MAMA

My mama was my dearest friend. I lost her forever on Tuesday, July 13, 2010, at 8:13am. I am not ashamed to say that I cannot stop crying over her. My heart is shattered.

My mother loved all of her children. She sewed dresses for my sisters, Carolyn and Carlene. My daddy bought my first saxophone for me. My brother, Arnold, wanted a drum set so daddy began making payments on a set from a private owner. The owner came to our house when my daddy could not come up with the current payment. He was going to take the drums away. Mama took off the gold ring she'd won in a contest and gave it to the man. He was happy; the ring was worth more than the drum set.

Mama never had much in the way of material things. Once she cried over a new microwave oven we, her children, gave her one Christmas. We were a poor family. After my dad decided to become an evangelist, in 1969, he moved the family into a house in Chocowinity, North Carolina. I was in the army at Ft. Bragg, at the time. The house had no paint on the outside. Mama had to burn wood chips in an iron wood stove in the kitchen to heat water to wash dishes. We had to heat water on that stove to take baths.

Once, while daddy was away on a revival, we had no food in the cupboards. Not a single can of food. But we survived it all because mama was there and she loved us and it was her spirit of love that kept us going through the hard times.

While living in Washington, North Carolina, daddy, inexplicably, moved our family 17 times in 17 years. Once mama said to daddy: "If you'll stay in one place, I'll get a job and make the mobile home payments". And she did. One day, arriving home with my brother and two sisters, mama was greeted by daddy who introduced her to a couple in the living room. He told mama that the couple were moving in that evening. In front of these people, my mother, brother, and sisters had to pack there belongings and leave what, that morning, was their home.

I don't know how my mother survived the things my dad put mama through, during the many years of their marriage. She was a rock. Daddy became a better man after becoming a Christian, but he could still be difficult to get along with.

Mama suffered from chronic nausea for at least the last seven years of her life. I was caregiver for mama and daddy from September 2004, when mama started having seizures, until Mama passed away. Many times I'd hear her say: "Oh, Lord, I'm so sick. I don't think I can take it anymore". Sometimes she'd have a break from the nausea, but only briefly. Medications gave her minimal relief, if any at all.

Nausea, rather than her cancer, diagnosed June 10, 2009, was the bane of Mama's existence. It made her life almost unbearable. I searched and searched on the internet for a cure, but to no avail.

Mama was one of the funniest people I've ever seen, when she wasn't sick. She could do or say comical things with a straight face that would make us all laugh.
She read the bible from beginning to end seven times. She was a praying woman. Her prayers were the sweetest I've ever heard.

My sweet, dear mother is in heaven now. She is with my dad, her mom and dad, siblings and other loved ones. [To be "absent from the body" is to be "present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8)]. She no longer suffers neverending sickness, sleepless nights, and excruciating pain.

Mama is waiting for Arnold, Carolyn, Carlene, and me in heaven. I know that I will see my blessed Mother's angelic face again. I hope that day is soon, because right now, my heart is breaking and hurting so badly that I don't know how much longer I can stand the merciless, mind-bending, heart-wretching pain.

*****

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says: :There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!" There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"
And that is dying.
--Henry Van Dyke

*****

YOU WILL BE THE ONES

I was spoon-feeding my Mom oatmeal, at 5:15am this morning (Thursday, June 3, 2010, she has cancer), when I had an epiphany: some young people love and support Obama, still, although he's surrounded himself with communists and socialists, because they're stupid. [I know they're not stupid; they're just ignorant. They don't care enough about some important things enough to become involved and educated about them.] They're all "Jay Walkers" who don't know what a cockamamie commie or socialist is. But they do know, you can bet your cucarachas, the lyrics to every song by Lady Gaga. The thing I don't understand is why intelligent people still love and admire him.

Why is it okay with these people to have a communist as a czar in the United States government? Why is it okay that everyone in Obama's adminstration is a socialist? Why is it okay that Obama is at odds with the majority of America people on virtually every major issue in the country? The only two answers I have is that they feel the same as he does on all the issues: they are philosophically aligned. The other answer is that Obama's admirers are too naive to entertain the possibility that he is capable of attempting to overthrow the government of the United States.

Obama lives by Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals the way Christians live by the Holy Bible. Anyone who disagrees has not examined the life of Barack Obama or paid attention to his actions, words, or behavior.

