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| ISBN-13: | 9781481743532 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 04/25/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST
MEMOIRS OF A RELUCTANT PROPHET
By Charles Kiker
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2013 Charles KikerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4817-4355-6
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Place
Geography and Historical Sketch
Swisher County is located at the juncture of the Texas Panhandle and the South Plains, roughly half way between Amarillo and Lubbock. It is on the Llano Estacado, a flat, treeless and semi-arid plain. Swisher County has an average elevation of approximately 3500 feet and average annual precipitation of approximately 20 inches.
The Llano Estacado was one of the last areas of the United States to be settled by white people. About 1700 the Comanches wrested control of the area from the Apaches, and remained "Lords of the Plains" until the latter quarter of the nineteenth century.
The Spanish explorer Coronado crossed the area in the 1500s. Comancheros out of New Mexico crossed the area to trade goods, guns, livestock and people with the Comanches. The area now comprising Swisher County was nominally under the governance of Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, and, after 1845 the State of Texas as part of the United States of America, the Confederate States of America 1861-1865, and the United States again after Appomattox—six flags over Texas.
But actual control was with the Red Man until the Red River Wars ended the Comanche era in 1874. In September of that year General Ranald Slidell "Bad Hand" MacKenzie located a Comanche camp in Palo Duro Canyon. MacKenzie's mission was to either kill or drive all Indians out of West Texas. So he attacked. There are no verifiable records as to how many Indians he killed, but it is widely agreed that most of them escaped by climbing out of the canyons on foot, leaving their tents and horses behind. They limped on foot some 200 miles east and turned themselves in at the reservation near Fort Sill, in present day Oklahoma.
MacKenzie burned all the tepees and captured about 1400 of their horses. He drove the horses out of the canyon about twenty miles south across the Llano to a site on Tule Creek near the head of Tule Canyon. He picked out about 300 of the best horses for himself and his men, and slaughtered the rest there on the prairie in present day Swisher County some fifteen miles east of Tulia.
The general who killed the horses did his job—he chased the Comanches out of the Llano Estacado. In spite of and partly because of the often inhumane ways he did that he became something of a folk hero in the Texas Panhandle/South Plains. There's a park named after him in Lubbock, an artificial lake in Tule Canyon, and a housing addition in Tulia.
He opened the Llano Estacado for white settlers. Soon after the Red River Wars cattle ranching thrived in the Texas Panhandle. The giant JA Ranch extended into what is now Swisher County. Before the end of the century sodbusters were moving in. Barbed wire expedited fencing. Open prairie gave way to fenced pastures and wheat fields.
Indian Scare
The Indians were gone but not forgotten. The Sioux had been banished to their reservation in South Dakota after the Custer fiasco at the Little Big Horn. A Medicine Man and self-proclaimed Indian Jesus stirred up the tribes with his promise that if all the Indians participated in a "Ghost Dance" the earth would open up and swallow up the whites and multitudes of buffaloes would return to the prairies. Many believed. Word of possible Indian uprisings spread southward. Settlers in the newly formed Swisher County were jittery about Indian attacks.
Then came the rumor in 1890 of Indians on the warpath. It seems to have started on a ranch in Collingsworth County, well to the east of Swisher. It spread by men on horseback and by telegraph, all the way to Tulia where by this time about 300 citizens dwelt. They gathered at the new courthouse and began to try to put up any kind of bulwark available to hold off the dreaded savages.
One cowboy was reported to have advised that they should crowd into the second floor of the courthouse and burn the first floor so the Indians couldn't reach them! Stupid cowboy? Or a cowboy wise beyond his learning using gallows humor to calm the frantic citizens? Or maybe just a good story fabricated in the aftermath of the tale of Indians on the warpath?
Agriculture, Dust Bowl, and Depression
With the turn of the century the big ranches got smaller as farmers and small stockmen moved west in search of cheaper and better land. With the advent of tractors it was easier to plow the sod. During and after World War I wheat prices rose. It was a period of above average rainfall, and more and more landowners turned their pastures into wheat farms. Then came the depression. And beginning in 1930 there was a decade of far below average precipitation. With the sod cover plowed under and no crop residue on the surface, there was nothing to hold the soil. The Dust Bowl was born.
