FLICKER 
 

“Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.  
What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while 
and then vanishes.” 
James 4:14 
   
INTRODUCTION 
 
From birth, one is infused with a bright glowing light, the breath of life from the Creator 
that moves and pulsates quickly to create a life that empowers one to experience and anticipate all its mysteries, its joys, its hopes for happiness in life.  For those of Christian persuasion, 
everything in God’s creation is centered in the traditional nuclear family-- the structure of the first
family, Adam and Eve--for the management and development of children.  From 1880-1960,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “The Negro Family, the Case for National Action, 1965,” indicates that there were two distinct features of African-American family structure;  Blacks were more likely than whites to become single parents, and to reside in “extended families”.  However, other 
theorist argued that Moynihan got it backwards.  The disadvantaged position of Blacks is not 
the consequence of single-parent families, but rather the cause of them.   When an African-American man that desires to become one that can be the head of and primary provider 
for a traditional nuclear family, especially during the 1900s, is thwarted by the beliefs of those 
who would undermine this goal by actions generated from beliefs  of superiority of a certain 
racial group, defined by Wikipedia as “scientific racism”, causes devastating economic and 
educational deprivation, and psychological malfunction in the Black family.   I, being a product of 
the strength, creativity and resilience of a strong Black extended male dominated communal 
family, have persevered and benefited from the strong survival skills that were taught, learned, 
and internalized by many in our Black family community.   Because of my early acceptance of 
faith in Jesus Christ, I was, later in life,  enlightened by God’s Word that He had a predestined 
plan of equality and free will for every man, including Black Families.   At the height of Jim Crow 
Laws and race riots of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, many Black families because of  the 
God-given innate drive to survive, and in the face of  the many morally unjust attacks against 
them, lived in constant and inconsolable fear.   Yet many Black families  continued to persevere 
and carved new avenues for achieving their life’s goals of finding greater economic security, 
freedom and protection by living in “extended family” communal environments, especially in the 
South.  Communal wisdom covered a widespread lack of education among Blacks, whose 
primary source of instruction post slavery was the Bible.  Christian ideology provided the basic 
design for post slavery black family living structure, much like the ideology of the early Jewish 
Kibbutz of a sharing agricultural community.  
 
However, as one moves along on life’s journey in search of anticipated fulfilment, some of us soon began to notice that world reality and disorders developed lifelong challenges that 
caused the glowing lights of one’s perceived great life plan and  expectations to “flicker”.   With 
the absence of any of the major survival components for the nuclear family structure, the family 
communal support and guidance, or the physical and psychological stability one can face tragic 
outcomes when attempting  to develop one's dreams and to keep the light that gives life 
purpose flickering. 
 
Time Magazine stated that the 1920s was “an exciting as well as a frightening time to be
alive and young”.  During these tumultuous, and for many Blacks, violent times, by mid 1900s, 
my to be mother, Mary, of African-American and Cherokee descent girl was born, and my to be 
father, Simon, an African-American descent boy was born.  By the mid 1930s, this  fourteen year old  teenage girl, and sixteen year old teenage boy would embark upon an adventure of nature 
that would result  in  producing  too-young teenage  pregnant parents, a major transgression of 
unmarried sex and become parents of a girl, my oldest sister, Annie.  Many years later my 
mother jokingly implied  “well, there just wasn’t much else for Blacks to do in the country.” 
Although my mother was abandoned at fourteen years old by her mother, Annie, necessitating  
moving from the mountains of West Virginia to Alabama to live with a martinet Great Uncle Chris
and his wife, Adeline,  baby Annie was sent back to live with Grandma Annie, as she loved the 
fact that the new family member was named after her.  But, mother would often threaten by 
saying “What goes around, comes around,” which also must be the meaning of her statement 
that life sometimes has a way of punishing us by repeating its history.   I later learned that 
Grandma Annie, too, was  pregnant with mother at age fourteen and may have been just feeling 
guilty for abandoning mother after learning of her pregnancy at age fourteen. 
 
