Cats and Other Tails- 2017

Cat and Other Tails: Random Remembrances from Our Youth (long)

Dr. Paul Manuel—2017

 

      My favorite part of high school was the band program, both concert band and marching band. Several other classes were required, but band, which was an elective, I enjoyed. It was also one subject in which I could get a good grade without expending much effort. (Being first chair in the trombone section helped. I was not as accomplished as Dad, who went to Julliard, where he majored in trombone and voice.) After graduation many of my friends went off for further schooling. I was content to stay and work in a gas station (“Pete’s Garage”), convinced that college was for intellectuals, and that I was not an intellectual. At the time, I had neither direction nor ambition. Those came several years later.  (The persistent refrain at parent-teacher conferences for me in grade school was: “He’s not working up to his ability.” It took a while for me to overcome that assessment.)

 

      I also lacked any interest in using what attracted many of my peers: alcohol, tobacco, or drugs. Having become a Christian some years earlier, I knew that God would not want me to impair my physical health or mental faculties. Several of my friends in high school were not so discriminating, a tendency not limited to youth. The band director was an alcoholic and would host parties for students at which there was no limit to underage drinking. Occasionally, he came to class visibly inebriated, behavior that eventually got him fired. At that time, I was not personally familiar with the effects of alcohol—neither of my parents drank; my father had taken the Methodist abstinence pledge, probably because his father was an alcoholic—so the signs of the director’s public intoxication, rarely to the extreme, generally escaped my notice. Thankfully, my reticence to “follow the crowd” kept me from such indiscretions.

 

      Marty, a drummer in the high school music department with me, was a regular user of illegal pharmaceuticals (e.g., marijuana, barbiturates, LSD). He did not appear to be addicted and seemed to function well. He would often offer me some of whatever he had. It was both generous and sincere, yet I declined each time. To my knowledge, his mother did not know about his drug use, but I noticed over time a degradation in his ability to think clearly. That observation confirmed for me my decision to eschew substance abuse of any kind.

 

      In August of 1969, Marty and I drove his 1963 Valiant (with its push-button transmission) to a music festival in upstate NY at a place called Woodstock. We had to park several miles from the concert site. The promoters were not expecting so many people to come. They sold tickets for 50,000, assuming that not all would actually attend. An estimated 400,000 came. Although we had tickets for two days, there was no checking tickets at the gates, because the initial onslaught of concert goers tore down the gates. The event lasted for three days and was amazingly peaceful, but we only stayed for one day. There was too much mud—it had been raining for several days—there were too few Port-a-Potties, there were no public food options, and there were too many people. The sound system was great, though, but there was barely enough room for us to walk among the huddled masses, all seated on the ground in the mud. The only space was at the foot of the elevated stage, yet by then a person was too close to see anything.

      Linda and I had a much better time when we saw the documentary “Woodstock” the next year. We were able to drive close to the showing, there was no mud in the asphalt parking lot, the theatre seating was plentiful and comfortable, there were food options (such as one finds at a mall theatre), the restrooms were clean and line-free (unlike the too few over-taxed Port-a-Potties at the concert). Marty and I were glad we went to Woodstock, even if only to say, “We were there.” Nevertheless, the movie was a more pleasant experience and worth the wait. Besides, I actually got to hear and see more of the concert.

 

      My earliest attempts at finding an academic path forward were neither focused nor fruitful. After high school, I enrolled in a technical school for computer programming, which began a series of student loans I was not able to retire fully until I moved to PA years later. Following that brief scholastic venture, I enrolled at NYIT hoping to complete its computer curriculum. That endeavor did not go well, especially when the teacher of my first semester English course addressed the class with this inexplicable piece of encouragement: “It’s good most of you are not computer majors [which I was planning to be], because the computer field is closed.” I dropped out of school soon after. I wonder how the direction of my life might have been different but for that inspiring remark.

      On my way to class one day, I received my very first (and only) traffic citation, for making an improper right turn. What impressed me most about the incident was not this encounter with law enforcement, but the patrolman’s grammatically passive statement: “A ticket will be issued.” While he doubtless intended his assertion to sound official, perhaps forestalling any objection on my part, I later learned it to be a weak construction. Why I remember what he said more than the trauma of that meeting, I can only attribute to my eventual sensitivity to effective grammar.

 

      Linda was a trendsetter in high school, although not always in a way she intended. For example, one day she and a girlfriend (Janice) decided to dye their white jeans red to wear in a variety show, which they did in Linda’s washing machine at home. But they did not clear the machine of excess dye before her mother, a nurse’s aide, washed her six white hospital uniforms in preparation for the week. As a result, those uniforms all turned pink, which Linda’s mother had to explain to her supervisor the next day…. To her mother’s surprise, her supervisor liked the change, so much so that she ordered each department in the hospital to adopt a different color uniform to distinguish it from the nursing staff, which wore only white. The policy change did not, however, endear Linda’s mother to her coworkers, as most of them now had to purchase new uniforms. Nevertheless, it did show Linda’s keen fashion sense along with her ability to influence people’s buying decisions, and it earned her mother the nickname, “Pink Lady.”

 

      Linda and I were both students at Freeport High School (on the south shore of Long Island), but I had already graduated before she moved from Arizona to New York. At the time she was a senior (1971), driver education was a very popular course most students looked forward to taking, because passage meant that one could get a license at 17 versus 18. We both took the course, but Linda did not do well on the final road test, during which she hit a grocery truck. Fortunately, it was parked, so damage was minimal. Nevertheless, she failed the exam, which may actually have been for the best. With her poor depth perception, she could not gauge distance properly. (That incident ended her driving aspirations until, at age 47, having corrective lenses, she retook the exam and passed.) While her part of that road test was over, the outing was not. A girlfriend (Elizabeth) took her place behind the wheel and proceeded to follow the instructor’s direction—“Turn here”—too soon, driving the front end of the vehicle off a pier. She then climbed over the front seat and exited one of the back doors with Linda and the other students (two boys). The instructor, being a very heavyset man, could not move as quickly and remained trapped in the front seat as the car teetered over the water. The students watched from afar, listening to his exceedingly colorful commentary, until the fire department arrived and pulled the car back from the precipice, enabling the teacher to step out onto dry land to the applause of a growing crowd. Needless to say, Linda’s girlfriend did not pass her road test either.

 

      Not all students who graduated with me from high school went on to college; some chose to work instead, like me. One evening, when I was at Pete’s garage, Linda brought dinner for us both, (meatball-parmesan heroes). As we were eating, a friend and former classmate (Carmine) stopped to visit and asked if he could have part of Linda’s sandwich. He told us that he had fallen in with an unsavory crowd, that he was now running from a criminal element intent on his harm, and that he had not eaten for several days. He did not explain his dilemma, and we did not press him for details or see him again after that encounter. It confirmed for us the importance of heeding the biblical proverb: “Do not envy wicked men [and] do not desire their company” (24:1), as well as the truth of Paul’s warning “Bad company corrupts good character” (1 Cor 15:33). We are thankful that God has kept us from such associations.

 

      Linda’s father enjoyed surprising the kids with something special at Christmas, and he graciously included his future son-in-law whenever he could. One Christmas eve, when his two boys were young, he and I stayed up after they went to bed and assembled an electric football game for them, the kind with a metal field that vibrated to move plastic men around. We placed the cardboard bleachers along the border of the metal stand, then attached each player to its own plastic base, carefully clipping off the small plastic feelers we assumed were left over from the extrusion process, and finally setting the two teams at opposite ends of the field to await the boys’ surprise in the morning. It took us most of the night, but we were determined that the boys would have this particular toy on Christmas. They awoke and came down the stairs anxious to see what was awaiting them under the tree. They could hardly contain their excitement and wanted to try their new game immediately. Each boy chose a team and plugged in the game. The metal surface began to vibrate, but instead of sending the men across the playing field, all of them on both teams moved together into a single clump. Upon reading the instructions, which we should have done initially, we discovered that the small plastic feelers we so carefully removed (with nail clippers) were adjustable to guide each player in a specific direction, allowing an individual to plan and execute a particular play. Needless to say, that Christmas present was ruined, all because Linda’s dad and I did not read the instructions first.

 

      When Linda joined our family, she not only gained surrogate parents as well as an additional brother and sister, she learned about our “house rules,” guidelines my father established to promote safety and tranquility, rules we all followed assiduously (Not!).

      •     Rule #1: Don’t laugh at the dinner table (because you might choke). Dinner was one time during the day our family was all together (an increasingly rare practice in society today), a time we enjoyed too much not to laugh, as in this exchange following a perceived slight by my brother.

Debbie’s whiny, six-year-old accusation: “Mom, he’s lookin’ at me.” (Pepper behaves this way toward Candy his sister.)

Mom’s stern response: “David, I don’t want to listen to that.”

Dave’s bewildered query: “What did I do?”

Dad’s firm admonition: “Debbie, stop whining.”

Debbie’s even more whiny and high-pitched reply: “I’m not whiiiining!”

            It was hard not to laugh.

      •     Rule #2: Don’t walk through the living room (because you’ll wear out the carpet); walk through the kitchen on the tile floor instead. Being the same distance to the back room either way, it was easy to follow this rule.

      •     Rule #3: Don’t play by the top of the stairs (because you might fall). This rule made the most sense and is the one we would have followed without being told.

      •     Rule #4: Don’t eat more than one banana per day (not because you might overdose on bananas—we all liked bananas—but because Mom did not want to keep going to the store to replenish the supply at home).

These “house rules,” though few in number, helped keep us focused on what is truly important—family unity.

 

      Once, our father asked Debbie, who was still quite young at the time, to pray before the evening meal as we all sat at the table together. She agreed and mumbled something quietly. Dad said to her, “Speak up. We can’t hear you.” She replied, “I wasn’t talking to you.”

