'Over Home,' 'Over There'

Rex Parker (pictured) of the Sandy Flat Community of Greenville, S.C.


In June 2011, I talked with my Uncle Fred E. Crain, 86, of Greer, S.C., about the Parkers who once lived on Keller Road in the Sandy Flat Community of Greenville, S.C.

Fred’s maternal grandparents, Jesse and Hattie Parker were members of Enoree Baptist Church. They had five children: John, Lillian, Hovey, Lucille and Rex. John died around age 18 in the 1917 flu epidemic. Fred’s mother, Lillian, married Carl Crain and had two sons: Fred and my father, J. B. Crain.

Here is the story of Rex in Fred’s words:

Rex died around age 21. He worked somewhere, maybe at Southern Worsted Mill. He played the guitar and sang. Then, people sang songs like “Let Me Call You ‘Sweetheart,’” “John Henry,” “Nellie Blythe,” “Down in the Valley,” “It’s Lamp-Lighting Time in the Valley” and “Red River Valley.”

Rex went with Hovey and Genelia and their baby Marian to make music. 

(Hovey's Uncle Pinckney "Pink" Parker, a banjo player, was also in the car with them, according to Mr. John Collins. Mr. Pink Parker was John Collins' grandfather.) 

They were coming home, going south on Locust Hill Road (Hwy. 290) around 11 p.m. on a Saturday. They came around “Dead Man’s Curve”; it’s been rerouted since then. Rex was driving. The left front tire blew. I understand they went off the road to the left. It was a convertible, a 2-seated touring car, around a 1930 model. This was Hovey’s car, black with a canvas top. Genelia was in back. 

The car rolled and threw Genelia out over a gully onto a bank of a field. She held Marian in her arms, didn’t turn her loose. Marian didn’t get a scratch. Genelia wasn’t injured. Hove neither. The car flipped to the left onto its side, and the running board on the left came full across Rex’s chest and stomach area. 

(According to John Collins, his Uncle Pink Parker broke his neck and "spent a long time in Chick Springs Hospital." Collins adds, "I don't think he traveled to pick again afterwards.") 

Grandpa Jesse couldn’t sleep that night; He got up and walked out in their yard. He saw the car’s headlights light up the night sky as the car flipped. He was far enough away – a mile or more – not to hear the sound, but he saw lights shine in the sky. He wondered what it was. In a while, someone came and told him. Somebody carried Rex to the Greenville Hospital. He didn’t gain consciousness.

I remember Daddy and Mama, me and J.B. going over to the hospital early on Sunday. We eat dinner before we went. They wouldn’t let me and J.B. in. I was five; J.B. was eight. We stayed around the car on the street. About 4:30 (p.m.), Mama came out with Daddy and said, “He’s gone.”

Grandma cried, couldn’t sleep, walked the floor. They had a time with her. Rex was her baby. I don’t think she ever got over it. Grandpa just clammed up. He couldn’t talk about it. He’d walk around like he was studying about something. He’d tell about them lights in the sky, though.

Mama was very sad. She’d want to go to see Grandma very often. She called it “going home.” She’d say to Daddy, “Carl, let’s go over home.”

After hearing Fred’s story about Rex, I wondered how many families past and present have experienced the heartache of losing a young loved one, taken “in the prime of life.”

The family circle will sooner or later be broken here on earth. Time will see to that. We may enjoy moments, perhaps during a family reunion or at a church fellowship gathering, when we feel “this is perfect; I wish we could always feel the togetherness we feel right now.” But life goes on, and if our hearts are in tune with God, we will sense the truth of these words found in an old gospel song: “This world is not my home. I’m just a-passing through.”

The writer of Hebrews tells us, “For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.”

Paul wrote to Christians in Corinth, “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling….”

After her brother’s death, my grandmother often wanted to “go over home,” but “home” for the Parker family of the early 1930s had changed.

D.W.C. Huntington wrote about a “home” for those who accept Christ. He penned these words to the old hymn “O Think of the Home Over There”:

“O think of a home over there / By the side of the river of light / Where the saints all immortal and fair / Are washed in their garments of white / Over there, over there / O think of the home over there / Over there, over there / I think of a home over there.

“My Savior is now over there / There my kindred and friends are at rest / Then away from my sorrow and care / Let me fly to the land of the blest / Over there, over there / My Savior is now over there….”

Perhaps you can no longer “go over home” and visit loved ones who have departed, but you can trust Christ and “think of a home over there.”