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Cauldron to Crucible
BayLore Chapter
### Gene Ewing
When I was a freshman at Baylor, Gene Ewing brought his faith healing “shtick” to Waco.
He was a corn pone second-tier predecessor of Joel Oilsheen, uh, Osteen.
In the first few days of Ewing's charade, he "cured" the normal ailments as defined in the Faith Healer's Handbook, written by Oral Roberts. They included lame legs, hearing loss, psoriasis, cellulite, acne, and wallet too full.
Ewing's accomplices used plastic rakes to scrape the money from the floor in front of the worshipers into the aisles for collection. They reminded me of RV salesmen: pompadour hair, iridescent suits, and clip-on ties.
Ewing invited people in the audience to come forward for healing. A man asked for help with his hearing. Ewing clamped his hands over the man's ears and began speaking in tongues. After several seconds, he asked how his hearing was. The man replied, “No difference. I was asking for prayer about my hearing at the courthouse next Tuesday.”
The grand finale of Ewing's week-long stint in Waco was going to be his raising someone from the dead. As his accomplices rolled a casket onto the stage, accompanied by organ music that sounded like a revved up rock 'n roll arrangement of a gospel tune, some people rushed the stage. Wide eyed, Ewing shot out the side door, hopped into his Cadillac and headed toward West Texas.
BayLore Chapter
### Gene Ewing
When I was a freshman at Baylor, Gene Ewing brought his faith healing “shtick” to Waco.
He was a corn pone second-tier predecessor of Joel Oilsheen, uh, Osteen.
In the first few days of Ewing's charade, he "cured" the normal ailments as defined in the Faith Healer's Handbook, written by Oral Roberts. They included lame legs, hearing loss, psoriasis, cellulite, acne, and wallet too full.
Ewing's accomplices used plastic rakes to scrape the money from the floor in front of the worshipers into the aisles for collection. They reminded me of RV salesmen: pompadour hair, iridescent suits, and clip-on ties.
Ewing invited people in the audience to come forward for healing. A man asked for help with his hearing. Ewing clamped his hands over the man's ears and began speaking in tongues. After several seconds, he asked how his hearing was. The man replied, “No difference. I was asking for prayer about my hearing at the courthouse next Tuesday.”
The grand finale of Ewing's week-long stint in Waco was going to be his raising someone from the dead. As his accomplices rolled a casket onto the stage, accompanied by organ music that sounded like a revved up rock 'n roll arrangement of a gospel tune, some people rushed the stage. Wide eyed, Ewing shot out the side door, hopped into his Cadillac and headed toward West Texas.
Cauldron to Crucible
Foreword
Most memoirs follow a familiar path.
A young person discovers a dream, overcomes obstacles, achieves success, and reflects upon the lessons learned. The trajectory is upward, orderly, and reassuring.
This is not that kind of story.
The life described in these pages often moved in the opposite direction. It rose, fell, recovered, stumbled, reinvented itself, and started over again. More than once.
At various times, the author was a small town Texas boy, a Baylor student, a naval officer, a CPA, a bank executive, a consultant, a forensic accountant, a telemarketer, a bookkeeper, an investigator, a caregiver, and, when circumstances demanded it, a survivor.
Titles came and went.
Fortunes rose and fell.
Careers flourished and collapsed.
New opportunities appeared where none seemed possible.
The conventional measure of a life would struggle to make sense of such a journey. Success and failure arrived too often and too unpredictably. The pattern refuses to fit neatly into a résumé or a formula.
Yet there is a thread running through every chapter.
The story is ultimately about freedom.
Not freedom in the political sense.
Freedom in the deeply personal sense: the determination to live a self-directed life, even when circumstances, institutions, expectations, responsibilities, or mistakes attempt to dictate another course.
The young man described in these pages was expected to follow a certain script. Many people do. Some embrace it. Others spend their lives quietly trapped within it.
The author chose another path.
Sometimes that choice led to achievement.
Sometimes it led to hardship.
Occasionally it led to both at the same time.
The reader will encounter ambition, humor, miscalculation, persistence, pride, disappointment, recovery, and more than a few moments that provoke the question, "What happens next?"
That uncertainty is not a flaw in the story.
It is the story.
The chapters that follow are not the account of a man who always won.
They are the account of a man who repeatedly got back up.
In an age that often celebrates certainty, this memoir offers something more valuable: an honest record of adaptation. It is the chronicle of a life lived without guarantees, where identity had to be rebuilt more than once and where resilience became a habit rather than an achievement.
The title Cauldron to Crucible is fitting.
A cauldron is a place of turbulence, heat, and constant motion. A crucible is a place where pressure and fire transform the material placed within it.
The story you are about to read contains plenty of both.
Whether you agree with every decision the author made is beside the point. What matters is that he made them himself, accepted their consequences, and continued forward.
At the end of a long life, that may be one of the rarest accomplishments of all.
Welcome to the journey.
Foreword
Most memoirs follow a familiar path.
A young person discovers a dream, overcomes obstacles, achieves success, and reflects upon the lessons learned. The trajectory is upward, orderly, and reassuring.
This is not that kind of story.
The life described in these pages often moved in the opposite direction. It rose, fell, recovered, stumbled, reinvented itself, and started over again. More than once.
At various times, the author was a small town Texas boy, a Baylor student, a naval officer, a CPA, a bank executive, a consultant, a forensic accountant, a telemarketer, a bookkeeper, an investigator, a caregiver, and, when circumstances demanded it, a survivor.
Titles came and went.
Fortunes rose and fell.
Careers flourished and collapsed.
New opportunities appeared where none seemed possible.
The conventional measure of a life would struggle to make sense of such a journey. Success and failure arrived too often and too unpredictably. The pattern refuses to fit neatly into a résumé or a formula.
Yet there is a thread running through every chapter.
The story is ultimately about freedom.
Not freedom in the political sense.
Freedom in the deeply personal sense: the determination to live a self-directed life, even when circumstances, institutions, expectations, responsibilities, or mistakes attempt to dictate another course.
The young man described in these pages was expected to follow a certain script. Many people do. Some embrace it. Others spend their lives quietly trapped within it.
The author chose another path.
Sometimes that choice led to achievement.
Sometimes it led to hardship.
Occasionally it led to both at the same time.
The reader will encounter ambition, humor, miscalculation, persistence, pride, disappointment, recovery, and more than a few moments that provoke the question, "What happens next?"
That uncertainty is not a flaw in the story.
It is the story.
The chapters that follow are not the account of a man who always won.
They are the account of a man who repeatedly got back up.
In an age that often celebrates certainty, this memoir offers something more valuable: an honest record of adaptation. It is the chronicle of a life lived without guarantees, where identity had to be rebuilt more than once and where resilience became a habit rather than an achievement.
The title Cauldron to Crucible is fitting.
A cauldron is a place of turbulence, heat, and constant motion. A crucible is a place where pressure and fire transform the material placed within it.
The story you are about to read contains plenty of both.
Whether you agree with every decision the author made is beside the point. What matters is that he made them himself, accepted their consequences, and continued forward.
At the end of a long life, that may be one of the rarest accomplishments of all.
Welcome to the journey.
Stop thinking about France. We're next . . . and soon.
Twitter should change its name to Clutter.