Joel, hi!
Love to hear your Skwarlo stories! Let's trade! In reverence, of course because Frank and Norma were as good as gold as you will ever find.
I remember Norma was accident prone. Frank thought this was good for a cheap laugh and would jokingly try to trip her sometimes after meetings in Fort Valley. She would just give this eye-rolling "he's so immature" reaction.
The whole congregation used to get a chuckle out of Brother Skwarlo after the song between the Ministry School and Service Meeting. The song would end and local announcements would start. Brother Skwarlo would be organizing his notes for whatever talk he had that meeting but the song we just sang would still be in his head and he would be melodiously humming it for all to hear, oblivious to the meeting trying to continue around him. Norma would nudge him and whisper loudly enough for the parking lot to hear "FRANK! BE QUIET!" and he would just smile as he stopped humming and go back to his notes.
I remember the knee thing very well! He also liked to try to teach gymnastics to us young tots. Flipping us in the kingdom hall. I remember his "knee tickle" as him asking "do you know what a horsie eats?" and the answer as he hit unheard of tickle nerves in my 5-year old knee was "HORSIE EATS CORN!"
the man had the energy of a teenager.
he used to change the oil in his old Ford Galaxie 500 in FIELD SERVICE CLOTHES!
If you and Danny were around these parts or still are, we probably know a lot of the same people.
I remember some of the driskells, but didn't know them well. Did you know Greg Crawford? I heard he went apostate.
My stepdad was an up-and-coming heavy. Charlie Ganas. Sure you never heard of the name Grimsley?
On the worldly side, if you were or still are around the area of Eastman and Dublin, do you know David Mobley or any of the Mobleys? Dublin Muffler?
this is fun to meet people on the WORLD-wide web and talk about an area of a few hundred miles.
nice to make some friends I kind of already know.
mike.
Posts by Bendrr
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44Strange Phone Call
by Bendrr ini had a message to call my mom this afternoon when i got home.
her voice concerned, she said "michael, please call us as soon as you can, we heard you may have been hurt".
i called back to find out what was going on.
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Bendrr
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44
Strange Phone Call
by Bendrr ini had a message to call my mom this afternoon when i got home.
her voice concerned, she said "michael, please call us as soon as you can, we heard you may have been hurt".
i called back to find out what was going on.
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Bendrr
Danny, I haven't seen Drexel in years. You may have known him before his accident in which he lost his arm. I knew his daughter Sheila very well, sweet girl but married a total idiot.
You may even have known the Grimsley family. Bobby Grimsley was a good friend of the Weeks and Eddie Williams.
Side story: I believe it was Eddie Williams' wife Ruth who one day started breast feeding her young'un during a Sunday meeting and caught the speaker, a cousin of mine, totally off guard.
Did you happen to know the Coleman's out of Hawkinsville? Ellery Coleman? -
44
Strange Phone Call
by Bendrr ini had a message to call my mom this afternoon when i got home.
her voice concerned, she said "michael, please call us as soon as you can, we heard you may have been hurt".
i called back to find out what was going on.
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Bendrr
Joel!!! I knew Brother and Sister Skwarlo for many years!
Brother Skwarlo married my mom and step dad in 74.
Sad to say, Brother Skwarlo passed away last year in a car wreck. He was well into his 90's. I just loved those two. They came from the New York area originally I think. Brother Skwarlo was almost a U.S. Senator at one point. That's a little trivia I picked up third-hand and don't know much about that story. They lived in a trailer behind the Kingdom Hall in Fort Valley thru the 70's and 80's.
Danny, If you were in that neck of the woods, you probably may know Eddie Williams and Roger Thompson from Eastman and Hawkinsville respectively. Also Drexel Weeks from McCrae. Wouldn't be much of a stretch if you heard of the Reagan clan from my neck of the woods-Otis Oliver and Obie.
What do you know, Georgia invades jw.com!
mike. -
44
Strange Phone Call
by Bendrr ini had a message to call my mom this afternoon when i got home.
her voice concerned, she said "michael, please call us as soon as you can, we heard you may have been hurt".
i called back to find out what was going on.
