Copyright 2006, Terry F. Phillips Sr.
All rights reserved
Chapter 15
When Mark Wilkins fell asleep on the cold campground, he understood everything. When he awoke he remembered he hadn’t taken his medicine and he didn’t have any with him.
He got up quickly but quietly, not wanting to disturb his new friend who was asleep on the opposite side of the dying fire from him.
Mark got into the car, driving by memory, not wanting to turn on his headlights until he was sure they wouldn’t awake Kelly.
Finally, he made it to the county road and turned right toward home.
A few minutes later he was parked in his parents’ drive, but then things got really weird.
One instant he was sitting in the pickup and the next he was standing on the shores of Sugar Creek, as he had done, so many times before.
Only this time, things were different. Wow, were they different.
Instead of seeing old paper and plastic wrap, the banks were clean. Instead of the smell of dead and decaying fish one normally smelled on a hot day, the river smelled … well, it didn’t have an odor at all.
In fact, Mark could see fish swimming up to him where he stood on the bank, like they weren’t afraid at all. Then, a squirrel ran up to him and brushed against him, as if the squirrel were a family dog, wanting to be petted.
But, then, he felt a cold nose under his arm. Startled, he jumped away and turned at the Same time.
It was a deer that had evidently come to the water for a cool drink on a hot day. The doe was nuzzling under Mark’s arm as if it wanted to be petted and his human odor hadn’t caused a problem at all for the animals.
But then, on the other side of the creek, he heard a “woof” and looked in time to see Maverick looking at him and wagging his tail in greeting.
Quickly, the golden retriever jumped into the creek and paddled over to him.
The dog was excited as if he hadn’t seen his old master in years, which, in fact, was true.
Mark remembered the horrible day when he arrived home from school to see his old friend laying on the back steps of his house. The dog’s flank was caked with mud and dried blood, but his leg was twisted at a crazy angle.
The dog whined and licked Mark’s hand just before he had stopped breathing.
That was when Mark was 10 and he never forgot it.
His mother had been at church, in the Ladies Aid meeting. When she got home, she saw her son shoveling the last few inches of dirt into the grave when Maverick had been laid. The boy had managed to get the large dog into his dad’s wheel barrow and move it to a spot behind the garage.
He still remembered the sting of the hot tears on his face and how he seemed to smear as much dirt on his clothes as he shoveled in the hole that terrible day.
“We’ll never get to play by the creek again,” Mark had thought. But here was the Same dog, fit as could be, obviously happy, overjoyed to see his master again.
“Mav?” was all Mark could say.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Friday, May 12, 2006
"Living in Victory," Chapter 14
Copyright 2006, Terry F. Phillips Sr.
Chapter 14
I was awakened by a man in a brown uniform a few hours later.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, are you Stevens? The preacher in Victory?”
“I have permission to be here,” I said, not knowing what was going on.
“Hey, I was told to come get you,” the deputy said.
I rolled out of the sleeping bag and immediately began shivering. I noticed it was snowing and the ground already was covered with a skiff of snow.
I smelled something, too. Then I realized that while I was asleep, I must have gotten cold, for I had rolled closer and closer to the fire and after it went out, I had rolled in the ashes. My sleeping bag was, indeed, well-broken in. And it smelled like fresh ashes. Instead of being brown, it was gray, as I could see in the headlights of the police car.
“Do you want me to follow you?” I said hopefully.
If the answer was yes, then I wasn’t under arrest for trespassing.
“That’s fine,” he said. “You better get in the car quick, you’ll freeze to death out here!”
We were almost back to the paved road before I realized Mark had left our camping place.
In my worst thoughts, I feared we were headed to the county jail. Instead, it was worse. We turned toward the hospital and I became alarmed.
In the emergency room, I met Mark’s parents. One look at their faces told me what I had chosen not to believe, but still I denied it.
Mr. Zellers was with them when I arrived. So was Kent Smith.
Though I was brand new as their minister, the Wilkins started crying when they saw me. It wasn’t professional of me, but I started crying, then.
Mr. Wilkins put his arm around my shoulder. He was shorter than I and much stockier. It seemed that he was trying to comfort me and I was there to offer comfort to them.
“He’s going to a better place,” Mr. Wilkins said through his tears. “But, I sure am going to miss him!”
And I felt his body shake in time with his sobs.
Mrs. Wilkins had a Kleenex® she had shredded in her hands. She was more quiet than her husband. Mrs. Rogers was talking with her.
We were standing in the hallway outside patient rooms. I assumed Mark’s body was laying behind the door to my right, inside the room. What had I gotten myself into? This was supposed to be a part time job and it was already serious and I was already way over my head.
I wasn’t trained for any of this. It scared me.
I wasn’t afraid of offending people. I was a journalism major, for crying out loud! But I was dealing with people. People who had just lost their son.
It was God I feared. Suddenly, I didn’t want this job any more. I wasn’t up to it.
Then, I felt Mrs. Wilkins hand on my arm.
“Kelly,” she said, gently. “Now, I now you are new at all this. But we want you to do Mark’s funeral. Is that OK?”
I looked into her eyes and realized that instead of cutting bait and running from the situation, I was going to have to see it through.
“Sure,” I managed to say.
I was numb. My lips were numb, my body was numb. I could barely feel anything in the soles of my feet.
Then I realized how disheveled my appearance must be.
“I’m sorry,” I stumbled in my words. “I didn’t realize … I was at the Conservation Club …”
“We know, son,” Mr. Wilkins said. “Mark told us you were going to meet him there and camp out. You don’t know what that means to us.”
I soon learned the whole story – Mark was not a popular boy. He was withdrawn, a poor student in school.
Yet, for some reason, he had sought me out.
“Maybe my incompetence drew him,” I thought. “If he rejected people who knew what they were doing – teachers, smarter students – maybe he saw a kindred spirit in me.”
“Your willingness to ride down the creek with Mark meant more to him than you’ll ever know,” his mother told me.
I thought of how he laughed when I stepped into the hole and found myself in over my head. I had to wonder if that was the happiest experience Mark had for some time.
I never did fully understand what happened that night.
Sometime during the night, Mark became sick. Without waking me, he had driven towards Victory, but he never made it.
I didn’t want to ask. Some said he had an aneurysm, others said it was his heart. He was gone and the cause didn’t matter.
Chapter 14
I was awakened by a man in a brown uniform a few hours later.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, are you Stevens? The preacher in Victory?”
“I have permission to be here,” I said, not knowing what was going on.
“Hey, I was told to come get you,” the deputy said.
I rolled out of the sleeping bag and immediately began shivering. I noticed it was snowing and the ground already was covered with a skiff of snow.
I smelled something, too. Then I realized that while I was asleep, I must have gotten cold, for I had rolled closer and closer to the fire and after it went out, I had rolled in the ashes. My sleeping bag was, indeed, well-broken in. And it smelled like fresh ashes. Instead of being brown, it was gray, as I could see in the headlights of the police car.
“Do you want me to follow you?” I said hopefully.
If the answer was yes, then I wasn’t under arrest for trespassing.
“That’s fine,” he said. “You better get in the car quick, you’ll freeze to death out here!”
We were almost back to the paved road before I realized Mark had left our camping place.
In my worst thoughts, I feared we were headed to the county jail. Instead, it was worse. We turned toward the hospital and I became alarmed.
In the emergency room, I met Mark’s parents. One look at their faces told me what I had chosen not to believe, but still I denied it.
Mr. Zellers was with them when I arrived. So was Kent Smith.
Though I was brand new as their minister, the Wilkins started crying when they saw me. It wasn’t professional of me, but I started crying, then.
Mr. Wilkins put his arm around my shoulder. He was shorter than I and much stockier. It seemed that he was trying to comfort me and I was there to offer comfort to them.
“He’s going to a better place,” Mr. Wilkins said through his tears. “But, I sure am going to miss him!”
And I felt his body shake in time with his sobs.
Mrs. Wilkins had a Kleenex® she had shredded in her hands. She was more quiet than her husband. Mrs. Rogers was talking with her.
We were standing in the hallway outside patient rooms. I assumed Mark’s body was laying behind the door to my right, inside the room. What had I gotten myself into? This was supposed to be a part time job and it was already serious and I was already way over my head.
I wasn’t trained for any of this. It scared me.
I wasn’t afraid of offending people. I was a journalism major, for crying out loud! But I was dealing with people. People who had just lost their son.
It was God I feared. Suddenly, I didn’t want this job any more. I wasn’t up to it.
Then, I felt Mrs. Wilkins hand on my arm.
“Kelly,” she said, gently. “Now, I now you are new at all this. But we want you to do Mark’s funeral. Is that OK?”
I looked into her eyes and realized that instead of cutting bait and running from the situation, I was going to have to see it through.
“Sure,” I managed to say.
I was numb. My lips were numb, my body was numb. I could barely feel anything in the soles of my feet.
