CB radio became really popular in the mid-70’s. When I moved to San Augustine County and we got a telephone, it was a 10 party line. We heard 5 rings at our house. Our ring was 3 short rings.
Every time you’d get a call about a half-dozen other people would pick up to listen in; meanwhile the person you’re talking to seems to get farther and farther away as the impedance of the phone line changes with each listener.

So I got myself a CB base radio and stuck an antenna in the top of a tall pine tree. Now I didn’t have to worry about the telephone. And every time I’d talk on the CB it became a party as friends from all over the area would join us on the same channel.

Summer rolled around and with it the revivals began. I went to a youth revival where a young man named Jeff Thompson was preaching. I was impressed with him. He often spoke of Jacksonville Baptist College.

Meanwhile I wasn’t doing anything profitable and my step-dad gave me a few options – get a job or go to college.
So I enrolled at Stephen F. Austin State University but my heart wasn’t in it. I took classes in Spanish, Speech, Military Science, Life of Christ, and Math.
The only classes I passed were Speech, Military Science, with emphasis on leadership, and Life of Christ.
Even then I think god was telling me something.

As the semester ended and winter began I was praying about what I needed to do. I was addicted to the CB and spent a lot of time on there and not doing much else, other than going to church.
I had been reading in the Bible about Gideon.

Gideon said to God, “If You will save Israel by my hand as You have said — look, I shall put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that You will save Israel by my hand, as You have said.” And it was so. When he rose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece together, he wrung the dew out of the fleece, a bowlful of water. Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me, but let me speak just once more: Let me test, I pray, just once more with the fleece; let it now be dry only on the fleece, but on all the ground let there be dew.” And God did so that night. It was dry on the fleece only, but there was dew on all the ground. Judg 6:36-40

Something in me laid out a wild hair of a fleece. I told God that if He blew up my CB I would go to Jacksonville and check out the college.
Now, of all things a winter thunderstorm rolled through and lightning struck my antenna and burned up my CB.

The next day I made the 90-minute drive to the JBC campus. I met with one of the counselors and told him my story and about Jeff. He said Jeff had just walked by in the hallway and called him in.
I made some financial arrangements and signed up for the spring semester.
I learned that you can’t just mess around with God. If you are serious about seeking His will, He will be serious about giving it!
I also learned if you lay out the “fleece” you’d better get ready for His answer!