 

      We learned early that Debbie was a connoisseur of beauty. She would also look for any excuse to avoid going to sleep if the adults were still awake, as she did one evening having already gone upstairs to prepare for bed. After completing her pre-bedtime tasks, she came part way down the steps to confer with the rest of the family, still gathered in the living room. She was holding a pink toothbrush she had just used, pink being her favorite color, and asked, “Whose toothbrush is this? It’s pretty.” It was Mom’s. The rest of us were glad we did not have such attractive tooth care products.

 

      As Debbie got older, she would often grace us with the benefit of her keen wit and uncanny powers of observation. One summer, she stood between her two brothers, both of whom were clad in shorts. Turning to me, who spent little time outside in the sun, she said, “Your legs are like white marble pillars.” Turning to Dave, who is hairier than I, she said, “And your legs are like caterpillars.”

 

      When it became clear to my parents that I was really interested in Linda, and as she spent more time with the family, my father realized that our relationship was serious and that he needed to be sure she could blend with the family musically. Linda was already in the church choir (which he directed), but the requirements for joining that group were not very stringent. Besides, Linda’s voice was largely lost among the other voices in the soprano section. My father needed confirmation. So, after dinner one evening he marched her into the music room, played a note on the piano and asked her to match it. After she did, he said simply, “We’ll get her a teacher.”

 

      As our courtship advanced—we were engaged four years—Linda thought I was dragging my feet and not anxious enough to get married, so she complained to my mother, knowing she would get a receptive ear. (I have always contended: “Mom loves Linda more than me,” and my mother’s counsel to Linda at this point proved me right.) “Tell him to set a date for the wedding, or the engagement is off!” Facing such a united front, I had little choice but to comply. Linda and I were married six months later. We probably should have waited another week. Our wedding date we discovered later fell on Hitler’s birthday. Still, it was a much more memorable occasion for us.

 

      The night before the wedding, I was in “Pete’s Garage” working on the car we would take on our honeymoon. I needed to replace a section of the exhaust system. Linda’s mother was there and offered to drive me to the auto store for the necessary part. (Linda was at home—something about it’s being bad luck to see the groom immediately before the ceremony.) Her mother and I arrived at the store right as it was closing, and I had to make an urgent appeal to the manager who had just locked the door: “But I’m getting married tomorrow!” I pleaded. Thankfully, he took pity and sold me some flex pipe to make the repair.

 

      Our wedding ceremony (1974), like many other such events, had its unscripted drama. Linda decided in a moment of vanity not to wear her glasses, without which she had no depth perception. Thankfully, this was not a problem, because she leaned on her father’s arm so as not to stumble on her way down the aisle. The biggest concern was that she could not be certain whom she was marrying, because I looked quite different having just gotten my long hair cut short. She said, however, that she was sure it was me because I ‘smelled’ right. She married me anyway, sight uncertain. I’m grateful for her keen olfactory sense.

       Events proceeded smoothly until it came time to light the unity candle. We both moved our individual candles to the single center candle. But when Linda withdrew her candle to blow it out, she almost set her veil ablaze, unsure of the flame’s distance from her face, and only the audible gasp from her mother averted a pyrotechnic disaster.

      Other episodes added color to the day’s proceedings, like the contribution to the Italian-themed reception dinner from a Jewish coworker of Linda’s father, who placed on Linda’s gowned lap in the limo about to leave for the ceremony a large bowl filled to the brim with soupy, pickled herring, a Jewish staple on such occasions. The bowl had only a thin layer of plastic wrap covering it. “Don’t move,” her father advised helpfully, as the liquid sloshed back and forth. Fortunately, the ride to the church was smooth and short.

      My aunt and uncle brought their two sons to the reception but did not note the addition on their reply to the invitation. This created a seating problem when distribution of the name cards did not account for two more Manuels. Before the dinner, the wedding party was busy with pictures and not aware of the difficulty until they went to find places at the tables, only to discover that all the Manuels were already seated. Linda’s mother was mortified upon learning the groom’s parents had nowhere to sit. Fortunately, we were able to resolve the dilemma by finding the boys room at either end of the head table.

      The church matriarch (Mrs. Carl) decided to stir and serve the sherbet punch at the reception dinner, despite Linda’s repeated assurances that the caterers would take care of it without dissolving the frozen sherbet mold prematurely. We learned later she was trying discretely to find and retrieve one of her clip-on earrings that had fallen into the drink. To make matters worse, she dropped her other earring in the punch while looking for the first earring.

      After the reception dinner, Linda and I were exhausted, being among the last ones to leave the church (a practice we continued well into our ministry). Phil and Milli, our best man and matron of honor, drove us to the house we had recently bought with help from my parents. We planned to leave for our honeymoon the next day. I carried Linda over the threshold to begin officially our married life together. But Phil and Milli followed us inside, sat down on the floor—we had no living room furniture yet—and said “Okay, let’s talk.” They did not have a pressing need to discuss or any particular topic in mind, just some casual conversation. It was a cruel thing to expect from a newly married couple late on their wedding night. But it was not as cruel as what Linda did after they left and we finally went upstairs that evening. In the middle of the night, while I was sound asleep, completely unexpected and definitely unromantic, she pushed me out of the bed! Linda claims that because I was not accustomed to sleeping beside another warm body, I simply tried to escape by gradually moving away from her and got ever closer to the edge until I fell onto the floor. Either way, it was a sudden and rude awakening, not an auspicious start to our new life together, yet we survived. After all, we had just taken a vow: “For better or for worse.”

 

      Linda and I inherited the formerly stray cat my family adopted some years earlier, a female Russian Blue we named appropriately, “Blue,” and she provided us all with considerable entertainment. During the summer, we would set up our old ping pong table in the backyard. Blue would jump up and sit by the net, watching the ball go back and forth. She did not interfere with it, just sat by the net watching the ball go back and forth. It was difficult to tell who was more mesmerized, Blue or us.

      Blue also possessed a mischievous side that was evident while I was still living at home. Dave and I shared a bedroom (whence we would have ferocious, balled-up ‘sock fights’). Whichever one of us was up first in the morning would feed Blue. Before she ate, though, she made sure we were both awake. She would bound up the stairs to our room, jump on whichever bed was still occupied, nip one of us on the cheek or forehead; then, upon seeing a startled but suddenly alert expression, she would bound down the stairs, content that she had fulfilled part of her mission for the day. After a while, I could anticipate what was coming as soon as I felt her paws hit the bed, even if I was sound asleep, and I would immediately throw the covers over my head. Such was her morning ritual.

      For several years before Linda and I were married, we had Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ home. It was significant, therefore, when our first Thanksgiving celebration as a married couple was in our home. Linda wanted things to be perfect, especially as my parents would be there, and as this would be the first such holiday meal she prepared in its entirety. With everyone seated at the table, Linda brought out the turkey, and all agreed that it smelled delicious. (Linda is a very good cook.) Blue also agreed and jumped onto the dinner table for a closer look. She had never done that before, so we were all taken by surprise. Apparently, the temptation was more than she could (or cared to) bear. I managed to grab her before she got to the bird and put her outside. By the time I returned to the gathering, though, Blue was back on the table, having climbed a tree, entered an open window upstairs, and run down to the dining room. Again, I grabbed her before she got to the bird and put her outside. I then ran upstairs to close the window, arriving just as she was poised to enter a second time.

      After Blue, we had three kittens, who were only eight-weeks old at the time of this incident and who possessed a similar tenacity about food. One Sunday morning, Linda left two frozen steaks to thaw on top of the refrigerator, beyond the cats’ reach…or so we assumed. When we returned home from church, not only were the once frozen steaks gone, so was all evidence of their ever having existed. The kittens had eaten them both, including the Styrofoam tray and the cellophane wrapping! Needless to say, our Sunday dinner was quite different from theirs.

      Although we both enjoy cats, because we moved around so much during my time in school as well as during our early years of ministry, and because we had possibly allergic houseguests, we did not have cats again until after we bought and settled into our own home (see below).

 

      A year after Linda and I married, we visited several members of her family who had gathered in Tucson. We were a very happy couple, as the picture below illustrates, but it was then that I narrowly escaped the personal peril of being eaten alive. It was my first near-death experience. (My second near-death experience came several years later, when I almost drowned while officiating a baptismal service.) 

      We spent a day at the Arizona Desert Museum, which had an enclosed aviary, giving visitors an up-close view of many indigenous birds. Being from NY, I was unfamiliar with the resident fauna and wanted to educate myself by reading all the informative signs along the pathway. Soon I had fallen behind the other family members, who were already familiar with the local wildlife. When Linda’s father looked back, he urged me to pick up the pace, directing my attention to the large, hungry-looking desert vulture tagging along behind me, waiting for its next meal to drop in the hot sun. I got the hint and moved a bit faster. It was a close call.

 

      After returning to NY, I was running some errands with Dave one day and stopped to pick up Linda, who was visiting her parents. She decided to stay when she learned that her father was making chili. (The recipe for this delicacy used powder from chili peppers he grew, dried, ground, and stored in a coffee can he had to replace periodically because the powder would eat through the bottom of the can.) Being accustomed to plain New England cuisine, I knew better than to join them, as her father’s chili was far hotter than I could tolerate. When Dave and I arrived, Linda’s father offered Dave a spoonful to taste. Wanting to be polite, Dave accepted. …Everyone waited for the inevitable response, watching as the red heat line in Dave’s neck and face rose to meet his red hair line. I asked him, “Would you like to go to MacDonald’s for lunch?” Unable to speak, Dave simply nodded his agreement.