Then I realized how disheveled my appearance must be.
“I’m sorry,” I stumbled in my words. “I didn’t realize … I was at the Conservation Club …”
“We know, son,” Mr. Wilkins said. “Mark told us you were going to meet him there and camp out. You don’t know what that means to us.”
I soon learned the whole story – Mark was not a popular boy. He was withdrawn, a poor student in school.
Yet, for some reason, he had sought me out.
“Maybe my incompetence drew him,” I thought. “If he rejected people who knew what they were doing – teachers, smarter students – maybe he saw a kindred spirit in me.”
“Your willingness to ride down the creek with Mark meant more to him than you’ll ever know,” his mother told me.
I thought of how he laughed when I stepped into the hole and found myself in over my head. I had to wonder if that was the happiest experience Mark had for some time.
I never did fully understand what happened that night.
Sometime during the night, Mark became sick. Without waking me, he had driven towards Victory, but he never made it.
I didn’t want to ask. Some said he had an aneurysm, others said it was his heart. He was gone and the cause didn’t matter.
Scooter time again
Today is rainy and cold (about 42 -- that's Fahrenheit), but I am looking at scooters again.
My Zuma was stolen from our garage about a month ago. Now, I am looking at something a little more powerful, though I don't think I'll find anything more durable.
After we settle with the insurance company (State Farm says the check is on its way) and we pay off the Zuma, Linda syas I can get a new scooter.
She knows I miss riding one and I think she would prefer it if I didn't get her up to take me to work. I've had a cold most of the year and I really don't want to walk the two miles early in the morning.
So, first I looked at a Motofino, a 150 cc scooter, which would move me around at 60 mph if I needed. Only problem -- my research (in Google, alt.scooter, Yahoo) indicates that a) it is a a new aka unproven brand and b) it is a Chinese scooter which everyone tells me to stay away from.
Then, I found (to my shock) that Thompson's Motorsports in Terre Haute actually had a blue Vino 125 in stock.
So, after more research, I test rode it. It was great. More confortable than my Zuma, but same family and same handling. It has a cool blue and chrome retro look about it that I like.
Linda didn't think the price was bad ($3,100 out the door). So, if it is still in stock or if I can find another Vino 125 (either color) I will get it later this summer.
I thought about getting a used car, but for $3 G, it would have to be a POS vehicle and I don't care to spend my time working on them. Have to have something that is reliable.
The one thing my Zuma wouldn't do is get up to acceptable speeds on Indiana 59 or U.S. 40. The Vino 125, with its 124 cc engine (compared to the Zuma's 49cc) should have no problem running 50-55, from what I've read.
My Zuma was stolen from our garage about a month ago. Now, I am looking at something a little more powerful, though I don't think I'll find anything more durable.
After we settle with the insurance company (State Farm says the check is on its way) and we pay off the Zuma, Linda syas I can get a new scooter.
She knows I miss riding one and I think she would prefer it if I didn't get her up to take me to work. I've had a cold most of the year and I really don't want to walk the two miles early in the morning.
So, first I looked at a Motofino, a 150 cc scooter, which would move me around at 60 mph if I needed. Only problem -- my research (in Google, alt.scooter, Yahoo) indicates that a) it is a a new aka unproven brand and b) it is a Chinese scooter which everyone tells me to stay away from.
Then, I found (to my shock) that Thompson's Motorsports in Terre Haute actually had a blue Vino 125 in stock.
So, after more research, I test rode it. It was great. More confortable than my Zuma, but same family and same handling. It has a cool blue and chrome retro look about it that I like.
Linda didn't think the price was bad ($3,100 out the door). So, if it is still in stock or if I can find another Vino 125 (either color) I will get it later this summer.
I thought about getting a used car, but for $3 G, it would have to be a POS vehicle and I don't care to spend my time working on them. Have to have something that is reliable.
The one thing my Zuma wouldn't do is get up to acceptable speeds on Indiana 59 or U.S. 40. The Vino 125, with its 124 cc engine (compared to the Zuma's 49cc) should have no problem running 50-55, from what I've read.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
"Living in Victory," Chapter 13
Copyright 2006, Terry F. Phillips Sr.
All rights reserved
Chapter 13
By this time, I was getting used to making the trip from Illinois to Victory. I learned where the better gas stations were, what exit the Steak & Shake in Champaign was on and what exits to stay off of because they led to bad neighborhoods.
I also learned how to take catnaps to avoid Interstate disasters. I could pull off to the side of the road, turn on my flashers (wish my car was a brighter color than tan) and get out and do jumping jacks to refresh myself. When jumping jacks didn’t work, I would just pull over, lock the doors, turn on my flashers and nap for 10 minutes. After just a 10 or 20 minutes, I would be ready to make the rest of the trip with no problem.
That Saturday was the church’s annual Sunday school picnic. Remember, the church did not actually have its own Sunday school; the town had a Union Sunday school, even though there was only one church in Victory.
I quickly learned people in the church went out of their way to not take advantage of others. In fact, they went out of their way to help one another. In the years I ministered in the community, I never felt a compulsion to preach on the Golden Rule. If it came up in the context of a sermon, I was always uncomfortable.
Some of the members belonged to the township fire department, some to the lodge (and raised money to help needy children), some belong to the county’s emergency management team; none seemed to lack civic pride or a commitment to help their community.
As a minister, I sometimes envied the above-named organizations. I had aspirations to build a great church in Victory, to even move the congregation out of the frame building, a little white church one might find on a Christmas card, and into a modern, brick church building. A large building to hold all the hundreds of people who would be won to Christ and worship in my church.
Then, I would stop and realize it was not my church, after all.
I would pray for forgiveness and try to learn what I could from these people and try to impart what the Bible said, to the best of my ability.
On this particular Saturday night, I arrived at the church, leaving my sleeping bag stowed in the car. Mark Wilkins, the pimply-faced teenager I had traveled down the creek with, was at the church before anyone else. Soon he was joined by another boy who was fooling around with the church’s public address system.
It was a one-box affair, with a microphone (I thought) permanently attached to the pulpit.
I objected when they used a screwdriver to remove the mike from the pulpit, but they assured me all would be well and that Betty was looking for me for supper.
I went without further comment. I had dreamed of her fried chicken all week long. By now, school classes were out and the cafeteria was closed. The fast food restaurants held no allure for me; all I could think about was Betty’s food and the fast food cuisine was poor by comparison.
That night, I returned to the church and found it adorned for a party. The basement was decorated with streamers and balloons and the teenagers seemed up to something. They were whispering and giggling.
I tried to use the rest room in the Sunday school room, but was greeted with a sign that read “Out of order”.
Mark was seemingly waiting to make sure no one challenged the signs (the ladies rest room was also marked with a sign).
I shrugged and made my way to the old outhouse behind the church.
The outhouse had been left standing for such emergencies as this. It was also convenient for the kids to use when they played outside with their friends on warm summer nights.
It smelled bad, like most outhouses. Outhouses have a peculiar odor about them. It isn’t what you would expect, for a deep pit is dug beneath the little building where one sits (or stands) to do one’s business. The smell is a combination of odors: wet wood, wet earth and the material one would expect to find in the bottom of the pit.
The door was hung on two rusty hinges. There was a block of wood inside that could be twisted to hold the door shut when the occupant wanted privacy.
Contrary to all the jokes, modern outhouses do not have copies of mail order catalogs that can be torn apart page by page to service human needs. Instead, this one had a coat hanger, bent to accommodate a roll of toilet paper.
I did my business and returned to the church.
The evening progressed with games and refreshments. Then, about 8 p.m., a woman’s blood-curdling scream could be heard from the back yard.
We ran outside to see Miss Cory running from the outhouse, pulling up her hose on one leg and letting the other hose bunch around her ankle.
“Oh, oh, oh!” was all she could say before swooning.
Miss Cory was carried into the church and laid on the carpeted floor. One of the emergency medical technicians in the church got his bag while two of the women patted her hands and rubbed her wrists.
A few minutes later, she came around and kept mumbling about “the man downstairs”.
By and by she told us that she had made her way to the outhouse to do what she needed to do. She had just got seated when a voice from below said, “Excuse me, ma’am. Would you mind not doing that, we’re painting the basement.”
I remembered the boys who had worked on the P.A. system just before supper. They were nowhere to be seen, but the “out of order” signs had been removed from the rest rooms.
I flushed the stool in the men’s room and found it worked perfectly. I found something else – the pulpit microphone. Its wire ran out of the bathroom window in the general direction of the outhouse.
Miss Cory’s excitement managed to break up the party and after everything was cleaned up and put away, the folks made their way home.
I made my way south, to the Victory Conservation Club.
I turned left onto a gravel road about a mile south of town. A hand painted sign said this was the entrance to the club.
Driving on, my little car churned up dust and dirt, reminding me to check the air filter when I got back to school.
After a few minutes of the old bump and grind, I found myself at the end of the road.
