Columnists
After fifth grade, Mark King’s education became a rather intermittent affair. On the farm in Wisconsin, he had faithfully walked five miles each way to school, even through snow. When he and his mother returned to New Jersey, where the schoolyard could become a battlefield, Mark chose work instead.
Columnists
Not often you get three summers in one year. Mark King managed it before he turned 14. His first was ending in New Jersey in August 1939. School was approaching, and doing nothing would make the decision for him. On his 13th birthday, Mark chose west. By autumn he had
Columnists
Mark King had crossed the Pacific once by ship. He was going home by air. At 13, Mark had never been in an airplane. Now he wore a borrowed shirt, carried a military bag and tried to behave as though being the seventh member of an American military flight crew
Columnists
For the first time in five months in Australia, Mark King had money in his pocket and nowhere he had to be. The cattle season was over. After the final roundup, one of the family drove Mark back to Perth. They had treated the 13-year-old American warmly, and
Religion
Guest Contributor: Father Tom Nelson My name is Father Tom Nelson and I am the Pastor at Saint Ann’s Catholic Church in Dayton, NV. Saint Ann’s was officially established on Pike Street in 1937 up until then Catholic services had been celebrated in parishioners homes or Saint Mary
Columnists
For several days, the station had been getting ready. The shearing shed, quiet for much of the year, was swept and cleared. Equipment was checked, extra food laid in, sleeping space prepared, and sheep gathered near the shed. Thirteen-year-old Mark King pitched in wherever another pair of hands
Columnists
Light filtered through the window well before the 5:09 sunrise, announcing another long summer day. Even after supper, the sun would still be hanging above the western horizon. It was Christmas Day. For someone raised in the northern United States, almost everything about that sentence feels wrong. Christmas belongs
Columnists
When I was young, I fell in love with a dark blue 1930 Ford Model A Coupe with a rumble seat. It took nine loads to bring the parts home and another nine months before it became a car again. In Southern California, where freeways ruled the landscape, it barely
Columnists
Sometimes God chooses the most ordinary day to begin His greatest work. For my father, Mark King, one such day began in December 1939. At thirteen, Mark had recently arrived on a sheep station in the hills east of Perth, Western Australia. To Mark it was an adventure. To the
Columnists
Sometimes you reach a place in life where you quietly wonder whether you've made the right decision. Thirteen-year-old Mark King wondered exactly that as the Australian coastline slowly rose from the Indian Ocean. Behind him lay nearly a month at sea caring for 20 cattle and
Columnists
If you've ever found yourself completely out of your depth, you'll understand something of what my father, 13-year-old Robert Mark King, was about to experience. Most of us eventually find ourselves in places we never expected—a diagnosis, a loss, or simply a season
Columnists
The valley revealed itself a little at a time. Just beyond the eastern entrance to Yellowstone, the North Fork of the Shoshone River wandered beneath cottonwoods leaning over its banks. Meadows opened into forests of pine and fir while mountains rose until they seemed to surround the valley itself. Morning