"The Stranger"

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Proverbs 13:20 He that walketh with wise men shall be wise:
but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.

A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our small
Tennessee town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer,
and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was
around to welcome me into the world a few months later.

As I grew up I never questioned his place in our family. In my young mind, each member had
a special niche. My brother, Bill, five years my senior, was my example. Fran, my younger
sister, gave me an opportunity to play 'big brother' and develop the art of teasing. My
parents were complementary instructors-- Mom taught me to love the word of God, and Dad
taught me to obey it.

But the stranger was our storyteller. He could weave the most fascinating tales. Adventures,
mysteries and comedies were daily conversations. He could hold our whole family
spell-bound for hours each evening.

If I wanted to know about politics, history, or science, he knew it all. He knew about the past,
understood the present, and seemingly could predict the future. The pictures he could draw
were so life like that I would often laugh or cry as I watched.

He was like a friend to the whole family. He took Dad, Bill and me to our first major league
baseball game. He was always encouraging us to see the movies and he even made
arrangements to introduce us to several movie stars. My brother and I were deeply
impressed by John Wayne in particular.

The stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn't seem to mind, but sometimes Mom would
quietly get up-- while the rest of us were enthralled with one of his stories of faraway
places-- go to her room, read her Bible and pray. I wonder now if she ever prayed that the
stranger would leave.

You see, my dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions. But this stranger never
felt obligation to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our house-- not from
us, from our friends, or adults. Our longtime visitor, however, used occasional four letter
words that burned my ears and made Dad squirm. To my knowledge the stranger was never
confronted. My dad was a teetotaler who didn't permit alcohol in his home - not even for
cooking. But the stranger felt like we needed exposure and enlightened us to other ways of
life. He offered us beer and other alcoholic beverages often.

He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely
(probably too much too freely) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes
suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I know now that my early concepts of the
man-woman relationship were influenced by the stranger.

As I look back, I believe it was the grace of God that the stranger did not influence us more.
Time after time he opposed the values of my parents. Yet he was seldom rebuked and
never asked to leave.

More than thirty years have passed since the stranger moved in with the young family on
Morningside Drive. He is not nearly so intriguing to my Dad as he was in those early years.
But if I were to walk into my parents' den today, you would still see him sitting over in a
corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name? We always just called him TV.

I was really taken in by this story, thinking it was a man you were talking about.:-?

You should be a mystery writer!!!

Jeannette

You should be a mystery writer!!!

All that I remember is D.W. saying something like 'It's the center of attention in a room with all the chairs turned toward it - like the god in the house.' .... something like that and from the beginning he called it "Hellevision" -- Right on!