To the right was a building with large windows and a screened in porch. Straight ahead was a strip of black that I took for Sugar Creek. I turned off my car lights.
Then, I saw a small fire and after my eyes adjusted, I could see a boy sitting next to it and a car not far away, but out of the firelight. I decided if he could drive to the fire, so could I.
I got out of the vehicle and approach Mark. He was quiet – even extra quiet for him.
“Hello,” I said, sitting down next to him in the sandy dirt.
“Hi,” he said, and picked up a small rock. He tried to throw it into the creek, but it either didn’t have enough weight or he didn’t throw it hard enough. It fell short.
“She was pretty scared,” I said, getting right down to cases.
He just smiled and I thought I heard a chuckle. That told me all I needed to know. He wasn’t going to be persuaded he did a bad thing, scaring the wits out of Miss Cory that night.
So, I let it go. I knew his parents would find out about it soon enough, even though they hadn’t attended the party.
“Did you bring your sleeping bag?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
I got up and went to he car to get it out of the back.
We made camp. Mark had brought some cans of soda and some hot dogs and buns.
“I thought I still owed you a meal after we dumped ours in the creek last week,” he said.
It was my turn to laugh.
“You didn’t need to do that,” I said. “I’m still pretty full from the refreshments.”
“Yeah, I didn’t stay,” he said, pushing a wiener onto a stick he had cut at the water’s edge and sharpened. He handed it to me before he got his own.
Mark was a good kid.
I took the stick and held the wiener over the fire, trying to catch the heat from the coals instead of the bright yellow flame. Coals cook, flames only burn the outer skin.
“I left right after Miss Cory – um, I left early,” he said.
He fixed himself a stick with two wieners on it – “I’m pretty hungry,” he said – I guess scaring old ladies does that to a teenage boy – makes them hungry.
The rest of the evening was uneventful. It was quiet.
I hoped Mark heard what I said and was thinking it over. He sure didn’t look too happy.
I wondered if it was guilt or the late night hot dog supper.
We turned in and with a full stomach and a busy day behind me, I soon fell fast asleep.
He didn’t have much firewood and the night was getting cold. In fact, there was a distinct chill in the air when I rolled up inside my sleeping bag and cuddled with the fire as close as I dare before going to sleep.
All rights reserved
Chapter 13
By this time, I was getting used to making the trip from Illinois to Victory. I learned where the better gas stations were, what exit the Steak & Shake in Champaign was on and what exits to stay off of because they led to bad neighborhoods.
I also learned how to take catnaps to avoid Interstate disasters. I could pull off to the side of the road, turn on my flashers (wish my car was a brighter color than tan) and get out and do jumping jacks to refresh myself. When jumping jacks didn’t work, I would just pull over, lock the doors, turn on my flashers and nap for 10 minutes. After just a 10 or 20 minutes, I would be ready to make the rest of the trip with no problem.
That Saturday was the church’s annual Sunday school picnic. Remember, the church did not actually have its own Sunday school; the town had a Union Sunday school, even though there was only one church in Victory.
I quickly learned people in the church went out of their way to not take advantage of others. In fact, they went out of their way to help one another. In the years I ministered in the community, I never felt a compulsion to preach on the Golden Rule. If it came up in the context of a sermon, I was always uncomfortable.
Some of the members belonged to the township fire department, some to the lodge (and raised money to help needy children), some belong to the county’s emergency management team; none seemed to lack civic pride or a commitment to help their community.
As a minister, I sometimes envied the above-named organizations. I had aspirations to build a great church in Victory, to even move the congregation out of the frame building, a little white church one might find on a Christmas card, and into a modern, brick church building. A large building to hold all the hundreds of people who would be won to Christ and worship in my church.
Then, I would stop and realize it was not my church, after all.
I would pray for forgiveness and try to learn what I could from these people and try to impart what the Bible said, to the best of my ability.
On this particular Saturday night, I arrived at the church, leaving my sleeping bag stowed in the car. Mark Wilkins, the pimply-faced teenager I had traveled down the creek with, was at the church before anyone else. Soon he was joined by another boy who was fooling around with the church’s public address system.
It was a one-box affair, with a microphone (I thought) permanently attached to the pulpit.
I objected when they used a screwdriver to remove the mike from the pulpit, but they assured me all would be well and that Betty was looking for me for supper.
I went without further comment. I had dreamed of her fried chicken all week long. By now, school classes were out and the cafeteria was closed. The fast food restaurants held no allure for me; all I could think about was Betty’s food and the fast food cuisine was poor by comparison.
That night, I returned to the church and found it adorned for a party. The basement was decorated with streamers and balloons and the teenagers seemed up to something. They were whispering and giggling.
I tried to use the rest room in the Sunday school room, but was greeted with a sign that read “Out of order”.
Mark was seemingly waiting to make sure no one challenged the signs (the ladies rest room was also marked with a sign).
I shrugged and made my way to the old outhouse behind the church.
The outhouse had been left standing for such emergencies as this. It was also convenient for the kids to use when they played outside with their friends on warm summer nights.
It smelled bad, like most outhouses. Outhouses have a peculiar odor about them. It isn’t what you would expect, for a deep pit is dug beneath the little building where one sits (or stands) to do one’s business. The smell is a combination of odors: wet wood, wet earth and the material one would expect to find in the bottom of the pit.
The door was hung on two rusty hinges. There was a block of wood inside that could be twisted to hold the door shut when the occupant wanted privacy.
Contrary to all the jokes, modern outhouses do not have copies of mail order catalogs that can be torn apart page by page to service human needs. Instead, this one had a coat hanger, bent to accommodate a roll of toilet paper.
I did my business and returned to the church.
The evening progressed with games and refreshments. Then, about 8 p.m., a woman’s blood-curdling scream could be heard from the back yard.
We ran outside to see Miss Cory running from the outhouse, pulling up her hose on one leg and letting the other hose bunch around her ankle.
“Oh, oh, oh!” was all she could say before swooning.
Miss Cory was carried into the church and laid on the carpeted floor. One of the emergency medical technicians in the church got his bag while two of the women patted her hands and rubbed her wrists.
A few minutes later, she came around and kept mumbling about “the man downstairs”.
By and by she told us that she had made her way to the outhouse to do what she needed to do. She had just got seated when a voice from below said, “Excuse me, ma’am. Would you mind not doing that, we’re painting the basement.”
I remembered the boys who had worked on the P.A. system just before supper. They were nowhere to be seen, but the “out of order” signs had been removed from the rest rooms.
I flushed the stool in the men’s room and found it worked perfectly. I found something else – the pulpit microphone. Its wire ran out of the bathroom window in the general direction of the outhouse.
Miss Cory’s excitement managed to break up the party and after everything was cleaned up and put away, the folks made their way home.
I made my way south, to the Victory Conservation Club.
I turned left onto a gravel road about a mile south of town. A hand painted sign said this was the entrance to the club.
Driving on, my little car churned up dust and dirt, reminding me to check the air filter when I got back to school.
After a few minutes of the old bump and grind, I found myself at the end of the road.
To the right was a building with large windows and a screened in porch. Straight ahead was a strip of black that I took for Sugar Creek. I turned off my car lights.
Then, I saw a small fire and after my eyes adjusted, I could see a boy sitting next to it and a car not far away, but out of the firelight. I decided if he could drive to the fire, so could I.
I got out of the vehicle and approach Mark. He was quiet – even extra quiet for him.
“Hello,” I said, sitting down next to him in the sandy dirt.
“Hi,” he said, and picked up a small rock. He tried to throw it into the creek, but it either didn’t have enough weight or he didn’t throw it hard enough. It fell short.
“She was pretty scared,” I said, getting right down to cases.
He just smiled and I thought I heard a chuckle. That told me all I needed to know. He wasn’t going to be persuaded he did a bad thing, scaring the wits out of Miss Cory that night.
So, I let it go. I knew his parents would find out about it soon enough, even though they hadn’t attended the party.
“Did you bring your sleeping bag?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
I got up and went to he car to get it out of the back.
We made camp. Mark had brought some cans of soda and some hot dogs and buns.
“I thought I still owed you a meal after we dumped ours in the creek last week,” he said.
It was my turn to laugh.
“You didn’t need to do that,” I said. “I’m still pretty full from the refreshments.”
“Yeah, I didn’t stay,” he said, pushing a wiener onto a stick he had cut at the water’s edge and sharpened. He handed it to me before he got his own.
Mark was a good kid.
I took the stick and held the wiener over the fire, trying to catch the heat from the coals instead of the bright yellow flame. Coals cook, flames only burn the outer skin.
“I left right after Miss Cory – um, I left early,” he said.
He fixed himself a stick with two wieners on it – “I’m pretty hungry,” he said – I guess scaring old ladies does that to a teenage boy – makes them hungry.
The rest of the evening was uneventful. It was quiet.