 

      In 1977 we saw the first Star Wars movie when it was released in the theatres. Linda and I along with Phil and Milli waited through two other showings before we finally got in. Phil and I stepped out of line to buy pizza for the four of us while the girls held our place. As each showing dismissed, we would ask patrons filing out if what they saw was worth all the hype the movie generated and got consistent reviews that it was. When the wait was over for us, we agreed. The special effects were great…“in a galaxy far, far away.”

      One summer the four of us attended a July 4^th celebration in a local park and were surprised when the light display came unexpectedly close. We were all seated on the ground together, awaiting the show. Suddenly, some of the various munitions fell over and ignited, sending them in our direction. The guys instinctively covered the girls to protect them as things exploded around us. It was very exciting, certainly more than any of us anticipated that year.

 

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Our Martial Arts Odyssey

 

      In our many years of wedded bliss, Linda and I rarely fought, but because we practiced karate together we did spar. Along with receiving the normal bumps and bruises that come with such activity, there were special moments that stand out as distinct markers, especially in her rank advancement.

 

      At Linda’s first degree black belt exam, the head of our karate style (USA Goju—Peter Urban) paid an impromptu visit to the dojo (gym). He had never been there before, so his appearance came as a surprise, especially to the students testing that day, including Linda, the only candidate for her rank. Wanting to showcase her ability, particularly in the final part of the exam (sparring), our instructor (Vincent Demarco) paired her with me, knowing she would not hold back. She did not, especially when he yelled, “Fifteen seconds (left).” Linda grabbed a handful of my hair, twisted her fist, and threw me to the floor. Pinning me down with her knee on my chest, she was about to finish with a punch to the face when our instructor yelled, “Yame!” (Stop!)

      Linda’s second degree black belt exam was after one of our “Karate for Christ” classes in the church basement. That test had a self-defense section during which our instructor blindfolded Linda and told one of the other black belts present to attack her. I grabbed her in a bear hug, pinning her arms and lifting her feet off the floor, severely limiting her options to respond. (Linda did not know I was her opponent.) Not wanting to cause lasting damage (e.g., by breaking her assailant’s nose with her forehead), she bit his (my) neck, surprising him (me), and causing the grip to release. After the exam, Linda and I went upstairs to attend prayer meeting where people wanted to know the reason for the hickey on my neck.

 

      On Saturday mornings, I taught a children’s karate class and was giving them some historical background one day about the various martial arts, including the difference between hard and soft styles. It was easy to demonstrate the hard systems but difficult to visualize the soft systems, especially as I had not yet begun my study of Tai Chi Chuan, the preeminent soft style. So, I asked our instructor, who was sitting at the desk observing the class, if he would demonstrate for the children something from a soft style—It was a bad idea! He told me to attack him, which I did, against my better judgment, but I dared not refuse his order. What I remember next was my flying backwards, several feet in the air, as he effortlessly lifted and propelled me in the opposite direction of my assault against him, toward the plate glass window in front of the storefront dojo. The kids’ eyes got very big as they watched their teacher flying through the air. Thankfully, there was a row of metal folding chairs set up for spectators that broke my fall and stopped me from going through the window. I escaped serious injury that day.

      On another occasion and between classes, I asked our teacher if he could demonstrate the strength of his internal energy (chi) by crushing a soda can. He said he probably could but did not have a can to show me. I foolishly offered him my wrist. First, he showed me what his grip felt like without internal energy. It was strong but not incapacitating. Then he showed me what his grip felt like with internal energy. His grip got progressively tighter until the pressure exceeded the limit of his physical strength. I fell to my knees. Eventually he stopped squeezing but said he could have gone further, crushing the bones in my wrist. I was thankful he stopped when he did. This was yet another example of my foolishness in questioning our martial arts instructor.

 

      One evening I stopped to pick up Linda for a date. After parking the car at the curb, I walked toward the front door. Her bother (Chuck) decided to startle me by jumping out from behind the tall bushes in front of the house. It was a bad idea. Mistaking him for a real threat in the dark, I nearly injured him seriously. Fortunately, he realized his error, identified himself, and pulled back before I could hurt him. As a martial artist, I do not deal well with such surprises.

 

      After a while, I taught the evening adult classes by myself. Sensei Demarco sometimes took advantage of the respite to go into NYC for a lesson with Peter Urban, the head of our system. One evening, he returned to the dojo and told us about his session with the Grand Master, saying how O'Sensei Urban kept retreating whenever Sensei Demarco made contact during their sparring session, because Sensei’s chi was flowing very well. Later we learned that O'Sensei Urban had to go to the hospital because of the internal injuries he received that evening. Sensei Demarco rarely sparred with his most advanced students, because he could not always anticipate their sudden movements, and he wanted to protect them against accidental injury from any sudden discharge of his chi.

 

      Wanting to broaden our martial arts training, we decided to study with Terri Higa, a high-ranking karateka who had expertise in Okinawan weapons. (Sensei Demarco did not teach weapons.) Before accepting us as students, Sensei Higa wanted to evaluate our ability, which he did by sparring with each of us. What impressed me is that he did not simply dominate the session with his superior skill, although he far outranked us. He sparred just above our level, making it a very enjoyable experience. When Linda and I went to put on our street clothes again, she directed my attention to the mirror in the changing room that showed my upper torso covered with fingerprints, where his mere touch had brought blood to the surface with his chi. There was no pain, but it was a clear illustration of his skill.

      There was some embarrassment on my part when Linda and I later went out to dinner with Sensei Demarco at a Japanese restaurant to celebrate our second degree promotions. It was a surprise when Sensei Higa waited on us, showing off his skill with weapons (knives) as he prepared food at our table. What made the event uncomfortable for me was that I had to explain to Sensei Demarco how we knew Sensei Higa. (I should have asked Sensei Demarco’s permission before we approached Sensei Higa to study with him.)

 

      We studied Wing Chun for a time with Jason Lau, the same style Bruce Lee practiced. Sifu Lau was a superb martial artist, adept in several Chinese systems. He visited our “Karate for Christ” class once to present Linda with a sword and to demonstrate a form with it. He also taught us a two-man staff set, appropriate for a married couple 😀. In anticipation of eventually studying the Wing Chun training dummy, I built my own version (with plumbing pipe), although we never did learn that form.

      One evening, we went to dinner with Sifu Lau and some other students, at a traditional Chinese restaurant. It was quite a cultural experience. At first, he ordered some appetizers for us all: pigeon, from which he proceeded to eat the brains and eyes, with the intent I am sure of disgusting the westerners at the table. It worked; we were suitably disgusted. I suspect those birds may once have been among the many pigeons we passed on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. Thankfully, he then allowed us to order dishes more akin to our western tastes.

      Unfortunately, we stopped those lessons before completing that martial arts system (i.e., by learning forms for the Wooden Dummy, 6 1/2 Point Staff, Butterfly Knives). Our instructor’s Taoist practices became quite extreme, even inviting demon possession. God may have hastened our withdrawal when, one evening coming home from the kwoon in Brooklyn, we had an almost head-on collision with a drunk driver whose car jumped the divider, hit us, and drove on without stopping. Thankfully, although our car suffered major damage, neither one of us was hurt.

 

Dragon Lady Dojo, Madison WI

 

      In 1995, after we moved back to NY from WI, I looked for an instructor with whom I could study and found Masakazu Takahashi, an 8th degree Black Belt in Kenkojuku, an early offshoot of Shotokan. He very graciously accepted me as a student even though I belonged to a different organization, SKIF, which I had joined while we lived in Madison. Not only did Sensei Takahashi allow me to train with him, he permitted me to stay in the dojo (Amityville) after everyone else had gone for the day so that I could continue to practice on my own. It was a very generous arrangement on his part. He also paid me a high compliment, saying to Linda when she came to visit one day: “Your husband has pretty kata.”

 

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      My father, Dave, and I had similar voices, which made it easy for us to blend musically but difficult for Linda to tell us apart if she could not see who was speaking, as whenever she called the house on the telephone looking for me, a difficulty my father and brother liked to exploit, often to Linda’s embarrassment. One day when we were all staying in a single motel room on a family trip, I went out to the car while Linda was taking a shower. Not realizing I had left the room, she heard Dave’s speaking to Mom and assumed it was me. “Would you bring in my clothes?” she asked from the bathroom. “I don’t think you want me to do that,” Dave replied. “Why not?” Linda asked, indignantly. “Because I’m not Paul,” Dave said. Linda was more careful after that incident.

 

      In 1977, Linda and I moved to SC to attend Columbia Bible College (CBC now CIU). For the first year, Linda worked while I went to school. The second year, because of the school’s generous program that allowed the spouse of a full-time student to enroll in classes free, she joined me. As a result of that program, a federal grant, and some help from her father, she was able to complete her Bachelor’s degree (1982) during our time there without incurring any debt.

      Despite several years of experience in a hospital central supply unit, Linda could not get a job in a SC hospital, because she formerly belonged to a NY union. Consequently, her first job in our new setting was as the manager of two Bressler’s ice cream shops in a local mall. One holiday break she made the mistake of hiring a college student…me! She left the first store, where I was, when the cash register at the second store broke down. Surely, I was responsible enough to handle matters in her absence. Alas, her new employee was uncertain how to make a popular and common order: the ice cream soda. He placed all those customers in a separate line until she came back to help. (I never took chemistry in high school.) Linda returned to find a growing and increasingly impatient crowd, and she was not happy. Later that day, when the owner of the two shops asked how the newest employee had done, Linda related the ice cream soda debacle and said she fired that employee. Perhaps college would prepare him for another line of work. (Thus, my first career, in ice cream sales, came to an abrupt and unceremonious end.)

