This is a true story that happened in the USA many years ago, before I was ever born. I have had access to this story since my childhood, and I was able to follow it         through the years.

The Romance of Olive

A mile down the gravel road from my grandparents home, lived the Garrison family, and they had two girls and one boy. Kretie was 17, OLive was 15, and Jim was ten years old, the age of my mother. Their house was a beautiful water fall, just so wonderful. My grandparents moved to this little valley, when my mother was about 7 years old, and my mother had only one sister then. The valley was about seven miles long and about two miles wide. The ground seemed to be fertile, and they always grew good gardens which supplied most of the food there. Everyone there had to work hard, so that supplies for the winter were plentiful, not only for them, but others around who may need their help. There were always some that did. My grandfather also ran a grocery store there, and I have read a newspaper article about him where he said that he was more of a social worker, than a business man.

The Garrison's were people very much respected by all around them, my grandparents included. When I was growning up, the they were older people, and they lived with their grandson, Leon in their home. Kretie was married with 4 children, and she and her husband, built a house just a bit nearer to my grandparents. On the story of my life, there are some pictures at the bottom, and the Garrison family lived on down the road about a mile from the sight of that picture, and there a sharp mountain begins that leads to the post office. There is one store in that "town", and not many other houses around. As a child, I saw the Garrisons only when I passed by coming to see my grandparents on vacation.

The area where my grandparents lived, is in a National Forest, and frequently there is logging, or tree cutting there. Notice was sent out by the government, that workers were needed there, so two men, John Green and Tom Casey showed up there. They found jobs doing logging, but they needed a place to stay, so they went to the Garrison home and found rooms that they could rent, for the Garrison' had a very large home. John Green and Tom Casey were in their twenties, and as I mentioned earlier, the Garrison's had two daughters, Kretie, age 17, and Olive was only 15 years old.

Tom Casey very soon married Kretie, and built a home just a little bit nearer to my grandparents home. This left Olive alone, without sister at home, and she would liked to have gotten married too, but she was so young. After some time, it was known that Olive was pregnant. John Green went away to the big city, and he promised Olive that he would write to her.

It was three miles to the post office, and a long way for anyone to walk alone, so Olive would go to my grandparents home and ask if my mother (who was only ten years old) could walk with her, so my mother would go. Each time my mother would go with Olive to the post office, there would be no mail from John Green and Olive would cry all of the way back home. My mother was only ten years old, and she did not fully understand. Time passed, this continued until Olive was so heavy with the child, that she could no longer walk to the post office to look for mail from John Green. No letters ever came. My grandmother told my mother, that the time had come where she could no longer be seen with Olive, for Olive had a bad reputation now.

One day my grandmother was called to the Garrison home, because my Grandmother acted as midwife for this community. My grandmother did go there, and a new baby was born, and it should have been a time for rejoicing, but it was not, it was a time of great sorrow and pain. There was no father for this baby, and there was no new home. There was a young mother in the bed with her face turned toward the wall, and she did not turn to even look at the baby, for she just lay there. Olive was told that her baby needed a name, and Olive refused, and she would give it no name. Olive lay there with her face to the wall, even refusing to eat. Three days went by, before Olive died. My grandfather was a carpenter, so he was the one who made a casket for Olive. She was dressed, placed in her casket and buried in the old cemetery on a high hill over by the little Baptist church. Olive's parents named the little baby boy Leon, and I would see him when we passed by his home on the way to Grandmothers house. I did know him when I saw him, but I never did talk to him, for I was small and he was grown up now.

So, more years passed, Leon married and left home, and became a Baptist minister and was very well thought of by all around him. And more years went by, and I was grown up, and my grandfather had died, and it was his turn to be buried. My grandfather was going to be buried at that same cemetery high on the hill, by the little Baptist church. We received word, that they had not been able to dig a grave for my grandfather beside my grandmother, because it was solid rock under there. So, I was a bit anxious about this, and I drove to this old cemetery high on the hill by the little old Baptist church. When I got up there, I found that the cemetery was all nicely fenced, and there was a gate to enter. In the background at the cemetery, I saw several men working, and they were blasting out rock. And who do you think was in charge of this blasting? As it turned out, it was Leon, the Baptist minister. That baby was now there, and stood there as the man working on my grandfather' s grave. Leon came over to me and shook my hand, and told me just how much he tought of my grandfather. Then the men went on working, they blasted and it made a big noise and the rocks flew. I jumped back without even realizing it, and I looked down at the ground, and I saw that I was standing on the grave of Olive, Leon's 15 year old mother. I moved and then I stood there in shock. Can all of this be true? Yes, it was. I had really never known before that where was the grave of Olive. I had never seen it before.

My reason for writing this, is not to moralize, but I do want to say that by God's laws, He has done all He can to protect us from harm. The rest is up to us, we can obey God or we can follow man. We can follow God or seek our own way, and not rely on him for our needs. We can defy God if we want. Today, many muslims like to tell me about the degraded life of non-muslims, and they have no idea how things used to be in America and other countries of the world in time past. I am an American, whose ancestors have lived in the United States, since the 1600's, and I feel that I do know a lot about the people in America's past. This story took place when my mother was ten years old. We do see a lot of children born out of wed-lock, and we see people everywhere cohabiting, unmarried and seeming to be without shame. We even see people doing the same, who claim to be Christian. No one seems to be concerned about avoiding the very appearances of evil. They seem to think that God is not looking on any longer, and that disobedience to God does not matter.

My mother never gave me warnings about boys, not ever, all she ever did was to tell me this story of Olive, and it has lasted for all of my lifetime. I just took a 5 hour trip with my brother, and I had a rare chance to talk to him at length, and I asked him if my mother ever told him the story of the "Romance with Olive", and he said that she had not. Then, after I told him this story, he said to me "Where is the Romance of Olive? Where is it?" Olive thought she had romance and love, but Olive did not have that. Lust and love is just not the same thing. All who sin, have their own excuses. For whatever the reason, Olive did not listen to society or to God. She was young, she was naive, maybe she was persuaded by an older man. I will probably never know, and really it does not matter. No matter how you look at this, Olive is dead.

I am writing this, to show each one of you how closely our lives are interlinked, and that no man is an island. We may think, that how we live is our own business. We may not even care at the moment, how much we hurt our friends or our parents by disgracing ourselves. Maybe the cause of our church does not matter either to us. Maybe it does not matter to some that they are looked upon as hypocrites, and cause people to turn from the church. Look at the lives of the Garrison family, all good people. Look at the life of John Green, and Leon. Look how much my mother was hurt, and she was only a child. Think about my grandparents.

Then lastly, look at me, I was not even born when this happened, but going down the highway, I tried to tell my brother this story, and I found that I could not cry and speak at the same time, so my voice often went silent, and this all happened so long ago. I grew up hating John Green as a murderer. Not so long ago, I met a cousin of Olive, and she told me that Olive's father was the one who ran off John Green, and I will never know. She told me, that John Green had left his small estate to Leon. God has done his best to keep us from harm, now we need to do our part and obey him, always. So many are following lust of the flesh today, that the lives of many christians, are no different than the lives of sinners. All of us have excuses.

Isaiah 30:21 - "And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left."