Get on board the "What's Happenin'" train, young people, and save America, before its too late. God bless those of you who work hard, study hard, volunteer for charity work, honor your Mother and Father, treat everyone with respect, for you will be the ones who restore the United States to its former glory and eminence. Not Lady Gaga, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Michael Jordan, or Tiger Woods. You will be the ones...you will be the ones.

Liberal Groups Want FCC to Police Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio, Cable News

Liberal Groups Want FCC to Police Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio, Cable News
A coalition of more than 30 mostly liberal organizations has sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency to monitor “hate speech” on talk radio and cable news networks.

I saw a movie last week, starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey, Jr. Downey's character criticized Gibson's character, for being uncharacteristic, as a Buddhist. To which Gibson's character replied: "I never said I was a good Buddhist". I'm a Christian, but let me preface the following, by saying, I never said I was a good Christian. It's difficult for me not to call Obama, his czars, the liberal media, and some actors in Hollywood, the names I'd like to call them, just for the biological pleasure of doing so. The Lord lost His temper in the temple, so maybe He, having experienced the feeling that provoked His anger, will have mercy on me, in mine. I'll ask His forgiveness later. As you read the letter below, just remember: I'm a Christian, but I never said I was a good Christian.

The following is a letter I e-mailed to the FCC.

Don't let Obama put your a-- in a sling. If Limbaugh and talk shows limited in speech, someday the streets will be covered in blood. Americans will take only so much of Obama's arrogance and strong-arming. If you limit the speech of Limbaugh, you'd d--- well better take Jon Stewart, David Letterman, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, Hollywood, most comedians, MSNBC, Chris Matthews, Matt Damon, most atheists, illegal aliens demonstrating against Arizona, Bill Maher (Christian-hater), idiots in the pop music industry, and many others, with him. Those are the sources of most hate speech.


I worked in radio in the '60s; and I respected the FCC for it's discipline in forbidding profanity on our nations air waves. I respected its integrity. I hope you do nothing to alter my opinion of your venerated institution.

Obama is not a God. His ineptitube as a leader becomes more apparent every day. Do not allow yourselves to be in awe of this man. Someone once said, concerning Christians, that if you are an idiot, and you become "saved", you're just a "saved idiot". It's the same with the presidency: If you're an idiot, and you become President of the United States, you're just an idiot President of the United States.

Citizens will not stand for suppression of free speech!!!

I'M SORRY SARAH (LAMENT FOR SARAH PALIN) BY ALLEN BALL

BallPoint: Samuel James Ervin, Jr. -- by Allen Ball

Accept whatever your mind finds to be true; and whatever your conscience determines to be right, and whatever your heart declares to be noble, even though your act in doing so may drive a hoary prejudice from its throne. And, above all things, meditate often upon the words and deeds of Him who died on Calvary for, by so doing, ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
-- Senator Sam Ervin, Jr.


Senator Sam Ervin, Jr. is one of my all-time favorite people. I loved his folksy manner; I admired his knowledge of the bible; I loved his storytelling; I admired his brilliance, but most of all, I admired his integrity.

In 1732, a band of Scotch-Irish settlers migrated from Ulster to Belfast and finally to the coast of South Carolina to escape the religious persecution of the King of England. Among them was James Ervin, who settled in Williamsburg County, South Carolina. In 1776, he died leaving a son, John, who owned a plantation and twenty-nine slaves.

John Witherspoon Ervin, teacher, newspaper publisher, and poet, gave up writing after the Civil War, accepting an offer to teach in Morganton, North Carolina, in 1874. His, Samuel James Ervin, took the North Carolina bar exam, in 1878, and later became one of the states most prominent lawyers.

In 1886, Samuel Ervin married Laura Theresa Powe. She bore ten children: Lauta, 1888; Catharine, 1890; Margaret, 1892; Edward, 1894; Sam, 1896; Hugh, 1898; Joseph, 1901, Eunice, 1903; John, 1906; and Jean, 1909.

Samuel James Ervin, Jr. was a Representative and a Senator from North Carolina. He was born in Morganton, Burke County, N.C., September 27, 1896, in Morganton, shortly before William McKinley, a Scotch-Irishman, from Canton, Ohio, defeated William Jennings Bryan for the Presidency. As a young boy his favorite pastime was playing baseball and playing marbles. He attended his first year of public school in 1903. He was an above-average student, excelling in history and reading, but he disliked science and math. An omnivorous reader, Ervin was taught by his grandfather to read at the age of four. "I don't remember so much his teaching, but when I didn't learn right quick he'd thump me on the head with his finger and say, 'Mighty thick, mighty thick.' That's the only conversation I recall having with him." His father had a sizable home library, including works by Shakespeare, Dickens, Scott, and Kipling. Years later, as Senator, Sam, Jr. estimated his own library to contain 25,000-35,000 books.