I was born in the depths of the depression and in the midst of the Dust Bowl on a farm in Swisher County, Texas at 12:05 a. m. on November 25, 1933. Evidently the dirt didn't blow that night, for my mother told me that she looked out and was awed by the beauty of that starlit night, and gave me to God for ministry before I was born.
In that time and place and in those circumstances began a life—my life—haunted by the Holy Ghost.
CHAPTER 2
Families of Origin
The Willeys
Thus it was that my mother, Lydia Elizabeth Willey McKinney Kiker, gave me to God that starlit night in November. Lydia was the eighth of eleven children of James and Artimecia Willey. Lydia was born in Arkansas on January 7, 1896. James Willey was a circuit riding Methodist preacher, and Lydia wanted me to grow to be a Methodist preacher like him, sans circuit riding. Artimecia was also a devout Christian.
The Willeys moved to West Texas sometime shortly after 1900. Lydia met neighbor boy Hugh McKinney, and they married in 1914. Kathryn was born in 1920. Lydia was pregnant when Hugh died with acute appendicitis in 1922. Daughter Jean was born later that year and Lydia was left a widow with two little girls, her family her only means of support. She hoed cotton, picked cotton, and did whatever else she could do. But she did have a supportive family. Jean remembers that sometimes they lived with the McKinneys in Howard County, and sometimes with the Willeys in nearby Martin County. It was a hard life for a single mother with two little girls.
The Kikers
In the meantime, Lydia's older sister Ada got her teaching credentials and a teaching job at a rural school in Swisher County. She met Schley—pronounced "Sly"—Kiker. They married in 1918 and established their home in Swisher County.
Schley Kiker was a Swisher County pioneer. He was brought to the county in 1902 by his parents, James Watt Kiker and Mary Ella Estes Kiker. James Watt Kiker, son of George and Mary DeLina Wesson Kiker, was born May 19, 1866 in Gordon County, Georgia, barely a year after the end of the Civil War. His older brother Robert Postell Kiker, born in 1844, enlisted in the Union Army. When James Watt was just a small boy, his family left Georgia—I wonder if they may have been unwelcome in their Dixie neighborhood—and moved to Alabama. They moved from Alabama to Kennedale, in Tarrant County, Texas when James Watt was nine years old. This move was by team and wagon, and the wagon was loaded with belongings, so young J. W. walked behind the wagon from Alabama to Texas. They crossed the Mississippi by ferry, and J. W. stood behind the wagon on the ferry. One of the stories he told from that trip was that his older sister Nancy blacked her face with berry juice and jumped out of the woods onto the trail and scared him. Whites feared black people in those reconstruction days.
As a teenager, he worked at a molasses factory in Kennedale. He said his overalls got so stiff with molasses that when he took them off at night they would stand up by his bed waiting for him to put them on early the next morning! His father died and young J. W. was left with the care of his blind mother.
He married Mary Ella Estes in 1889. They moved to Throckmorton County, Texas where three children were born to them: Julia Odessa in 1892, Floyd Odell in 1895, and Audrey Schley in 1898.
J. W., like so many of the early Swisher County settlers, came west seeking cheaper and better land. In 1902 he bought a section ten miles northeast of Tulia where he built a home. Another son Estie Lloyd was born to them in 1906. Floyd died in 1906 of diphtheria when Estie was still just a baby. The extended household included from time to time Mary Ella's mother, her sister and brother-in-law Mattie and Robert Stroud.
In addition to farming J. W. operated a dray business before the railroad came to Tulia. With his wagon and team of mules he hauled furniture for the second Swisher County courthouse from the railhead at Canyon to Tulia.
Disaster struck the J. W. Kiker household in 1923. Early in the year, their house burned. He built a new one within six months. On May 18th of that year Mary Ella died. So J. W. was left a widower approximately a year after Lydia was left a widow. J. W. didn't have small children. His youngest, Estie, was a mischievous 16 year old when his mother died. His straits were not as narrow as Lydia's, but still he could use a help mate.
The Marriage of J. W. Kiker and Lydia Willey McKinney
It's no mystery how J. W. and Lydia became acquainted. Ada Kiker was Schley's wife and Lydia's sister. Schley Kiker was J. W.'s son. There is no family lore regarding any courtship between J. W. and Lydia. Courtship or no, James Watt Kiker and Lydia Elizabeth Willey McKinney were married in Stanton, Texas in September, 1927. He was 61 years old; she was 31. He had a daughter older than Lydia, a daughter who never accepted that marriage. His son Schley was almost as old and he did accept it. J. W. had grandchildren older than Lydia's children. The marriage may have been—almost certainly was—a marriage of convenience for both of them, but it was a marriage which endured 26 years and 9 months until J. W. passed away in June, 1953.
