The short story of my life!
Hold on to your boots
A foster child’s life
The true life story of Reverend
Dave F. Brown
As we go through this life we hear
things that we can’t believe sometimes. This is the case with the story
that you are about to hear. I am the person that this happened to.
I can assure you that this is all true. This is a story that shows how
mean and hurting mankind can be but also shows how loving we can be also.
It also shows how great this god that we serve is and how he can take the
bad and turn it into good. As you read this please don’t feel sorry for
me but rather praise god for being there to deliver me out of the devil’s
hand.
It all started on March 13, 1954,
the day that I was born. Sometime in the middle of this story you might
ask your self how can he remember this stuff at the age of 3, 4, and 5.
All that I can say is I do. I was born in South Baltimore and my
family was poor. Things were really hard because my father was a drunk
and through out his whole life beer was all that mattered. There were a
total of nine children and I was the 4th to be born. Even though dad worked
everyday he would come home broke each week and throw 5 or ten dollars
(if that much) at my mom and tell her to go get food for that week. No
please don’t feel sorry for mom because she was no saint in this by far.
In Baltimore at that time and even to this day there wasn’t much to do
but go to work, if you could find a job, and then drink it all up. That
was the way life was for almost everyone at that time. (Sadly) and still
is for some this day.
When I started to remember things
there was so much pain in my life that after a while your mind kind of
learns to block the pain out. This is what I did. Now the things that you
are going to hear from this point are true and I do have the scars mentally
and physically to prove it.
There was a lot of hell around my
house. Mom liked to drink and then flirt with men and then that would make
dad mad and he would go home and beat the living hell out of mom. Then
that is when I came into the picture. None of the other kids got
what I did. I guess I became the punching bag for my mother. You know to
take out her anger on. There was many times when I would be locked
into the bathroom in the basement for days and days at a time. You
might say well, that doesn’t sound so bad. Well let me tell you why it
was so bad. In the basement there was only a dirt floor, and the toilet
sat on a small piece of concrete. The light bulb would be taken out when
I was put in there. After a while my eyes would get used to the darkness
and I could see a little. The first night I was in there. I felt something
on my feet. When I looked down I saw a big rat and then another and
then another. The only thing that I could do was to climb up on top of
the tank that held the water. They could not climb up it because
it was real smooth. I was put into this room many times for nothing
at all. Just to take her anger out. Believe me at that time Baltimore
had a big rat problem and even to this day. It was nothing for me
to see a foot and a hale size rat. I’m talking about rats now, not little
mice that you see in your house.
Now I’m going to give this to you
in parts because it’s still hard to talk about but the reason I decided
to do this is because there might be some poor child out there that needs
to hear about someone that has been through what they are going through
now and to let them know that god does not forget you or does not
See you in your time of hurt and
he will deliver you out of your hell in due time. This story has so many
blessings in it for me and I know that it will bless those that read it.
It took me many years of thinking to decide to go ahead and tell this story.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky and some movie producer will read
this and want to make a movie. (Ha! Ha! Ha!)
Part two will come tomorrow night.
Also anyone that would like to send this to someone that they know is hurting,
go ahead. Or if you know someone that just likes to hear a blessed story
about god doing great things. Send it out.
Part two will be called
The bed & the light
This part of my life is sometimes
the hardest to tell because I cannot understand how someone could do this
to a 4-year-old child, no matter what they has wrong in their life.
Oh, I forgot to mention last night in the ending of Part – 1 that I would
be locked in the bathroom for as much as a week before I was left out.
I was not a bad child but just the
reverse, I had a very loving heart, but you see I was used as a tool against
all my other brothers and sisters .why I do not know. But I will
get into that later. Our house was a three-story house and the attic was
right above the third floor, it was small and very dirty and the windows
were broken out and the cold air would come blowing in. For some reason
I would find my self up in that attic tied to a bed that had no mattress
on it. Yes tied to the post with a rope around my waist in a knot I could
not loose and was even afraid to even try to get it loose. What would happen
to me if they would come up and see me untied? Yes I was real scared.
There was a streetlight that was just about the level of the window at
the foot of my bed. This light at nighttime would scare the heck
out of me. This light looked like a big monster to me with it changing
colors. You see I had never seen a traffic light before, but that
was not why it scared me. This is why, every now and then someone would
come up to the top of the steps and throw me a slice of bread to eat, yea,
like you would to a dog. Now this was not given everyday but maybe every
other 3 days and even longer. Sometimes it was days before I would hear
the door open up and hear the steps crack and then the slice of bread would
come at me. They would never say a word, but just turn around. The light
was never turned on at night when who ever it was that done this.
