M i t c h S a n d e r s . c o m

People and events from the book Whiteboy Blues

	My Great-Uncle Everett "hogged" this monster catfish that I open my book up talking about. Fishing is used throughout my autobiography as a symbol of the acquired skills that it takes to grow up and be a man. There is a mystery involving fishing and the transition from boyhood to manhood that I can't fully explain, but it is a theme that runs throughout "Whiteboy Blues." On a pre-release edition of my book, I used this photo on the cover.
	Laurence Sanders, according to at least one Sanders genealogist, was my 12th Great Grandfather. He was burned at the stake in 1555 in England by the orders of Queen Mary who was trying to reinstate Catholicism in England. He was martyred for refusing to denounce his right to read the Bible and have faith on Jesus Christ alone. His descendants and other Sanders relatives were Quakers who also were persecuted for the religious beliefs. This wood-carving was done shortly after Laurence was burned at the stake and is from the "Fox's Book of Martyrs."
	John Sanders and his wife Sarah Copple were my 4th Great Grandparents. He was born in North Carolina into a Quaker family that fled Virginia when Quakerism was outlawed in that state. Many Quakers fled across the Great Dismal Swamp that separated the two states and settled in North Carolina. John's father fought alongside George Washington in the Revolutionary War for 7 years. Afterwards, John came with his father and family to Indiana, which was the frontier land at the time where Indians and pioneers still raided each other's homelands.
	Newspaper clippings mostly of my father and his brother. They were local celebrities in southern Illinois from fighting in the St. Louis area Golden Gloves circuit. They were in the papers often. My mother tells lots of stories how the girls in every town knew all about the Sanders boys.
	Vernos Sanders, my uncle, the Glove Gloves boxer recruited for the U.S. Olympics team.
	Burl Ingles, my uncle on my mother's side of the family. I talk a lot about Burl's style of life and some of the ironies involved. My mother admired Burl very much and told me lots of stories about him as a child growing up.
	This is me with my guitar that my mother bought me in 1968 when we couldn't afford it. I still have the guitar and think a lot of it.
	This is me and my harmonica playing the blues with a Houston celebrity—Harlem Slim. In recent days I've playing several blues clubs with Harlem playing old-style Chicago and Delta blues stuff. I helped Harlem Slim get started in his professional career by getting him on the web and building his web site for him. He is doing quite well nowadays as a full time musician on the local Houston club scene.
	My Grandfather Ingles and me as a young teen-ager. I was never proud of this picture, as this was the time I just started getting into drugs. Notice the marijuana poster behind us. This is the only picture I know of with my grandpa and me.
	Here I am at the grave of my grandfather Ingles and his wife, my grandmother. This picture I auto-captured during my genealogy trip of which I spent 3 months on the road during the summer of 2001. I gathered lots of family history and pictures and wrote two other family history books from this data collected on this trip.
	This photo I took during the Kathryn Kuhlman crusade in St. Louis, which I describe in the book. This man came there in a wheel chair and I believe he was paralyzed from the waste down. He had a urine bag attached to his wheelchair that I noticed. He was healed and walked around very normal. I describe him in more detail I believe in my book.
	This lady I took a picture of also at the Kathryn Kuhlman crusade. She was just in the crowd and was walking out from the building pushing an empty wheelchair. She had a great big joyous smile on her face and I asked her in passing if she too was healed. She replied with this amazingly joyful, "Yes" and I snapped a photo of her. You can just see the edge of the empty wheelchair she is pushing. There were lots of people in this crusade leaving and having been healed, so it wasn't unusual at the time at all.
	Here I am looking somber at Bruce Lee's gravesite. His own son, Brandon Lee is buried next to him here. I named my own son, Brandon, after I heard Bruce Lee named his son that (though he was alive and just a small boy at the time.)
	I used to give demonstrations of snakes and reptiles to the local schools. I was something of an amateur herpetologist and at one point had literally hundreds and hundreds of snakes in different cages throughout the house. One of the reasons we moved into our present home was to build and keep a special room just to breed snakes in. We still call it the "snake-room" sometimes, even though I no longer breed them and am only down to just a few pet snakes.
	My stepfather Ike Lovvorn has brought a lot of joy into my life and I don't give him enough praise in my book Whiteboy Blues. He is held very dear to my heart though and has been very kind and gracious to me throughout my life. Ike also became my father-in-law since I also married his daughter, Adena. This is Adena's father and my children's grandpa. He also is a fisherman as you can see.
	Adena at the gravesite of her 11th Great Grandmother - Pocahontas.
	Myself, standing under a dedication stone to Sanders at the very church spot where Pocahontas was buried. I describe this strange discovery in my book and consider it symbolic of our special relationship and strange history together.