What Were They Thinking?
18 Discernment
NOTHING, of course, is that easy. I was sent to Amarillo AFB as a UPT instructor and awarded the rank of Captain. Until the end of 1968 when the base closed, I trained pilots and sent them into the jaws of death.
And I met Bea Townsend.
Despite my conviction that God had spared me in Vietnam, I sank to my lowest level of depravity during those three years. I drank heavily. I indulged in the pleasures of the flesh. There were many willing women near the base, especially for an officer. Inside of a year, I failed to pass my physical. I did not see the interior of a cockpit during the remainder of my term and was passed over for promotion to Major, the kiss of death to any Air Force career ambitions I might have had, so I accepted separation from active duty when the base closed.
I met Bea at an AA meeting. I was too ashamed to attend one of the sessions that were common on base. I’d gone to a local meeting in Amarillo.
Bea was openly critical, though she’d voluntarily entered the program after a session in rehab. She challenged me as no woman had ever done. I found myself attending her church. I thought I would return to Indiana after my service was done but I was ashamed to face my father and my younger sister who had idolized me. I didn’t know what I could do that would be acceptable in the sight of God.
Bea recognized my plight and, through hours of prayer and Bible study, helped me to see that no one was beyond the saving grace of our Lord.
She proved that the day she proposed to me.
“John, you’re a good man and thoughtful. Perhaps you are thinking things through too much,” she said. She reached across the seat and placed her hand on mine as I drove her to dinner after church on Sunday.
“I’m a sinner, Bea. I’ve polluted this body. Every day, I crave the cigarettes and alcohol I’ve given up.”
“All we like sheep have gone astray,” she intoned. “I’ve thought about this a lot, John. I’m not pure either. We wouldn’t have met in an AA meeting if I was. Yes, that includes all the abominations of the body. I understand the cravings. Alcohol. Tobacco. Drugs. Sex. I’ve been clean and sober for twenty-two months. What I crave most is something you have in abundance. Love. Marry me, John. I will be your helper, mother of your children, strength when you are weak. But to love me, you have to love yourself. Show me you can forgive both of us our pasts and marry me.”
I changed course from our intended restaurant and drove to the shopping mall. I took Bea’s hand and led her to Zale’s to have an engagement ring fitted to her finger. We bought wedding bands at the same time.
“Bea Townsend, I am a wreck of a man but I am rebuilding my life on the sure foundation of our Lord. Take me as I am, as I accept you as you are. Be my wife, Bea, and I will be your husband, now and forever. I love you.”
“I love you, John Clinton. We will rebuild our lives together.”
My college degree, at the encouragement of my father, was in business and accounting. It had been a natural move for me to find a job in banking when I left the service. I quickly rose to Vice President at Citizens Bank, which meant I could help ranchers acquire cattle, cotton growers to get harvesters, and new oil barons to put wells on their property. Bea and I were married in January of 1971 and settled down in a small house near her parents. Almost exactly a year later, our daughter, Cassandra, was born.
Though Bea’s parents were enthusiastic about our marriage, they were not a good influence on our lives. Jim Townsend was a wildcatter and was always in debt. He drank hard and gambled big. There was constant pressure on me to loan him money for his next well—whether from the bank or from my personal funds. Dee was a waitress at a seedy bar and was known to not come home at night if Jim was drilling out of town.
Life was stressful for us and as much as we wanted a good family relationship, both Bea and I struggled not to be sucked down into her family’s morass.
“John, I promised to be your helpmate and supporter. I promised to be a good mother to our children,” Bea said as we lay together in bed. I knew all the joys of the flesh a woman can provide for a man and did my utmost to let Bea know what joys she could have from me. Even through her pregnancy, we had maintained a healthy sex life. After the birth of our daughter, we renewed our lovemaking with vigor, hoping to be blessed with another. “We need to leave Texas.”
I looked long and hard into the eyes of my wife and saw there the strain she was under.
“For the sake of our daughter,” I said. She nodded. “Let’s put the house up for sale and go back to Indiana.”