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Bendrr
I had a message to call my mom this afternoon when I got home. Her voice concerned, she said "Michael, please call us as soon as you can, we heard you may have been hurt"
I called back to find out what was going on. Seems a sister in a nearby town heard on an Atlanta TV newscast that Michael Ganas was shot and another man killed in a gunfight in Atlanta. Well I haven't been to Atlanta today, haven't been in a gunfight, and definitely haven't been shot.
So we had a good laugh.
Then I got to thinking. Mom said the sister called her and my dad first and no one answered. So she started calling others trying to locate my folks.
Imagine the stories flying around middle Georgia tonight! I love it! By now the gunfight has probably become somewhere on the level of that firefight scene in "The Matrix".
Funny thing, tho. I surfed a bunch of sites for Atlanta news headlines and found no mention of the story.
mike. -
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WT May 1 & June 15, 2001
by Defender inthe may 1 and june 15, 2001 watchtower issues have reading articles about helping widows through their trials and look after orphans and widows in their tribulation.
both articles contain very healthful counsel, tips and recommendations to the grieving and needy and to those around them on how, and when to offer help and support.. the problem with these articles is not that the average jw or local congregation elders are not doing their part in helping out the needy.
in fact, most individual jws are as compassionate and supportive as the average person.
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Bendrr
So true, defender. I hope that average publishers reading your post take it to heart and look around for those truly in need. The Empire will never have any department overseeing the care of those in need like the early apostles did or indeed as any modern day church of "christendom" does today. Instead, The Empire will always publicly say as denounced in the book of James "go in peace, keep warm and well fed" (NWT).
There are so many worldly doors you can knock on as a dub and so little time. There are so precious few moments you can spend with a lonely elderly person......and so little time.
mike. -
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JW's and the "Half" Factor
by Bendrr inwhen i was about 12, a friend of mine and i were walking home.
he told me about the "half factor"-something his strange mind had concocted.. starting at whatever distance from your destination-lets say a mile-walk half the journey, take a break, then walk half the remaining distance, take a break, then half the remaning distance again.. even when you are yards, then feet, then inches from the finish line you never get there.. kind of like the history of the empire in a way.
they get closer and closer and closer but never there.
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Bendrr
Hi Amazing.
Glad you joined in on this thread. I enjoy reading what you have to say.
I made a little joke about The Empire and extraterrestrials, but then I got to thinking. Do you remember in the late 80's or early 90's an Awake magazine dealing with the possibility of life in space?
It was interesting to me the argument The Empire used to disprove any and all possibility of life anywhere other than Earth. It went something like this:
Jehovah sent Jesus to EARTH to die for MANKIND's sins. If there were life on other planets, He would have had to die on each of those planets for their sins as well. But the Bible only speaks of Jesus dying for us.
(or so I paraphrase)
How fascinating!
Number one:
Maybe other planets have races who stayed faithful to God and Jesus DIDN'T HAVE TO DIE THERE.
Maybe other planets had an Adam and Eve scenario and God is working on them as well and what business is it of ours?
Boy, can't wait for those "new scrolls" The Empire always hints at to be opened!
mike. -
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Are you a hypocrite?
by Julie inin light of the recent discussions on the death penalty in america i got to thinking.
i wonder about the commandment thou shalt not kill.
don't all christians subscribe to this?
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Bendrr
Thanks for the thoughts, Jan. At first I was a little angry, then I re-read a few times.
First of all, I am no fundamentalist. Second of all, there are no absolute pacifists.
I disagree with the concept of a first or any trimester embryo/fetus/whatever medical term baby as a lump of cells. A wart is a lump of cells. A scar is a lump of cells. A tumor is a lump of cells. An unborn child at any stage is a human life. A lump of cells the way you put it is a suprise. "Gosh, I've got an embryo inside me, Doctor, How the heck could that have happened?"
I'm not trying to put any kind of emotional spin on it, just telling how I feel in response to the thread's question. There is sanctity of human life, but the Bible as well as the last several thousand years of man's law has firmly established the death penalty as the ultimate price to pay. True, there may be cases of innocent men going to the chair. Personally I think the liberal press has played this card heavily to influence us against the death penalty.
