Hello,

I'm "fowl1." I'm not quite as bad as it sounds. Well... maybe it depends on who you talk to. It was kind of laid on me a long time ago when I first entered the cyber-world. I was trying to come up with a "user name" with my new phone company, and the user-friendly Windows95 dialup wizard kept rejecting my selections, telling me they were all taken. Being my initial experience with the Internet, the first of my frustrations began to set in, until finally the wizard threw some user name options my way; I figured because it had long ago become equally frustrated with me.

But, there it was - "fowl1".

It was me all over, I scooped it up and I've been "fowl1" ever since.

As it turns out... it's a good thing that I haven't gone with too many other names, because one day I woke up and found out that I was really old with intermittent memory lapses. One user name simplified things considerably for me where the Internet is concerned... but I wrote it down on a piece of paper, anyway, along with the password just in case - if I can only remember where I put it.

It's not that big a deal these days as it used to be way back in '95, forgetting your user name and password. Just click on the little prompts today: "forgot my user name" or "forgot my password"... and a thousand strangers will email it to you.

It's particularly helpful to old people.

Okay... that'll do for now. More historic adventures, later.

I inherited my King James Bible from my grandfather the day he died - Aug.2, 1957. He passed away upstairs in my uncle's house. He was my mother's step-father and the only grandfather I ever knew on any side of my family.

They must have just come back from the doctor as they escorted him into the house, uncle and dad supporting him on either side. I was nine.

I remember saying, "Hi, grandpa!" as they shuffled by on their way to the bedroom stairs. He looked at me, began to cry... and for the longest time I wondered what I had done wrong to make him cry like that.

A few hours later, mom brought down a box and gave it to me. It was grandpa's Bible. It was virtually new, still in the box... everything still shined the shine of unuse. It had a shiny black paper cover, embossed to appear as leather, with a really neat "zipper" around three sides that had all the pages within secure and cozy.

I unzipped it, immediately liking the sound of the security it boasted, and read the inside cover: "The Holy Bible," in Old English type, "Presented to David Fowler from Grandpa (Otto Lantzer) Aug.2-57." It was written with a fountain pen in my mother's handwriting.

The shiny box and its contents soon became nestled in my dresser drawer, still shiny and unused for another sixteen years before I would be inspired to take it out and actually study it.

I had grown up with my brothers and sisters going to a Presbyterian church of our parent's selection. Our parents didn't go, except on a few odd Christmases and Easters... they just sent us kids every Sunday to get us out of the house for a couple of hours of peace and quiet (or whatever).

But, Bibles weren't really necessary in those days to take to church. Especially, Sunday school, to which we were required to attend. The regular church service was optional. An option of which we seldom took advantage. Sunday school wasn't really that bad, as a kid's outlook was concerned. As I said, they didn't teach us from the Bible... they taught us from "comic books!"

Hardbound versions of them are available in bookstores today as "Illustrated Bible Stories."

Our Sunday school mentors, or Deacons, or whatever they were called (Sunday school teachers)... basically taught us that they encouraged us to read the Bible, just as long as we prepared ourselves for the reality that "we wouldn't be able to understand what the Bible said." "The Bible uses a lot of symbolic language that means something else."

Okay... so, the Bible doesn't mean what it says. So, then... what... we either take a crash course in Bible symbolism to learn what all the symbols mean... or make up our own meanings for the symbols as we go to make the Bible mean whatever we want it to?

This was not conducive to serious Bible study. If the Bible doesn't mean what it says... does it have any meaning or purpose at all? Is God toying with us? Or is there a God at all?

Like a typical child, I believed what I was told. And like a fool, I actually tried to read my shiny "zippered" Bible once. I quickly found myself being lulled into deep trance-like sleep early in the very first book by what seemed to be hundreds of booring unpronouncable names and ages of people who "begat" hundreds of thousands of more people with more booring unpronouncable names and ages.

So, I discovered the teachers were right... the Bible couldn't be understood. It was an utterly dull book whose only redeeming quality was to assist you in the event you were having trouble getting to sleep.

****

I married in March of '73 (which was way back in the 1900's). My wife and I had barely set up housekeeping (three-room apartment) when I saw the talking head on the console TV that day as I was drying the dishes.

It spoke the most radical words I'd ever heard - "THE BIBLE CAN BE UNDERSTOOD!" "THE BIBLE MEANS EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS!"

I was hooked immediately. Something in the back of my mind had always put Jesus Christ on hold. Something had always told me that something wasn't quite right about what I had always been told. How could the religion I had been taught by profess their God... and not believe what He plainly says?

I had never actually rejected Jesus... but, I never really knew anything about Him, either. How could I, when I was taught that He was a liar... didn't mean anything He said?

But suddenly, in the blink of an eye... just as I "believed what I was told" as a child by the "God experts" in my life, that the Bible couldn't be understood - I discovered that I was now a naive, trusting adult who now believed what he was told: that the Bible CAN be understood.

That was really the whole key to understanding the Bible - one's frame of mind.

And after a brief prayer to the Creator, asking that He might open my mind and heart to the Truth of His Word, I eagerly took the talking head's correspondence Bible study course (by snail mail) and fed on, imbibed and digested the most amazing nourishment I had never imagined. The course took about a year... but the studying never stopped.

Then, one day... I looked down... and my shiny new Bible with the really neat zipper on it was all worn and tattered. The cover was almost falling off. I had it all zipped up... but I could still see the pages inside!

Panic began to set in as I looked around for a solution. This was my grandfather's Bible... a priceless heirloom. It was all filty from oily hand sweat... pages torn and all marked up with underlining and passage references. I had toiled ceaselessly through those pages for a priceless treasure trove of knowledge and divine understanding...

But even more importantly... I HAD TO SAVE THAT ZIPPER!

I had to repair my Bible with a durable material worthy of the zipper. Hardly any time at all was lost in deciding on the solution.

The motorcycle leathers that I had bought years before for riding my Harley had long ago fallen into disuse. The leather pants legs would make an admirable material for the new Bible cover... and securely hold the zipper.

So, I grabbed a pair of shears and went hunting. To this day, the hide of some unsuspecting cow has adorned my priceless Bible, exceeding all expectations. The tattered contents are still held securely within... including the pages that have separated from the rest and would have long ago disappeared were it not for that zipper... even if I did sew it on upside down.

You don't think about it normally... that you zip a Bible closed from the bottom of the book, up. That is, you don't think about it until you have to zip it closed from the top, down.

Anyway... while I was at it, I went ahead and put a leather cover on my RSV Bible, too (that the old Presbyterian church gave me). It didn't have a zipper originally, so I got one from JoAnn Fabrics. That zipper is installed correctly.

****