Episode 27 In The Shadow Of The Mountain C.L.Knox stories

The speaker talks about his childhood experiences, specifically about going to his first concert at age 10, Janis Joplin in Alabama. He reflects on the innocence of his childhood despite being exposed to adult behaviors. He also mentions the joy of playing and how his children and grandchildren still have that ability. He reminisces about the concert, the drugs and donuts, and the strong impact of the music. He briefly mentions his time in California and Canada, where he engaged in more adult activities such as drugs. He then talks about playing with Lego and matchbox cars with his siblings, and the imaginary worlds they created. He mentions a man who used to come visit and play war games with them, and also discusses a friend from Africa who had interesting stories to tell. Okay everybody here we sit in my truck again doing episode 27. As soon as I do one of these podcasts I start thinking what do I want to talk about on the next one and so I thought I would talk about the first concert I went to and then I'm going to talk about that. It was Janis Joplin when I was 10 years old in Tuscaloosa Alabama. What I want to talk about is something that maybe you forget or you miss. I'm talking about me being 10, 11, 12, 13 years old and basically these are adult experiences most of what I'm sharing and I'm you know I'm 10 to 13 or 14 years old. There is something that is very real about my childhood and that is I was still a child. I liked to play. I still even though I was exposed along with my siblings to some pretty outlandish behavior I was still I still had a part of me that was pretty innocent and I liked to play you know and I was thinking about it because we were having dinner one night and we've got some international students staying with us and we were talking about my son Joel and Emily and how they still have an ability to play and Noah too I think to play with kids to play you know this sense of play and I still do too we still do it we still play around and I've seen Noah play with them and this all came from the international students we had at dinner and the international students were playing with the grandkids and one of them is 16 and one of them is 15 just to watch them play with you know two three and five-year-olds it was it was fun. The concert we went and we stayed at LaDonna's like I mentioned LaDonna before so we stayed at LaDonna's house in Tuscaloosa and there was lots of drugs and stuff like that going on and you know whenever I think of LaDonna's I think of having doughnuts for breakfast and I don't know if that was every time we went there or if it was maybe this time or it was another time but we I remember having doughnuts for breakfast and we we went to a concert it was Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company so that would have been in 68. Now I've gone online and tried to find any evidence of that or any paraphernalia or any anything about that concert I haven't been able to find anything I did once find something about it being posted that it was going to happen a poster talking about Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin coming to Tuscaloosa and I haven't been able to find that since but they did play in Mississippi the night before and in this week or two period of time they played in Mississippi and they played in Georgia so it makes sense that they would have stopped in in Tuscaloosa and had a show and at the show like I remember before the time before it started there was a few other kids there I can remember running around and playing around and getting all sweaty and and I talked to my brother I asked him my younger brother if he remembered it my old brother wasn't there my younger brother and he said oh I remember playing around in the mosh pit I think that's what he called it he said oh yeah I'll never forget that so he would have been eight and my sister was there too and I haven't talked to her about it and I when when Janis Joplin came out like it when Big Brother and the Holding Company came out and they're playing music and you know it's like an introduction it's just playing music and it's rock rock and raunchy and getting raunchier rockier and then she comes out on stage and she's got two bottles of Southern Comfort so she's got one in each hand and she sets one on top of I guess it was probably the bass player's speaker it was a high speaker she set it up there and then she cracked the other one and took a swig and then she started singing and I don't recall playing around with the other kids after that I was enthralled by the by the music and by her and by the concert the loudness and the raunchiness and the bluesy rock feel I can remember dancing I was close to the front and dancing up there with with all the people in their late teens early 20s and you know some older and just having a good time doing that playing around like listening to the music and dancing around by the end of the concert both of those bottles were were gone she drank both of them it was a sight to see that was one of my childhood experiences now I wouldn't have been doing any hard drugs at that time and we wouldn't have been smoking pot in public in in Alabama at in 1968 that wasn't happening but we did get stoned before we went there I don't remember leaving to get more stoned the other people that were I was with they were probably all on acid or something you know the other thing I want to talk about is you know as I went to California I was with Hoagie I don't recall a lot of play there was some chess and there were some few people that would play chess with me you know probably cards and maybe the odd board game it was more of an adult kind of living experience at that time there was doing drugs by then I was doing acid and stuff which I already went into and cocaine did cocaine on my 12th birthday that was the first time I did cocaine in San Diego at my it wasn't my party but I always called it my birthday party but then when we got back into Canada and I was back with my siblings when we got up into Canada and I was with my siblings