“Whither thou goest, I will go. Your people shall be my people and your God my God,” she said. Tears fell from her eyes as we made love again, knowing we would be leaving all her family and history behind.
My parents, bless their hearts, welcomed us with open arms and doted on little Cassandra. I didn’t need to worry about her being dropped or becoming intoxicated by simply breathing the same air as her grandparents. My sister Julia became an instant best friend for Bea, a willing babysitter, and a refuge while we looked for a home in Indiana.
My credentials got me a job at the St. Joe Valley Bank and Trust so we could truly settle down and decide where to live. My father, of course, had some ideas.
“How much are you flying, John?” he asked. Dad’s business had been forced to change with the winding down of the war effort. He’d managed a transition from avionics to general electronics and that industry was booming. We sat in his big study for this important father and son chat.
“After Vietnam… When I was young here and a part of CAP, I thought my flying would all be to aid and rescue people in trouble. I… I don’t even know how many people I killed. All the missions were against military targets… munitions dumps, supply routes, surface to air missiles… but not all the people were soldiers. Heavy bombs are indiscriminate. I… I can’t go back up there without hearing their cries.”
“You need to fly. Son, you went through some hard times when you came back. You sank to some level of depravity. But you and Bea have proven that you can rebuild. You needed to reclaim your life for the Lord despite the fact you had fallen. I’m telling you as the father who loves you more than anything on this earth, you need to reclaim the sky as well.”
It is not unusual for alcoholics to gain significant weight when they quit drinking and quit smoking. Bea caught me looking at myself in the bedroom mirror, dressed only in my boxers.
“Admiring yourself?” she laughed.
“Oh, Bea, I think I am twice the man you married.”
“I love every pound, but we have gained a little weight, haven’t we?” She immediately began taking off her clothes until she stood beside me in just her bra and panties as we looked in the mirror.
“You’ve always been a fine-looking woman, Bea, but I didn’t marry you for your looks. I just have been thinking about what my father said the other night. If I ever want to get back in a cockpit, I need to shed some pounds and make sure I can pass the general physical that’s required,” I sighed.
“I don’t want Cassie to grow up with this as the image of what she will be in the future,” she said. “We should go on a diet.”
“Not just diet but exercise, as well. I spend my days sitting at a desk and if this continues, I’ll need a bigger chair.”
“Do you really want to fly again, John?”
“I used to love to fly. When I was in Vietnam, I was afraid every time I went up. We lost so many. Over three hundred men flying the same craft I did, didn’t return home. And how many of the enemy we left dead or dying on the ground. I wonder if it is possible for me to go into the air again and touch the hand of God.”
“You will need a two-seater aircraft this time, my love. I plan to fly with you.”
“You don’t have to do this just because I want to.”
“I am your helpmate. This is something I can help with. I’ll go to the bookstore tomorrow and see if I can find something that will help us.”
And thus, our project began. Bea read that simply starving ourselves was not an effective diet plan. We parted from the heavy southern cooking we’d become accustomed to and began eating vegetables. Not to the exclusion of meats, but we increased the percentage of poultry and even began eating fish. I never quite developed a taste for fish, but Bea said once a week we would pretend to be Catholic and insisted that we eat fish. I was pretty sure that most of my Catholic acquaintances did not abstain from meat on Fridays any longer but our own Free Gospel Church members were often known to bend the rules against dancing and card playing. Perhaps that is a subject for later.
Fish once a week was only part of the new food regimen that Bea instituted for us. It included less fried food, fewer simple starches, and a lot more fruit. I carried an apple to work each day in the lunch that Bea began packing for me.
For my part, I located my age-old book of Air Force exercises that my recruiter had given me to prepare for Air Force Basic Training. There was no way either Bea or I could do the full regimen when we started. I modified it into a list of exercises that we would begin with and then how and when we would add others.
I would never again be in the physical condition I was in when I finished Basic but gradually, Bea and I lost weight and improved our health. I remembered again what a beautiful woman she had been when we first started dating as I saw her emerge from the weight she had carried since her pregnancy. Her progress inspired me and when I began to slacken, I reminded myself that it was not just for me that I wanted to improve but to support my wife and set a good example for my three-year-old daughter.