I hoped Mark heard what I said and was thinking it over. He sure didn’t look too happy.
I wondered if it was guilt or the late night hot dog supper.
We turned in and with a full stomach and a busy day behind me, I soon fell fast asleep.
He didn’t have much firewood and the night was getting cold. In fact, there was a distinct chill in the air when I rolled up inside my sleeping bag and cuddled with the fire as close as I dare before going to sleep.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
"Living in Victory," Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Betty took me home after church for a lunch of soup and a sandwich.
On our walk back to church before the worship service, she had asked me if I liked soup. Of course I did.
My mother had heated Campbell’s soup for me on many cold mornings and I had eaten it for breakfast. To me, soup was synonymous with condensed soup in a can.
Such was not to be the case. Betty made homemade soup and seemed shocked that I had ever tasted any other kind.
It had a wonderful clear broth, the best chicken and vegetables cooked to perfection. Not too crunchy and not overly done, but just right.
The sandwich was made on home-baked bread and featured beef that had been butchered not many weeks earlier. It had then been “cold-packed” she told me. I saw the canning jar and recognized it as the kind my own mother had used for fruit when I was very small.
I stayed with Betty many times over the next few times, and put on a several pounds in the process. I was told that she planned her whole week around my Saturday and Sunday visits. If there was ever an angel to care for me it was Betty, but she never allowed me to call her “Aunt Betty”.
The next Saturday, after the capture of the local thief in Betty’s living room, was the annual Sunday school party and was I in for a treat!
Betty took me home after church for a lunch of soup and a sandwich.
On our walk back to church before the worship service, she had asked me if I liked soup. Of course I did.
My mother had heated Campbell’s soup for me on many cold mornings and I had eaten it for breakfast. To me, soup was synonymous with condensed soup in a can.
Such was not to be the case. Betty made homemade soup and seemed shocked that I had ever tasted any other kind.
It had a wonderful clear broth, the best chicken and vegetables cooked to perfection. Not too crunchy and not overly done, but just right.
The sandwich was made on home-baked bread and featured beef that had been butchered not many weeks earlier. It had then been “cold-packed” she told me. I saw the canning jar and recognized it as the kind my own mother had used for fruit when I was very small.
I stayed with Betty many times over the next few times, and put on a several pounds in the process. I was told that she planned her whole week around my Saturday and Sunday visits. If there was ever an angel to care for me it was Betty, but she never allowed me to call her “Aunt Betty”.
The next Saturday, after the capture of the local thief in Betty’s living room, was the annual Sunday school party and was I in for a treat!
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
"Living in Victory," Chapter 11
Copyright 2006 Terry F. Phillips Sr.
All rights reserved
Chapter 11
Aunt Betty, as everyone called her, was a widowed woman who lived a few blocks from the church. Of course, Victory was so small, you could walk out of town by just walking a few blocks.
She was also called Aunt Betty because it seemed she was related to everyone.
“So, should I call you Aunt Betty?” I asked.
“No, you may call me Betty,” she said as we walked toward her house.
Her tone of voice was firm, but kindly.
We turned the corner north of the church.
“That’s my house, the white one on the left,” she said.
I had to smile, because they were all white. But to her, her house was indeed “the house” and the others were not as important to her.
I followed and soon we walked up the short driveway and onto the porch.
I noticed she did not carry a purse and had no key in her hand. She did not look for a key under the doormat nor anywhere else.
Instead, she just pushed the thumb latch on the door and opened it. There was no screen door; indeed the windows had no screens on them. And, she kept the door unlocked.
But, as quickly as she unlatched the door, she pulled it shut again, but almost noiselessly.
She signaled me to step off the porch and she quickly joined me.
“Come along, but be quiet,” she said. “We must hurry.”
We hurried; indeed we did hurry, for the little old woman was spry for her age. Our destination was the next-door neighbor.
“Cory is home today, I reckon,” Betty said. “She has been feeling poorly.”
We quickly climbed the steps to Cory’s house and knocked. All the time, Betty watched her own house.
“Hello, there,” she said when an elderly woman, who I recognized from Sunday school, appeared at the door.
“Cory, this is our new minister,” Betty said, apparently forgetting that I had been introduced to the congregation already. “And we must use your telephone and quickly.”
The woman stepped out of the way and let Betty into her living room. I stayed on the porch. If she was, indeed, sick with any communicable diseases, I decided I would avoid contact as much as possible.
Then I sneezed. O must have caught cold in Sugar Creek the day before, I told myself.
In a few minutes, Betty stepped back on the porch; the neighbor lady stayed inside the house.
“Now, we must wait and watch for the police,” she said in the same tone she might have said, “Now, we must do the dishes.”
I thought about the Sunday school that was proceeding at the church and wondered why I couldn’t get the bath and breakfast I had been promised.
In a few minutes, the answer became obvious. We watched two sheriff’s cars pull up in front of Betty’s house, go inside, and in short order, come walking out with a man in handcuffs!
“That is why I had to delay your hospitality,” Betty told me.
The man in handcuffs was a wanted fugitive from the law who had been wanted for breaking and entering into homes in the Victory area. He, like everyone else, apparently, knew Betty’s house was never locked, that she was always ready to take in strangers and offer them hospitality as she would if Jesus Himself came calling.
Fortunately, for her, the crook had fallen asleep on her couch. It was he who she had seen when she opened the front door of her home. IN an instant she recognized him as the man the Ladies Aid had deduced was breaking into people’s homes. She had hurried me to the neighbor’s home to protect me from harm.
Betty walked over to the sheriff’s deputies and spoke in low tones with them for a moment before they left with their prisoner.
“Now,” she said, very matter-of-factly. “You need that tub, but I don’t think you’ll have time for a breakfast before church. We’ll have to figure something out after church and feed you some lunch.”
So, I bathed, put on clean clothes from the suitcase I had carried from my car, still parked in front of the church building, and made it back in time for the worship service.
All rights reserved
Chapter 11
Aunt Betty, as everyone called her, was a widowed woman who lived a few blocks from the church. Of course, Victory was so small, you could walk out of town by just walking a few blocks.
She was also called Aunt Betty because it seemed she was related to everyone.
“So, should I call you Aunt Betty?” I asked.
“No, you may call me Betty,” she said as we walked toward her house.
Her tone of voice was firm, but kindly.
We turned the corner north of the church.
“That’s my house, the white one on the left,” she said.
I had to smile, because they were all white. But to her, her house was indeed “the house” and the others were not as important to her.
I followed and soon we walked up the short driveway and onto the porch.
I noticed she did not carry a purse and had no key in her hand. She did not look for a key under the doormat nor anywhere else.
Instead, she just pushed the thumb latch on the door and opened it. There was no screen door; indeed the windows had no screens on them. And, she kept the door unlocked.
But, as quickly as she unlatched the door, she pulled it shut again, but almost noiselessly.
She signaled me to step off the porch and she quickly joined me.
“Come along, but be quiet,” she said. “We must hurry.”
We hurried; indeed we did hurry, for the little old woman was spry for her age. Our destination was the next-door neighbor.
“Cory is home today, I reckon,” Betty said. “She has been feeling poorly.”
We quickly climbed the steps to Cory’s house and knocked. All the time, Betty watched her own house.
“Hello, there,” she said when an elderly woman, who I recognized from Sunday school, appeared at the door.
“Cory, this is our new minister,” Betty said, apparently forgetting that I had been introduced to the congregation already. “And we must use your telephone and quickly.”
The woman stepped out of the way and let Betty into her living room. I stayed on the porch. If she was, indeed, sick with any communicable diseases, I decided I would avoid contact as much as possible.
Then I sneezed. O must have caught cold in Sugar Creek the day before, I told myself.
In a few minutes, Betty stepped back on the porch; the neighbor lady stayed inside the house.
“Now, we must wait and watch for the police,” she said in the same tone she might have said, “Now, we must do the dishes.”
I thought about the Sunday school that was proceeding at the church and wondered why I couldn’t get the bath and breakfast I had been promised.
In a few minutes, the answer became obvious. We watched two sheriff’s cars pull up in front of Betty’s house, go inside, and in short order, come walking out with a man in handcuffs!
“That is why I had to delay your hospitality,” Betty told me.
The man in handcuffs was a wanted fugitive from the law who had been wanted for breaking and entering into homes in the Victory area. He, like everyone else, apparently, knew Betty’s house was never locked, that she was always ready to take in strangers and offer them hospitality as she would if Jesus Himself came calling.
Fortunately, for her, the crook had fallen asleep on her couch. It was he who she had seen when she opened the front door of her home. IN an instant she recognized him as the man the Ladies Aid had deduced was breaking into people’s homes. She had hurried me to the neighbor’s home to protect me from harm.
Betty walked over to the sheriff’s deputies and spoke in low tones with them for a moment before they left with their prisoner.
