My wonderful granddaughter Caylie got
married recently. She and Tim have been hanging around together for a long
time. They are both still in college, and that can be a problem financially,
but they are both very hard workers and they are having a grand time.
Tim is a
swimmer. Six years ago, he was a big time swimmer. He swam every day, five
hours per day, with an elite swim team full of olympic hopefuls. He had the
second fastest time in the country in the mile, somewhere around fifteen
minutes. (A fifteen minute mile is a pretty fast walking pace, in case you
haven’t tried that.) Also on Tim’s elite swim team were two little girls, ages
eight and nine. They were already, at their tender ages, showing great promise
for the future, and have continued that grueling training pace to the present.
I feel certain that six years ago, Tim was their hero.
The Olympic trials were looming. But as
bad luck would have it, Tim had a serious allergic reaction to chlorine in
swimming pool water, and had to drop out. Tim manages to stay in good shape,
and swims when he can in lake competitions, but the world class level at which
he had been swimming had to go by the wayside.
Last summer, Tim and Caylie borrowed my
fourteen foot aluminum boat. They floated from Lake DeGray to the Ouachita
River Bridge near Arkadelphia, Arkansas. That’s a pretty solid half day
float. I drove down to pick them up, and when I was crossing the bridge,
I could see they had missed the take-out ramp. They floated by on the far side
of the river, and when they saw it, they were already well past.
The lakes were releasing a lot of water
due to heavy spring rains, and the river was flowing swiftly. They were both
paddling as hard as they could, but were steadily losing ground. I hollered for
them to paddle to the bank, where Tim could walk along in shallower water and
pull the boat up. They did, but immediately saw a large water moccasin on a
limb, grinning at them, daring them to get just
a little bit closer.
They quickly headed back to deep water. Paddling was not the way to go, so Tim
jumped into the river, put the rope around his shoulder, and started swimming.
Now, for a normal person, considering Caylie was still in the boat, that would
have been impossible. But Tim is not a normal man. He started gaining ground.
It still took him a long time, but he got it done.
This past Saturday was a big day for me.
For the first time, I was about to see Tim in action, swimming against strong
competition. Hundreds of great swimmers from all over were competing at Degray
Lake. Tim was entered in the one mile swim. Swimming in the women’s division of
that race were two teen age girls. Initially, this really didn’t mean anything
to me, I did not know them. But Tim did. They were the same two little girls from his old swim team of six
years ago. He knew they had been swimming five or six hours daily all these
years since Tim had to quit. He also knew they would be in top condition, and
his chances against them would be slim. Not being in the know, I was concerned
with the whole herd of musclemen Tim would be swimming against, and I paid
little attention to the girls.
Halfway or so into the race, his
shoulders began to give him great pain, but they soon went numb. Other than
having to throw up a couple of times, everything was going smoothly. But Tim
had been right. The two little
girls, no longer little, fourteen and fifteen, were first out of the water.
Tim was next out, winning the men’s division, at around twenty four minutes.
The musclemen I had been worried about were still specks far out in the lake.
**
Tim’s father Joe is 55 years old. He owns
a landscaping business, and he normally gets up very early, riding his bike
totally unreasonably long distances. A one hundred mile ride is standard
fare for Joe. He then works all day in his landscaping business. Then he goes
out after work for a little exercise. Joe is a regular in Iron Man
competitions.
Joe was once present at a one hundred
mile run event in the mountains. He was not participating in this, so he had
not been training for it. A friend who was entered knew Joe always stays in great
shape, so he asked Joe to pace him during the last part of the race. Joe
agreed. He paced him the last forty miles. That put both of them in the medical
tent.
Joe hires several young men, twenty
some-odd years old, in his business. Occasionally, they all gang up on Joe and
attempt to pin him in wrestling, but have never yet been successful. Joe said
recently, “I gotta stop doing that. I hurt one last time.”
In the one mile swim – twenty five mile
bike ride event at Lake Degray, Joe placed second. The one man who beat him in
his age group also won first overall, and he is number four in the country in
that event. Swimming was Joe’s weakest area, but he made up for that once on
the bike.
Joe’s father David,
Tim’s grandfather, started his physical training early. At two, he was so
active he was having trouble walking. The doctor determined he was too
musclebound to walk properly. Later, his father Ray hitched David up to the
plow to work the garden, instead of using a mule. He went on to become captain
of the football team at The Citadel. The University of South Caroline was a
major football power at that time, but David’s team managed to beat them, the
only time that has ever happened.
David was in the Korean War. He was a forward observer, maybe the most
dangerous job in the army. Their job was to move into enemy territory, locate
enemy forces, and call in artillery fire.
This was during a time of change and experimentation in the US army. Up to that
point, the early 1950’s, black soldiers were normally not highly trained in
fighting, being usually assigned more domestic duties. That was changing. David
was given a team of thirty men, mostly blacks, and he trained them up to a very
high fighting level.
Also along about that time, the Chinese were flooding into North Korea to fight
for North Korea against the South Koreans and Americans. They came in very
large numbers. They fought with guns, pitchforks, hoes, etc. The large hoards
of men more than made up for any shortage in equipment or training.
David’s team, as forward observers, were spotted by one of these very large
groups. The machine guns David’s team was equipped with had two barrels. While
one was firing, the other would be cooling off. Facing this vast hoard of
Chinese, cooling the barrel was a luxury they could not afford. They had to
keep both barrels firing constantly. Over time, both barrels melted.
Both groups were running out of ammunition.
Now, it was man to man, hand to hand. David realized they were about to be
overrun, so he called in artillery fire right on top of the entire battlefield.
That way, the enemy would be taken out also.
Officers, such as David, carried a pistol. They were trained to shoot
themselves rather than be captured. David pulled his pistol, ready to do his
duty. But he just could not bring himself to pull the trigger. The only other
option was to fight to the end. David dimly remembers he and men around him
beating each other with fists, and heads being slammed against the ground.
After what seemed like forever, all was quiet on the field. There was no one
left to fight. Only David and two of his men survived on the entire
battlefield.
**
David’s father Ray, Tim’s great-grandfather, became a professional heavyweight
boxer at an early age. He married at fourteen. He and his wife had eight children.
His wife finally persuaded Ray to retire from boxing. He always regretted that
decision.
Ray went on to become the ski jumping champion of West Virginia. At 55, he was
the national skeet shooting champion. Even his bird dogs were national champions.
Ray became a state senator in West Virginia. When the presidential elections
rolled around, he played a major role in helping John F. Kennedy get the
presidential nomination. West Virginia became a key state in the election, and Ray
campaigned tirelessly. Who woulda’ guessed?
When West Virginia compiled a list of the one hundred greatest athletes in the
last hundred years, both Ray and David were on that list.
Hopefully, Tim and
Caylie will produce the next generation of supermen for the Barnett family. Who
knows? Maybe a little of that super manhood will spill over into the Gillum
clan.
Look at me. As you can clearly see, we
need a little dab of that.
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