{"id":65435,"date":"2015-11-30T22:16:44","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T22:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=65435"},"modified":"2015-11-30T22:16:44","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T22:16:44","slug":"stories-from-jim-jones-childhood","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=65435","title":{"rendered":"Stories from Jim Jones’ Childhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>Section DDDD<\/p>\n

[Untitled]<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Pastor Jim was very young and wise beyond his years, he developed a great vexation with his father who was a semi-invalid deeply enamored of the local pool hall and the habitu\u00e9s there whom he regularly trounced in endless games of chance.<\/p>\n

I, working early and late against the fearsome odds of the Great Depression to support the family and to get on with young Jim\u2019s College fund, gave little attention to the heat being generated over the issue until \u2013<\/p>\n

One evening hurrying down an alley to the grocery, I collided with a neighbor in the half dusk \u2013 hanging over the back fence of the pool hall, peering into the dusk \u2013 \u201cMy word!\u201d I groaned. \u201cWhat\u2019s up?\u201d Receiving no reply I took my place beside him, hastily scrutinizing the area in the direction of his case. \u201cNever have I seen the likes before as ever expect to see the likes again,\u201d said he, excitedly. \u201cThree weeks ago, it was, and little Jim sittin\u2019 crosslegged \u2013 in that very spot \u2013 surrounded by rats big as cats \u2013 where rats have never been before.\u201d He seized my arm in iron grip and rasped, \u201cListening they wuz to every word he said. Did ye ever see a varmint listen, Mrs. Jones? Well, it was a hunnert or so, listenin\u2019, and little Jim was saying: \u2018Friends! The hour has struck. You must chew this foundation from under that den of in\u2013 in-ee-quit-us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Mine informant sprang uncomfortably close to my ear and hissed, \u201cOh you will not see them, Mrs. Jones, only the big holes, and the mounds of sawdust beneath, and the timbers set under the sagging corners, and perhaps you have heard how ol\u2019 Jarbon was bitten to the bone a week ago, when he struck at a rat, and the floor giving way under Big Jim Jones\u2019 chair and \u2018tis a wonder his back was not broken\u2026 and the urine \u2013\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cThe what?\u201d I whispered, \u201csurely he didn\u2019t \u2013\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cNo! No!\u201d shrieked my informant, \u201ctwas only the way of rats trompin\u2019 vituals, and Baldy, God rest his soul, never had a nose for smellin\u2019 \u2013 Remember: he was slapped down twice by a couple of strangers who found rat pellets in the ham sandwiches he sold \u2018em. Ah! Yes! It\u2019s the nature of living things to eat, heat, and excrete as they shoulda knowed, but it all started when little Jim set right there a sayin\u2019 to them rodents, \u201cFriends! The hour has struck.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a stirring of many bodies, a mere whisper sound in the tall grass and a rasping of many teeth on wood, a spooky sort of symphony, well suited to the night. Mine informant stiffened and resumed his darker stance, gazing fixedly at the pool hall.<\/p>\n

Little fingers smuggled into mine. Lady Bug (his little dog) reared her soft white body between us. Little Jim said: \u201cI have a feeling God is very fond of nights like these. No! It is not a feeling really, but in knowing,\u201d said he pensively. \u201cYes! A knowing that has been going on a long, long time, when worlds were different than this one, and we were not much different than new.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Section FFFF<\/p>\n

The old house<\/strong><\/p>\n

There was an abandoned house on the lot where the starving chickens have been penned. It sat close to the sidewalk on long walk. The outbuilding where the chickens had roosted was not visible from the walk or from the inside of the old house because of the tall weeds and undergrowth that covered the lot.<\/p>\n

The timber of the old house was not showing a lot of warp and twist or others signs of disrepair. The baseboards for no indication that paint had never been applied on either interior or exterior. The roof had not leaked at the rate one would expect of such a neglected place, and no part of the floor was broken or gone.<\/p>\n

There was an atmosphere of mystery about the place and a sort of mute appeal that was not easy to shake off. Villagers reported from time to time the old house was haunted. Young fry avoided it for the most part except when young Jim led the foray. It must be admitted that he feared neither gods nor devils, or the quick or the dead. I on the other hand had many fears, all of them confined to anxiety about young Jim\u2019s safety and the safety of the animals of our family and in the town which (illegible) much like children and were dependent upon young Jim and I for guidance and assistance when in trouble just like children.<\/p>\n