      Unfortunately, those two ice cream shops soon went out of business (but not because of that one employee’s incompetence), and after a brief stint at Swiss Colony (also in the mall), Linda got a job as the manager of a local Golden Skillet restaurant. Because the owner was a Christian, like the owner of the Bressler’s shops, he permitted Linda to be off on Saturday (the Sabbath), an arrangement that worked well until he sold the chicken franchise back to the parent company. A company representative who took over the store refused to abide by the original terms of her employment, insisting that she, as a manager, had to work on Saturday or would not work at all. When she appealed her dismissal before the state labor board, the presiding judge ruled in her favor. Later, she learned he was a Seventh-Day Adventist.

      Soon after the ruling, Linda got a job at another fast-food chicken restaurant (“Strutters”) owned by the same Christian businessman, who again gave her every Sabbath off and whither she took her famous biscuit-making ability, to the new Golden Skillet manager’s extreme frustration. He attempted unsuccessfully to coerce her return when breakfast sales fell off. That second chicken store was located beside a gay “house of ill repute,” some of whose workers (e.g., “Phyllis”) were regular customers, offering frequent opportunity for ministry. Linda worked in that restaurant until she started classes the following February (1979).

 

      During the winter quarter of my freshman year, I taught a weekly Bible study at a senior center in Columbia. In the middle of one session, the director came into our class to announce that the center would be closing immediately because of a snowstorm that had already started. She had to allow attendees enough time to get home safely while they still could. I looked out the window to see how much snow had accumulated thus far, hoping the stores would not yet be sold out of snow shovels, something I did not bring when we moved. Being from NY where heavy snowfall is common, I expected several inches on the ground and was surprised to see it completely bare, with only a few flakes blowing around in the light wind outside. Later, I understood the director’s caution, as snow is not common in SC. Observing people on the roads that day, going too fast or too slow, it was obvious they are not at all accustomed to traveling in it, and the mere prospect of inclement weather instills fear in many drivers there.

 

      Linda and I lived off campus during our time at CBC but spent most of our days on campus. Upon arriving at school in the morning I would go to the library to study (naturally); Linda would go to the cafeteria to socialize with friends. She had her morning coffee then which Kevin, a Seventh-Day Adventist from the deep south, called “Devi’ Juice” and which he teased would be the cause of her consignment to perdition. Later, she would go to the women’s dorm to spend time with friends Debbie and Diane before their first class together. Alas, she was something of a jokester and did not always provide the best, lady-like example for her younger, more impressionable classmates. One morning, Linda found a large bullfrog on the back stoop of the dorm, picked it up, and brought it into the building. Upon entering, she realized the purpose of this providential discovery: One of the other girls, a pernicious tattletale, was taking a shower during “quiet time,” contrary to the dorm rules. Linda slipped into the bathroom, placed the bull frog under the shower curtain, and quickly exited the area. The girl’s screams soon echoed throughout the dorm, disrupting the tranquility of “quiet time.” Somehow, she knew Linda was responsible. Apparently, my wife’s prankster reputation preceded her.

      On another day—it was especially warm—one of Linda’s friends put some ice down her back. Linda prepared to retaliate with a cup full of crushed ice and water. Quite unexpectedly, the dean of women opened the door to investigate the cause of the ruckus just as Linda threw the contents of her cup. Her friend ducked, and the dean caught a barrage of ice water squarely in the face. Because Linda was not a dorm resident, she was not subject to dorm disciplinary measures…but her two friends in that room were.

      Linda would also offer suggestions about what her friends could do to make dorm life more exciting, like placing ketchup or mustard packets collected from the cafeteria under the toilet seats so they would squirt the legs of whomever sat down, alternating that with stretching clear cellophane over the tops of the toilets but under the seats thereby preventing any deposit from reaching the water below. Who knew that she was a future minister’s wife?!

      Linda had her own unique experiences as well, like when she ran across campus flapping her arms wildly and yelling, because a mockingbird was flying above her head trying to extract a single hair the bird thought would make a good addition to its nest. Despite Linda’s obvious distress, no one came to her aid, not even her husband. They all simply observed her predicament from a distance.

 

      We would occasionally babysit the young son of a couple at school if his parents needed to go out. Jan, his mother, sometimes found Linda’s sense of humor incapacitating, such that she complained about laughing so hard her face hurt. When her mother visited, the three adults decided to go shopping, so Linda and I came to watch the toddler. As Jan introduced us, she said, “This is Linda; she’s funny.” Not realizing the background for that description, her mother assumed it was an allusion to Linda’s mental condition and asked seriously, “Do you think we should leave the baby with her?”

 

      During our first Christmas season in SC, we gave the artificial tree we purchased while still in NY, along with its lights, candy canes, and home-made (bread dough) ornaments, to another couple in school who had several children but could not afford a tree of their own. Because we had no room to store it in our garage apartment yet they did in the attic of the large farmhouse they rented, we suggested they keep the tree and use it again the following year, which they did. What neither we nor they realized was that their attic had rats. The next year when the family went to retrieve the tree, they discovered that the rats, perhaps initially attracted by the candy canes, had eaten almost everything, including the plastic tree, the insulation for the lights, the home-made ornaments, even much of the cardboard box. The couple wanted to replace the tree, but we declined. Who knew rats could be so festive?

 

      While Linda and I were both in college, we spent our summers working at the Stony Brook day camp on LI. I was a youth counselor, and Linda ran the kitchen, which fed the staff members who roomed on campus (as well as feeding lunch to the young campers). Because she had a generous budget, she asked the staff members what they would like for their final meal at the close of one summer season. They chose a steak and lobster cookout. We set up a grill close enough to the kitchen so that transporting the food back to the dining room was fairly easy. Unfortunately, leaving the doors open exposed the smoke detectors inside to smoke from the grill outside. Soon, almost the entire Stony Brook volunteer fire department was there, having responded to the alarm and thinking the school was on fire. Upon learning it was a false alarm, they offered to stay for dinner and wanted to know if Linda had enough food for all of them. She did not and, thankfully, they did not stay.

      Because we roomed on campus, we had use of the facilities in our off hours, including the gym. One summer I took advantage of this perk to develop my table tennis skill. I experimented with different grips, spent hours honing my forehand and backhand slams, and became quite satisfied with my progress. I was finally ready for some serious competition. One of the other counselors that year happened to be the state high school Table Tennis Champion. What better way to test my prowess than challenge him to a friendly game? …Needless to say, he defeated me easily and quickly. The most humiliating part of the experience, though, was that he did not use a conventional paddle: He beat me with his flip-flop.

 

      Normally, Linda and I would drive back to Freeport for the Sunday service at the Baptist church where we and Linda’s mother regularly attended. Linda’s mother was in our “Karate for Christ” class and, although I did not teach weapons, she managed to pick one up to deploy against me. She would occasionally chase me around the house with a broom, which I assumed at the time was in jest, but upon further reflection I wonder about her motivation.

      One weekend Linda’s mother came to the camp for a visit, so we decided to sample what religious services were in the Stony Brook area. On Saturday, we went to what was advertised as a messianic assembly. When we arrived, it turned out to be a charismatic group singing a few Jewish sounding (minor key) songs. It was quite lively, with people speaking in tongues and being slain in the spirit, not like a typical Messianic or Baptist service. On Sunday, we went with some friends to a very conservative Plymouth Brethren assembly. The contrast could not have been greater. The Brethren congregation sat quietly until someone read a passage of scripture or gave a brief testimony. Wanting to participate, Linda’s mother proposed a hymn to sing, which would have been fine in a Baptist church. What we did not realize until later was that only the men were permitted to speak. For Linda’s mother and for us, the weekend was a very unusual experience.

 

      On another weekend, sister Debbie came to the camp for a visit. She decided at the last moment to spend the night. Realizing late that she would need a change of underwear, she and Linda went to a large supermarket, the only store open at that hour, to purchase a pair. The selection was not great, but they did their best to find something in the right color and style. When they returned to the dorm room and Debbie tried them on, they realized she and Linda had been careful about everything but the size and had grabbed an extra, extra, large by mistake, much too big for Debbie’s petite frame. Fortunately, Linda was able to resize the garment with a generous supply of safety pins. Debbie would not have passed successfully through a metal detector, but she did have something to wear the next day.

 

      Once when we were driving back to SC after a visit to NY, we pulled into a rest stop for fuel and decided to eat at a Hardee’s restaurant there. We were especially impressed by the sophistication of the workers when we unwrapped our sandwiches and saw the instructions printed inside—a circle with the message: “Place bun here.”

 

      In 1982 when Linda and I moved to IL to attend seminary at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), we knew no one there and had no idea where we would live. On our way, the U-Haul truck we rented broke down (in Hope, NJ), and we managed to coast into a gas station. The company sent a replacement vehicle, but we had to reload it, which actually meant unloading the first truck completely (in a light rain shower), because the fifty boxes of books for my library had to be in the front for proper weight distribution. (Linda remembers the number of book boxes being greater.) When we finally arrived at the seminary, we spent a week in a dorm room before the quarter started while we looked for housing, which meant we had to unload the U-Haul yet again, because we could not afford to keep the truck that long. (We subsisted on apples and granola bars left over from camp that summer.)

      Most of the apartment rentals in the area were already taken by other students who had either gotten there earlier or had made arrangements ahead of us, and the new facilities on campus for married students were still under construction. The only place we found that we could afford ($80 monthly) was a one-bedroom ‘cottage’—Linda prefers the term ‘shack’—in the middle of an abandoned apple orchard. (It was not nearly as luxurious as the converted chicken coup we rented in the middle of a pecan orchard during our last quarter at CBC, whose nuts provided Christmas gifts for us to give that year.) When we first saw it (i.e., the shack)…

      •     The flies were having a field day with all the rotting fruit on the ground.

      •     The bathroom sink was inexplicably sitting out in the backyard.

      •     The bathroom tub was filled with dirty water from when the previous tenant washed his car engine in it.

      •     The large, bay window in the living room…was missing, which did make moving in easier but made the increasingly cold nights uncomfortable.