“Now,” she said, very matter-of-factly. “You need that tub, but I don’t think you’ll have time for a breakfast before church. We’ll have to figure something out after church and feed you some lunch.”
So, I bathed, put on clean clothes from the suitcase I had carried from my car, still parked in front of the church building, and made it back in time for the worship service.
Monday, May 08, 2006
"Living in Victory," Chapter 10
Copyright 2006, Terry F. Phillips Sr.
All rights reserved
Chapter 10
My room at school was always a shambles. I liked the spread-out living concept, I told myself.
Our dorm dad had other ideas. One hot day he found a white substance growing in a glass bottle with a screw-on top. The substance vaguely resembled cottage cheese. It had started out as a bit of leftover milk I had stored in an old gallon root beer jug.
Dorm Dad was not amused.
So as soon as I could, I moved off campus found a room into a house owned by one of my professors. He had left the main floor as a an apartment and rented it out to a graduate student. The upper floors were divided into sleeping rooms with a community kitchen and bathroom on each floor.
It was just two blocks from campus and I had a corner room to myself.
The steam heat didn’t work, so I bought an electric heater, against my landlord’s rules. But, I figured, he wouldn’t know. He didn’t live in the house.
My room had a real closet. There were wardrobes in some of the rooms. I fancied one might get into Narnia from one of those wardrobes, just like in “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” which had just been reprinted in a paperback collection that was all the rage in our campus ministry group.
I dug into the closet and found my sleeping bag under some dirty clothes I forgot I owned. I sniffed and then held my breath.
The next Saturday I threw my sleeping bag into the back of the Pinto, threw in a paper grocery sack filled with clean clothes, hung my suit next to the window behind the driver’s seat and headed east.
I had learned to put my hang up clothes behind the driver’s seat because that was the only way I could avoid blocking my rear view. If you put hang up clothes on the other side, they are always in the way when you try to back up the car.
I planned to get to Victory by 10 a.m. That was early enough and it still required leaving too early.
I had arranged to meet Mark at the church. As soon as he saw me pull up, he came out of his house and drove across the road.
“I borrowed my Dad’s pickup,” he explained, as if I couldn’t see he was driving a pickup truck. “Get in. There’s been a change of plans.”
I climbed into the seat after looking around to see a rusted monstrosity in the back end of the truck.
“That’s part of the surprise,” he said. “We took the hood of a ’32 Ford and welded it together in shop class. Looks funny, but it will probably float.
“We’re going canoeing first and then camping tonight.”
I had my doubts but decided Sugar Creek, our destination for the day, was narrow enough I could get to shore when it went under. I decided it would not float. If Mark wanted to go down with the ship, that would be his problem.
We stopped at a store and bought wieners and buns for our lunch. Mark had packed some mustard and catsup packs he had lifted from a fast food place and had brought his Dad’s cooler as well.
It was a Styrofoam job I had seen for sale for $3. I was skeptical about it making it down the creek, but decided it would float. Even if we lost everything else, we would have our lunch. Then I realized there was no way to latch the lid.
My doubts proved well founded.
Mark drove up 32, through Yountsville, to a side road that wound alongside the creek.
Clouds were starting to fill in overhead and I made a mental note to leave my wallet and other items in the truck.
Soon, we found a place to park and then came the back-breaking job of unloading the boat.
We wrestled it out of the pick-up bed and down the bank to the creek.
Despite its dilapidated look, the craft was made of sturdy (and heavy) metal.
It made it down the shallow bank and into the water. Mark made sure it was pulled up safely on the bank until we were ready to push off.
Next came the paddles and finally, the Styrofoam cooler.
I emptied my pockets.
“What are you doing that for?” Mark asked.
“Didn’t you say we might overturn?”
He thought a minute. “Yeah,” was all he said and then emptied his pockets, too.
Soon, we pushed off and were floating down the historic Sugar Creek.
The sun was hot, the air muggy and I was torn between sweltering and taking off my shirt. I wondered if I wanted to risk losing the shirt I was wearing or not. It was a white “T” with a huge Superman “S” logo on the front. I had ironed it on myself, and scorched one edge in the process.
I decided to risk melting in the heat, grateful for every bit of shade that we cruised beneath. I was proud of that shirt, despite the brown spot where the iron had burned the fabric.
We would talk for a while and then just float along and enjoy the scenery.
It was easy to imagine Indians first floating along this waterway. There were long stretches where no signs of civilization could be seen. There would be nothing but water and woods on either side of the boat.
Then I heard a regular splashing sound.
Mark had me in the front of the boat. Since he was experienced (and it was his boat) I didn’t mind. Besides, it gave me a better view of what lay ahead.
When I turned around to ask him about the sound, I saw him bailing out his end of the boat with a one-pound coffee can.
“It leaks,” was all he said.
Mark, though a very good student – he would later graduate from Wabash College – was a boy of few words, even when more information would be important.
“How bad?” I asked.
“Well, we welded the two parts of the car hood together in the high school shop,” he said. “I guess we didn’t quite get it watertight.”
So, in addition to being concerned about the boat overturning in the current, I could also count on the possibility of sinking due to a leak in Mark’s end of the boat!
Then, the current picked up speed. And there were rocks. And the creek became a few inches deep instead of a few feet.
“We have to ford some places,” Mark said, as loquacious as usual.
So, we got out of the boat, waded, while hoisting the heavy craft in our bare hands.
“You could take off your shoes and socks,” Mark said.
I had noticed he was wearing no socks, but I had attributed that to his wardrobe preferences, not to the needs of the trip we were taking.
So, we tried to stop the boat. Mark offered to hold it against the current while I lifted one leg up on the side of the boat and pulled off my shoe. Before the sock came off, we learned Mark was not strong enough to hold the boat against the current. The boat swung round and hit me. I lost my balance and my right shoe. But I saved one sock.
My shoe was gone, so I took off the other as soon as I was able, and tossed it into the boat, realizing it would never see its mate this side of shoe heaven (shoes do have “soles”, right?).
We caught the boat, which had hung up on a pile of rocks not far ahead of us. I pulled off my remaining wet sock and decided to risk pneumonia in the icy water.
Even though the air temperature was very warm, the creek was ice cold in spots. I enjoyed putting my feet into the dry boat, though the water line inside the craft had crept up to my seat and soon threatened to take over the entire floor of the.
We soon were floating again and I noticed the sky was dark and the crisp shadows of leaves had given way to no shadows at all.
“We should probably find a place to land and dump the water out of the boat,” Mark said.
So, we hopped over the side of the boat. That is, I hopped; Mark took his time getting out.
Instead of hopping into the knee- to hip-deep water I expected, I found the water was over my head. But, I could hold onto the side of the boat and keep my head above water.
Mark stopped paddling. He was too busy laughing and stomping the bottom of the boat with his feet.
I had found one of the infamous holes that the current had worn in soft spots of the creek bed.
Mark steered us toward shore and I looked at the sky, realizing it was going to storm and I would not be dry before we ended our voyage and I found a warm room.
We landed just as rain began.
“I guess we can’t build a fire to cook the hot dogs,” Mark said.
I was getting hungry but couldn’t guess the time of day.
Forget what you have been told about the sun being straight overhead at high noon.
In the first place, the sun does not get directly overhead unless you are at the Equator. In Indiana, the sun never climbs really high in the sky, even in summer. In Winter – well, the sun doesn’t put in a very effectual appearance at all, which is why we end up with sub-zero nights and days when the temperature doesn’t reach freezing for weeks at a time. I have only been glad I didn’t live in more northern states, like Minnesota, Wisconsin or North Dakota. I imagine Maine can be pretty rugged, too.
Indiana makes up for its lack of sun power by being very humid. I have never studied the matter, but I am sure sinus headaches are more numerous in Indiana than any other state of the Union.
Indiana has more trees, more hills, “hollers” and more vegetation to trap the humid air from streams like Sugar Creek. Still, I found myself enjoying the state more and more.
Mark pulled the cooler and other items out of the boat. I grabbed my socks and remaining shoe, not because they were worth keeping, but because I was self-conscious and didn’t want to look like a spendthrift with more money than brains. I had known people like that and didn’t think much of them.
Then we dumped water out of the boat and left it inverted on the edge of the creek while the rain poured.
I didn’t know what to do if it started storming. Mr. Science taught me on TV that you shouldn’t be near a body of water during an electrical storm. In addition to it being very scary, there was the danger of instant eternity if a lightning strike should hit the water and run through your body.
I decided my ticker didn’t need a recharge of that kind.
I stepped back from the water.
“That won’t help,” Mark said. “If lightning strikes near here, we will get, at least, a thrill.”
After he laughed at me when I jumped over the side of the boat, I didn’t know if he was kidding or not. I was out of my city boy element. That much was sure.
Before long, the rain stopped. The sun came out, but it just made everything more soggy and hot at the same time, if that is possible. I wasn’t drying out, that was sure.
When the rain ended, it was time to start downstream again.
