Editorial March 6, 1989 Issue

Growing up to know God

William E. Moody

Most of us can probably look back and recall some special experience in our lives that made us feel for the first time that we were finally entering the world of "grownups." Of course, becoming an adult never actually happens overnight, and we all discovered soon enough that those first invigorating glimpses of adulthood were still to be followed by some hard lessons and perhaps a fair share of childish mistakes.

The time I remember most vividly taking the somewhat shaky steps past boyhood was during the summer after high school. I had secured a job as a deckhand on a towboat that pushed barges up and down the Mississippi River.

After I received my seaman's papers, the call came one day to catch up to the boat when it passed Natchez, Mississippi, the next morning around 2 a.m. I packed my bag, put on a sport coat and tie (as my mother told me to do—first impressions and all that), and took the Greyhound bus from our home in New Orleans. I arrived at Natchez around midnight, in plenty of time, and tried to get a couple of hours' sleep on a bunk in the back of Frankie and Johnny's boat store. The towboat that needed a fresh deckhand was a little behind schedule, but it would still be coming upriver sooner than I felt ready for.

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