then it was there was definite play we had scads of Lego like we had a huge box full of full of Lego we built stuff with Lego and we all had our own collections of matchbox cars and hot wheels and we used to go out there was a couple of big fir trees that are still there on the property the property's been sold but they're still there and it was like on a hill and it was all sandy and we cleared that out and we had built basically a town there like we all had our estate properties where we had houses dug in and built with wood and sand and whatever and all of our cars all of us had like 20 or 30 vehicles each and we made roads and we would spend hours doing this imaginary existence of wealthy people with their cars and our mansions and driving around we'd and making stuff and then when it was not nice weather we were inside with the Lego doing the same thing we did we did that for endless hours Lego and matchbox and hot wheels and it was a it was a gas I still have some of that Lego it went to my kids and they added to it and we lost a lot and some may have been given away I don't know we still have a fairly good sized box of of Lego it's you know some of it doesn't stick together as well as it used to but it's still you know it's still Lego Lego is Lego and I play with my grandkids with that same Lego the hot wheels and the matchbox they they are I don't know they got lost you know I probably had some that I gave to Joel when he was a kid but they're all gone now pretty well Noah had quite a collection himself which we now have that our grandkids play with and in particular Finan really likes to to play with the matchbox and the Lego are the hot wheels and the Lego more hot wheels and matchbox now I don't even know if they still make matchbox cars so that was one thing and then there was this this other thing there was this man that used to come and visit us and I do not remember his name I never asked Joe if he remembered the guy or we'll talk about after I publish this thing or put this up but uh he he had a young wife and a young child and every time this guy came to visit us it was like we were playing guns we were playing war and on the property it was a great place there was this alder grove and there was all kinds of places to hide and and we didn't have like airsoft guns or anything like that back then we just had fake guns or sticks or guns we made and we played war and we ran around the whole property and we could seem like we did it for hours and this guy like his wife's in visiting with mom and Bryce and whoever and he's out there playing with us and they had a dog too if I remember correctly and it was a riot I remember thinking then when I'm an adult I hope I still remember to play to do this to be a kid play around and another one another person was Zane I don't know I've never I haven't talked about him some of you who listen to this who knew me then will know Zane Abraham he was a fellow from Africa I can't remember I can't remember the country right now that he was from he he claimed to be a tribal leader from from some African tribe his father was the chief or the king of the tribe and he was you know in line to be the the leader of their their village or tribe or whatever it was he was a Muslim man I assume that they the whole community that he was involved with in Africa were Muslim he walked with a an extreme limp and had scars all over his body and said that he had been involved in war like guns shooting and torture was involved like he had some stories to tell and it was it was interesting to to listen to his stories and he ended up marrying one of the teachers that I'd had in grade seven who used to come and buy pot from us and and hash from us who I talked about before I don't think I said her name I'm not going to say it now but you know some of you will know as I you'll put it together if you know Zane and you know who he married and he had a couple of kids and their marriage didn't last but I think they stayed friends I think they stayed friends and Zane eventually went back to to Africa I think he felt duty-bound to go back I I you know as a young adult I had some contact with him but I lost that he got married had his family moved to Nanaimo and I didn't see him a lot I have some few pictures of him I have a drum that he made out of a barrel like an old whiskey barrel and he stretched a piece of cowhide over it and he got it wet he got the cowhide wet and he stretched it and he used roofing nails and you know big big headed galvanized roofing nails and put it around the as he stretched he nailed them and stretch him nail and and that drum was infamous when we would have you know jams I still have the drum it ended up being sort of absconded by another fellow but we got it Bryce got it back somehow I'm not going to say the other guy's name he's an old hippie guy who as far as I know he's still alive him and his wife I don't know if they're still married whatever we had history with them on and off throughout the years and he's remarried we ended up back with the drum and I've got it now so perhaps I'll drag it out sometime and do a use it on a song if I can learn how to use this recording thing I've got where I can layer stuff and actually produce some some decent music so Zane was a drummer he was a you know he was a musician drummer and he also built us a picnic table and bench of cedar and then burned it and wire brushed it we had that for years when when my wife and I first got married we had it side as a as a picnic table out on the deck on the farm when we lived on the farm anyway Zane used to play with us he used to come out and play I don't remember playing war with him but probably did that he used to come out and play with us and too he taught us scully which I think I mentioned before it was a game you play with bottle caps but he also taught us bocce ball we played bocce ball on the farm and we also played soccer just kicking the ball around so it was interesting having some of these young adults still into playing with kids some of them were it was above you know below them I think to play though we had