THE HIDDEN TREASURE

It was a spring day.  Josh was just a baby and Cindy and Vicki were at school.  They were in middle school at the time.  I use to think I would love to be a teacher.   Elementary or high school.  Middle school?   NO WAY!!!!!!  I could handle one or two kids of middle school age but to have a class room full,,,, if you're were not already crazy you soon would  be.  I once  suggested they make prisoners teach middle schoolers but was quickly reminded we have laws against cruel and unusual punishment in our country.  Of course I loved mine at all ages.  They were different than yours. LOL!!  Anyways,  on this spring day Peggy and I had decided to go through some  boxes  that had been pack up for years.  I pulled a box down from the stack and opened it.  When I first saw it contained a bunch of little toys that went to other toys that had long ago been lost, broken or discarded to the trash,  my thoughts were to just put the whole box in the  pile to be taken to the dump.  But I have a bit of "hoarder" in me.  I refuse to watch that program on TV about Hoarders  because I've lived all the episodes.  Where was I?  Oh yeah,  I had  taken this box down, opened it and thought I'll quickly go though and see what is in here.  Hid in the bottom of that box was an old portable reel to reel tape recorder.  It had a tape in it but no batteries.  Once again i decided to just put everything back in the box to toss out.  But just then something said to me, "get some batteries".  I'm sure you've heard that silent voice  in your ear.  The voice no one else hears.  But I knew I had to find some batteries to install into the recorder.  After about 15 minutes of rummaging though some of my hoarded things I came upon 4 AA batteries. I quickly installed them into the recorder and hit the play button.  What I heard was the most wonderful sound. It was the sound of my two little girls at the age of probably 4 and 5.  They were playing church.  Not school,,,,,not mama and daddy,,,,not telling stories, but church.  Cindy was the preacher and boy was she letting it roll, and Vicki was the congregation and she couldn't amen enough. But the sermon text,,,The sermon text was the thing that really caught your attention.Get ready for this....it was  "DON'T PEE PEE IN YOU PANTIES IN CHURCH".   Peggy and I couldn't stop laughing.  Art Linkletter had it right with his "Kids say the darnedest things".  Cindy and Vicki were the first grand children on Peggy's side of the family and her dad thought the sun rose and set on these two girls, and they thought the same about their PaPa.  It was not unusual to hear a knock on the door early on a Saturday morning and it would be PaPa coming to get the girls to  take them to the farmers market to get  what seemed at the time to be a truck load of fruit.  Peggy's dad was named Doy.  He had bought a small motor home to take a trip to Alaska and decided to go to the north Georgia mountains to try it out on a short camping trip first, so he and Granny (Emily) wanted to take the girls with them.  At that time inflation had hit the tooth fairy to the tune of about a dollar a tooth.  As soon as they picked the girls up to go camping Cindy had to let them know she had a loose tooth as children are prone to do.  A couple of days later when they returned they had a wonderful story to tell.  Seems Cindy had pulled her tooth and was told to put it under her pillow in the camper and the tooth fairy would come and leave her some money which she did with much excitement.  As soon as the girls were asleep Granny put a dollar under Cindy's pillow and retrieved the tooth to bring home to us.  That task being  taken care of  Granny and PaPa decided they would also go to bed.  The next morning Granny and PaPa were awakened by the screaming and laughter of the girls.  They were on all 4s crawling around gathering change from the floor of the motor home.  Seems when PaPa was getting ready for bed, in taking his pants off he had dropped all of his change on the floor.  The girls in anticipation of the tooth fairy coming thought the tooth fairy had left all this change in addition to the dollar.   PaPa always had a pocket full of change as if he bought anything during the day he would pay for it with a dollar bill and save his change for the piggy bank.  He said it must have been close to 6 or 7 dollars on the floor.  What I wouldn't give to have seen this.  Granny and PaPa lived on South Gordon Road in Austell in a house they had bought after Doy came home from WWII.  They paid $1300 for the house and the payments were $12 a month.  Doy would often tell me of lying awake at night wondering how in the world he would be able to make those big house payments.  About a quarter of a mile up the road lived Peggy's Granny and she owned a couple of acres of land.  Doy, just like my dad,  loved to garden and always had a pretty big garden behind his mothers house.  Cindy never liked to go to the garden as planting or gathering the vegetables involved getting dirt on your hands.  She never has like dirt on her,.  Vicki on the other always loved to go.  Dirt never bothered her plus it was a chance to spend time with PaPa.  One day we went to  Peggy's parents to eat dinner but Doy was up at the garden.  Vicki wanted to go help PaPa so I walked with her up the road until we could see him on the tractor and he saw us and motioned for her to come there.  I left her and walked back down to their house so I could go ahead and eat.  About an hour later we were sitting on the porch and here comes Doy walking down the road by himself.  Emily yelled at Doy and asked him where Vicki was.  He said she's coming and pointed up the road.  I walked out in the front yard so I could see up the road and here comes this 7 year old little girl driving the tractor down South Gordon Rd.  It scared all of us nearly to death but Doy said she was fine.  We came to find out he had been letting her drive the tractor with him for a month or so.  Vicki always thought there was nothing she couldn't do by or for herself, and she's still this way.  She was the most hardheaded kid I ever saw.  I once sent her to her room for doing something I thought was wrong and told her she could come out when she realized and admitted her wrongdoing.  She saw nothing wrong in what she had done and  never to this day has admitted she was wrong.  Maybe I should send her back to her room now that I remember this.
When Josh was born we had a dog named snowball.  Snowball was a ball of white fuzz and had the  energy of a puppy all his life.  As I've mentioned before mine and Peggy's dads loved gardening and at the age of 4,  even though very young Josh had always been around gardening.  He had seen his grandfathers plow, plant the seeds and add fertilizer and water.  He had seen the plants grow from the ground and even helped gather the tomatoes and pick beans.  Josh was a very deep thinker even at a young age.  He had heard people say many time he looked just like me.  One day while riding down the road I could tell he was deep in thought.  after a while he looked up at me and asked....."daddy,  do I look like you?' 
I answered   "Pretty much like me,  Why?
Josh said  " I was just wondering if I was going to be bald headed when I grow up"
As I look back my son was vain at the age of 5.
Now back to the Snowball story.  When Josh was 4 Snowball died.  I can't believe it but I can't remember what happened to him.  What I do remember is burying him and dreading the thought of telling Josh that Snowball was dead.  After working up the courage to tell Josh,  I took him out in the back yard and let him see where Snowball was buried.  He stood there and just looked at the grave for a few minutes.  All at once he looked up at me and asked..."How long will it take for him to come up?"
I said.."I don't understand what you're asking me Josh"
He said .."You know daddy,  When PaPa and Jack Jack (that's what the kids called my dad) plant their gardens,  the seeds grow back.  How long before Snowball grows back?
Oh how I wish I had started a journal the first day Cindy was born and had written everyday the story of all my children.  It saddens me to think of all the things they said and did that are forgotten and lost forever.
There will be more stories about Cindy, Vicki and Josh to come as well as memories of Austin, Zack, Trevor, Bethany, Chasity, Jay, and Hunter.

Mathew 18:  1-3 says
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

God thank you for my riches!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!