Although the song, “500 Miles Away From Home” was released in the 60’s, it seemed part of my life in 1972. After the height of my pride in 1971 at my August college graduation, I was stripped of my vanity by a terrible job market. I couldn’t find anything remotely close to my accounting training and I headed to Nashville, TN on a whim. I was tired of people telling me how my uncle was calling me a bum, who didn’t want a job. I actually rode with that same uncle to Jefferson City, where I caught a ride to Nashville. I accomplished little in Nashville except to make a couple of old friends unhappy, so I stepped on a bus and headed back to Jeff City. I didn’t have enough money for a ticket back home.
I stayed in old friend, Earl Stroup’s trailer for a couple of days until my brother, Mitch Whisnant, talked me into riding back to Greenville, SC with him. After spending a few days in the home of Mike and Betty Whisnant, I moved over to a trailer with Mitch and his housemate, Jim Gilstrap. I can’t tell you how many times I was refused a job because I was supposedly overqualified. In the meantime, though, I started substitute teaching at Carolina High School in Greenville in order to make a little coin. I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed being in the classroom and around teenagers.
I went home and found a seasonal job and returned to college in the Spring of ’73 and ’74. In ’74 a government recruiter came to my off-campus residence and offered me a job with an agency that is now part of the FDIC. The agency liked my test scores and really came on strong, but I decided not take the job. When I took an accounting class while training in ’73, my old accounting prof said, “Roberts, you don’t want to teach,” and told me he could set me up as an accountant for a ski lodge. I thanked him, but stuck with my hopeful teaching path.
I continued to work at that same seasonal job and in the Fall of ’74 was told by my boss of a teaching job open at Wicomico High School. I had already interviewed for a full-time job with my seasonal employer that would have required a move to New Jersey. At the same time, I interviewed and was hired for the teaching job at Wicomico. Two years later, I began coaching basketball. Thirty-three years later I retired with lots of great memories.
It wasn’t a fun journey from ’72 until ‘74, but in the end, God led me where he wanted me to be. I’m forever grateful He did. For much of that difficult road, however, Bobby Bare’s classic echoed in my thoughts, and it still brings back memories all of these years later. It’s a classic.
“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”—Proverbs 16:9