The reason I told you this is because
I could hardly see because of malnutrition. Malnutrition is when your body
has not been given enough food on a regular course and what you do get
your body cannot digest it right. This causes your body to become very
weak. This was causing me to not to be able to see. Are you
ready for the schocker? At the age of 4 and 3/4 I weighed only 20lb yes
I said 20lbs. This was from never eating. The night would come and
then the fear would begin. I knew that the monster would come back.
My eyes were so week that everything was blurred. This was why the light
would scare me so bad. Then I would hear voices outside where people were
shouting things like I’m gonna kill you. They were fighting out side because
they were drunk. I would spend sometimes a week or two up in the old attic.
Oh I did have a blanket! This is why I named this part, ” the bed
and the light “.
God bless you all and again part
3 will come tomorrow night.
There’s so much more to come to show
you how god delivered me out of this hell house, but first the bad must
be told. Please remember this brothers and sisters, our lord Jesus said
these words, “your power is in your testimony ” amen and amen!
Talk to you tomorrow night for part
-3 called:
The Hot Tub
Love in his holy.
Rev. Dave brown
The Hot Tub
One-day dad came home drunk again
and there was a real big bad fight. Dad had already broke almost every
bone in mom’s body at least once. There was allot of yelling and
screaming. This is what led up to something that my mother done that almost
took my life unto my very last breath that my poor weak and starved body
could take. As a result of dad doing one of his beatings again, mom
later on that night took me up to the bathroom on the second floor.
There I was undress and the water was drawn and I thought that I was going
to get a nice bath. Well that was not the case, the water started steaming
as it would go into the tub, needless to say, mom threw me into a tub of
nothing but scolding hot water and then kept holding me down under the
water trying to kill me. (Oh! This is getting hard) if it would
have not been for my sister or someone walking into the bathroom and mom
stopped. I would have been dead. Later on I will tell you about when
I confronted her about it. When I was taken from my mother when I was 5
years old and put into a foster home, the first night that mom heaps
(she is my foster mother you will learn about later) tried to give me a
bath, well all I did was scream “hot, hot, hot “ but of course it was not,
but that let mom heaps know what had happened. I even asked my mom why
she tried to kill me and she said yes I did but it was just because I was
having a real hard time at that point in my life, well, I asked her how
tough do you think I was having it? A couple of friends have been
asking me why I want to bring up all these bad feelings and all the hurt,
this is what I say to them: if by any means I can show others that when
things are going bad, if they will just wait upon the lord, he will deliver
them, if by any means I can show them that things could be worse, then
they have it that would be worth all the pain that I might experience in
this whole story. Some think that these things could never even happen,
well to them I say this, open up your eyes. There’s an old
saying that goes something like this, ” they are so heavenly minded
that they are no godly good, or something like that, it just means that
we can not afford to turn our eyes away from the bad and pretend that it’s
not there, because you could loose the chance to help someone out. Amen
Part 4 is called “The Basketball”
Bless you and we love you all!
In his holy name
Rev. Dave Brown
The hammer and the nails
Now what you are going to hear is
just another part of my mom being out of control, and as before I promise
you that this is true. When the family and children’s society took
me away from mom and dad, I had no toe nails, well the reason was my mom
stomped them off or took a hammer to them .yes I know it’s hard to believe
but what can I say! It took years for them to grow back and the two
little ones are still to this day deformed. You can ask all the questions
you want, but in my eyes, this was just evil and nothing else. Also
to save time I’m going to just put as much as I can in each letter so you
won’t have to get 500 e-mails. I can remember many times I would be picked
up and just thrown across the room and bounce off the wall. This is why
I called this the basketball and the wall. To cover up my hurt in my older
ages, around 14 or 15 I would sing this song;
My mother used me for a basketball
She bounced me from wall to wall
My mother was a mean old woman.
Short but to the point this happened
many times. I also have scars in my head from when she would take her high
heels and beat me over the head with the point of the shoe. I still have
the holes in my head to prove it when I would wet my pants and she would
have to change them she would (get ready) take my you know what and
twist it and twist it! What purpose that was for, well god only knows.
There are many other things but I need to get to some good stuff that god
has done. Well one day someone turned my mother and father into the
family and children’s society for the 4th time and they took me from them.
Why it took 4 times to see that I was being killed, I don’t know. Then
I was put into the most blesseth foster home a child would want. These
two older people took me as their own and all of a sudden I found something
that I never knew there was, and that was love! I stayed with this family
until I moved out on my own. God has truly blessed me because I feel no
hate or meanness towards my mom and dad. I even met them 28 years
later and told them that I forgave them, even after they tried to deny
what they had done. I just said well I have the reports from the courts
that took me from you and the mental and physical scars to prove it. But
I still forgive you. I led a pretty normal life until I grew up and
got into drugs in my teens. That was one of the biggest mistakes that I
ever made in my life. Between drugs and beer, it almost took my life in
November of 1975. I will get into that the next time. Okie Dokie!
