It's always enjoyable to read your stories Terry and your references to Fort Worth. My first recollection of anything to do with Fort Worth was when I was a kid back in 1970 during the JW 1975 fever. My JW mother convinced my non-JW father to sell our nice home and move themselves and 4 kids into a single wide mobile home and park it across the street from the Kingdom Hall, in a trailer court inhabited by dozens of other JW's escaping reality.
We came to learn years later that many JW's in other places were getting in debt, figuring they'd never have to pay anything off before the end came. Instead of getting in debt, my parents did the opposite. Like a good JW, my Mother had been convinced that the economy was going to collapse and people would be throwing their money in the streets so she figured we should get out from under a mortgage so that when the "tribulation" came, we'd at least be able to hang on to our mobile home if my Dad lost his job.
The mobile home they bought was really nice and it was sort of unusual because it had an upstairs bedroom up front which was mine. I remember there was an insignia outside my bedroom window on the front that said "PAULSIL- MELODY HOME, Fort Worth Texas". As a kid, I was fascinated by the idea that our home was built in magical place called Fort Worth Texas and was hauled by truck all the way to Seattle Washington for us to live in. I always wanted to go to the factory and see how it was made but Fort Worth Texas was a world away.
I've been to Texas many times since them but never to Fort Worth but anytime I hear that name, I think of my younger self in my little upstairs bedroom in our "Melody Home", tossing and turning at night worrying about my little sisters and trying to figure out how I could possibly save them during the great tribulation and the persecution that was on its way. I think about my parents who had to struggle to get us back into a real house again after 1975 came and went. I think about how they are both gone now and how my non JW father died too young because he was convinced by the JW's he was studying with not to take a blood transfusion during his heart surgery. I think about how JW's today have virtually dismissed what we went through as a result of what we were led to believe in those days.
Now because of your Fort Worth related stories, I also think about all the unnecessary hardships you went through as a JW, yet you still have a sense of humor about it and about life's ironies in general. I also find it ironic that as faithful JW's we both lived through the 1975 debacle and have this little Fort Worth connection and have both wound up here on an Ex JW forum all these decades later via something called the Internet ,which wasn't even though of back then. Weren't we supposed to be perfect by now?? Where's that pet Lion they promised me??