In the mid 1930s and after Annie was born, father and mother married, and two years 
later in 1936  I, Mary Rose, their second child, was born into a thriving and growing communal 
extended family environment of Childresses, Harpers, and Cooks, not realizing how the Number
14 and 7, 14 being a double digit of 7, with Biblical inference of a double measure (2x7) of 
spiritual perfection, would  continue to impact  my life’s journey.   As a God creation,  we remain 
under “numerical construction” by our Creator until all “free will” effort on our behalf here on earth
is complete, and our Creator completes His plan of “spiritual construction” in eternity.  If, as 
Ephesian 1:11 reveal, “In him we were chosen, having been predestined according to the  plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will,” leads one to  believe that before creation, God had designed His plan to bring children to himself.  Throughout God’s plan of creation, it is as if God used numbers as a slide rule for calculating conclusion,  salvation, perfection, and deliverance.  God really does stress numbers in much of His creation as He strives to “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” 
Psalms 90:12.     
 
My early acceptance of faith in Jesus Christ at twelve years of age following four great life 
tests, made me mindful of the need for divine guidance, which provided a powerful source of 
strength during numerous future life tests and challenges from the transition of time.   As I was 
destined to travel primarily alone, void of much family guidance, a predestined journey through  
life, spiritual faith offered the necessary growth and development template in wisdom, the 
needed courage and strength to be able to circumvent and overcome the motions that causes 
life’s light to “flicker,” for numerical construction to suddenly change,  for the light of life to flutter 
into dissolution of nothingness and darkness.
  
Chapter 1
  
A SUNRISE
 
The sounds of singing penetrated the darkness as I opened my three year old eyes from
twilight sleep.  I began to recognize the sound as it was coming from my beautiful Aunt Corrine, 
my mother’s only sibling, who as usual was so full of the joys of life.  Soon, even the community
dog, “Hunter”,  was whining as if in anticipation of what was going to be a day of fun and 
excitement because Aunt Corrine was visiting from West Virginia.  The family community called 
our dog “Hunter” because he was always as hungry as the rest of us and  a great rabbit and 
opossum hunter.  In great anticipation of Aunt Corrine’s approach, I tiptoed out of bed and 
sneaked through the kitchen to peek out the kitchen door.  I could see the dawn approaching 
and as everyone else was still quiet, I sneaked outside to sit on the porch with “Hunter” as we 
anticipated Aunt Corrine reaching the porch.   Because of the rocky-muddy road, few, even 
boot-legged cabs or horse drawn wagons, would provide drop off service to the door.  
 
While sitting on the porch, suddenly a reddish-yellow and orange glow surrounded us, 
quickly dissolving into golden yellow sprays that in a sudden lurch spread a radiant beam of light upon the earth.  The brightness was so profuse that it appeared to engulf me in a glowing fire. 
This unusual and sudden brightness prompted me to look up and become absorbed in the  sun 
that was beginning to rise.  There was only the top three-fourths of the sun above the horizon, 
with sprays of light which appeared to thrust away from the sun’s body in pointed golden 
daggers.  It was my first sunrise and I was held spellbound by its awesome beauty.  Oh how 
much I had missed by sleeping so late.  I found it hard to turn my eyes away because the sun 
reminded me of a picture mother had of Aunt Corrine that also appeared to be surrounded by the glow of a sunrise.   Suddenly, with the nimbleness of a floating ball, the sun showed through in 
all its glory as a fresh blooming sunflower.   As I sat staring at the sunrise, through it’s 
brightness,  I could see my beautiful Aunt Corrine appearing as if she, too, was evolving from a 
beautiful morning sunrise.  
 
 
 
(Corrine's Picture-Sunrise ) 
 
 
  
Chapter II
 
“NEAR LIVINGSTON”
 
It was a rocky and muddy mile walk or more from a major Interstate Highway 11 in Sumter County, Alabama to, as Great Uncle Dan would proudly state,  an approximately 300 acres of farmland and dense wooded terrain.  Mother called it “Belma”, but I now know that it was really Bellamy, which as listed on my birth certificate, was “near Livingston.”  Since the early 1800s the family had travelled and shifted between Sumter, Tuscaloosa, and Raleigh Counties up and down Highway 11. The highlight of the Moses Childress, Harper, Cook extended Family Sumter County homestead was the envied “Moses’ fishing pond.”  All pond useage was under the auspices of Grandpa Moses, whom I am told everyone respected, and the entire family, including many whites in Sumter County, looked up to and enjoyed the special “Grandpa” fishing parties and fish fries.
 
