Disaster Among the Heavens - Don E Peavy Sr (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

Disaster Among the Heavens


Don E. Peavy, Sr.


Published in 2009 by YouWriteOn.com


Copyright  Don E. Peavy, Sr.

First Edition


The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.


All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the author, nor otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.


Published by YouWriteOn.com


This work is dedicated to Dr. James N. Newcomer and Dr. Betsy Colquitt, professors of English at Texas Christian University, who taught me the craft of creative writing and gave me the hope that I might someday produce a manuscript worthy of being called a novel.
PREFACE


In reconstructing this tantalizing tale, I have followed the long and honoured tradition of historians who have had the difficult task of recalling speeches and events that no one else could recall of which Thucydides perhaps is the progenitor. The gospel writers are probably the most apt pupils. For instance, I have always been puzzled by the rendition of Jesus’ sayings in Mark 14:32-42. If Peter, James and John were asleep, then how do we know what Jesus said while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane? Did Jesus after his resurrection dictate his memoirs to the disciples, or did some angel record all these events for later posterity?
And what about the innocuous comment in Matthew 9:21 by the woman with the issue of blood who to herself says, “If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well.” How is it possible that someone observing this woman could know what she said to herself? Well, we need not trouble ourselves with such wondering any longer for the academy has come up with an answer.
In their book, Luke and Scripture: The Function of Sacred Tradition in Luke-Acts, Craig A. Evans and James A. Sanders present an enlightening view of how scripture was composed in the grand tradition of history writing for that period, “Luke rewrote the story of Jesus much as Josephus rewrote Israel’s sacred history,” (p.4). Taking this view a step further, Marion L. Soards writes in The Speeches in Acts: Their Content, Context, and Concerns that “the speeches in Acts were Luke’s own compositions,” (p.8); and when the speech could not be elicited from listeners, Luke drafted a speech that would have been appropriate for the occasion (p.9).
Thus, when I relate matters which happened in private and conversations to which there were no apparent listeners, readers should not take these matters as attacks on my credibility – I am but following a well-charted path of the writing of history and is not the history of America as sacred as that of Israel?
Another matter of equal importance must be established here to aid the reader in perusing this historical narrative. I fought long and hard with my Editor for the right to present these characters without names. There was a time in our history when names were important. That changed, however, when the Bard asked via Juliet, “What's in a name?” And so, parents began to name their children without any concern or forethought as to the meaning of names, even going so far as to name a boy “Sue.” Thus, were I to use names in this historical presentation, I would mislead the reader into thinking there was some significance to that name and the reader might be led down a rabbit trail that did not lead to a carrot! Moreover, our names are not as important as what it is we do and this shift was occurring about the time the events recorded here were securing a place in historicity.
One final observation, writers of history must make choices in the presentation of materials of the past to audiences of the present. I have made choices here on two primary matters. First, literary critics might take exception to the lack of descriptions and scenic development in this work. I remind them that this is a historical narrative. I am a disciple of Edgar Allan Poe who taught that a good reading is one that can be consumed in one sitting. I have endeavoured to demonstrate that I am an apt pupil and have thus avoided describing the color of grass and giving the weights and measures of people unless they are germane to the narrative. After all, does anyone truly know how Jesus Christ looked?
Secondly, the Nixon tapes and the police chronicles reveal that politicians and those in law enforcement are not as articulate behind closed doors as they are in the light of cameras and the eyes of the public. Both politicians and law enforcement personnel equate power and prestige with the use of profanity and vulgarity. A similar mentality prevails among those who write of and about Blacks. A look at Broadway shows such as “Bubbling Brown Sugar,” “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide...,” any of the movies and recordings of Eddie Murphy or writings of bell hooks will illustrate with crystal clarity the truth of my observation.
I have made the choice to avoid where possible profanity and vulgarity, as well as dialects and regional nuances. I have also decided not to point out to the reader where I have edited the language of a speaker for to do so would be too distracting. Suffice it to say that the manuscripts reviewed for this historical drama were replete with profanity and vulgarity to such an extent that I had to bathe three times in the River Ganges, three times in the River Jordan, and once in the Hot Springs of Arkansas to cleanse myself. Hopefully, you will appreciate these choices and find that they have enhanced your understanding of a slice of the pie of American history without diminishing the flavour of its heroes.


