Stories from Grandma II- Toddler & Preschool

When Keith was about two years old he talked so plain. My Mother described his speech as being “brickle” We belonged to North Dallas Christian Church. A lot of adults liked to get Keith talking to them, but he was especially fond of Lester Chambers, who was an elder in the Church. One Sunday we all got in the car and with a flash Keith was out of the car running back to the Church. Jack started after him and when he caught up with him Keith, said” I have to shake hands with Lester.” Jack had to find Lester before Keith would give up.



Lester’s wife, Sue taught Keith in Sunday school when he was almost three years old. She told me that they couldn’t find Keith’s little story leaflet a few minutes after she had handed them out. She asked Keith what happened to it and he said, “I ate it.” Sue had to tell me that over and over.



Our friends DeWayne & Barbara Wright had a little girl the same age as Keith. When they were one year old they were in the nursery and they bit each other. Keith had her teeth marks on his cheek and she had his on the corner of her mouth and check.



Barbara was another one of Keith’s teacher when he was three. We took him and Brenda over to Verna & Wayne’s on a Sunday not too long before Kent was born. On the way, Keith was sitting on the front seat with my sunglasses on. One of us asked him what his Sunday school lesson was about. He told us in detail... almost word for word the colorful way Barbara would have told the story of Adam and Eve. At the end he said, “God told Eve she would have babies and He told Adam he would have to work fort a living and “shaking his finger” he said that God told that old serpent he would have to crawl on his belly in the dust the rest of his days!” I wished so much that I had a movie camera to record it, but in my mind I can see and hear him so clearly it doesn’t seem possible that it was over 47 years ago.



Keith was a cowboy at heart and he rode endless miles on his stick horse around the house when he was three and four. With the record played blaring out “Onward Christian Soldiers” while he rode. Of course he kept up the Cowboy life through High School and beyond riding in the Junior Rodeo in Mena and another rodeo in New Mexico. Everytime he rode, I wished I had never encouraged him to be a cowboy when he was little, but thank God he was never seriously hurt!