A Reading from Jerry Morton's Memoir, Finding My Way

 

The following is an excerpt from Jerry Morton’s entertaining memoir, Finding My Way: A Memoir. Join Appalachia Bare as we take just a small peek into one of Morton’s life experiences:

 

 

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A Reading

As an escape from the tensions of my first job after leaving the Army in June of 1969, I read a book I had run across about Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet. It was the first time I had ever encountered some documented, unexplained psychic type of phenomena that I considered to be credible. Now, there were things in that material that were just beyond any level of credibility, like reincarnation and life after death. However, there were reports of documented psychic predictions from Edgar Cayce that impressed me. Cayce’s trance-like readings on someone’s health and the recommended treatments that were documented to have worked were convincing. The material strongly suggested that something beyond our understanding was real.

I didn’t pretend to know what real was. Whatever it was, it gave me hope that there was something more than what we saw in front of us. A guiding force knew what was happening and directed us when we allowed ourselves to listen. Now, I understood this was not the scientific view of the world, nor the mainstream view of the world. You couldn’t just openly discuss these things. You would quickly be ostracized from any well-educated group of people. The risk of believing such things was being labeled a religious fanatic or worse.

After two years of functioning as the only school psychologist serving seven inner city schools being integrated for the first time in St. Petersburg, Florida, I got admitted to the University of Tennessee’s Psychology Department’s doctoral program in school psychology. Even though I had a master’s degree in school psychology, I was told that it would take me five years or longer to complete the program. The length of time it would take me to graduate was dependent upon my passage through well-defined evaluation levels the doctoral program had established for all of its Ph.D. psychology students. There were five basic levels to get past. Each one would take an estimated year of preparation to accomplish. Somewhere along the line, at least one of the levels would take you more than a year.

Leaving my Florida position with a wife and two toddlers to enter a five-year plus doctoral program was stressful. My wife had a high school teaching job at a school near the house that we had to buy in order for me to get in-state tuition. Thank heaven for the GI bill and its funds supporting education. The psychology department didn’t trust my masters level training in psychological testing, so I had to do extra things in that area along with the eighteen hours of course work I was taking. It was a stressful time.

Adding to my stress was the fact that I had not passed the department’s first hurdle. The entering class in the psychology doctoral program had to take a test on the mastery of current facts established in the nine domains of psychology. The test was created by the department’s faculty. A passing score was not established until the test had been administered. The faculty would review the test results and determine the passing score in such a manner that at least forty percent of those taking it would fail.

Those who failed would be allowed to retake the test in the spring. Those graduate students who failed the test the second time would be dropped from the program. The word among the senior graduate students was that you could appeal to take the test a third time in the fall with the newly entered class of graduate students. Failing the test the third time was it. You were gone.

I was stressed. Here I was with a wife and two toddlers competing against these brilliant graduate students straight out of undergraduate school knowing all of the current research in the nine areas of psychology. I had been out of graduate school for five years and didn’t even know there were nine areas of psychology. I repeat, I was stressed.

I could manage the course work. My experiences at the Army’s special warfare center working on psychological issues for two years had prepared me extremely well for the graduate work. The Army provided me the opportunity to work with some highly regarded psychology professors. In turn, my work as a practicing masters level school psychologist for the last two years had made student evaluations comparatively easy for me when contrasted to the other graduate students. I had administered the standard psychoeducational tests at least three hundred times compared to the ten or so times expected of the normal graduate school student. The course work wasn’t my problem.

My fellow graduate students were at a disadvantage when compared to the hard intellectual work demanded of me by the Army. I knew that no one had worked harder or longer hours than I did on issues related to psychology during my two years at the special warfare center. My problem was getting through the department’s big testing events and doing the research for a dissertation. Test results never reflected my true knowledge of a subject. With the exception of the few times I got lucky on a test. Then I did extraordinarily well. I couldn’t count on getting lucky in this graduate school.

Well, there were two other problems. One was having enough time to do all that had to be done. the other problem was money. My wife worked all day in a highly demanding job. We had two toddlers to raise. I needed to study in the evenings. She needed to grade papers and develop lesson plans. Daycare, diaper services, and normal living issues consumed our income and a lot of time.

I found reading the Edgar Cayce material sent from the Cayce Center at Virginia Beach, Virginia, helpful in reducing my stress level. It gave me hope of something bigger than the constant struggle to get ahead. There were just a few very close graduate school friends to whom I even dared to mention a little of the Cayce material. They were surprisingly receptive. Being rigorously trained in the scientific method, we naturally challenged every concept of reported explanations for verified events.

One of the graduate student’s wives told me about a psychic who lived near the part of town where my family and I lived. She thought the psychic was able to hit on some things for her that she had no way of knowing about beforehand. She gave me the woman’s name and phone number.

After thinking about it for several weeks, I mentioned the psychic to my wife. Our first summer in Knoxville was under way. It provided a break for my wife from teaching school. She was able to spend more time with the children. I continued taking courses at the university. I was trying to get through the program as rapidly as possible. I also needed extra time to study in preparation for getting through the second of the five hurdles in the fall. I had passed the first testing phase in the spring. It was the one I had failed last fall.

It wasn’t until the third or fourth year of graduate school that the senior graduate students attempted to pass the generals examination that I was targeting in the fall. It was two days of writing essay answers on very broad psychological issues that required you to cite specific research or literature on the topic in writing your answer to each question. Approximately 40% or more of those taking the test failed it. Those who failed it could appeal to take it the following year. Reportedly, it was rare for a graduate student to be allowed to try to pass generals a third time.