Uppermost in my mind with the suspicion that transients might be using the old house for a way station. There were numerous in the depths of depression. Also the rural tracks were close by, and switching was underway both day and night. My imaginings grew like green bay tree, whispering: \u201cyou know how \u2018tis with the lad. Wherever riddle or mystery is there he will be also,\u201d or \u201cBeware! Among those knights of the road could be blood-letters, child molesters, kidnappers, all driven insane by the crucial economic stress of these times.\u201d Inspired by these whisperings, I can always flag my exhausted flesh and depressing my investigation of any place or thing that might pose a threat to me and mine or any other person or any other living thing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d creep through the thicket often to check the old house from stem to stern, for signs of occupancy, and finding none, I would sit on my bottom on the floor, lean against the wall, and envision all the folks who may have lived there, wondering if old houses missed all the folk it has sheltered, and all those familiar voices that have drifted into the limbo of its past.<\/p>\n

I was equally intrigued by old privies sat in the middle of pastures were hidden in dark ravines were houses once stood.<\/p>\n

The most fascinating of these old privies I have encountered on a trip from Indiana to Renfro Valley and Kentucky some years later. Renfro Was the birthplace of the old barn dance, folk music and homespun humor like ol\u2019 Hee Haw now showing on TV. I yelled at my lady friend who was my relief driver on that drive to halt the car and I lit out across that pasture with my camera hammering me in the back every leap I took. Cows along on the way surveyed me questioningly and return to their grazing.<\/p>\n

A beautiful rose bush laden with crimson bloom leaned against the old structure with its feelers rocking in the soft breeze as it reached for the roof. A cluster of roses was draped over the sagging door which stood open just enough to admit a person and afforded good luck at the Sears and Roebuck catalog, neatly placed beside the hole in the seat platform. The seat and the floor was immaculately clean and spang in the center of the floor a fat rattler was coiled. Dressed in his new skin, burnished and bright, the snake did not so much as shake its tail at me, nor did it stir when I clicked the camera. That picture was a masterpiece. I cherished it for years.<\/p>\n

As I reluctantly turned to retrace my steps back to the car, another rattler hurried toward me on the path. It surged aside to avoid my feet and disappeared through the sagging door of the old privy. I rejoined my friend in the car. After a few miles of silence she said, \u201cAll these years I have known you and I\u2019ll never really know you, I reckon. So, what\u2019s with the old privy? Something exciting like never happens to other people, I suppose?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe so, maybe no,\u201d I mumbled and let the matter rest there.<\/p>\n

To return to the empty house along the long walk from time to time of very a witty in a very young boy had appeared there. Young Jim had called on her and offered to get her groceries etc. He had said she had acted very standoffish as she did to me when I followed up his offer with another of my own. Neighbors said the boy in the woman always arrived at night and departed the same way. None new by what means they had come or gone, since no strangers had visited them or been seen around the place.<\/p>\n

In due course the neighbors also reported that the boy and the woman had been there some weeks before Jim had found the starving chickens, but she had gone, they said, in the same mysterious fashion as she had come. She never came again after that incident in a speech I had prepared for her about such conduct with chickens was therefore never delivered.<\/p>\n

It was little consolation to me the young Jim\u2019s father was always in town where Jim could easily find him if in trouble. Big Jim was usually at the pool room trouncing his associates in games of chance and strangely it very seldom happened that he chanced to lose a game of chance but when he did he would fly into a towering rage that shook the town and bid fair to cause him to drop dead in his tracks. Big Jim was far from while physically. Fortunately he was well-liked and his eccentricities were sympathetically condoned by all.<\/p>\n

It might be said, however, that his chance of keeping up with the activities of young Jim was less likely than would have been the case had he tried to stroke the top knot of a hummingbird. Furthermore Jim Babe would not into the pool room no matter what occurred for he had harbored a towering resentment of the place from infancy. \u201cGrown men, ol\u2019 blokes just a settin\u2019,\u201d Jimba would snort in his peaks [piques] of high drudgeon against the old poolroom. \u201cJust a settin\u2019 and a tittering and telling nasty jokes, old toothless, bald ones, trying to tease me,\u201d he\u2019d yell, warming to his subject, \u201cand eyeing women, like (illegible), making stupid remarks, not enough sense among \u2018em to even do nothing well. No! Not even to spit off themselves.\u201d Following such great rages, young Jim could be found sitting among the big rats behind the pool hall instructing them, \u201cYou can do it, boys and girls. Just look at those large piles of sawdust from the work of your teeth, little brothers. It cannot be long now until you have chewed the floor out from under them, but when you work on the front foundation, be sure you work under the floor, so the ol\u2019 fools will not try to shoot or poison you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once as I came down the alley from the grocery at dusk, I heard the poolroom proprietor shrieking to his clientele. It was summer, and the back doors of the old landmark was opened to admit the west winds which blow intermittently affording small respite to the sweltering townfolk.<\/p>\n

Said the proprietor, \u201cBoys, if these darn rats don\u2019t clear out, not a splinter will be standing come winter to mark the spot where this pool hall stood.\u201d<\/p>\n