After the marriage, Lydia returned to Swisher County with J. W. in his 1927 Buick coupe. Kathryn and Jean, aged seven and five, rode in the rumble seat for the 200 mile trip, dirt road all the way. The dust boiled up and around and on these two little girls for five long hours.
I doubt that Lydia, my mother, bargained for what came next. On June 24, 1928, nine months almost to the day after their marriage, twin girls Agnes Irene and Angie Allene were born to James Watt and Lydia Kiker. Before Irene and Allene were out of diapers, James Watt Jr. (Jim) came along on August 6, 1929. Three babies—no disposable diapers, no indoor plumbing, water had to be brought from the windmill and heated in a big black pot over a scrap wood fire. Some four years after Jim, I—Charles Wayne Kiker—was born. And then a little over two years later, on February 9, 1936, Franklin Delano Kiker was born. Where in the world did they come up with that name? Except that by that time FDR was almost the Anointed One. Five children were born to J. W. and Lydia; all of us had nieces and nephews who were older than we were.
The J. W. Kiker Household
Seven children lived in the Kiker household. Other somewhat regular residents and visitors included Aunt Matt Stroud, sister to J. W.'s late wife Mary Ella. Lydia's brother Uncle Cleve Willey was usually a part of the family from April through October. He headed up the vegetable garden project and gave me my green thumb. Uncle Bob Kiker was there not infrequently. Crawford Crain was a nomad who just dropped by one day needing work and a place to stay, and stayed the better part of a decade. Aunt Ada and Uncle Schley and their four children were frequent visitors and sometimes overnight guests. Various and sundry hired hands and just wanderers dropped in needing a place to spend the night and a bite to eat—always someone at the house other than Mother and Daddy and their seven.
Jean tells of a night when there was no one there other than immediate family. She remarked to Mother how peaceful it was. And then there was a knock at the door. Someone needed something to eat and a place to spend the night. Daddy, given to hospitality, accommodated them.
CHAPTER 3
Early Memories
The Extended Household
Not all in the household were blood kin, Crawford Crane for instance. As a child I heard the story of how he saved my young life. I was six months old, and came down with whooping cough. I was having a coughing fit, and Mother, with me in arms, hurried toward the wall mounted crank telephone to call the doctor. In her haste, she accidentally bumped my head against the telephone, and I began to cry and cough until I lost my breath. The gathered family was sure I was dying. Mr. Crane said, "Give me that baby!" He took me in his arms, held my face next to his, and blew his breath into my mouth until I breathed again. He saved my life. That story was part of the haunting.
Mr. Crane was a cantankerous sort who got offended by the most trivial things. When he did he'd disappear for a few days. One time he got mad because Mother put a cracked plate at his place at the table. I'm sure she didn't intentionally offend him. In those depression days a dish was not thrown away unless it was broken. We all ate from cracked plates from time to time.
He finally got a custodian job at the livestock show barn and community building in Tulia where he lived in a one-room apartment in the corner of the barn. I was about ten years old the last time I saw him alive. He was in the hospital in Tulia. Daddy went by to see him and took me along. It was obvious even to a ten year old that he was not fully cognizant. He was declared mentally incompetent by the local authorities and sent to the mental hospital, aka the insane asylum, in Wichita Falls. He wasn't there long before he came back to Tulia, in a box. I saw him as a corpse at his funeral at First Baptist Church. He was one in a long line of family members, neighbors, friends and boarders who suffered that fate.
Earl Parker was an eccentric sort. He lived with his sister and brother-in-law, Sally Pearson and Jess down the road about a mile from us. He entertained his hearers with tales of narrow escapes, and always concluded his story with, "I Dod, it's a wunner it hadna kilt me a thousan' times." He drove his old Model A Ford as furiously as the Biblical Jehu drove his chariot. One day he came careening into our driveway, jumped out and ran up and knocked on the kitchen door. Mother answered, "What's wrong Earl? Is everybody all right?" "Everbody's fine, Miz Kiker. Everbody's fine, but Jess is a'dyin'." Jess was a' dyin' alright. By the time Mother and Daddy got there, he was dead, stretched out under a lilac bush where he had stretched out for an afternoon nap. A year or so later Sally died and Earl was left alone. He became more and more eccentric until finally he was officially declared a danger to himself and others and was committed to the insane asylum at Wichita Falls. Like Mr. Crane, he came back in a box.