We decided to keep an eye out for any wood that might be reasonably dry and in a location where we could start a fire without drawing the ire of the police or a conservation officer. It might look like the 1800s, but I knew it was the 1970s and people feared fires that might destroy acres of woodland or homes – even in rural Indiana.
Indiana is by and large politically conservative. The John Birch Society is big in Indiana. The people by and large want government to leave them alone.
Even though many counties would pass planning and zoning laws over the next 30 years, many people kept the attitude, “I don’t want nobody to tell me what to do with my land.”
Of course, when their neighbors did something they didn’t like – well that was an entirely different matter!
It was at the next shallow place where we had to wrestle the boat that we ran into trouble. We lost our lunch – literally.
I’m not sure if Mark slipped or I did. I think we both slipped at the same time. The current was swift and we lost our cooler when it fell out of the boat. Before we could recover it, it was far downstream.
I wondered later why we didn’t find coolers other people lost. Did the coolers all get past the point where we left the creek? Or were everyone else just better canoeists than we were? I suspected it was the latter, but didn’t bother to ask.
By the time we were ready to get out of the creek, at Deer’s Mill, I had had it for the day.
I decided there would be no camping under the stars that night for this wet guy.
We pulled the boat up on a sandy spot near the canoe rental office. I stayed with the boat and paddles (we hadn’t lost them) while Mark went and called a friend. Soon, his friend arrived, we loaded up the boat in the back of the friend’s pickup, hopped in the cab and were taken back to Mark’s father’s pickup truck where we had set off on our little escapade so many hours earlier.
Mark took me back to the church, where my car was setting.
“So, are we on for camping tonight?” he asked with a grin.
“Nah,” I said. “Let’s save that experience for another time. I think I’ll just hang out here tonight. See in the morning.”
“How about next Saturday night?” Mark asked.
At least, he was persistent.
“Sure,” I said, remembering Kent Smith’s instruction that I would have to do more than just show up for services.
I was really hungry and decided to drive into Crawfordsville for a good dinner.
A “good dinner” meant a chef’s salad at a restaurant I found on Crawfordsville’s east side. They made the best chef’s salad with blue cheese dressing. It went well with a cup of coffee for less than three bucks. Exquisite.
After dinner, I had to figure out what to do that night.
I had bailed out on the overnight camping trip and didn’t have the money to rent a room at any of the no-tell motels … and the Holiday Inn at the interstate was definitely out of my price range.
So, I figured I would go back to the church, sleep there, and get up before anyone could find me in the morning.
I had asked about a key for the church and had been told there was no need for keys. The church was never locked, which didn’t make me feel any too safe; but I thought that if there had been no vandalism done to the church, I would be pretty safe. If anything, an intruder would mistake me for a tramp and leave me alone. He might even be more afraid of me than I was of him!
So, I drove the half hour or so it took me to get back to the church, took my sleeping bag inside, unrolled it and decided to try to sleep.
It was a cold spring night. I didn’t want to turn up the heat in the sanctuary and waste money. I had tried to sleep in the basement but it was too damp and cold, so I moved my sleeping bag over to a heating duct and decided to sleep on top of it.
Fortunately, I remembered to bring my pillow from home.
It felt comforting, somehow, as if I had no place to lay my head. I had no real home, but that pillow was something familiar.
I dared take comfort in the thought that Jesus had no place to lay his head when He was ministering. I certainly had no right to expect anything more than the Lord had enjoyed.
I finally fell asleep and slept fitfully. It was just too cold. I had not really warmed up after the creek escapade of that afternoon and I found my sleeping bag was not really made for cold weather.
I had taken off my clothes and draped them over a pew, reminding myself to wipe the pew dry in the morning, if my clothes were still wet.
I didn’t manage to get up in time to leave before everyone else arrived.
In fact, I awoke to some of the men in the congregation laughing at me. They had come in, turned on the lights and I had slept right through it.
I gathered my sleeping bag around me, smiled awkwardly and left the church in a hasty retreat.
But my plans to go somewhere – anywhere -- get cleaned up and return, pretending nothing happened, all went awry.
I was greeted by one of the church widows, who had decided to go to the church early that spring morning. She lived one street over and one street down from the church in a small, but comfortable, cottage on the edge of Victory.
“Well, hello, there, Kelly” she said. “You look like you could use a bath and some breakfast. Come with me.”
And I did.
All rights reserved
Chapter 10
My room at school was always a shambles. I liked the spread-out living concept, I told myself.
Our dorm dad had other ideas. One hot day he found a white substance growing in a glass bottle with a screw-on top. The substance vaguely resembled cottage cheese. It had started out as a bit of leftover milk I had stored in an old gallon root beer jug.
Dorm Dad was not amused.
So as soon as I could, I moved off campus found a room into a house owned by one of my professors. He had left the main floor as a an apartment and rented it out to a graduate student. The upper floors were divided into sleeping rooms with a community kitchen and bathroom on each floor.
It was just two blocks from campus and I had a corner room to myself.
The steam heat didn’t work, so I bought an electric heater, against my landlord’s rules. But, I figured, he wouldn’t know. He didn’t live in the house.
My room had a real closet. There were wardrobes in some of the rooms. I fancied one might get into Narnia from one of those wardrobes, just like in “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” which had just been reprinted in a paperback collection that was all the rage in our campus ministry group.
I dug into the closet and found my sleeping bag under some dirty clothes I forgot I owned. I sniffed and then held my breath.
The next Saturday I threw my sleeping bag into the back of the Pinto, threw in a paper grocery sack filled with clean clothes, hung my suit next to the window behind the driver’s seat and headed east.
I had learned to put my hang up clothes behind the driver’s seat because that was the only way I could avoid blocking my rear view. If you put hang up clothes on the other side, they are always in the way when you try to back up the car.
I planned to get to Victory by 10 a.m. That was early enough and it still required leaving too early.
I had arranged to meet Mark at the church. As soon as he saw me pull up, he came out of his house and drove across the road.
“I borrowed my Dad’s pickup,” he explained, as if I couldn’t see he was driving a pickup truck. “Get in. There’s been a change of plans.”
I climbed into the seat after looking around to see a rusted monstrosity in the back end of the truck.
“That’s part of the surprise,” he said. “We took the hood of a ’32 Ford and welded it together in shop class. Looks funny, but it will probably float.
“We’re going canoeing first and then camping tonight.”
I had my doubts but decided Sugar Creek, our destination for the day, was narrow enough I could get to shore when it went under. I decided it would not float. If Mark wanted to go down with the ship, that would be his problem.
We stopped at a store and bought wieners and buns for our lunch. Mark had packed some mustard and catsup packs he had lifted from a fast food place and had brought his Dad’s cooler as well.
It was a Styrofoam job I had seen for sale for $3. I was skeptical about it making it down the creek, but decided it would float. Even if we lost everything else, we would have our lunch. Then I realized there was no way to latch the lid.
My doubts proved well founded.
Mark drove up 32, through Yountsville, to a side road that wound alongside the creek.
Clouds were starting to fill in overhead and I made a mental note to leave my wallet and other items in the truck.
Soon, we found a place to park and then came the back-breaking job of unloading the boat.
We wrestled it out of the pick-up bed and down the bank to the creek.
Despite its dilapidated look, the craft was made of sturdy (and heavy) metal.
It made it down the shallow bank and into the water. Mark made sure it was pulled up safely on the bank until we were ready to push off.
Next came the paddles and finally, the Styrofoam cooler.
I emptied my pockets.
“What are you doing that for?” Mark asked.
“Didn’t you say we might overturn?”
He thought a minute. “Yeah,” was all he said and then emptied his pockets, too.
Soon, we pushed off and were floating down the historic Sugar Creek.
The sun was hot, the air muggy and I was torn between sweltering and taking off my shirt. I wondered if I wanted to risk losing the shirt I was wearing or not. It was a white “T” with a huge Superman “S” logo on the front. I had ironed it on myself, and scorched one edge in the process.
I decided to risk melting in the heat, grateful for every bit of shade that we cruised beneath. I was proud of that shirt, despite the brown spot where the iron had burned the fabric.
We would talk for a while and then just float along and enjoy the scenery.
It was easy to imagine Indians first floating along this waterway. There were long stretches where no signs of civilization could be seen. There would be nothing but water and woods on either side of the boat.
Then I heard a regular splashing sound.
Mark had me in the front of the boat. Since he was experienced (and it was his boat) I didn’t mind. Besides, it gave me a better view of what lay ahead.
When I turned around to ask him about the sound, I saw him bailing out his end of the boat with a one-pound coffee can.
“It leaks,” was all he said.
Mark, though a very good student – he would later graduate from Wabash College – was a boy of few words, even when more information would be important.
“How bad?” I asked.
“Well, we welded the two parts of the car hood together in the high school shop,” he said. “I guess we didn’t quite get it watertight.”