      •     The house, we discovered later, came with a resident field mouse that managed to elude capture while we lived there yet appeared whenever we had company. It was also house-broken, neat as well as clever. It would collect the buckwheat bait from the yellow, wedge-shaped boxes of poison we put out and store it in Linda’s kitchen linen drawer to eat later but would use the container of poison as a litter box for its droppings.

…And, as an added bonus, we learned after moving in that…

      •     The orange-brown shag carpet throughout the house—stylish as well as quaint—was infested with fleas.

It was not an auspicious start to the school year. Needless to say, it is not a place we recall fondly, although we do remember it vividly.

      After our first quarter at TEDS, the married-student housing on campus was ready. We rented another U-Haul, loaded then unloaded all our possessions again, and moved into a new apartment. It was like a palace compared to our earlier accommodations. Unfortunately, another couple who moved into the building at the same time brought with them roaches, which required all the apartments in the unit, including ours, to be fumigated. In hindsight, this measure was probably good for us as well, although our previous residence had a different infestation problem. Nevertheless, that new apartment, however luxurious it seemed to us at the time, cannot compare with what awaits us when we get to heaven, where someone has prepared a place for us and whither he even makes the move for us, where we will not need our possessions, that promises to be a residence far nicer than any we have known, and one we will not have to share with any critters leftover from the Fall.

 

      One evening we invited another student couple for dinner. Linda fixed lasagna (delicious!) and for dessert decided to try a recipe she had gotten from one of the cooks at CBC: “Mississippi Mud Pie.” Never able to leave well enough alone, she decided to make it more decadent than it already was by adding caramel and pecans. We calculated that each two-inch square contained 2500 calories! The husband of the couple decided to eat a second piece, against Linda’s advice. When the evening ended, he made it only as far as the bushes in front of the apartment before that second piece came back up. He learned then there can be too much of a good thing.

 

      While we were in school, Linda and I would spend the Christmas season at home in Freeport. One holiday, though, was unexpectedly disturbing as Mom sought to get even, so we assumed, with her then adult children for their many years of waking her on Christmas morning. By the time Debbie, Dave, and I reached adulthood, we were not so enamored of arising early to unwrap presents as we were of spending time with the family. That particular morning, while we were all still ensconced comfortably in our beds, Mom did something exceedingly cruel. She started to play a Christmas album on the stereo just loud enough for us all to hear. Then she sat at the piano and began to play along with the album…the same carols but in a minor key. Soon we were all awake, standing in the music room, and wanting to know the source of the cacophonous duet assaulting our ears. As we are all musicians, the experience was particularly disconcerting and made a lasting impression on our collectively fragile psyche, from which we have never fully recovered.

      On another Christmas day, my uncle Dave and his family joined our family gathering in the afternoon. Grossmutti (our grandmother and his mother) presented each family unit with a tin of homemade cookies which we all saved for future consumption. As the gathering came to a close, my uncle and his family went home but, we discovered later, he took all the cookies. He denied that he had committed such a dastardly deed, of course, even when we assembled again at his home later on New Year’s Day. As that second gathering came to a close and we were preparing to leave, he presented Grossmutti with a stack of empty cookie tins. Despite the ‘mounting’ evidence, he continued to deny the original theft. His daughter, my cousin, remembers the episode; his wife, my aunt, claims she could not ‘recall’ it.

 

      Linda visited her sister Chris in Tuscan AZ and, while there, attended St. Mark’s Church, a large United Methodist congregation where Chris was a lay leader. At one service, Chris was helping distribute communion, which included two unexpected guests. The first guest was a little dog that a woman brought to church. As the woman stood in line to receive the elements, her little dog wandered to the front of the sanctuary and began to lick Chris’s sandaled toes while she was dispensing the bread, making it difficult for her to maintain composure during this solemn ceremony. Linda, who was in the front row observing this, also had difficulty containing her amusement, especially when Chris caught her eye.

      The second guest was a patient who had escaped from a nearby nursing home. His presence might have gone unnoticed were it not for his mode of transportation, a wheelchair he propelled by himself across a six-lane highway, and his attire, a hospital gown open in the back and not very concealing in the front. It was as memorable a service as when one of the ministers preached her sermon about spiritual balance, clothed in a fitted leotard (too tight for her expansive girth) while walking back and forth on a low balance beam. Also notable was when a Buddhist priest gave the morning message. The church was very ecumenical.

 

      Nevertheless, it was not quite as ecumenical as when Linda and I, two Baptists, sang at the high mass wedding for Joe and Krista, two Catholics, accompanied by a Buddhist-Quaker organist clothed in shorts, who played the organ pedals in his bare feet. Fortunately, we were also in the balcony, out of sight from the congregation. That was ecumenical and, perhaps, a bit risqué!

 

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Our Trip to the Holy Land

 

      One of the most significant periods of our married life was the time we spent in Israel. Following my first year of seminary (1984), I was given a private and very generous scholarship to attend The American Institute for Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn about the land that played (and continues to play) a central role in God’s program. While there, and in addition to the course work, we became aware of the political tensions in the region. We lived in an apartment just outside the capital, close enough to the school to take a bus or to walk. Israel has very good public transportation, such that few people, especially in the city, need a car. It is also how most children get to school.

      One afternoon, Linda decided to walk to class; I had gone ahead earlier that day. The route took her past the president’s residence, whose motorcade happened to be making its way back slowly from some event. Running a bit late, Linda saw a momentary break in the stream of cars and walked through, only to be stopped by an Israeli soldier who questioned her about the contents of her backpack. He actually cursed at her for doing something so foolish, yet upon seeing her puzzled expression—she did not understand Hebrew profanity—decided that she was just a clueless American and allowed her to continue, but only after emptying her pack on the sidewalk. This was before terrorism was such a threat in the US.

      On another day, we both decided to walk. A few hours later, we learned Hamas had bombed bus 18, the one we regularly rode, falsely claiming in a press release to the BBC that it was a military vehicle—we learned that dishonesty is typical of Islamic terrorists. (Bus 18, which runs along Jaffa road, a major thoroughfare, was bombed again in 1996 [twice], 2002, 2003. and 2015.) While there were some soldiers on the bus—soldiers often use public transportation—the bus carried mostly non-military personnel: businesspeople, shoppers, and school children (13 of whom were killed that day). Islamic terrorists consider children an especially easy and inviting target. Consequently, it is not unusual for a group on a school outing to be accompanied by parents (former military) who are visibly armed. On yet another occasion, terrorists bombed a popular pizzeria in the city, a place we frequented, though not that day.

      Other incidents that were not deadly still illustrate the heightened public anticipation of a potential terrorist attack, like when I set my camera case down and walked away to take a picture, only to return and find the area evacuated, with several soldiers ready to call in a bomb disposal unit; or when Linda and I were in a Jerusalem movie theater, and someone in the back row dropped an empty soda can, which then rolled noisily on the floor toward the front of the room, causing many of the patrons to leave the building in the middle of the movie.

      These types of acts were not daily occurrences, but they happened more often than we were aware previously. Nevertheless, spending a year living and studying in Israel was a wonderful experience we will not forget. It also made us acutely aware of the country’s threatened position in the region, a condition that will not see resolution until the messiah comes and restores the kingdom to Israel:

The days are coming, when I will bring My people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their forefathers to possess. (Jer 30:3)

My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd. They will follow My laws and be careful to keep My decrees. (Ezek 37:24)

They asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority.” (Acts 1:6-7)

 

      During our time in Israel, we took several field trips to important but remote archaeological sites, many of which were not designed for tourist traffic and did not have rest facilities. Consequently, visitors had to be prepared for rustic accommodations. On one such outing, and before we reached our destination, the instructor (James Monson, author of The Land Between) stopped the bus for a bathroom break. He sent males in one direction, into a collection of cacti, and females in the opposite direction, into an old olive grove surrounded by a low stone wall. That day, Linda chose to wear a one-piece jumpsuit with many buttons, which she had to remove completely. To give her some privacy, the other ladies surrounded Linda and flared their “broomstick” skirts. (These women apparently anticipated the possibility of needing suitable clothing.) Nearby was a curious flock of wild turkeys that came to investigate this colorful gaggle of females. When the flock approached, the ladies scattered, leaving Linda alone and exposed. Thankfully, the low wall still gave her some privacy, except for the turkeys, but her experience was the main topic of conversation for the duration of the trip.

 

      Although many people in Israel speak English, the main language is, of course, Hebrew, which was one of the subjects we studied and which presented its own set of challenges. Most Hebrew words, both biblical and modern, employ a three-letter root that may have one or more affixes (a prefix or suffix), and recognizing a word often requires identifying that root…but not always. Normally, we rode a public bus to school. In the morning, we would wait at the bus stop across from a grocery store, whose single word sign I spent several days trying to decipher. Despite repeated attempts, I could not isolate the three-letter root. Linda suggested it was not originally Hebrew but an English loan word written in Hebrew characters. Instead of attempting to translate it, I just sounded it out and understood that the sign said: S-U-P-E-R-M-A-R-K-E-T. I encountered a similar bit of difficulty in an easy-to-read Hebrew newspaper, a problem that provided our teacher with considerable amusement given whence we came. What I finally deciphered there read N-E-W Y-O-R-K (another loan word).

 

      Between semesters, we took a nine-day study trip to Egypt. Our Israeli guide warned us to drink only bottled water there to avoid intestinal problems, which most of us in the group did, with predictably good results, but which one student did not, with predictably unpleasant results. The trip was quite a venture, enabling us to see several of the pharaohs’ tombs and experience ‘pyramid legs,’ a medical malady that follows walking up the steep inclines of several long, narrow, and low passageways inside the pyramids.