Please let me say this one last thing.
If you know of some child that is being abused, please in the name of god,
report it. If you don’t the child might not be there for you to report
the next time. Don’t wait!
Part 5 tomorrow
God Bless you!
Rev. Dave Brown
Part – 5
Another time of death
The true life testimony of Rev.
Dave Brown
As I left off in part 4, I began
to tell you about the years of my teens, these years were really hard on
me because I had always felt as though I had no real identity as to who
or what I was, even though I was in a great loving family now I still felt
a hole deep inside me. So to fill up that hole and to make me feel as though
I was accepted along with the other boys of my age, I got into drugs and
drinking. It seemed to me at that time of my life that this was the only
thing that would fill all the hurt that I had inside, even though I didn’t
want to admit that was the problem. There were times when I would
never remember driving home from the bars or even leaving the bar or the
person’s house that I passed out at. Sometimes I would find myself in my
car and never even think that I left the driveway. Well the time came when
I thought that I knew what was best in my life, and I decided to quit school.
Well dad heaps, (oh to clear things up at this point, my foster parents
names were, Webster and Evelyn heaps and when I refer to mom and dad at
this
point I am talking about them and
not my real parents unless I say different). Well dad heaps was a real
big man that you did not talk back to, he weighed about 230 Lbs.
And it was all muscle and he was a real gentleman but you did not mouth
him the way kids do now days, well he told me if I wanted to quit school
I could but I better have a job the next day, and I did! Then I got a car,
or I should say mom and dad bought me one. It was a big boat, a 1959 Chevy
Impala with the big wings on the back. Well the second night I was out
in it I hit a tree and smashed it up. I was not hurt but the car sure was,
as the years went by I went deeper and deeper in to the drugs and drinking.
Then November 5th, 1975 came along. As every night for the past 8 or so
years, that evening started out like the rest except I had smoked an ounce
of real good Colombian weed that day all by my self and had drank probable
a case and more of beer along with a couple of hits of purple haze,
(acid). Well my one foster brother (Tony Romero) saw me around 3:00
that evening. He said that I tried to get him to go along with me that
night to the bars that I hit every night, he said that he hardly knew me
by the way I looked. He said he was not going along and I’m glad that he
didn’t. But my younger foster brother Ricky Manton did go along with
my part time girl friend. We had went to townson and hit the bars and then
stopped at a pizza place that served beer and drinks. So we had a
pizza, (so they tell me). We left there around 10:00 PM and started home.
Then it happened, I was heading up this road that had two straight aways
, these two straight aways almost looked the same except for the second
one had a wooden rail fence right before you got to the stop sign, well
my part time girlfriend told me that this peace of junk wouldn’t get out
of it’s own way, now if you grew up in the 50’s and the 60’s and
70’s you did not say that to a man . His car was always fast and he was
always the best driver on earth. (you know what I mean!) It was the time
of the big and small block racing cars. The Chevelle SS and the 409’s
and the great Mustangs.
I was in my Mustang, a 1970. I started
racing because, first I was a fool, but I thought I was at the first straight
away but found out real soon I was not. As I came up to the, what I thought
was the first straight away at about 100 mile a hour, I seen the big red
stop sign at that time I was only about 30 feet from the
biggest tree right across the road,
there was no time for anything but to slam on the breaks ,
as I hit the break pedal, I hit it so hard that it busted the main break
line. (Back in those days the cars only had one break cylinder for both
the front wheels and the back not like today. If one line goes you still
have the other lines to break by, that are for all you motor minded
sisters . He He!) Well needless to say we hit the tree at 100 miles
a hour and the car just exploded, we had just filled the gas tank up in
cockeysville, and the only thing that kept the car from burning us up was
when we hit we hit right on the side of the battery and it cut all electricity
off. (But really it was the lord God. Amen !!!) After the car
hit the tree it left the road up into the air some thirty feet and landed
up next to the swing pool at the house that owned the tree we hit. The
last thing I could remember was grabbing hold of the girl with my right
hand to try to hold her back, well it done no good. She was thrown out
her door and caught her head on the door and ripped all the skin off her
scull, broke her ankles, both wrist and landed sitting up right against
a tree some where out in the yard. My brother Ricky was in the back
seat and when we hit his weight came up on my front seat and the bucket
seat folded, He was not hurt bad, He just cut his little finger a had a
couple of cuts in his head. I was the one that got the worst and if someone
had to be bad off, well I’m glad it was me and not them. It took the firemen
and ambulance 40 minutes to get there. It was 1:00 am when it happened.