It was eighteen months after we began our regimen that I stood for the first time beside a Cessna 172 with a pilot instructor for my first flight in my quest to renew my license.
“Lord, my Savior, if it be thy will, bring my feet safely to the ground again that I may continue to serve you. Purge my soul of hate and fear. Hold those I love in your loving care. Lord, thy will be done.”
After my first flight, Bea was waiting for me with Cassandra in the flight office and we wept together.
Father was ill.
He was sixty-two and said he was ready to retire anyway, so he left the company he had managed for as long as I could remember. The doctor’s diagnosis was colon cancer.
“Did they check for a stuck doughnut?” my little sister Julia asked. “That seems much more likely to me.” Her smart aleck comment brought the first smiles we’d seen in a week. My poor little sister was single again, having divorced her second husband. She had her own physical and emotional problems to deal with. But her wit… We all inhaled at last.
“Now see here,” Dad said, “just because I’m old and feeble doesn’t mean I can’t take you across my knee.” I didn’t think my father had ever hit his daughters, even when they probably deserved it. “This is no death knell. They have some new treatments and I’ll be starting right after surgery. Unfortunately, they are in Fort Wayne where the specialist is. With quick surgery and the follow-up treatment I stand a better chance of surviving than John had in Vietnam. You just keep praying and I’ll keep fighting.”
I hadn’t thought of my Vietnam experience much since I started flying again. The difference between an F-105D and a Piper Cub is astounding. It had taken some frightening experiences before I was fully comfortable with the taildragger instead of the tricycle landing gear of the Cessna training planes I’d learned on. I’d come across a Cub for sale that needed some—well, a lot of—work and restoration and snapped it up for seven hundred dollars. The gentle hum of its engine and noise of the propellers was nothing at all like the supersonic jet I flew in the war.
It was peaceful.
Dad surprised me one week when he asked if I could take the next Monday off and fly him to Fort Wayne for his treatment. In all my time flying, I’d never flown with my father. In fact, for all his love of airplanes and the years he spent manufacturing parts, despite the fact that he owned two Cessnas that were almost exclusively used by CAP, I wasn’t sure he’d ever been in an airplane. I quickly agreed.
I’d lost enough weight that I was reasonably trim and Dad’s illness, surgery, and treatment had dropped his weight under two hundred pounds, so the payload wouldn’t be too much for the little yellow plane. The flightpath to Fort Wayne was less than a hundred miles so I was surprised that Dad wanted to start as early in the morning as he did. I made sure he was dressed warmly enough. Even though the cockpit was enclosed, it wasn’t necessarily warm.
Dad laid a county map on the table when I stopped to pick him up. We sat with a cup of coffee.
“I’d like to tour a couple of places on our way if you don’t mind. I’ve seen them from the ground, but not from the air.” He pointed out the route he wanted me to take and it was easy enough to navigate. We’d stay out of any flight patterns for the regional airport and would be flying low enough that he could get a good look at the ground. We went to the airstrip where the training planes were kept and took off. When the wheels left the ground, Dad whooped.
I flew the pattern he’d requested and he pointed out a couple of farms, the fields green with spring growth.
“Weeds,” he said. “Nothing is being planted there. It’s a shame the land is going to waste. You should think of buying out here.”
My father wanted me to become a farmer? Well, we’d see what the future would bring.
Cassandra was ready to start first grade when we bought the old farmhouse and eighty acres of fallow land that adjoined it. Dad’s tour from the air had been intended to show me where I could build a grass airstrip. He financed the purchase and my family moved into the farmhouse.
The first winter was hard. We discovered windows that leaked cold air, an inadequate furnace for the old house, and appliances that all needed to be replaced. Three men from the Free Gospel Church came out one Saturday and helped me install aluminum storm windows. The immediate cut in drafts through the house was incredible. The furnace, while still inadequate, could heat the lower level without running all the time. We only opened the vents in the upper level at night.