relationships with them I talked about Charlie and Linda Charlie was a leather craftsman I I can remember sitting and talking to him and both of us working on leather and cool two people I don't remember him ever playing with us but you know cool to sit and work with him the thing about play is it's important for children in learning and the thing about children is that it's important that they have that the opportunity to live that innocent life the the life of innocence and to play there's a part in I think it's in John I haven't read it recently I probably should have read it if I was going to talk about it but um I just started reading the book the gospel of John again so there's a part in the gospel of John where Jesus's disciples children are coming around him and they're and they're shooing him away saying leave leave the rabbi alone and he's he's like he scolds his disciples and said no let the children come to me and then he says like unless you become as a child unless you all become as a child you will never enter the kingdom of heaven right so there's a sense of innocence and a sense of awe that a child has towards adults and and as they experience wise teaching and you know so you get this vision like and we've all seen those Sunday school pictures of Jesus holding children on his lap and I think that he probably embraced children it's like I said I just started reading first John again and that there's there's so much in that gospel the first part of it is where it says in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and he was with God in the beginning so the word being logos Greek logos and it goes that word goes back to Greek philosophy John and Luke both you can see the influence of Greek culture in in their writing they wrote in Greek they spoke Greek probably Greek was like the international language of the time even though Rome was the governing country body or whatever just about everybody spoke Greek because of the well Alexander the Great so logos I mean it's interesting if you take a look at that word logos it's wisdom and understanding and logic and it's a very interesting word word on its own and then to to realize that this is this is a description of of Jesus and his relationship to creation and the world and then often the Bible speaks of Jesus as being the light and this first part of John is all about Jesus being the light and the truth and what what I mean we we say that and we you know people say that all the time and what is it what is this the light and the truth you know it goes on it says he was in the world and though the world was made through him the world did not recognize him and he came to that which is was his own which is his people the the Israelites but his own did not receive him yet all who did receive him receive him to those who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband's will but people born of God and it goes on and it talks about him being the light of the world these these concepts logos and light and truth they're concepts that post-modern shift that the western culture western world has adopted eliminate they want we want to get rid of those ideas of their being logos logic that this is post-modern thinking and we want to get rid of light something that would shed or expose evil darkness we want to get rid of truth there there's no truth it's your truth and my truth and so I mean this has permeated our society today it's permeated it and it's so it's a horrible concept to think that we can have differing truth the idea that there's not one universal moral truth universal spiritual truth it's illogical really I mean either it's true or it's not it's an illogical thing see so these things logos truth light they've been sort of abolished and pushed out so we went back to that supermarket culture where you know you go and you pick what you want and you get you get instant gratification everybody knows john 316 just about everybody you know you got football players writing john 316 under their eyes people into stands at baseball and basketball and football games with john 316 up there I mean john 316 is a soundbite to to john 1 2 and 3 but in the third chapter the third verse jesus says I tell you the truth no one can see the kingdom of god unless he's born again and that's what john 316 is about where he so this whole john 3 is is jesus talking to nicodemus now nicodemus was a pharisee and a member of the sanhedrin so the sanhedrin is a governing body and the pharisees were the upper echelons of spiritual elites and the legal elite so he was an elite of the elite because he sat on the sanhedrin and he was a pharisee he was a wealthy man he's come to jesus in secret and jesus says you know you can't do anything unless you're born again the thing what about it is is like he's like what can a man re-enter the womb and be born again and jesus is like no this is not what we're talking about here you're a you're a teacher and a leader of of this people and you don't understand if i tell you this worldly earthly you can't understand this how can you understand the spiritual things he says i've spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe then how will you believe if i speak of heavenly things then in john 316 is for god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life and that's a sound bite and that's about all most people can handle and it's easy to just shuffle that off just you know yeah whatever that's kind of arrogant but this is jesus talking this isn't tim tebow or anybody else this is this is what jesus said you know god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son and then it says god so 17 is god did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him so they are the object of jesus coming wasn't condemnation condemnation comes from it and he says that afterwards but that wasn't his purpose in coming whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has chosen not to believe in the name of god's one and only son so he's making these bold audacious claims that he's the son of god and that he's the way he's the only way and without being born