One of my good friends came along in his car right after it happened, and
knew that it was my car, he said that he could not find me, but he could
hear me. Then he crawed into the car half way and saw me under the dash.
He said that I started talking to him about selling him the tape player
out of the car, he told me years later that he couldn’t even find it.
Well. I’m getting real tired for
now, I will finish the rest of part five tonight if I get time. (You wont
believe the rest of this part, just the accident).
God bless you all and I love you.
Rev. Dave Brown
I will try to get more done as soon
as I can, I have been so busy. Please forgive me for the time it’s taken.
God bless you all and he’s coming
soon to take us home
The Accident
The true life story of Rev. Dave
Brown
As I lay in the car that freezing
night with the dash of the car on top of me, I knew nothing of how bad
I was tore up. I can remember coming to and the only thing that I said
we, god if you get me out of this I’ll serve you the rest of my life. It
amazes me the things we promise god when we are in trouble and know that
he is the only one that can help us. I couldn’t see a thing because of
the blood that was running down my face, I thought that I was blind, I
tried to move my left arm and it felt as though it wasn’t there, I felt
no pain at all but knew to the best that I could that I was in serious
trouble. It took the fire and ambulance 45 minutes to get there and
what they saw was nothing short of a miracle. At that time the only fire
company that had the Jaws of Life, (that’s what they call the thing they
use to pry open or off the doors of a car. The next thing I remember
was this fireman or ambulance worker taking a razor knife and stripping
my close right off me. I mean they were fast! It seemed like it only
took a second to get me out of the car but I was told later that it took
over an hour because I was under the dash and the dash was folded over
on top of me. The right front wheel was setting at the passenger’s
seat and the passengers seat was almost in the back seat. The motor and
transmission were bent up into the car and pressed upon my body. When we
hit the force was so great that it threw me to the right. (After my head
had hit the windshield and broke it. By this time the helichopter (or however
you spell it and I’m gonna call it the bird so I don’t have to spell it
each time I use it, ok?) well the bird had got there. As they were cutting
me out, and again I stress that it took over an hour just to get me free
from all the twisted metal, I came to again. The person working on me looked
at another guy and said,” this one will never make it to the hospital ”
I passed out again then as they loaded me into the bird I came to again.
This part is where I get real fuzzy, when I felt the bird lift off the
ground something strange happened to me. I thought that I was in a round
soft and pure white tube,
the purest white I have ever seen.
It looked like a coffin but it wasn’t and I could feel this fresh air coming
in it and it was so peaceful and nice. I didn’t see god or anything like
that, at least I don’t remember it but I’m sure that I would have remembered
it. Maybe it was the wings of the angels surrounding me? I just don’t
know, but it was nice, I had no fear, no pain, all I felt was good at that
point. Well the bird landed down at shock-trauma down in Baltimore, Maryland
on the roof. As they pull me off the bird there must have been 25
doctors and nurses working on me. They jabbed everything every where they
could, I still felt no pain. As they rolled me into the operation room
I looked up at a doctor and he looked at me and said these words, “it is
impossible for this boy to be alive” He’s lost almost all his blood.
Here is a list of the injuries that
I had;
1) Left broken arm at the shoulder
mid way
2) Forehead had a couple of big
cuts showing the skull and my right eye was almost cut out and the left
one was in bad shape also, but not as bad.
3) A piece of the windshield broke
off and went up into my mouth at my chin and went up into my upper part
of my mouth.
4) My right leg from the knee up
to my hip, the bone was shattered and sticking out of my leg. The bone
was almost gone.
5) The shifter on the floor had
went through my skin and lodged itself between my ribs and broke off 1/16th
of an inch away from my right lung. They had to pick up my intestines and
put them back inside me while I was still in the car and wrap me up with
allot of bandages to hold them in till I got to the hospital. The shifter
was still in there when they pushed me into the operating room. As
I said the last thing I remember was what that doctor said about it not
being possible for me to be alive. Oh! But they don’t know the lord
we serve!
Amen
They had called my mother and said
that she should think about making arrangements for my burial. But she
knew I was not going to die. I went into a deep comma for 3 or 4
weeks and they would not even let my mom see me till came out of the comma
because I was in a germ proof room. But I did came out of it on the fourth
week, (praise the lord god almighty!) When mom seen me she said that she
didn’t even know me, my head was swelled up like a big five-gallon bucket!
Only one more scary part to the accident but I will finish the rest as
soon as I can.
God bless you and we love you all!
Reverand
Dave Brown & Family
|
Dave’s Testimony