“Do you plan to farm, John?” Martin Sanders asked. He was a good friend and always willing to help another member of the church but I also found him to be a bit rigid in his beliefs. I read my Bible daily and sought God’s guidance in understanding what I read. Martin, like many members of our church and other churches I knew, tended to decide what he believed and then search out Bible verses to support it—ignoring any that did not.
“No, Martin. I’m not a farmer.”
“I could farm it for you.”
“Actually, I plan to level it and plant it in Kentucky Bluegrass. I’m going to land my plane out there.”
“Seems like a waste of good farmland but to each his own.”
In the end, Martin agreed to plow and drag the field after I’d removed the fence that ran down the center. I managed to seed it and hired a road crew with a steamroller to flatten it. Of course, the roller wasn’t steam powered but had a diesel engine. The old operator, however, had worked the various kinds of equipment for thirty years and still referred to ‘his baby’ as a steamroller. In a matter of a couple of hours, my airstrip was flattened and he was loaded back on a flatbed for the next job.
In the spring, it was wonderful to see the green sod appear.
The Toro riding mower I bought to trim the grass strip cost more than my airplane. I found, however, the time I spent each week mowing was as peaceful as my time in the air. I worked and received another promotion at the bank. I flew, taking my wife or my daughter up in the air and sometimes my father, who had made a recovery from his cancer after surgery and treatment. He was deemed to be in remission.
And I meditated on the Word of God.
Cassandra was twelve when what I believed no longer seemed adequate for what I had to face. She was invited to a party to celebrate the end of the school year. I was not opposed to my daughter playing with her peers. We took her to church twice a week so she could socialize with other children of true believers. After all, Proverbs 22:6 clearly says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” All I ever wanted was for my child to grow up and love the Lord. I saw no reason that she should go to a party with children that did not hold to that same faith.
“But, Daddy, my friends are going. Why can’t I?”
“Cassandra, you see your friends every week at church.”
“I don’t have friends at church,” she adamantly declared. I was shocked.
“What about your Sunday School friends?”
“I go to Sunday School to learn the Bible, not to have friends.”
“You need to make friends there and not go off with non-Christians to party,” I said. I seldom ever raised my voice and found it creeping upward as my daughter challenged me. I calmed myself and simply quoted scripture to her. “Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.” I knew I was in trouble when she didn’t back down but stared me straight in the eye and continued the quote.
“‘Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.’ Colossians 3:21.”
I didn’t relent. Not that moment. But I had learned something. My daughter paid attention. I was bothered she claimed not to have friends in our church. Granted some of the people were a bit harsh. When they were filled with the Holy Spirit, it tended to boil over and burn anyone it spilled upon. But they were good people. I didn’t think the children were so harsh. I hoped the new minister we had just called to our church would possibly breathe new life into our old spirits.
I searched my Bible with an open mind. I disciplined myself not to simply seek for verses that supported my viewpoint. Hebrews 5:14 said, “But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” Too often my friends were given milk instead of meat. We were fed only the verses that agreed with what we already believed. My daughter had just taught me that I needed to discern more carefully and examine what I believed to see if it stood up to the Word of God.
“John, would it be so bad if she was allowed to socialize with her friends from school?” Bea asked me. “They are twelve years old. They are not going to be drinking and having sex. I talked to Amanda Lenox to make sure the party was on the up-and-up. They will be chaperoning the party. Paul will cook. Amanda is a certified lifeguard and will be with them at the pool. And twenty of her classmates and friends from school will be there.”
I hung my head. Indeed, it was an innocent thing. They were young. What could happen?
“John, this is Marilyn Frost,” said the voice on the phone. “I understand Cassie is also invited to the party at the Lenoxes’ tomorrow. I just thought I’d let you know that we are going that way as well and would be happy to pick her up since it is on the way.”
I mark that phone call as the beginning of the endless spiral that brought me eventually to hold a granddaughter in my arms that I knew for a fact was not the seed of my daughter’s husband.
And I loved her.
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