What follows is the legacy left to me by my forebears.
My great-grandfather, James Peter, used to drive a horse-and-buggy rig throughout the hills along the Kentucky-Tennessee border establishing congregations of the church of Christ. There were times when he was away from his own family for months as he nurtured the infant congregations.
My grandfather, Carmen, was a farmer. He was a hard-working, caring family man who was very dogmatic, but sincere in his beliefs. Grandpa collected an impressive library of books and even had a Greek typewriter, though he never personally learned to speak the language.
My late father, Carlin, was raised in the hills of northern Tennessee. He started proclaiming the Gospel when he was 18 years old. The Watson clan moved to Houston, Texas in the fifties and that is where Dad met and married the woman who was to become my mother.
As a child growing up in the confines of the big city, I never tired of hearing Dad's tales of his boyhood among the hills and "hollers" of Tennessee. His wonderful sense of humor was like a breath of fresh air in a world that is becoming increasingly cynical and apostate.
Dad never did quite fit in with the particular group of people we were associated with. He taught me to reject all the creeds of man and to study the Holy Scriptures with an open a mind as possible. He once said that the doctrine of "the authority of the silence of the Scriptures" made about as much sense as "the geography of nowhere."
When Dad unofficially retired in 1985, we moved back to Tennessee. It was here among the hills that he loved as a child that he succumbed to cancer in January, 1990. His legacy of proclaiming the Gospel is the same one that was left to us by Jesus Christ so many centuries ago. And, I will, by the Grace and Will of God, carry on that precious Message until I die.
In His Service,
Carlin Dale Watson
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