I heard a musical tee-hee coming from a sagging fence corner behind the old edifice. Squinting against the rapidly falling dusk, I crept closer and there sat young Jim, half naked, except for his shorts, sitting atop a corner fence post, which was creaking under his weight. Hugging himself, he was, and chanting in a language foreign to me, but, judging from the animated tossing of the grasses in the lot, I realize that the small workers below hadn\u2019t missed a syllable of his jargon. I edged up a little closer keeping in the shadows of a big tree, trying to figure out how that fencepost maintained its 45\u00b0 angle, doing a wide smooth circle as it moved by some invisible mechanical device, whilst topped off by the small naked nymphs, gittering about and making joyful noises and yet writing the dime post as if it were a horse expertly.<\/p>\n

I often crept up to spy on young Jim when he was unaware, just to admire the bronze of a sturdy body and note little rivulets of sweat coursing down making pale pads to the dust he had gathered in his wanderings. And as always having finished his immediate involvement with happenstance, he spoke without turning his head in my direction: \u201cYou needn\u2019t be a cat-footin\u2019, mom. I always know who is around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grinning widely, I sauntered on down the alley toward home and the preparation of the evening meal. The air was balmy now. The soft breeze came more regularly. I was tempted to dilly dally in hope the young Jim would come along with me and relate the incidents of his day. He didn\u2019t. A stockman who was driving a couple of head of cattle toward me there in the narrow alley. \u201cWatch out for that bull, Mrs. Jones,\u201d he squalled. \u201cHe\u2019s a mean one.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s why,\u201d said I grumpily. \u201cWhatcha mean?\u201d said he suspiciously. \u201cI mean you should never have owned an animal of any kind, Elmer. If he\u2019s mean, it\u2019s because you never could see any good in him. All he could see was money, Elmer.\u201d I groaned as I rubbed noses with the bull and scratched his ears, encrusted with the blood from many fly bites. \u201cBuy some spray for these ears, and spray \u2018em, do you hear me? And to h___ with the cost of it. You can afford it.\u201d I snapped angrily.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I hear ye. I ain\u2019t deef, whatever else you think I am. I\u2019ll spray \u2018em In the morning.\u201d \u201cSpray \u2018em tonight,\u201d I snapped. \u201cFlies will be at \u2018em again at daybreak unless ye do and I just hope I never have to get as mad as I\u2019m going to be if that spray is not on these cows by daybreak.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can you see fly bites when it\u2019s almost dark,\u201d he growled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith these fingers I feel \u2018em, man,\u201d I roared, \u201cand I can feel abuse of animals even if I was ten years dead. You know that! And don\u2019t you tell yourself these cows are not fly bitten! Doncha dare! Hear me?\u201d said I.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I hear you, I\u2019ve got no more ear trouble since you forced me to see a specialist. Cost me $100, too \u2013 damn thief, he was, for God\u2019s sakes\u2013 I\u2019ll spray \u2018em tonight.\u201d He moaned.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour cows, Elmer, remember your cows. Not your ears.\u201d I grinned and started to continue on my way.<\/p>\n

He took off his battered hat, scratched his head vigorously, and remarked, \u201cYou get me so rattled, Mrs. Jones, I swear I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m plowing or disking. You are always after me about the way I do my beasties. I don\u2019t know why I like you. I don\u2019t know why anybody likes you. Be damned if I do. And I sure don\u2019t know why me and all the rest does what you tell us to do every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, Elmer,\u201d I drawled in my most elongated southern accent, \u201c\u2019twixt me and three, \u2018taint \u2018cause they like me, \u2018tis \u2018cause what I tell \u2018em is solid sound sense, and having done what I say to do, they feel so much better inside, more like they\u2019ve befriended themselves, ye know. And by the way, rub some salve on those bites before ye spray \u2018em. Do it just before daylight in the morning. Hear?\u201d said I.<\/p>\n

\u201cCourse I hear, like I told you before. Okay, I\u2019ll do it,\u201d snapped he.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cows, Elmer! Not your ears. Mind you, now.\u201d I chanted briskly and hurried past him, mindful once more of the many tasks awaiting me at home. Young Jim skipped past me, a sprite in the night. I was often caught up, rather sadly to, in the thought that he was not of this world, and that neither world held mystery for him. Where learned churchmen expounded upon profundity, his wisdom was so unusual, so apart from the reasoning of this world. At those times I would vow within myself to live forever to safeguard him from all harshness and harm at the hands of the unlearned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Section DDDD [Untitled] When Pastor Jim was very young and wise beyond his years, he developed a great vexation with his father who was a semi-invalid deeply enamored of the local pool hall and the habitu\u00e9s there whom he regularly trounced in endless games of chance. I, working early and late against the fearsome odds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":62772,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-65435","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/65435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/65435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65436,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/65435\/revisions\/65436"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}