Like most boys, Sam was not immune to mischief. "I used to have to answer the roll call every morning with a quotation from the scriptures. On one occasion I had just looked through the Bible and I found a verse that said, 'I have more understanding than all my teachers.' Of course, the class was hilarious. And the teacher kept me in, said there was no such verse in the Bible. And I showed it to him. I've forgotten where it is now. I think it's in King Solomon that said that. I pointed it out to him, and he said, 'Well, you didn't say it in the right spirit of reverence'"

Tragedy struck the Ervin family on several occasions. Edward suffered a bad case of whooping cough when he was a child and then developed an agonizing asthmatic condition, spending his nights sitting in a straight chair. He died when he was 39.

Margaret, four years older than Sam, died of tuberculosis when she was 19. Before it was diagnosed she lost one lung and was not expected to recover. She spent her final days in her bedroom where only her mother was permitted to see her.

Catharine contracted Hodgkin's disease and died when she was 50.

Surely, the most tragic of all was the suffering and extraordinary treatment Joseph endured, resulting from a fall from a tree in the family apple orchard, at the age of 6. Joseph developed osteomyelitis, a painful inflammation of the bone marrow. Before the discovery of "wonder" drugs, one of the treatments of osteomyelitis involved planting maggots, worm-like insects, near the infected bone, place a small cage over the incision so the maggots could not escape, and leave them there to eat away at the diseased bone tissues. It worked, at least provisionally, but it was a horrible, disgusting experience for the patient.

Ervin went to see his brother one day at the hospital and Joe confided in him: "This is the greatest agony I've ever undergone; feeling a live maggot wandering around inside my body. I don't know how I can stand it much longer." He committed suicide at the height of a promising political career. He had endured a series of operations, spending time in between on crutches. "He took the notion that his osteomyelitis was coming back on him and it was just too much for him."

A northerner, Carey E. Gregory, seeking a healthier climate, settled in western North Carolina. Prior to Sam's departure for college he told him, "There's no royal road to learning.: Sam may have taken the comment to heart, as indicated by an excerpt from Paul R. Clancy's "Just a Country Lawyer":
"To those who did not know young Sam well, he frequently seemed to be going through life in a fog. He had the ability, even then, to crawl inside his mind and hide. He was collecting, storing, sorting out, and valuating knowledge. And, in so doing, he could shut out the rest of the world. Friends and family could go into his room where he was studying, even dust around his feet, and he wouldn't know it"

"There were always lots of books in that family. You read books and you developed yourself."

"Before leaving for Chapel Hill, the studious remote young man walked his sister Eunice to school on her first day in the first grade. He read a book all the way."
Sam extolled the virtues of reading when he addressed the class of '73, on October 12, at the Memorial Auditorium at the University of North Carolina:
"Let books be your friends, for by so doing you summon to your fireside in seasons of loneliness the choice spirits of all the ages. Observe mankind through the eyes of clarity, for, by so doing, you will discover anew the oft forgotten fact that earth is peopled with many gallant souls. Study nature, and walk at times in solitude beneath the starry heavens, for, by so doing, you will absorb the great lesson that God is infinite and that your life is just a little beat within the heart of time. Cling to the ancient landmark of truth, but be ready to test the soundness of a new idea.

Accept whatever your mind finds to be true; and whatever your conscience determines to be right, and whatever your heart declares to be noble, even though your act in doing so may drive a hoary prejudice from its throne. And, above all things, meditate often upon the words and deeds of Him who died on Calvary for, by so doing, ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
In 1913, Ervin entered the freshman class, of only 200 students, at the University of North Carolina, graduating, in 1917. Thomas Wolfe, from Asheville was two years behind Ervin at Chapel Hill. They met through Sigma Upsilon, the campus literary society. Ervin made the observation that Wolfe was "normally a very taciturn person, but when he got with some friends he could speak almost as fluently as he wrote."

After serving in France in the First World War, with the First Division (1917-1919), Ervin was admitted to the bar in 1919 and commenced practice in Morganton, in 1922, after graduating from Harvard University law school , the same year. He became a member of the North Carolina general assembly (1923, 1925, 1931); judge of the Burke County criminal court (1935-1937); judge of the North Carolina superior court (1937-1943); elected on January 22, 1946, as a Democrat to the Seventy-ninth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of his brother, Joseph W. Ervin, and served from January 22, 1946, to January 3, 1947. Choosing not to run for re-nomination in 1946; Sam resumed the practice of law; and was associate justice of the North Carolina supreme court 1948-1954; appointed on June 5, 1954.

