King's Corner: Childhood Dreams
King's Corner column for June 13, 2025
For his fourth birthday my dad, Robert Mark King, received a gift that would change his life. The latest technology for playing pre-recorded music had just been released. These days that might be a new type of music streaming device, or greatly improved earbuds or headphones. That year – 1930 – RCA Victor produced the first vinyl record, 12” in diameter playing at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute (RPM), and a record player. His mother was single, divorced, so a major expense like this for her “Bobbie” was a sacrifice.
It came with an album by a ‘cowboy’ singer, filled with songs about the old west. They played it so many times that he could still sing some of the songs when well into his 90s. These were utterly out-of-place to a child in the rough urban neighborhoods of New Jersey, but that was their appeal. There was a better life “out west” where horses, rodeos, gun-shooting challenges and occasional romances happened in wild, wide open spaces.
The bible – in Proverbs – says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Bobbie’s mom gave him a dream as they sang to the songs on the record over and over again. She was giving him a gift of a new technology they could both enjoy. He was receiving the vision of a life he could only imagine, but became eager to embrace.
And the ‘wild’ part of the ‘wild west’ inspired him to get up to a few antics. Just the next year he was enrolled in a strict, traditional Catholic School run by young Father Stone and a group of inflexible nuns. He soon discovered he could slide down the tile roof, play with the delivery man’s horse, and interrupt his teacher’s stern lecture to him in the classroom by having his pet snake pop its head out of his desk’s inkwell hole right by her hand.
His mom was determined he would be a “good Catholic boy” as well as an altar boy. What she didn’t realize was that she’d already taught him a deeper lesson, imprinted a deeper longing that no amount of discipline was going to take away from him.
Each of us have our childhood dreams even if – as an adult – we’ve tucked them away in a corner we can barely remember. We each have childhood moments and places we fell in love with, that bring us special delight when we revisit those memories.
When we find friends – and later, lovers – who share our dreams and joys, then we feel like “someone gets me” at a deep level. These relationships bring us joy. They show us that someone cares that we are here, and that they share our passion. These give us the sense that we are understood, that we are “seen”.
What if there’s an even deeper imprint in you? We’ve discovered that babies often know their mother’s voice from before they’re born, and often father’s voice if he also was talking to ‘mommy’s tummy’. And not just parents. As the prophet Isaiah said, “The Lord called me before my birth; from within the womb he called me by name”. What if God imbued you with gifts, talents and a deep passion from the youngest age?
We want to be seen and heard and understood and recognized by God. To feel his unconditional love. And to be shown who we really are and what we’re capable of being. To be truly “known” in the deepest way. And then to be inspired to put all of that into action, to chase that dream.
Sometimes you get shaken into taking that action.
At ten years old “Bobbie” was still in New Jersey. He was a big kid, and had no trouble winning fights, but this was far from his dream life. He and several friends rode their bicycles down to the field with a mooring mast where a hydrogen-filled airship carrying 97 people was coming in. They couldn’t ride out onto the field, so they stood by the booth where Herbert Morrison was announcing the evening’s events by radio.
As the Hindenburg went to dock, it tossed ropes from the bow to the ground crew working to secure it. Static electricity ran skyward up the ropes and almost 300 feet above, fire broke out. An explosion at the rear of the airship broke its back; the tail crashed into the ground while fire engulfed the bow, all in thirty seconds.
Bobbie stood near Morrison as he narrated, “There's smoke, and there's flames, now, and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity, and all the passengers screaming around here!” Thirty five passengers died in the flames.
Bobbie and his mom cried together that night. He desperately wanted to leave. She knew someone who could take them to a family farm in Wisconsin, and by the morning they’d organized it. They would finally move west, and begin a whole new life that just might fulfil his childhood dream.
What are your dreams? And what deep longings has God put in your heart? And are you still chasing them? Can you trust him for guidance, and wait for his sometimes unexpected timing?
