 yards and we had a good time playing pitch and catch. Addison too was quite the athlete and we soon became close friends. It was about this time that I got my driver’s license. My father had bought me a Toyota Corolla and I was in hog heaven. It was an older model car but it got good gas mileage and Addison and I started doing the McDowell Road scene on weekends. Addison also had a good friend named Art and the three of us would hang out from time to time. Art’s parents owned Hankins Airfield and we would often go out there and hang out. There was an apartment upstairs over the airport and this became a cool place to hang.

Art was also a pretty good athlete. We had played baseball together in Pony League but he didn’t really get good until around his senior year of high school. He and Addison both went on and played baseball at Hinds Junior College before going on to the University of Southern Mississippi. This was about the time we parted ways for several years.

Check back tomorrow for Chapter 2, On the Road to Destruction.

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