On November 2, 1954, Ervin was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy brought about by the death of Clyde R. Hoey, for the term ending January 3, 1957. Re-elected in 1956, 1962, and again in 1968 and served until his resignation December 31,1974. "I've seen too many Senators remain there too long," he once said.

In addition to being well-read and having a prodigious memory, Senator Ervin was an unbending moralist who possessed a rapier wit, often quoting Biblical scripture. On President Gerald R. Ford's pardon of Richard M. Nixon, he said: "The pardon power of the president of the United States is greater than the pardon power of the Almighty. The Almighty, according to religious teachings, can't pardon a poor sinner for his sins, unless the poor sinner first confesses his sins." He counseled his peers with the admonition: " The Constitution and the Bible are suggested readings for public officials."

Ervin chaired the Committee on Government Operations (Ninety-second and Ninety-third Congresses), and the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (Ninety-third Congress). Resuming the practice of law, after retirement, Sam engaged in literary pursuits in Morganton, N.C., continuing to work an 8-hour day because "I prefer to wear out rather than rust out."

Senator Sam, as he was referred to affectionately, was an avuncular figure--he was a Bible scholar, an intellectual, and a warm-spirited gentleman. He possessed a gift of story-telling, His down-home, down-to-earth manner endeared him to, not only North Carolinians, but to the nation, as exemplified by his folksy demeanor when asked to head the Senate Watergate Committee investigation. "This self-proclaimed country lawyer with the bottomless barrel of aphorisms from Shakespeare, the Bible, and the North Carolina mountains, became a national symbol of decency and fairness in politics, the embodiment for many of wisdom, a genuine American folk hero."

Senator Sam Ervin, Jr. died in Winston-Salem, N.C., on April 23, 1985. He was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery in Morganton, N.C.


Bibliography


American National Biography; Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives; Clancy, Paul. Just A Country Lawyer: A Biography of Senator Sam Ervin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974; Ervin, Sam. Preserving the Constitution: An Autobiography of Senator Sam Ervin. Charlottesville, Va.: Mitchie Co., 1984.

TRUE, FUNNY, KINSTON, N.C. STORIES~VOL. 1

My dad told me this true story that took place in the Forties...

My dad, Allen James “Jay” Ball, was in Lovick’s Cafe, in Kinston,N.C., sitting at the front counter. A man walked in and sat down close to my dad at the counter. The man behind the counter said: “Can I help you? The man replied, gruffly: “Give me a sandwich.” The man behind the counter said: “What kind of sandwich?” The man replied: “I don’t care--just fix me a sandwich.” So the guy fixed him a sandwich. When he placed it on the counter, the customer said, rudely: “I don’t want that sandwich.”

All the while this conversation was taking place, my dad was taking it in. He interrupted saying: “You ordered that sandwich now you eat it.” The man said: “Whata ya mean?” My dad, pretty upset by the man’s rude behavior said: “I said, you told the man that you wanted a sandwich and you didn’t care what kind of sandwich, so now; you eat it!”

The man, figuring my dad was serious, picked up his sandwich, moving further down the counter next to another man. He looked at the guy, sitting there quietly, and said: “I’m gonna have ta whip his a-- before I leave here.” The man said calmly: “You mean that man right there?” nodding towards my dad. The troublemaker said: “Yeah.” The quiet onlooker hauled off, and without any warning, punched the guy right in the face, knocking him onto the floor of Lovick’s Cafe.

The man didn’t know it, but the guy he’d been grumbling to, about my dad, saying he was going to have to “whip his a--”--was my dad’s brother--my Uncle “D.J.”

“THE LORD TOLD ME…”
At a church service, in Kinston, North Carolina, in the ‘70s, a prominent church member stood up, announcing to the preacher and the congregation, The Lord told me that the church needs to pray for brother “so-and-so.” A lady quickly spoke up, saying to the prominent church member: “Brother “so-and-so” is dead.”

THE TWO LADIES WITH HARRY
Wanting to acknowledge visitors at his church, in Kinston, North Carolina, the preacher addressed them saying: “Will the two ladies with Harry Butz please stand up?”

Thank You Soldiers - Veteran's Day/Memorial Day Song