In my opinion, the only reason the death penalty or any other "severe" penalty is less of a deterrent is because of such slack and slow enforcement. Life sentences don't mean life these days. And a death sentence may take 20 years. So where is the threat?
Bottom line is, I wish there were no abortion but it happens. I just hope that mankind moves on to a point where it becomes an obscure rarely-performed procedure because we find some alternatives including better more convenient birth control and adoption.
As far as the death penalty, I don't want to hear about executions on the news every week. But no one made McVeigh kill 168 people and he had to pay. (Just using him as an example)
Bottom line is, we have a long way to go. -
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JW's and the "Half" Factor
by Bendrr inwhen i was about 12, a friend of mine and i were walking home.
he told me about the "half factor"-something his strange mind had concocted.. starting at whatever distance from your destination-lets say a mile-walk half the journey, take a break, then walk half the remaining distance, take a break, then half the remaning distance again.. even when you are yards, then feet, then inches from the finish line you never get there.. kind of like the history of the empire in a way.
they get closer and closer and closer but never there.
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Bendrr
When I was about 12, a friend of mine and I were walking home. He told me about the "half factor"-something his strange mind had concocted.
Starting at whatever distance from your destination-lets say a mile-walk half the journey, take a break, then walk half the remaining distance, take a break, then half the remaning distance again.
Even when you are yards, then feet, then inches from the finish line you never get there.
Kind of like the history of The Empire in a way. They get closer and closer and closer but never there. In one of those "half the distance" pauses 1975 came and went. In another more recent one, the Generation That Saw 1914 teaching got a little tweak.
I also remember being told that 2000 would be it, or at least we would not make it to 2000 now here it is 2001.
Now down to inching along-or millimetering along-I wonder what will fill those "half the distance breaks".
Do you think the sayings will gradually get more outlandish and sensational so as to keep spiritual adrenaline pumping?
I'm curious to hear theories y'all may have on what "new light" may blink forth from Brooklyn to keep interest up.
How about The Empire adding extraterrestrials somehow? (maybe alien abductions are just E.T. Jehovahs Witnesses who didn't realize Earth wasn't on their territory card and decided to witness to humans. Maybe those weird medical experiments on their planet is how they place Watchtower and Awakes)
mike. -
13
Are you a hypocrite?
by Julie inin light of the recent discussions on the death penalty in america i got to thinking.
i wonder about the commandment thou shalt not kill.
don't all christians subscribe to this?
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Bendrr
Julie, it is equally hypocritical to say abortion is acceptable but the death penalty is not.
I'm pro-choice--the choice NOT to abort--but pro-death penalty.
God did call for life-for-life in the "eye for an eye" passage.
How I justify the difference you don't understand is this: the unborn baby up for abortion didn't do anything to deserve death. The death row inmate DID do something under law deserving of death.
mike. -
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What is your opinion?
by Gianluca ina few days ago there was a post which had a link to a we site with an article entitled "the 13 illuminati bloodlines" written by a certain by fritz springmeier.. in there was this comment .
"the wt society performs a secret ritual every year which is their primary ritual.
this ritual is actually the ancient gnostic (satanic) ritual of saying no to the.
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Bendrr
As soon as I saw the word Illuminati in the first paragraph, my first impulse was to lock and load my illegal chinese assault rifle, don camo, and run for the hills to hide from the black helicopters.
Then I remembered that there is no Illuminati or New World Order, only Yankees as there have always been since Sherman and the heat drives them away from my neck of the woods.
I love conspiracy theory timelines like this one. Just goes to show how gullible people can be. Now if you want real truth about the conspiracy, you should have been listening to patriot radio on shortwave shortly before the militia movement culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. Callers bragging about shooting down black helicopters on Linda Thompson's show just made my day.
Disney is "like, so five minutes ago" when it comes to hidden agendas and messages. If a Disney film were released that was actually "sterile", THEN we would have cause for alarm.
mike.p.s. ever notice on The Little Mermaid that the Bishop doing Ariel's wedding gets a boner?