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.
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 4th
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.
************
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.”
************
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!
************
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!
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Relevant and civil comments are welcome. Whether there will be any response depends on whether Dr. Manuel notices them and has the time and inclination to respond or, if not, whether I feel competent to do so.
Jim Skaggs