      There were some grand vistas, especially as we made our way by boat along the Nile. Upon returning to Cairo, we visited the national museum, which housed the King Tut exhibit back from its world tour. Our guide, the museum’s curator was named Cleopatra (truly), and all the other guides deferred to her, clearing a room whenever she would enter. We also had an unexpected view out our hotel window of white Egyptian porcelain. Management was renovating the bathrooms and stored all the old fixtures (toilets and sinks) on the flat roof just outside our room.

 

      Following our trip to Egypt, Linda returned home to work and left me in Israel to complete my degree. On the eve of Israel’s New Year (hDnDÚvAh vaør) celebration in September, I attended a showing of the three (at that time) Star Wars movies at a Jerusalem theatre. It was quite an experience. I sat in the front row starring almost straight up at the screen. Needless to say, I was ready for a break after the third movie let out. What I was not expecting was the peculiar way people would be marking the holiday. They hit one another with plastic mallets made specifically for this occasion. The mallets had collapsible accordion-type heads that squeaked on contact. It was quite a free-for-all, but one people seemed to enjoy.

 

************

 

      After I returned to the states (1985), I completed two more quarters at TEDS, during which I also taught Hebrew. We then moved to Madison (WI) to attend the University. During our ten years there, we lived in three different apartments, each on the second floor of a once single-family dwelling and all in residential neighborhoods. While in IL, we attended Adat Hatikvah, a messianic synagogue in Chicago, and we sometimes frequented the arboretum on Shabbat. Although there is a sizable Jewish community in Madison, there was no messianic assembly, so we looked for another Sabbatarian group and found an ad in the phone book—this was before the internet—for the Madison Seventh-Day Baptist Church. It was our introduction to SDBs. The church was close enough to reach by foot, so we walked. That Saturday, we discovered, was also a scheduled football game. Because we are not sports fans, we were unaware of the importance college football holds for many people. Being a “Big Ten” university, football is a big deal at UW, and our apartment was only two blocks from the stadium. We also did not realize that parking was at a premium. We returned from church to find the street, our front yard, our driveway, and our back yard lined with cars packed so close together that we had to step from bumper to bumper in order to reach the outside stairs to our door. We were very glad we had decided to walk to church and leave our car in the garage. The three male students who lived in the apartment below us were all trombonists in the marching band and had doubtless chosen that location as a way of supplementing their income.

 

      Sometime later, we moved to our second residence in Madison, across the street from students advertising themselves with a large banner that read “Motley Crue.” Our new apartment had three girls living below us who were not in the marching band. That neighborhood was also farther away from the stadium and had only curbside, on-street parking, no garages, not even driveways. There were no regular or assigned parking spots, so I had to hope my circumnavigating the block (often several times) would allow a vacancy to become available close to the house whenever we returned from the grocery store, laundromat, or church. The situation was particularly burdensome in winter with significant amounts of snow on the ground. Most cleared places to park were taken as soon as they became available. It was rare, therefore, when I found an empty spot one day right in front of our apartment, and I was reluctant to leave it, especially as more snow began to fall. I proceeded to carve out a rectangle I would ultimately have to give up or risk getting a parking ticket after 48 hours. (The police, needing to keep streets clear for the city’s snowplows, marked violations by chalking vehicles’ tires.) The wind was gusting heavily, blowing every shovel-full of snow back into my face—most frustrating! Linda, watching from warmth and safety inside, found this exchange very amusing. I did not. I was determined, however, not to surrender to the elements, even though the elements were obviously winning. The snowfall eventually subsided, and when I could no longer avoid moving the car, I pulled out of my beautifully prepared slot. Immediately, another vehicle swooped in like a bird of prey. Regrettably, that parking area was not vacant again when I returned.

 

      Still, that second apartment possessed its own charms. One evening, upon returning from our weekly pilgrimage to the grocery store, we encountered a bit of Wisconsin wildlife. Unlike our previous apartment, with its stairway outside the building, the stairway for this apartment was inside the building. The lights were off in the apartment when we entered. I walked through the living room and deposited the groceries on the kitchen table without turning on the lights. Linda followed me, closing the apartment door behind her. There was a brief pause, then I heard her yell: “There’s a bat in here!” It must have followed us.

      The apartment had windows, closed because of the cool evening air, but only the one external door which was now shut. We could not close off any of the rooms except the bathroom, leaving the bat with a free field of flight of which it took full advantage. After the initial thrill of meeting each other, we all settled down for some sedate conversation. The bat lighted on top of the front window shade, I stood in the middle of the living room, and Linda retreated to the bathroom, closing the one door inside the apartment, and stood in the tub behind the shower curtain yelling: “Get it out of here!”

      I knew the chance of my encountering a vampire bat in Wisconsin was slim, but I also knew the chance of my encountering a rabid bat was not so slim. Consequently, I was reluctant simply to pick it up, carry it down the stairs, and put it outside. I called the landlord, but he was out of town. His wife answered the phone and suggested that I stun it with a tennis racket. “But we don’t play tennis,” I replied. Next, she suggested that I swat it with a broom. As the linguistic part of my brain considered this new etymology for the term “Swat team,” the mathematical part of my brain began calculating the ratio of swinging room—“Why do we have so much furniture in here?”—to broom handle length—“Does Linda really need a ten-foot broom?” The apartment door was open now, yet it was obvious the bat was quite comfortable by the window and had no intention of moving.

      After thanking the landlady for her help, I hung up the phone and called an exterminator, one who advertised bat removal and 24-hour availability (suggesting the need for such a service in Madison is not unusual). A sleepy voice answered the phone—it was now past midnight—informing me that no one was available. Not easily put off, I pressed, “So what am I to do?” I should have anticipated the response: “Do you have a tennis racket?” Apparently, the sport of tennis is actually a covert martial art designed specifically for use against bats.

      Next, I called a friend (Steve) I hoped might have a tennis racket. He did but suggested we spend the night at his place and confront the problem in the morning. Linda agreed with that proposal…from the bathroom. I thanked my friend for his invitation, said we would be there shortly, and hung up the phone. We covered the bookshelves with spare sheets in case the bat made a ‘bombing run’ while we were gone. Our movement apparently disturbed it. The bat took off…and so did Linda, back into the bathroom. I grabbed the broom and took two swipes, neither of which was particularly graceful, despite my extensive martial arts training, but the second one connected and sent the bat careening out the then open apartment door into the stairwell. I closed (actually, slammed) the door and watched through the peep hole as the bat made repeated attempts to get back inside. Finally realizing that I was an ungracious host, the bat gave up and flew down the stairs out of sight.

      I called my friend, told him that our plans had changed, and asked him to bring his tennis racket in the morning in case the bat was still in the stairwell. Needless to say, we were careful to check above our heads whenever we entered the apartment thereafter.

 

      Our third and final residence in Madison was also on the second floor of an originally one-family house, that a member of the church (Clifford) owned and shared with his cat, Sprite, who enjoyed playing with Linda’s big hair.

 

 

It was much nicer than our previous apartments and in a much better neighborhood, where we enjoyed taking walks and became aware of the notorious ‘Butterfly Cult.’ (Several houses had decorative metal butterflies adorning their exterior, which we assumed marked membership in the group.) It was far from the stadium, and all the homes had driveways, so parking was never a problem. Nothing unusual happened during our time there (no bats), and I only mention it to complete the description of our three apartments in Madison.

 

      Linda did not often sing in public, but when she received a request from a member of our church (Morrie) to open a meeting of his local Shriners group, she accepted. She even made a dress for the occasion, at a cost that probably exceeded what she received for the event. Moreover, the musical situation was not ideal. Neither the two songs he chose (e.g., “Sweetheart, Sweetheart, Sweetheart”) nor the accompanying brass band he directed, was the best compliment to her voice. Linda got to the hall early for a final rehearsal before her performance. When several members of the band arrived and tried to enter through a locked side door, Linda helpfully opened it for them. Unfortunately, the door was attached to an alarm, clearly marked yet one everybody missed. The alarm went off, summoning the local fire department and incurring a $300 fine for the false call. Thankfully, the Shriners paid the bill. Although the performance went well, the introductory proceeding was not a calming start to Linda’s musical debut.

 

      Katie, who is now married with kids of her own, was a very precocious child of 15 months when she spoke a complete sentence using a word her mother Rene did not even think she knew. Rene asked Linda to hold the little girl while her mother tended to something in the kitchen, a task Linda had done often. Katie inexplicably objected, “No, Mama, she’s fierce!” Apparently, Linda has a terrifying personality.

 

      Linda is not flustered easily nor does celebrity awe her, so when she was working at the desk of the Women’s Fitness Center in Madison and the owner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, paid an impromptu visit to the business he established, she retained her composure. While a student at UW, he noticed there were several gyms for men yet none for women, a desideratum he rectified by establishing the Center. He visited it when he was in town but did not give much advance notice. Consequently, Linda had to prepare the exclusively female clientele for this sudden appearance, which meant she had to act quickly so as not to embarrass him or any of the women who may have been wandering around in assorted states of nakedness. “Man on the hall!” she yelled, curt but effective.

 

 

The women scattered to various safe spaces, and Linda managed to avoid several “wardrobe malfunctions.” Afterwards, He gave a weightlifting class for any of the women who wished to attend.

 

      While writing my dissertation and focusing on Biblical Hebrew, I decided to study Modern Hebrew (again). It was an opportunity to review both the language and culture, especially as one Sabbath the teacher had the class visit the synagogue she attended. Although I was familiar with the service, there are specific practices common in some but not all congregations. After we took our seats, an usher handed me what I assumed was a visitor card to fill out, similar to what many churches use. It was, of course, in Hebrew but had no place to fill in information. When I showed the card to my instructor, who was sitting next to me, she said it was an invitation to read one of the biblical portions for the day. It was an honor this particular synagogue extended to visitors. Although I was familiar enough with the liturgy, which includes canting a prayer before the reading, it would not have been appropriate for me as a gentile, and I returned the card to the usher with my thanks. It was a privilege but one best for me to decline.

