Technically, I did not break my neck, but it sure seem like it. The neck bones are interlocked and I had one of them twisted out of the lock position and could not move my head. It was 1950 and I was in the third grade. The two of us were wrestling in the class room before class started and he had a neck hold on me and was squeezing hard when something snapped. The teacher broke us up and I knew that something bad was wrong because I could not straighten my head or move it.

Mom rushed to the school and took me to a chiropractor. The doctor checked me out and then with both hands firmly grasped my head and snapped it back into place. He explained how the bones were interlocked and what had happened. He then explained that now that the damage was done, it would be very easy for the same thing to happen again. There was to be no more wrestling for me. I had to start learning how to avoid fights, at least the hand to hand type. It was hard for years afterward to walk away from bullies and be called names and I guess in some ways the experiences help me to become a loner or at least not a follower. I chose my friends carefully and avoided rough groups and gangs.

Rock fights were common on the school play ground and I seemed to always be the one that threw the rock that hurt someone. The playground was on the side of a steep hill and we would throw rocks over the hill at each other without being able to see where the rocks landed. As fate would have it, I hit someone in the head.

I almost lost an eye that year or the next I am not sure. We were breaking off old dried weeds and throwing them like spears. I was running and jumping over ditches when I fell and landed on what was left in the ground from one of the broken weeds. The dried stalk went in just above my eye ball below my eye brow. I had a scar there for a long time. All this did not slow me down and it is a miracle that I survived my child hood days.

Another close call came that winter, we were sledding and as always looking for the steepest hills. We would run and jump on the sled to get more speed. I was going fast and did not have much control when a stump got in my way. I stopped cold with my head right in the middle of that stump. It knocked me out cold for several minutes. I think that this is when I learned that my head was the toughest part of me, I also seemed to be top heavy. Any time I took a fall I seemed to always land on my head. A few years later when we were living in Union Town, Kentucky, they were clearing the school grounds and had a large pile of timber stacked up. We were climbing on it and I fell from one of the large limbs sticking out of the pile, right on my head.

I also stepped on my share of rusty nails. I soon learned that if there were old boards laying around with nails, I would find them. Tetanus shots were common for me. I was twelve when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and it was not a minute too soon. Without his protection I am sure that I would have not made it to age twenty. Although I have taken many falls, I have never had a broken bone and the out of place neck bone was the closest that I came.

Victory Baptist Church was only two blocks from where we lived in Providence and like most kids I spent most of my time in church on the back pew. I was not even aware that I was listening to the sermon that Sunday, but when the invitation came at the end of the service I almost ran down the isle. I knew from that day forward that God would be with me whatever I would be facing in the future.