My wife suggested that I call the psychic, Vivian, and see how much she would charge and when she could see me. We could consider a reading from Vivian a birthday present since my birthday was fast approaching.

Vivian could see me two weeks from the day I called her. She would charge me $5.00 for a reading. We set the date. Her house was on Chapman Highway near John Sevier Highway. It was about three miles from our house.

The day to get a reading arrived. I felt like such a fool. This was a waste of money. These fortunetellers were fakes. This was so un-scientific. Why was I doing this to myself? On top of all of those feelings of self-doubt I was afraid. What if she was accurate on some things? What would I do then? How would my worldview be forced to change? Why was I putting myself under this pressure?

It was with mixed emotions that I drove to the address Vivian had given me over the phone. I’m not sure what I expected to see, but what I saw was definitely not what I expected. This house was a poor excuse of a house. It was tiny. It was more of a run-down shack than a house. I knocked on the screen door. The screen was torn in one corner. Because of the heat of the day, the windows and the front door were open. I knocked again. A parrot in the house screeched from the left side of the screen door. A weak voice coming from the right side said, “Come in, Sweetie.”

The squeaky screen door opened and bumped on the flooring as I walked into the dimly lit room. The elderly, overweight woman was propped up in the bed, pressed between the back wall and the opening for the door. Her hands were obviously crippled as she raised a glass to her dry lips. The glass was clasped between her thumb and forefinger as her other fingers were pressed deeply into her palm in such a manner that it was apparent that they had not moved from that position in years.

“Sit down, sweetie. Bring that chair over there, here. Sit right here beside me now,” she wheezed between little gasps for air.

Vivian was an old woman with not long to live. She appeared to live in pain and poverty.

“SCRRREEECH,     CHAWW,     EAT     IT,     EAT     IT, SCRREEECHHH,” screamed the parrot.

“Shut up, you damned old bird,” screamed Vivian.

Yes, I thought, I’ve been had.

“Don’t mind that old bird. Now you’re the one who called for the reading, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. You’re right on time. Now give me those playing cards,” she mumbled pointing to an old deck of regular playing cards sitting on the little end table beside her bed.

As I handed her the cards, she said with a pleasant smile, “Now reach that bottle of Southern Comfort and pour a little into my glass, please.”

I did. She took a little sip of it and set the glass down.

“Now take the cards and shuffle them nice and long for me. That’s right. Do a good job. Pull that board over here. Put it on my lap. That’s good. I can lay some of the cards down on it.”

She proceeded to lay the first few cards on the make-do table and studied them.

Looking up at me, she said, “I see you’re a graduate student in medicine about to become a doctor.”

“No, ma’am. I’m in psychology.”

“Well that’s a healing profession. That’s what I meant. You’re about to graduate aren’t you?”

“No, ma’am. I just started. It will take at least four or five more years if I ever do graduate.”

“No, you are wrong. This time next year you will be through with school. You will have a job as a psychologist. It will be here in Tennessee. You will not have to move from the house you live in now. Honey, would you pour me a little more of that Southern Comfort?” she asked, after finishing a long drag on her glass of the same.

“That’s all for now. Don’t pay me. You will be back. You will be back next year. You will be back after you start that new job,” she stated, taking another sip of the Southern Comfort.

I tried to pay her, but she vigorously refused to accept the five-dollar bill. As I was leaving, a brand-new Mercedes-Benz sedan pulled up in front of her house. It was driven by an extremely well-dressed older lady. As I got into my car, the woman got out of hers, made a friendly wave to me and entered Vivian’s house as she was greeted by the screams of the parrot.

My wife and I laughed at the telling of my visit with Vivian. She was an obvious total failure as a psychic but what a wonderful character as a human being. You just couldn’t help but like Vivian a whole lot.

I did go back to see her a year and a half after that reading. Her predictions of the future were so far-fetched that I had just forgotten about her. It wasn’t until the year and a half had passed that I paused to reflect on what Vivian had told me.

I had finished the doctoral program the following July. I had gotten through the department’s fact-check test, the two days of writing the generals exams, my specialty project in psychology and my dissertation, an analysis of variance research project that tracked twenty-six factors across an experimental group of subjects, a control group of subjects and a placebo group of subjects.

I didn’t receive the doctoral degree officially from the university until that December because my major professor had missed the filing date for receiving the degree in August by two days. I had a job that started on the first of July, as predicted by Vivian.

I was to develop the first comprehensive school psychological services for seven small school systems through an educational cooperative and to provide training to the area school systems’ staffs on the implementation of the newly passed special education laws being enforced by the state for the first time. The cooperative’s offices were less than ten miles from home.

 

Jerry Morton grew up in a Coast Guard family who moved quite a bit, with the result that he attended 8 different public schools. These circumstances provided him with some unusual experiences and insights into the many subcultures that exist in the northern and midwestern states. Experiences in the South began for him when he attended Centre College of Kentucky. After graduating from infantry officer candidate’s school in the Viet Nam era, he was assigned to the Special Warfare Center to be an instructor at its psychological warfare school. Jerry later enrolled in the University of Tennessee’s doctoral program in school psychology where he received his Ph. D. and began working for the Little Tennessee Valley Educational Cooperative (LTVEC) assisting area school systems to develop school psychology programs. In 1976, he became the executive director of LTVEC and held that position until 2014. Jerry’s other writings include Reluctant Lieutenant: From Basic to OCS in the Sixties, and he co-authored A School for Healing: Alternative Strategies for Teaching At-Risk Students with Rosa Kennedy.

 

Click on the following images for more information about Jerry Morton’s Finding My Way: A Memoir and his other books.

 

**Featured image: Theo Crazzolara, Pixabay