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MY BABY! MY BABY!

For most of our father's adult life, he bore two very ugly scars on both arms between the elbow and the wrist. When Clara was a lap toddler, he liked to sit very close to the fireplace singing and rocking her to sleep. In many instances, he ended up falling asleep long before Clara did. One chilly fall evening, my mother noticed that the baby had fallen asleep and dad was snoring so loud she thought that he would wake the baby. She tiptoed over and gently took Clara out of my father's arms and placed her in bed. About five minutes later dad woke up with a jolt, and started screaming, "My baby, my baby!" and digging into the flames in the fireplace with his bare hands. I don't know what he was dreaming about, but he evidently thought the baby had fallen off his lap and into the fire. By the time we calmed him down, the room was filled with smoke and the smell of burning flesh, and both mother and dad were laughing hysterically. Clara slept through the whole thing.

By the time I started school in the fall of 1941, Clara and I had developed quite a ligature. As a small boy I was absolutely enthralled by military uniforms. Rumblings about WWII were in the air, and I was totally impressed with anyone wearing a uniform. My father bought me several khaki outfits to be used as school clothes. These hung on a nail behind the door in our parents bedroom. As I retrieved my clothes in preparation for school each morning, Clara would start waving bye-bye. Although she was only 14 months old, she has so much personality.

By the time my brother Donald was born in 1943, Clara was not at all threatened. She had become quite gregarious, developing several outside friends that included Georgia Morton, Ann Laura (Boola) Thornton, and Lois Crowe, and she simply adored her 'big brother'. In 1946 when it came time for Clara to enroll in elementary school, there was no first day jitters. Forget that! Clara and her entourage, which had expanded to include Mary Otis Sanders and Moselle Lyons, descended upon the first grade as if they owned it. Although she later had to defend her position as group-leader from Leola Hicks, there was never any doubt about who the real leader was. As long as she lived, I never let Clara forget the day she came home crying, "Leola done hit me in the head wd a rock."

The fact that Clara had prevailed as queen-bee worked to my advantage several years later when the First Baptist Missionary Church appointed Edward Sellers and me as junior deacons. Neither Edward nor I took our appointment seriously or paid much attention when we were instructed to collect dues from our assigned wards and report on them each first and third Sunday. Edward was assigned the youth ward consisting of everyone between the ages of 13 and 18. I was supposed to collect from children 12 and under. During Sunday school, Mr. Earnest (Man) Smith asked us if we were ready. We both scrambled during the break between Sunday school and the start of eleven o'clock service. Edward came up with 75 cents; however, the best I could do was 15 cents. Reporting time came at the end of the service, and Edward went first. After he finished reading the names and amounts that he had collected, he received an ovation, all sorts of amens and shouts of encouragement from the congregation. Feeling very ashamed of having only 15 cents to report, I stood up and in a very soft whisper started reading my list of names: "Charlile Lucky, 5 cents; James Hallman---." Mr. Stanford Beasly, the chairman of the deacon board, stopped me in mid-sentence. "Boy! Don't chew come in heah mumbling. Anytime you do anything for the Lord---I don't care if it ain't but a token---you sound off! Hit ain't fer you to worry about how much you git! Yo job is to go and ask! Now start over, and read them names with some energy like you working for a king." By the time he finished, tears had started to trickle down my face. All the other teenagers were hunching each other and snickering. Well, it wasn't funny to Clara; she didn't like to see her brother cry. Immediately after church she called a meeting of her soros, and by the time the next two weeks rolled around, they had brought on board Freddie Hallman, Norvelle Williams, Crawford (Black) Pickett and many others. From that time forward, members of the children's ward couldn't wait to pay their dues. Thanks to Clara, the youth ward never again raised more money that the children's ward. I owe a part of any success I have enjoyed as a deacon to her spunk and "can-do" attitude.