Smoke curled from the chimneys,  forming ghost-like creatures that appeared to haunt the Childress, Harper, and  Cook’s country shanty windowless communal produce sales store, midway down the road.  Inside the shanty store one could find much of the day’s  produce pickings, or eggs, or salted pork  ready for sale to Highway 11 traffic.  The closer one approaches, one could see other community family members busying themselves with the awesome task of effecting a living from their daily resources, primarily from the earth, the forest, chickens and  sow pens.  As the day unfolded, the air was soon redolent with smells of cooking collard greens, turnips, tomatoes, and salt-cured pork meats, indicating success in a few of the shanties of retrieving enough food for the day’s survival.  Community shared sporadic garden patches of collards, turnips, beans, tomatoes, and squash swayed in the breeze, awaiting its next harvest for sale and canning.

Among the typical Native American designed windowless wood shanties, tall pines and trees further isolated its inhabitants, and gave one the feeling of being cut-off and protected in another world.  Half naked black and a few Native American children played and laughed among the trees,  their faces, though laughing now and then, did not seem really happy.   The many weather beaten wooden shanties scattered across the terrain showed great need of painting and repair, most standing on wooden post revealing all kinds of active swamp garden snakes at any time of day and night.  Bare splintered shanty floors and lawns that showed signs of much scuffle from overactive child play--a patch of grass here a patch there, and lots of exposed red clay which, for many days,  became a hungry child’s extra meal treat.

The Communal Patriarch’s Light Dims and Flickers Out….

In the midst of an America’s 1900s great racial divide, defined by Wikipedia as “scientific racism”, producing devastating economical and educational deprivation, and psychological malfunction in the Black family also brought with it a new morals revolution, the advent of prohibition, clandestine drinking, smoking, and a youthful addiction to the new jazz sounds of Louis Armstrong, the new soulful blues jazz song of St. Louis Blues by another Alabama born W.C. Handy,  August 1914 started the spiritual transition from earth to eternity of another great Alabaman, Great Grandfather Moses, the brightest light, the most effective protector of the family from outside racial tension and threats, began to dim and on August 17, 1914 flickered out, creating a commune-wide void and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.   Young family members were maturing and leaving out of fear of the constant threat of “night riders,” some taking Great Uncle Chris’ advice to leave the south and move North for what was believed to have greater safety, security, and better job opportunities.  The years following Great Grandfather’s death, with the removal of the patriarchal covering, were ones of great turmoil among the communal family environment.  The communal family  began to destabilize as the external environment became more hostile, and more families moved North.  In the late 1930s, my father and mother also started to be more and more open to the idea of moving North.  Life in the commune mother stated was becoming more scary each day due to  overt threats of hangings from a more violent racist groups that mother and daddy feared, and whom they knew sometimes came at night to frighten community families because they “wanted their land.”   How they needed and missed Great Grandpa Moses.

Great Grandpa Moses

No Substitute  
God makes all things
He causes the wind to blow
And makes the waters flow
There is no substitute for Him
*
God makes all things
Like a Grandpa Patriarch that cared
To leave a legacy of how to share
There is no substitute for love

--by Mary Rose Childress

It was in these secluded, rural, yet primarily serene surroundings that a little girl named Mary Rose was born, the second child, of two teenage parents, Simon Lloyd Childress and Mary Magdalene Saunders.  

• Update #2 - "Flicker: A Memoir That Creates Its Own Music" RELEASED! April 5, 2019

  "Flicker:  A Memoir That Creates Its Own Music" has been released!  Order your copy today from Amazon Prime for free shipping in April.  Experience …

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• Update #1 - New Book Release: "Flicker: A Memoir That Creates Its Own Music" released and available for purchase from all major book distributors such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble. An inspiring journey of a life dependence upon God. April 4, 2018

  Dear Subscribers:

  Hope your Resurrection Sunday was as blessed as mind.  As Chairperson of Christian Education and Sunday School teacher, I had another blessed opportunity …

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