So, in addition to being concerned about the boat overturning in the current, I could also count on the possibility of sinking due to a leak in Mark’s end of the boat!
Then, the current picked up speed. And there were rocks. And the creek became a few inches deep instead of a few feet.
“We have to ford some places,” Mark said, as loquacious as usual.
So, we got out of the boat, waded, while hoisting the heavy craft in our bare hands.
“You could take off your shoes and socks,” Mark said.
I had noticed he was wearing no socks, but I had attributed that to his wardrobe preferences, not to the needs of the trip we were taking.
So, we tried to stop the boat. Mark offered to hold it against the current while I lifted one leg up on the side of the boat and pulled off my shoe. Before the sock came off, we learned Mark was not strong enough to hold the boat against the current. The boat swung round and hit me. I lost my balance and my right shoe. But I saved one sock.
My shoe was gone, so I took off the other as soon as I was able, and tossed it into the boat, realizing it would never see its mate this side of shoe heaven (shoes do have “soles”, right?).
We caught the boat, which had hung up on a pile of rocks not far ahead of us. I pulled off my remaining wet sock and decided to risk pneumonia in the icy water.
Even though the air temperature was very warm, the creek was ice cold in spots. I enjoyed putting my feet into the dry boat, though the water line inside the craft had crept up to my seat and soon threatened to take over the entire floor of the.
We soon were floating again and I noticed the sky was dark and the crisp shadows of leaves had given way to no shadows at all.
“We should probably find a place to land and dump the water out of the boat,” Mark said.
So, we hopped over the side of the boat. That is, I hopped; Mark took his time getting out.
Instead of hopping into the knee- to hip-deep water I expected, I found the water was over my head. But, I could hold onto the side of the boat and keep my head above water.
Mark stopped paddling. He was too busy laughing and stomping the bottom of the boat with his feet.
I had found one of the infamous holes that the current had worn in soft spots of the creek bed.
Mark steered us toward shore and I looked at the sky, realizing it was going to storm and I would not be dry before we ended our voyage and I found a warm room.
We landed just as rain began.
“I guess we can’t build a fire to cook the hot dogs,” Mark said.
I was getting hungry but couldn’t guess the time of day.
Forget what you have been told about the sun being straight overhead at high noon.
In the first place, the sun does not get directly overhead unless you are at the Equator. In Indiana, the sun never climbs really high in the sky, even in summer. In Winter – well, the sun doesn’t put in a very effectual appearance at all, which is why we end up with sub-zero nights and days when the temperature doesn’t reach freezing for weeks at a time. I have only been glad I didn’t live in more northern states, like Minnesota, Wisconsin or North Dakota. I imagine Maine can be pretty rugged, too.
Indiana makes up for its lack of sun power by being very humid. I have never studied the matter, but I am sure sinus headaches are more numerous in Indiana than any other state of the Union.
Indiana has more trees, more hills, “hollers” and more vegetation to trap the humid air from streams like Sugar Creek. Still, I found myself enjoying the state more and more.
Mark pulled the cooler and other items out of the boat. I grabbed my socks and remaining shoe, not because they were worth keeping, but because I was self-conscious and didn’t want to look like a spendthrift with more money than brains. I had known people like that and didn’t think much of them.
Then we dumped water out of the boat and left it inverted on the edge of the creek while the rain poured.
I didn’t know what to do if it started storming. Mr. Science taught me on TV that you shouldn’t be near a body of water during an electrical storm. In addition to it being very scary, there was the danger of instant eternity if a lightning strike should hit the water and run through your body.
I decided my ticker didn’t need a recharge of that kind.
I stepped back from the water.
“That won’t help,” Mark said. “If lightning strikes near here, we will get, at least, a thrill.”
After he laughed at me when I jumped over the side of the boat, I didn’t know if he was kidding or not. I was out of my city boy element. That much was sure.
Before long, the rain stopped. The sun came out, but it just made everything more soggy and hot at the same time, if that is possible. I wasn’t drying out, that was sure.
When the rain ended, it was time to start downstream again.
We decided to keep an eye out for any wood that might be reasonably dry and in a location where we could start a fire without drawing the ire of the police or a conservation officer. It might look like the 1800s, but I knew it was the 1970s and people feared fires that might destroy acres of woodland or homes – even in rural Indiana.
Indiana is by and large politically conservative. The John Birch Society is big in Indiana. The people by and large want government to leave them alone.
Even though many counties would pass planning and zoning laws over the next 30 years, many people kept the attitude, “I don’t want nobody to tell me what to do with my land.”
Of course, when their neighbors did something they didn’t like – well that was an entirely different matter!
It was at the next shallow place where we had to wrestle the boat that we ran into trouble. We lost our lunch – literally.
I’m not sure if Mark slipped or I did. I think we both slipped at the same time. The current was swift and we lost our cooler when it fell out of the boat. Before we could recover it, it was far downstream.
I wondered later why we didn’t find coolers other people lost. Did the coolers all get past the point where we left the creek? Or were everyone else just better canoeists than we were? I suspected it was the latter, but didn’t bother to ask.
By the time we were ready to get out of the creek, at Deer’s Mill, I had had it for the day.
I decided there would be no camping under the stars that night for this wet guy.
We pulled the boat up on a sandy spot near the canoe rental office. I stayed with the boat and paddles (we hadn’t lost them) while Mark went and called a friend. Soon, his friend arrived, we loaded up the boat in the back of the friend’s pickup, hopped in the cab and were taken back to Mark’s father’s pickup truck where we had set off on our little escapade so many hours earlier.
Mark took me back to the church, where my car was setting.
“So, are we on for camping tonight?” he asked with a grin.
“Nah,” I said. “Let’s save that experience for another time. I think I’ll just hang out here tonight. See in the morning.”
“How about next Saturday night?” Mark asked.
At least, he was persistent.
“Sure,” I said, remembering Kent Smith’s instruction that I would have to do more than just show up for services.
I was really hungry and decided to drive into Crawfordsville for a good dinner.
A “good dinner” meant a chef’s salad at a restaurant I found on Crawfordsville’s east side. They made the best chef’s salad with blue cheese dressing. It went well with a cup of coffee for less than three bucks. Exquisite.
After dinner, I had to figure out what to do that night.
I had bailed out on the overnight camping trip and didn’t have the money to rent a room at any of the no-tell motels … and the Holiday Inn at the interstate was definitely out of my price range.
So, I figured I would go back to the church, sleep there, and get up before anyone could find me in the morning.
I had asked about a key for the church and had been told there was no need for keys. The church was never locked, which didn’t make me feel any too safe; but I thought that if there had been no vandalism done to the church, I would be pretty safe. If anything, an intruder would mistake me for a tramp and leave me alone. He might even be more afraid of me than I was of him!
So, I drove the half hour or so it took me to get back to the church, took my sleeping bag inside, unrolled it and decided to try to sleep.
It was a cold spring night. I didn’t want to turn up the heat in the sanctuary and waste money. I had tried to sleep in the basement but it was too damp and cold, so I moved my sleeping bag over to a heating duct and decided to sleep on top of it.
Fortunately, I remembered to bring my pillow from home.
It felt comforting, somehow, as if I had no place to lay my head. I had no real home, but that pillow was something familiar.
I dared take comfort in the thought that Jesus had no place to lay his head when He was ministering. I certainly had no right to expect anything more than the Lord had enjoyed.
I finally fell asleep and slept fitfully. It was just too cold. I had not really warmed up after the creek escapade of that afternoon and I found my sleeping bag was not really made for cold weather.
I had taken off my clothes and draped them over a pew, reminding myself to wipe the pew dry in the morning, if my clothes were still wet.
I didn’t manage to get up in time to leave before everyone else arrived.
In fact, I awoke to some of the men in the congregation laughing at me. They had come in, turned on the lights and I had slept right through it.
I gathered my sleeping bag around me, smiled awkwardly and left the church in a hasty retreat.
But my plans to go somewhere – anywhere -- get cleaned up and return, pretending nothing happened, all went awry.
I was greeted by one of the church widows, who had decided to go to the church early that spring morning. She lived one street over and one street down from the church in a small, but comfortable, cottage on the edge of Victory.
“Well, hello, there, Kelly” she said. “You look like you could use a bath and some breakfast. Come with me.”
And I did.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
"Living in Victory," Chapter 9
Copyright 2006, Terry F. Phillips Sr.
All rights reserved.
Chapter 9
After church – oh joy of joys – her family, the Rogerses, invited me to their small farm for dinner/lunch.
I quickly learned the noon meal was always called dinner, not lunch, and Sunday school was never called Bible School. Bible School is the summer event I had grown up calling Vacation Bible School. They used that term, too, but Bible School was never held on Sunday mornings.
The Rogers had a spacious kitchen that doubled as their dining room. An arch was all that separated the dining and living rooms.
Although the house was very old, it was well maintained, with wallpaper that just made me feel homey.
