Dr. R Leonard Carroll - Rural Odyssey: Growing up in the Country. Memories of Family, Faith, and Secrets

RURAL ODYSSEY:
Growing Up in the Country

RURAL ODYSSEY
Growing Up in the Country

Memories of Family, Faith, and Secrets

Dr. RL Carroll

2018 Dr. RL Carroll

RURAL ODYSSEY:

Growing Up in the Country

Memories of Family, Faith, and Secrets

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018940973

ISBN 978-1-595556684 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-595556103 (Hardbound)

ISBN 978-1-595557070 (eBook)

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P ROLOGUE

I do not believe in coincidences. In fact in the Hebrew language there is no word for coincidence. God opens and closes doors in our lives. So if there is a choice between miracle and coincidence, miracle wins out every time. Not until I read Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir of a family and culture in crisis by J.D Vance, did I realize I had a similar but different story.

One definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If you dont know your family history and you dont learn from it, youre destined to repeat it. In essence this is my family history and my history of growing up in the country. No one has ever known most of it or taken the time to record it. This is my story and I hope by relating it, some can learn from or avoid certain things that have happened to me. My family history and story are in many ways similar to Mr. Vances story. The main differences lie in two categories. One of them is the secrets that were kept by my family and most other families I grew up with. The second is that basic Pentecostal fundamentalist religious beliefs were present.

My story commences with growing up in South Carolina for my first ten years before moving to Tennessee where I lived for fifty-four years (except for two years spent in the Army at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama). Then I moved to rural Florida where I have lived and worked for the past eleven years. Even though the states changed and I grew older, the stories remained the same, as do the secrets and my religious faith. I have spent the past forty-one years as a board-certified general surgeon with almost all of the time being spent in rural America. Im now seventy-five years old and have had a very full and eventful life. These are my memories and may not be correct in all details, but it is how I remember them. My faith remains strong, though it has wavered many times throughout my life as it has with others. This is highlighted in many of the memories I have and in the people that surrounded me.

Looking back, most of the regions I grew up in had no people of color. I did not consider this to be an advantage or hindrance as much as a mere fact of growing up. Others may disagree, but I do not feel this made a difference in the way I was raised or in my relationship to people throughout my entire life. Even after we have moved to Florida, I found we were still in the country. In fact, if you cut the crust off the state of Florida, there is nothing left but country. I now live in an area that is best described as being 50 percent Hispanic, many of whom are illegal, and most speak very little English. Approximately 25 percent of the population are African-American (I grew up calling them blacks), and the other 25 percent are white like me.

Two things have been consistent in my life and I also believe in rural Americafaith and secrets. My definition of faith is taken from Hebrews 11: 1 which states, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. A secret is defined as something kept from the knowledge of others or shared only confidentially with a few. I was always warned that telling secrets was taboo. Im going to tell a lot of them. I guess they will remain a secret to those dont read the book. I have always been careful when I picked friends, and I dont think it will make any difference to most of them. I have one friend who says, If you cant see it until you see it, youll never see it. I wholeheartedly agree. I think this is true of both faith and secrets.

I came up with a brilliant bibliography for my facts- none. I learned how to reference material when I began writing reports and papers in high school. I was told in my residency that I needed to be published. It was understood that my work must have a bibliography. But I also learned that I can come up with articles to prove the exact opposite of what the facts really are. You can come up with your own bibliography to prove your own facts. I have mine. One study shows that less than 2 percent of readers ever look at bibliographies, 1015 percent know in general what bibliographies are, and the other 8085 percent wonder what the little numbers represent.

Peter, my youngest son who recently passed away, used to say, Daddy, tell me a story about when you were a little boy. At the encouragement of my family, my students, and my friends, I decided to tell the stories. Dale Gentry, a prophetic minister and a friend, gave me the following words: I have set you like a lily in the midst of a valley. There is an attraction about your life that people are drawn to. In the midst of what looks like a desolate situation, you are always going to become like the lily that shines forth. I have made your tongue like the pen of a ready writer there are times when you say words and it comes like a story in peoples lives and gives them hope. There is a book inside of you. If you will speak the book, it will be written. You must tell the stories and peoples faith in life will get hope. You are at the right time and place for a Holy Ghost invasion.

Here are the stories

C ONTENTS

M y fathers family came from the northern portion of the state of Georgia. My dads father was Amer Jackson Carroll and his identical twin brother was Amos Johnson Carroll. According to oral history, both men were considered to be wealthy and owned the entire upper half of the state of Georgia (an exaggeration Im sure) until they started drinking whiskey. They eventually became alcoholics and lost it all, wealth and land.

My grandfather Amer and his wife Bertie Belle Cochran along with their children moved from Franklin County, Georgia, to Greenville, South Carolina. At an earlier time, his brother Amos had moved to Greenville to find work in the cotton mill there. The identical twins actually lived around the corner from each other in Dunean, the mill town surrounding the J. P. Stevens Dunean Textile Plant in Greenville. Amos had found work there in the cotton or textile mill for himself and for most of the members of his and his brothers family. Even when the children grew up and married, they usually lived within a few blocks of each other. All the houses in the mill village were architecturally laid out the same. I heard many stories about fights at work and at home in this close-knit area. They were usually alcohol-related. At home everyone could tell what room the disputes were in because of the sameness and closeness of the houses.