It was the same with Aunt Matt Stroud. She developed Alzheimer's. She often stated that she was going to town that night after supper to marry Mr. Cantrell, although Mr. Cantrell was not privy to her plans. She stayed at our house part of the time and part of the time at the Schley Kikers. When her dementia worsened to the point that she chased young Cecil with a butcher knife—no doubt with some provocation from Cecil—she was indeed a danger to others. It was time for her to go to Wichita Falls where she didn't last long. Memories and family stories of the insane asylum haunted me from childhood.
Numerous hired hands were a part of our family. I remember Jack McClanahan and how he was always glad to oblige by showing off his big muscles. Millard, aka Bugs, Curry had a unique laugh. I got sent away from the supper table one night for mimicking it in his presence.
Brill Vaughan brought music to our house with his banjo. He was also instrumental in getting my brother Jim in trouble at the supper table. Brill passed gas rather loudly one day, outside of course, and said, "Woops, stepped on a frog." Jim thought that was cool. So that night at the supper table he let a loud one and announced, "Woops, stepped on a frog." Mother said, "You ought to have to leave the table!" Jim was sitting on the end of the bench next to Daddy, at the head of the table. Daddy was less restrained in his reaction. "I'll swear I've got a great mind to slap you. Believe I will!" Whap!
Brill taught us his version of "Froggie went a-courtin":
Froggie went a courtin' he did ride, uh huh.
Froggie went a-courtin' he did ride, uh huh.
Froggie went a-courtin' he did ride,
A sword and a pistol by his side, uh huh, uh uh uh huh."
Then Brill added his specialized nonsense refrain:
Cai m' nero down to Cairo, cai m'nero Cairo.
Straddle addle addle bobble addle bobble inctum,
Rink somebody mitch-a-combo!
If Brill wasn't on the time clock when he sang that for us, he should have been. Of course there wasn't any time clock. It was a dollar a day no matter how long the day was. And he was glad to get it!
Uncle Cleve Willey was my mother's older brother, a widower who lived with his daughter Myrtle in Martin County during the winter, where he trapped and sold furs. He had spent a few years working on a ranch in SW Wyoming. He was proud to announce that he was acquainted with J. C. Penney at the first Penney's store in America, in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
Uncle Cleve stayed with us from April through October, where he was superintendent of our vegetable garden project. He taught me a lot about horticulture and irrigation techniques he had learned in Wyoming. I gained a green thumb from him. I learned other things from him that a young boy shouldn't learn. Still here was a close relationship between us. He claimed to be an atheist. Aunt Ada wondered how an atheist could invoke the divine name so often!
(Continues...)
Excerpted from HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST by Charles Kiker. Copyright © 2013 by Charles Kiker. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements.................... xi
What Others Say.................... xiv
Prologue: Dry Creeks.................... xvii
Chapter I: The Place.................... 1
Chapter II: Families of Origin.................... 5
Chapter III: Early Memories.................... 10
Chapter IV: School Days.................... 22
Chapter V: Religion on the Vigo Park Circuit.................... 39
Chapter VI: Making a Preacher.................... 52
Chapter VII: Answering the Call.................... 64
Chapter VIII: From the Llano Estacado to Louisville.................... 69
Chapter IX: Three Years North of the 49th Parallel.................... 78
Chapter X: Back to the Bluegrass.................... 92
Chapter XI: Starting over in Louisville.................... 97
Chapter XII: Pikes Peak or Bust.................... 104
Chapter XIII: In the Shadow of Cuerno Verde.................... 110
Chapter XIV: On the High Desert.................... 119
Chapter XV: Gypsies in Jayhawk Land.................... 145
Chapter XVI: Miracle at 29th and Minnesota.................... 163
Chapter XVII: Meet Associate Pastor Marcus Goodloe.................... 176
Chapter XVIII: Right Back Where We Started From.................... 180
Chapter XIX: Ministry on the Crow Reservation.................... 192
Chapter XX: Interim Ministry in Colorado.................... 209
Epilogue: Full Circle.................... 219
Family Tree for Charles Kiker and Patricia Culwell Kiker................... 223