Keith Welch: Family skeletons
We probably all have individuals in our families who we either do not talk about much or we speak of them in terms of their dysfunction. We may hope and pray they will change, but mostly we know they won’t. It does make for interesting family genealogies.
My brother, Glenn, made a trip down to Kentucky to search some Welch family history and found out our relatives were moonshiners.
An uncle in Mishawaka, Indiana worked as a draftsman in an engineering company. He was a very proficient and detailed draftsman, but he was also an alcoholic, which led to several firings and re-hiring. He also dyed his whitened hair jet black and it looked like he was wearing shoe polish.
My cousin was kidnapped right in her own front yard on her birthday. She was molested for several days when she was a few years old. When the police found her and asked her how old she was, she said she’d be 4 when she got home. I believe she may be a lesbian today because of this experience. It is difficult for her to trust men today.
Two cousins in Elkhart, Indiana, enlisted in the U.S. Army in the late '60s. When they returned, they had two large duffle bags filled with Marianna leaves. They poured out the duffle bags in my grandma’s basement to dry them out and then left the house.
When my grandma went down to the basement in her bare feet to do the laundry she felt something beneath her feet. She discovered what it was and called a Salvation Army Lieutenant to figure out what to do about it.
The lieutenant gathered up all the Marianna leaves in a container and took it to the police station. When he got there with the container, the police officer asked him where he got it. He refused to tell them even with the threat of being locked up. When my cousins found out the leaves were gone, they were pretty mad.
Later these two cousins robbed a gun store and were almost immediately captured. The police asked what they had planned to do with the weapons. One of them responded rather stupidly and replied, “If someone tried to stop us we were going to shoot them.”
We have one cousin who became pregnant before she was married. My mom pretty much told her that is not the Christian order of becoming pregnant before marriage.
Someone broke into the old Salvation Army church building in Mishawaka, Indiana, by climbing through the old coal chute. We enter the building startling both the kid thief and my dad. He had taken the birthday plastic cake bank loaded with world service coins from Sunday’s collections. The kid ran and opened the second-story window ready to jump as my dad was in hot pursuit. As the kid was about to jump, my dad planted his shoe on the kid’s bottom and gave him a hard boot out the window. The thief landed so hard on the ground below that the plastic cake exploded sending all the coins scattered across the ground. The kid took off and we spent the afternoon collecting the coins.
My dad’s dad chewed tobacco and spit it on the flower in front of his house. He said it made the flowers grow.
Scripture states:“Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the LORD.” And You forgave me! All my guilt is gone.” (Psalm 32:5: NLT2) and “Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you; but I will instruct you in the good and right way.” 1 Samuel 12:23 (NASB77)
A few more skeletons are dangling from the Welch closet, but I think I will just close the door for now before it becomes too personal.
— Keith J. Welch is a resident of Holland. He has an MFA in creative writing and is a retired Salvation Army Major. Contact him at Keith.welch16@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Keith Welch: Family skeletons