 

      An Israeli guest lecturer introduced the class to a new concept in Biblical Hebrew poetry: parlarism. He used the term several times in our first few sessions. No one had ever heard about it, and none of the students wanted to admit ignorance by questioning him. After all, we were in advanced courses and should be familiar with this presumably basic concept. Finally, after several classes, and despite our collective ignorance, it dawned on us that what he meant to say was parallelism, which was a concept we all knew.

 

      One day, Jim, Linda, and I stopped traffic along a six-lane highway to escort a line of ducklings that was following its mother across the road toward one of the lakes in Madison. Unlike NY, where cars probably would have sped on obliviously, these cars on both sides of the road all paused to allow the family’s crossing, fascinated by this little display of WI wildlife. When the last duckling had safely jumped the curb on its way to the water, the traffic resumed its flow, and people went about their business satisfied to have played a productive role in the gentle course of nature.

 

      Another multicultural experience was my preaching at the Chinese-American Christian Church in Madison. A fellow student in the Hebrew program (Chun Ming) was the pastor of that congregation and would occasionally ask me to take his place in the pulpit. It was an opportunity to address a very different linguistic group. The university attracted many Chinese students, and they often came with family members who spoke little or no English. Two translators would flank me whenever I preached, one for those who spoke Mandarin, another for those who spoke Cantonese. Although both languages use the same written characters, they are spoken differently, quite differently. Cantonese is much more wordy, and that translator would still be speaking—for a while, it seemed—after the other had finished. The two translators obviously enjoyed working together and would often exploit this difference in the languages for comic effect.

 

      We spent most Saturday evenings in Madison watching TV at the apartment of a friend (Jim), a high school history teacher, subsequently the creator of my blog. At the time, we did not have a television and managed to avoid that distraction while in school. One Sabbath afternoon in September, we decided to attend a community Corn Boil. Linda wanted to dress appropriately for the event, which she did by donning Bib Overalls, a colorful flannel shirt, and putting her long hair in pigtails high on either side of her head. She was the stereotypical picture of a farmgirl. We collected our ears of corn from the large tent where they were steamed, dipped them in a vat of clarified butter, and applied salt from one of the many shakers hanging outside on a clothesline. Then we went to sit on the hillside and enjoy our treat. When we returned to our friend’s apartment that evening and turned on the local news, there was the picture of a farmgirl in Bib Overalls and a flannel shirt, with long pigtails, eating corn. Unbeknown to us, and to Linda’s chagrin, the local TV channel had sent a crew to record the event. Needless to say, this celebrity appearance became the main topic of conversation the next day at the University Bookstore where Linda worked.

 

      One day, Linda mentioned to a female coworker at the bookstore that she irons my dress shirts before we attend church, something she has done lovingly for years. This struck her coworker, an avowed feminist, as an egregious affront to her gender. “He should iron his own shirts,” she huffed, adding: “I’ll bet you even iron his underwear.” “Oh no,” Linda replied in all seriousness. “If you take them right out of the dryer, you don’t need to iron them.” (Editor’s note: Linda has never ironed Paul’s underwear in all their years of marriage…. She has always managed to get them out of the dryer soon enough.)

 

      One year, when the family was together on Mother’s Day, both boys were home from their respective Ph.D. studies, Dave at Rutgers and I at UW. The two of us decided to surprise our mother with matching body art—tattoos of a bright red heart with the word “Mom” blazoned boldly across the image. But instead of marveling at this obvious display of devotion, she took one look at our arms and said dismissively, “Oh, those aren’t real.” Dave and I were crushed…. Thankfully, the store-bought decals washed off easily.

 

      In 1995, I graduated with my “terminal degree” (Linda’s designation). Debbie and Mom flew to WI for the ceremony. On our way back to the apartment, we talked about the next step in my career quest. I had been in higher education for eighteen years—a BA, three Masters’ degrees, and now a Ph.D. I was finally ready to venture forth into the world and get a ‘real’ job.  Debbie saw what she thought would be the perfect opportunity for me. The Oscar Mayer company, which has a plant in Madison, had a rolling advertisement in its Wienermobile:

 

 

“Maybe you could get a job driving that,” my sister said, ever the optimist. At least she thought I might be qualified. Nevertheless, this was not the muscle car I once dreamed of having (Olds 442), but what it lacked in speed, it made up in style. All this vehicle needed was a pair of racing stripes (flames) painted along either side. In any case, I had already missed my opportunity. The company only accepts drivers for its fleet from recent college grads. Sigh! I was overqualified.

 

      We moved back to Freeport to pastor the Baptist church there. It was an interim position, because the regular minister had recently retired, just for three months while the congregation sought a permanent replacement. That temporary three month posting lasted for three years. While there, I had yet another multicultural experience. The church included several congregants who were deaf. They would sit together and sign the hymns as the ‘hearing’ would sing. It was beautiful and inspiring to watch. Also inspiring to watch, often to the point of distraction, was the young woman who signed my sermons next to me. Those who could hear were so enamored by her graceful and expressive movements that I wondered if people were paying attention at all to my preaching. I did not mind, though. They may actually have gotten more benefit from the sermon visually represented.

 

      The move back to Freeport was also when we replaced our heavy, Early American living room furniture that we had been carting around the country since our original departure from Freeport. While we were in Israel, we put most of our belongings into a locked storage unit, which seemed like a secure way to protect our things. Although it did keep thieves out, it did not prevent mice from getting in and using the couch for nesting material. We got rid of the mice, but the damage they created remained. Now having a job with sufficient income, we could get new (lighter), living room furniture, and that made subsequent relocations much easier.

 

      When we moved from NY to pastor the German Seventh-Day Baptist Church in PA (1998), one of the deacons (Don), an Administrative Law Judge for the Social Security Administration, asked Linda to be a hearing reporter, a job she accepted and thoroughly enjoyed. Because the office was an hour away in Johnstown, he also offered to teach her how to drive. The first step was to get a driver’s permit, which required passing a multiple-choice written test. When a clerk checked her answers, they were all correct but one about the penalty for driving while intoxicated. Possible answers included receiving a summons, suspension of one’s license, or all the above. The answer Linda chose, “All the above,” was incorrect. When the clerk asked her for the proper response, she said, “Just shoot ‘em.” That was not what he expected, but he said, “You have the general idea,” and he passed her.

 

      One of the most attractive features of living in rural PA, beside the beautiful scenery, is the frequent sighting of wildlife, as when Linda was driving and almost got picked up by an eagle that swooped down toward her car. She instinctively ducked only to realize that the bird was after a rodent on the road behind her. Or when the dogs in our neighbor’s outdoor kennel began to bark furiously. We looked to investigate the cause for their excitement and saw a little bear cub sitting calmly outside their enclosure as the dogs grew increasingly more excited. After a bit the cub got up and wandered off. Apparently, it realized the dogs were not going to come out to play. I guess it could not bear the boredom. We never saw the mother bear, but she was doubtless not far away.

 

      Linda worked with several different federal judges, one of whom had a regular habit of borrowing but not returning her pen, a practice she decided to address by ordering new pens with her name imprinted on them: “This pen was stolen from Linda Manuel.” When he invariably pocketed one of her pens again, insisting he did not, she asked him to read the purloined instrument, which he did and sheepishly admitted his error: “Oh, I guess this is yours.” It was the last pen she lost to his care.

      Linda got up early each day for an hour drive to the office in Johnstown. She would save time by preparing a whole pot of coffee she could refrigerate and from which she could reheat a single serving, which she did one morning. Still being half asleep before taking her shower, she put a cup in the microwave and took a big gulp, only to discover that it was not hot coffee but hot grape juice, “Bleah!” It was a case of mistaken identity Linda was careful not to repeat.

 

      Eddie King was a great asset to me and related several stories about people in the congregation before my time, like Lowell Martin, one of the church’s previous ministers. He was a forceful preacher, who hosted a local television program, “The Prophet Speaks,” where he regularly appeared dressed in flowing robes and espoused his distinct views (e.g., universalism). Occasionally, he attracted a standing-room-only crowd to the church, although his popularity may have been more from curiosity than from any genuine interest in the Sabbath. Unfortunately, financial and sexual improprieties tainted his ministry and left him alone at the end of his life. Lowell had four sons. Eric was the youngest and most like him in personality. Eric was often the brunt if his older brothers’ pranks. Once, they tied him to a tree in the woods, until his mother wondered about his absence at dinner and rescued him. On another occasion they put him in the clothes dryer and turned it on to see if he would get dizzy. Even apart from these experiences, Eric had his own way of doing things, like when he mowed the church cemetery at Snow Hill and decided to make the job easier by moving all the headstones to one side first. He returned them later whence he thought they came but reasoned that it did not matter if they were back in their original positions, because the dead are beyond caring.

 

      During our first few years in PA, we rented the top floor of a two-family house before we bought our own home. Although one might assume that public utilities, like water and electric, would be less reliable in the country than in the city, we found them to be very reliable…except when the water shut off unexpectedly one day while Linda was taking a shower. Thankfully, I was at home and heard her cry for help. I rushed into the bathroom knowing only that my wife was in distress. I found her standing in the tub under a now waterless shower, dripping wet, having just soaped up her long hair. She was quite a sight, and I tried not to laugh. When I regained my composure, I realized that water in the heater for the unoccupied apartment below ours would still be hot. After a few trips with an empty gallon milk container, Linda was soap free.