Chapter 1


Childhood is supposed to be a time of joy and thrills, not terror. And yet, the latter is what gripped me as I sat with my family in our living room around our sole AM radio to hear the threatening words. I was but six years of age at the time and should have been listening to The Little Rascals or Amos and Andy, not these words which so terrorized my family and me.
“We will bury your grandchildren!” declared Khrushchev in 1956 as he shook his fists at an unrepentant United States of America while he stood at the podium of the United Nations. It was a feat unmatched in the annals of international détente. That this old full-figured man could straddle a Russian Bear and look to America1 with clenched fists raised so high they almost touched the sky and not fall was worthy of an Olympian gold. Like E.F. Hutton, when Khrushchev spoke, the world listened, and the world listened as Khrushchev prophesied the victory of communism over democracy.
The feeling which seized me at the time has never been surpassed, though it was matched on the date of that terrible tragedy in Dallas, Texas when the glow of Camelot was extinguished by the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Even the fear and anxiety that hold us, at times in a paralysing grip since September 11, cannot reach the height of terror I suffered on those two infamous days when I was brought to the edge of the abyss and was about to be tossed over into its fiery depths as if I too were a “Sinner in the hand of an angry God.”
For it was on that dark day in Dallas when the news came over the school public address system at my elementary school and forced me to tears. Mrs. Dixie Bell tried to console me as well as the other members of my class, but I was especially distraught so she took me to the nurse’s office.
A balding, short, stocky nurse in a much used and tattered uniform guided me to a small chair and instructed me to sit down. She placed rough and time-scarred hands on my shoulder and tried to mimic gentleness when she asked, “You want me to call your mom?”
“I don’t wanna go Africa,” I cried.
“Africa?” She asked as she sat next to me. “Who’s sending you to Africa?”
“Nixon …” It was difficult for me to say the name. “Nixon will now be President and he will send us colored people back to Africa.”
The nurse handed me a tissue and continued to question and console me. She was able to get me calmed down long enough for me to explain that I had heard during the Kennedy/Nixon election campaign that if Nixon won the election he was going to send all Negroes back to Africa. The nurse did her best to explain the presidential succession policy to me and eventually she was able to calm me down and to assure me that I would not be joining Tarzan in Africa. I hoped she was right. I, along with my family, hoped because we could do nothing more.
“We will bury your grandchildren,” he had said. Our grandparents trembled as they invested our inheritances in a wrestling match between this Russian bear and a handsome young knight who felt more comfortable in a vineyard than in the corridors of power. No wonder, then, that our grandparents looked on anxiously as their champion, locked in a bear hug, fought against all odds to be the first to come in from the cold.
Fortunately for us, Nikita S. Khrushchev, like so many others who have stood behind the podium of politics, was a better politician than prophet. History would make his words ring hollow. Like his peers, Khrushchev failed to count the costs of his promise. In the jargon of a bygone generation -- he had written a check which his grandchildren could not cash. And now, the barbarians were gathered at the gate of the citadel of the USSR demanding payment. Unable to pay, Khrushchev’s grandchildren, as if they were an American savings and loan of the eighties, declared bankruptcy and the words of their forebear clashed against the walls of absurdity and collapsed beneath the rubble of the once-iron curtain which had caged the bear in.
Ironically we, the grandchildren whose death notices had been premature, now buried Khrushchev and all those who had placed their bets on the Russian Bear. Oh happy day! It was neither a bad day nor a good day. It was a happy day. It was a day which will long live in fame -- a day on which an elder statesman had ascended from Death Valley Days to life atop the mountain of power and had completed the work first begun by America’s young knight. This statesman, like Joshua at Jericho, had looked at the walls of communism and shouted, “Mr. Premier, tear down these walls!” And lo, the walls came crumbling down!
It was the shout heard around the world and it still reverberated in the