again i mean how does one be become born again so he goes on and he says this is the verdict this is back to light again light has come into the world but men love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil to me this is i think people have to pray to understand what the bible says and i think that it's a being born again gives you insight into what stuff means a broader insight and this is where you know born again isn't a political ideal born again isn't a class idea born again isn't like you get these visions of you know if somebody says i'm born again you get these sort of visions of what the cultural culture has produced for what it means to be born again but let me tell you something it's it's not those things it's something like so many believers i can i can name a dozen people that i know that believe in christ now that were raised in the church and they were taught the bible and they knew the bible and they thought they were christians and they thought they understand and then something happened to them at some point something happened and their eyes were open and they were born again spiritually something happened to them they changed and they began to understand scripture they began to understand that they were sinners even though they thought they were doing good they were living a good life they were doing the right things and at that point it's like becoming a child again it's like coming back and starting over like for me it's different when i was born again was the same time that i started reading the bible i virtually knew nothing about the bible being born again when i was 13 after that acid trip and that whole thing the bible ever since i started reading it has been more and more open to me like the veil has been removed and like i can under i can read it and i can understand it and and i can i can help explain it to somebody but i can't you know i can't make you born again you know and so it's like becoming a child it's like going back and becoming a child and that's what jesus said unless you become as a child you can't enter the kingdom of heaven you can't see the kingdom of heaven unless you've been born you can't even see it you can't perceive it everyone who does evil hates the light and i mean that's the world we live in people don't like this stuff i'm talking about you know a lot of people you know they'll listen to my little first bit story and that's partly because you know they don't want they don't want a 20 minute or 30 minute story they want a two minute or five minute at the most sort of burst of stimulation they want instagram and tiktok and snapchat and facebook they don't want depth of understanding you have to want it you have to dig for it everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed that's so clear to me whoever lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through god john 3 16 to 21 3 16 it's just the beginning you read through that it's pretty incredible stuff to to get into understanding light truth logos word jesus and being born again how does one become born again you can pray about it but did you have any part in being born in the first place did you have it no so this is this is this dichotomy between me choosing god and god choosing me so the only way somebody becomes born again is if god wakes them up if god does it if god makes them born again and as a as a believer who i pray for my whole family and friends and my whole life only only one of my kids really is a believer born again believer that'd be emily my other kids one of them absolutely hates the whole concept the whole idea of christianity hates me for believing it hates the idea that we've would have even tried to teach her truth and light and moral objectivity so that's that whole they hate it they hate the light because it exposes their evil and more people in the world move towards evil and and i'm talking about evil from god's perspective but from god's perspective anything that is not of him is evil anything and so that's why we need a savior we need a messiah so that we can be forgiven and enter into that relationship as sons adopted by no physical means not by the choice of a father not by any other means except for god born again seek it that's all i can say you know is and if you have a desire for it if you have a desire to be born again history as i have experienced it will grant you that desire because god desires for all of us to be born again and adopted into his king his family his kingdom begun kings and priests along with him to achieve everything that he intended from the beginning anyway you know i i can talk about this stuff forever i'm gonna stop here peace next one will be 28 see you next time i know the hate you feel it burns you up inside i know the way you feel i know the pride but there is peace you can find it if you want it there is peace you can find it if you try there is peace you can find it if you want it there is peace there is peace yeah so it's been a long road you feel so tired sometimes you wish you had a home someplace to hide inside and that's just a rotten deal you know there is peace you can find it if you want it there is peace you can find it if you try there is peace you can find it if you want it there is peace there is peace yeah there is peace there is peace yeah there is peace there is peace so you walk the streets you don't want nobody's pity you're not a puppet you're master of the city just hanging out getting high feeling wild is there a god you've asked and then you've asked him why you said why are all those names in this i fear why all the burn i hate so real why all this dying killing pride why all the pain i try to hide yeah is there peace can i find it if i want it is there peace can i find it if i try is there peace can i find it if i want it is there peace is there peace yeah yes there's a peace and you can find it if you want it there's a peace you can find it if you try there's a peace you can find it if you want to there's a peace there's a peace yeah there is a peace there's a peace yeah there's a peace there's a peace there's a peace there's a