 

      In 2005, we bought our home in Loysburg, PA. We took advantage of the two-car garage immediately, not for our two cars—the spacious and paved driveway accommodated them easily—but for the extra boxes we moved during our various relocations over the years yet never unpacked. We could then transfer them to the house to open gradually, deciding at our leisure what to keep and what to discard. This process also avoided the clutter we both deplore. (We have since managed to keep our attic empty.) It was a luxury we never had before. We discovered things we forgot about, like my Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, which was inexplicably packed with the speakers to our stereo, that we also never unpacked. Still, we had time to empty boxes that remained untouched for years, except to move from place to place. We had gotten to the point where we left most of our things in their boxes and only unpacked what we used all the time (e.g., clothes, library). The intact boxes were like time capsules representing our life from years past.

 

      Not long after my wife and I came to pastor the German Seventh-Day Baptist Church, members Don and Linda asked us to host their son Gabriel, who was still in high school, while his parents were away for a week. My Linda prepared a lunch for him, including three of her famous, giant chocolate chip cookies. When he returned from school, he said the cookies were a big hit and that he sold them for $1.00 each. The next day he asked for some extra cookies in his lunch. Since then, Gabe has gone on to get his Ph.D.in chemistry and now works for a major pharmaceutical company researching and developing new medications. If he is ever looking for another job, his entrepreneurial skill will surely enable him to sell anything, perhaps used cars.

 

      In 2004, I conducted the wedding for Karl and Samantha, whose pre-marital counseling I held using SKYPE, as he lived in Australia and she in America. It was one of the failures of my ministry that I could not convince them to live here. My reason was admittedly selfish: While Karl would certainly have been an asset to our church, as he is to the SDB denomination in Australia, Samantha was the strongest soprano in our choir, and losing her voice would leave Linda with the burden of carrying that section. Unfortunately, I was not successful in getting them to settle here, and soon after the wedding ceremony they moved across the globe, where they now have two daughters and one son all with adorable Aussie accents.

 

      By 2005, Linda had moved 22 times before we got married and 27 times since we were married. Understandably, she was looking forward to settling down at last when we bought our home in Loysburg (PA). Indeed, we have now lived in that house longer than we have lived in any other place, and longer than Linda has lived in any place. Although at this point she is quite skilled at packing, Linda has never looked forward to moving. While she is confident I will not go on for more schooling (under penalty of marital excommunication), she hopes there are no other moves in our future. Nevertheless, however many times we have relocated, there will always be one more move ahead for us which we eagerly anticipate, because God has a place for us to spend eternity with Him:

In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2)

 

      Another memorable water event (2010) occurred at Snow Hill, the other congregation in PA we pastored, when the church gathered for a baptism in a nearby stream. The water was about waist deep, and I borrowed trout waders to keep my dress pants dry. Linda insisted upon bringing a change of clothes in case what I was wearing got wet, but I was confident the waders would be sufficient. (A husband should always listen to his wife.) The candidates, five young people, entered the water one at a time from youngest to oldest while the rest of the congregation watched from the bank. The baptismal service proceeded smoothly until the final candidate, a slim, seventeen-year old girl lost her footing. Reaching out to steady herself, she grabbed the nearest means of support—me!—pulling us both under and causing my waders to fill with water, thankfully, without any fish. (This was my second near-death experience. I almost drowned!) We surfaced to find the entire congregation, having observed this episode from the safety and aridity of the shore, erupting in gales of laughter, which was wholly inappropriate for such a serious and solemn occasion. Fortunately, two of the oldest boys jumped in to help the waterlogged minister out of the stream. Needless to say, I was grateful for my wife’s foresight to bring dry clothes.

 

 

      In 2011, Harold Camping, a popular radio evangelist predicted the world would end on May 21. To warn people about that momentous event, he rented several billboards across the U.S., including some in our area announcing the big day. Many people, especially Christians, were caught up in anticipation of that great event. As the time drew near, I prepared my sermon for the weekend and introduced it by telling the congregation Linda and I would be leaving immediately after the service to join other like-minded souls atop Brumbough mountain to await Jesus’ return.

 

[Evidently, awaiting Jesus’ return while standing on a mountain is a popular location, presumably because it is easier for Jesus to gather his followers if they are already assembled; and a mountain top, being closer to heaven, makes the trip shorter: Flee to the mountains. (Luke 21:21)]

 

(I sounded very serious.) There was a collective gasp as people absorbed the news of our impending departure. (I warned the church matriarch, Betty, about my planned announcement, so she would not be unnecessarily alarmed.) I then launched into my sermon. The text that morning was Jesus’ statement in Matt 24:36—No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. The congregation was relieved to know Linda and I would not really be leaving that day.

 

      In 2013, Linda began to feed a stray female cat she named Callie, a tortoiseshell tabby she saw wandering around the backyard. At first, Linda put out dry food, but soon discovered that Callie was not the only one taking advantage of this daily repast. Other critters came to share whatever Callie did not eat.

There were actually three different skunks (with three distinct markings) who would visit to eat whatever Callie left.

      Eventually, Linda rescued Callie and two of her kittens during one especially cold winter. All three are now indoor cats (see below), in great part to avoid the additional perils of traffic, predators (coyotes), and parasites (fleas, ticks), and they have provided us with countless hours of entertainment and companionship.

 

      The man who owned the dairy farm next to our house did not always keep the fence between our properties in good repair. One morning, while practicing Tai Chi in the sunroom, I turned toward the window and found a cow whose face was almost pressed against the glass, chewing her cud and calmly watching me with big brown eyes as I proceeded through the form. She was probably curious about this human who was moving so slowly.

      Once when we returned from a trip to NY, we discovered evidence that several of the farmer’s bovines had escaped into our yard while we were gone, depositing cow pies around the property. We did not try to collect them but figured the next rain would wash them away, which it did, leaving several well-fertilized, bright green circles on our lawn that remained throughout the season.

 

      There is a favorite picture I cannot locate that may now exist only in my mind. The picture is of a lone cow reaching through a single section of split rail fencing for a tasty patch of grass. She does not go around the fence, which would be easy, but through it as if to show she thinks “the grass is greener on the other side.” There is also a picture I wish I had taken of my standing by the fence at Gene’s farm with my floppy Bible open as his curious cows came over to me: “The preacher addressing his flock.” Regrettably, I never took it.

 

      Although I have never worn a clerical collar, there was an instance when I would have been glad for such identification. Toward the end of my formal ministry, I could visit people only if a deacon transported me and my wheelchair. On one such occasion, we were seeing a former parishioner in a VA facility. As we were leaving and the deacon was rolling me toward the exit, the clerk at the front desk, who was different from the one who saw us when we arrived, mistook me for a resident and thought the deacon might be kidnapping me. We had to convince him that I was not a veteran but a minister making his rounds. While it would have been an honor to be included among our military, I was glad to return to the ministrations of my wife.

 

      We have three cats now, all with distinct personalities and with their own idiosyncrasies.

      •     Callie, the mother, is an exotic, short-haired tortie.

 

 

            She likes to lie on her side at one end of the couch and pull herself along the front skirting (all while lying on her side) to the other end of the couch. Why she does this is a mystery to us.

      •     Pepper, her son, is a handsome, American short-hair with a solid black coat.

 

 

            He is a little thief, the quintessential cat burglar. If Linda dumps some just-washed laundry on the bed to fold, he will steal one sock and come trotting into the family room with his prize dangling proudly from his mouth. Why he does this is a mystery to us.

      •     Candy, her daughter, is a cute grey tabby.

 

 

            She enjoys getting on the nightstand by Linda’s bed to knock glasses and anything else she can onto the floor. She only does it, though, when Linda is in the room (presumably, to appreciate her antics), in the evening when Linda goes to bed and in the morning when Linda wakes up. Why she does this is a mystery to us.

These three activities are unique (we assume) to these three cats. Only Callie drags herself along the bottom skirt of the couch, only Pepper steals socks, and only Candy knocks things off Linda’s nightstand. They are all amusing to us but still mysteries to us.

      Little did we realize that by bringing the cats inside we would be inviting criminals into our home. The two kittens (now adolescents and, therefore, juvenal delinquents) seem to have come from a good family, their mother displaying no nefarious tendencies. We know nothing about the father, however, other than catching an occasional glimpse of him (we think) in the backyard, a large grey tabby Maine Coon. Pepper was the first to exhibit aberrant behavior. He would steal things and hide them, beginning small at first (Linda’s plastic spaghetti scoop), then graduating to more personal items (socks).

      While Pepper appears to have reformed, as far as we can tell, his sister has not and, and unlike her brother, Candy’s activity is most brazen. When asleep, she looks completely innocent.

 

 

It is, however, a façade, which she is ready to set aside should the opportunity arise to pull a quick heist. She especially prefers soft, poorly guarded targets: Most notoriously, Candy is a bed thief. Often waiting until nightfall after we have both retired, Candy will make her move if Linda gets up to visit the necessary room. At that point, Candy immediately takes her place by the pillow, presumably because it is warm. She does this quite regularly then refuses to vacate upon Linda’s return, digging in her claws, even when Linda threatens to sit on her. It is a battle of wills. Although Linda invariably wins, Candy is persistent. Moreover, Candy is both unrepentant and defiant. (Notice in the picture below that she is sticking out her tongue and posing with an earplug she knocked off Linda’s nightstand.)

 

 

      Candy also has no appreciation for music, as I discovered one day. I just started to practice my trombone when Linda came into the room and shoved my mute into the bell. “Use this,” she said. Then she called me back into the bedroom where Candy was taking one of her naps on Linda’s bed. As soon as I had started to play, Candy put her front paws over her ears, as if to block out the sound, and began to whine. Everyone’s a critic.

      As I said, the three cats have given us both entertainment and companionship, two elements that have enriched our lives.

 

      We are grateful to God that He saved the best for last in our life together: retirement and home ownership in a beautiful part of the country, as well as the financial means to enjoy them. God is good all the time!