A Grandfather’s Voice Points to Many Fathers

 

George B Shelburne-01

It’s been an interesting Monday morning.

The dog and I were sitting in the recliner. My laptop computer was living up to its name. My column/blog deadline was looming. Waiting for words to start showing up on the blank computer screen, I was really waiting for the adrenaline rush that my sadly undisciplined brain seems to require. Coffee is an aid, but no sure cure. The deadline usually does it.

In the meantime, as I found myself piddling around, procrastinating, perusing some files on the computer, I somehow wandered into the “Family Audio” section and clicked on an old file labeled, “Big George 1972.”

And that’s when I heard the voice of my paternal grandfather, G. B. Shelburne—we called him “Big George”—who died in 1975, recorded by my oldest brother in 1972 at the old house in Stanton, Texas.

In the fourteen-minute recording, Big George, a longtime lay preacher and church elder who over the course of 40 years held pretty much every non-elected position available in the City of Stanton, Texas—city secretary, water commissioner, city judge, etc.—shared a little family history.

He partially solved the family “mystery” of “G. B.” as he said that “George” was the name of his mother’s oldest brother and that “Beatty” (spelling?) was the name of the doctor who “presided” (his word) at his birth.

Oddly enough, what I found most interesting was the story he told of a spanking administered to my great-grandfather by my great-great-grandfather sometime in 1870.

Great-great-grandfather Shelburne had come home to Alabama in 1865 after his service in the Civil War. His son, Tom, my great-grandfather, was born that same year. Tom’s father died when the boy was only five years old. That would be 1870. The incident Big George told about, that his father Tom had told him about, took place that same year and was one of the only memories Tom Shelburne had of his father.

As the story goes, my great-great-grandfather had just finished filing a hand saw in the blacksmith shop he had on his Alabama farm. Five-year-old Great-grandfather Tom had been playing in the shop. His dad laid the saw up on top of his workbench and said, “Now, Tom, don’t you bother that saw. I’m goin’ out.” Tom told his son, my grandfather, later, “I had such a curiosity to try that saw that when Father came back in, I was tryin’ it over a plow beam, and he give me a paddlin’ fur it.”

Funny. That old story of my great-great-grandfather’s warming Tom’s tail section actually seemed to warm my great-grandfather Tom’s heart, too. He lost his father way too early, but he never lost the sure knowledge that he was loved by him.

It’s a great blessing to me to hear my grandfather remind me that I stand in a long line of fathers who dearly loved their sons (and daughters). The best blessing of all is to know that all of God’s children are loved by the best Father of all.

Yes, and the Bible reminds us (Hebrews 12:6, etc.) that some discipline is involved in love!

 

 

      You’re invited to visit my website at http://www.CurtisShelburne.com!

 

 

Copyright 2016 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.


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