CHILDREN LEARN ABOUT THIS UNFAIR WORLD

  Children learn how the world works — in their little corners of the world, and beyond.

As a pre-schooler, I lived in a white-shingled house on a 13-acre “farm” on rural Groce Meadow Road, Taylors, SC. Dad was a World War II Army combat veteran who worked at Southern Bleachery. Mother, who had sewed sheets in a mill, stayed home during my early years. Sister Shirley came along three years behind me. I was blessed to be born into a Christian home. We attended Gum Springs Pentecostal-Holiness Church.

Poor people and not-so-poor people attended our church. My late Uncle Fred, who was raised on a farm, worked in textiles at Southern Bleachery, too. He said people who worked in “the mill” could afford to buy pre-made cigarettes but other folk had to “roll their own.” Of course, Uncle didn’t smoke. He attended our church, and our church didn’t approve of smoking, much less drinking. That was why we had “holiness” in our church name, I thought back then. 

I began to realize that some people were nice and others not-so-nice by hearing adults talk. I learned that God loved all people — “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.” We used to sing that song in Sunday School. Forming ideas of the kind of world I’d been born into, I saw people of different colors — they were referred to as “colored people” in the 1950s.  

Ma and Pa Crain — that’s what I called my dad’s parents — often took me to Greenville on their Saturday “milk and butter route.” Ma wanted to be called “Ma” instead of grandma because “grandma” sounded old, she said. Ma sold milk and butter to city-folk wanting straight-from-the-cow products. In Greenville, I’d see all kinds of folk. A few “colored people” in the city appeared fairly well-to-do. Of course, there was the poor fellow on Main St. He had no legs and sold pencils for donations. He sat flat on the sidewalk with his back against a stone-walled building. His black hands held a cane, but I wondered how he used that cane, with him having no legs. I can still see an image of him in my mind. 

When I started first grade at Mt. View School, I rode the bus. On that long, round-about trip to school, I saw the houses children lived in, and I couldn’t help but make judgments about how poor or rich they were. A few lived in brick homes, most in shingled-houses, and some in run-down plank abodes. Mobile homes weren’t on the scene in those days, as I recall.

By age six, I knew people who were affected by poverty, race, handicaps, mental problems, and moral failings. I came to believe that Jesus can give eternal life and save us from this fallen world and accepted Him when I was six years old. I also came to believe this: No parent can keep children from learning about the unfair world into which they’ve been born.