I have since learned to trust the feeling I get when entering a new building.
As Kent Rogers told me years later, many times you can walk into a church or a house and immediately know the emotional climate of the people who gather there.
I had a good feeling about the Victory church that first Sunday I worshipped there. It was basic and simple. The kind of building where kids could make a mess (during either Sunday school or Bible School) and not receive so much as an admonition. It was a happy feeling, a church that seemed to be happy together and happy to serve the Lord in harmony.
The Rogers had a warm and secure feeling about their home.
I learned Kent worked for one of the factories in Crawfordsville. I assumed he had a very good job by the kind of car he drove and the expensive console color television set and big comfortable furniture in the living room.
I also learned the Rogers had adopted Grace, the breathtakingly beautiful vision of a girl I had met at church.
During dinner, Kent wanted to talk about the church and what members expected of me. It was difficult for me to concentrate, but by this time I really wanted to succeed in this ministry (or at least, not fail miserably).
“Kelly, we aren’t quite used to your style of preaching, but I have heard good comments about what you have to say,” he began.
I found his words puzzling and comforting in the same sentence.
“Now, we have some people in the hospital and you need to go see them.”
“I’ve not done too much hospital calling,” I said, truthfully.
“I’ll take you into town this afternoon and show you where the hospital is,” Kent continued.
I would quickly learn he would be the kind of person who would forge ahead through any difficulty. His tenacity had served him well over the years.
I would never have found Crawfordsville, trying to remember the way he drove into town. But, through back roads of Indiana, we quickly made our way to Indiana 32, a road I did remember. It was south of Waynetown and it was the highway where State Road 25 ended, north of Victory.
“This is Culver Union Hospital,” he said, pulling up in front of a dark brown building.
Inside, I was introduced to two or three people as “our new minister” and was warmly welcomed.
One man was waiting for his pill so he would be relaxed before they took him to surgery on Monday.
“Hi, I’m Kelly,” I said, trying to be confident and smiling. “I wanted to stop by and say, ‘Hi.’”
He opened one eye, looked at me and said, “I’d rather see a doctor.”
On the way back to the Rogers farm, I was told I needed to think in terms of doing more for the church that just attending Sunday school and preaching.
I quickly decided I needed to spend more time in the Victory community. But, how? I wasn’t paid enough to afford a motel each weekend. I couldn’t very well insist people invite me into their homes for the night.
That idea was very disturbing to me. An involuntary shiver actually went through my body at the thought of using someone else’s bathroom to shower – or worse, to bathe in!
What if I made a mess? What if the water got out of the tub onto the floor, as it had at home sometimes?
One time, when I was a kid, I had splashed so much water out of the tub, it actually leaked through the living room ceiling below!
The problem was solved by one of the church’s teenagers.
Mark Wilkins stopped by the church building one Sunday afternoon. I had run out of things to do and had stopped by the church to use the rest room.
When I stepped into the sanctuary, there Mark was, a thin, pimply-faced kid who looked exceedingly serious behind his thick glasses. I noticed his long legs and narrow shoulders.
“I saw your car here and thought I’d stop by,” he said. “We just live down the road.”
We chatted a while, but there were some very awkward silences. Mark, like most teenage boys, had trouble making chitchat with strangers – even strangers just a few years older than him.
Finally, he got around to what was on his mind.
“Do you do any camping?” he asked.
The question floored me. I would have pegged him as a bookworm. If he had invited me to look through a microscope or a telescope, I would have politely gone along for the afternoon or evening. But camping? Him? He looked as if he was malnourished and a wind would blow him over. Camping? He couldn’t hike three city blocks, I thought.
I had not been camping in years. But I did have a sleeping bag my parents had bought me when I was 9 years old. It had a removable lining because in those days, when I was 9, I wet the bed.
“Yeah,” I lied. “I enjoy camping.”
“Well, we camp sometimes down at the Conservation Club,” he said. “Me and the guys.”
“How about next Saturday night?” I asked.
We made plans to go canoeing and then camp at the conservation club. I made a mental note to dig out that old brown sleeping bag.
All rights reserved.
Chapter 9
After church – oh joy of joys – her family, the Rogerses, invited me to their small farm for dinner/lunch.
I quickly learned the noon meal was always called dinner, not lunch, and Sunday school was never called Bible School. Bible School is the summer event I had grown up calling Vacation Bible School. They used that term, too, but Bible School was never held on Sunday mornings.
The Rogers had a spacious kitchen that doubled as their dining room. An arch was all that separated the dining and living rooms.
Although the house was very old, it was well maintained, with wallpaper that just made me feel homey.
I have since learned to trust the feeling I get when entering a new building.
As Kent Rogers told me years later, many times you can walk into a church or a house and immediately know the emotional climate of the people who gather there.
I had a good feeling about the Victory church that first Sunday I worshipped there. It was basic and simple. The kind of building where kids could make a mess (during either Sunday school or Bible School) and not receive so much as an admonition. It was a happy feeling, a church that seemed to be happy together and happy to serve the Lord in harmony.
The Rogers had a warm and secure feeling about their home.
I learned Kent worked for one of the factories in Crawfordsville. I assumed he had a very good job by the kind of car he drove and the expensive console color television set and big comfortable furniture in the living room.
I also learned the Rogers had adopted Grace, the breathtakingly beautiful vision of a girl I had met at church.
During dinner, Kent wanted to talk about the church and what members expected of me. It was difficult for me to concentrate, but by this time I really wanted to succeed in this ministry (or at least, not fail miserably).
“Kelly, we aren’t quite used to your style of preaching, but I have heard good comments about what you have to say,” he began.
I found his words puzzling and comforting in the same sentence.
“Now, we have some people in the hospital and you need to go see them.”
“I’ve not done too much hospital calling,” I said, truthfully.
“I’ll take you into town this afternoon and show you where the hospital is,” Kent continued.
I would quickly learn he would be the kind of person who would forge ahead through any difficulty. His tenacity had served him well over the years.
I would never have found Crawfordsville, trying to remember the way he drove into town. But, through back roads of Indiana, we quickly made our way to Indiana 32, a road I did remember. It was south of Waynetown and it was the highway where State Road 25 ended, north of Victory.
“This is Culver Union Hospital,” he said, pulling up in front of a dark brown building.
Inside, I was introduced to two or three people as “our new minister” and was warmly welcomed.
One man was waiting for his pill so he would be relaxed before they took him to surgery on Monday.
“Hi, I’m Kelly,” I said, trying to be confident and smiling. “I wanted to stop by and say, ‘Hi.’”
He opened one eye, looked at me and said, “I’d rather see a doctor.”
On the way back to the Rogers farm, I was told I needed to think in terms of doing more for the church that just attending Sunday school and preaching.
I quickly decided I needed to spend more time in the Victory community. But, how? I wasn’t paid enough to afford a motel each weekend. I couldn’t very well insist people invite me into their homes for the night.
That idea was very disturbing to me. An involuntary shiver actually went through my body at the thought of using someone else’s bathroom to shower – or worse, to bathe in!
What if I made a mess? What if the water got out of the tub onto the floor, as it had at home sometimes?
One time, when I was a kid, I had splashed so much water out of the tub, it actually leaked through the living room ceiling below!
The problem was solved by one of the church’s teenagers.
Mark Wilkins stopped by the church building one Sunday afternoon. I had run out of things to do and had stopped by the church to use the rest room.
When I stepped into the sanctuary, there Mark was, a thin, pimply-faced kid who looked exceedingly serious behind his thick glasses. I noticed his long legs and narrow shoulders.
“I saw your car here and thought I’d stop by,” he said. “We just live down the road.”
We chatted a while, but there were some very awkward silences. Mark, like most teenage boys, had trouble making chitchat with strangers – even strangers just a few years older than him.
Finally, he got around to what was on his mind.
“Do you do any camping?” he asked.
The question floored me. I would have pegged him as a bookworm. If he had invited me to look through a microscope or a telescope, I would have politely gone along for the afternoon or evening. But camping? Him? He looked as if he was malnourished and a wind would blow him over. Camping? He couldn’t hike three city blocks, I thought.
I had not been camping in years. But I did have a sleeping bag my parents had bought me when I was 9 years old. It had a removable lining because in those days, when I was 9, I wet the bed.
“Yeah,” I lied. “I enjoy camping.”
“Well, we camp sometimes down at the Conservation Club,” he said. “Me and the guys.”
“How about next Saturday night?” I asked.
We made plans to go canoeing and then camp at the conservation club. I made a mental note to dig out that old brown sleeping bag.
WSAI Air Force DJ Bob White dead at 77
By FRANK PHILLIPS / frankphi@hotmail.com
If you were a kid growing up in the 1960s and you were fortunate enough to own your own radio, it was probably a hand-held six-transistor model and you probably pulled in stations from Chicago and Cincinnati. Those modern marvels had only one set of frequencies (AM) and the selectivity was poor (it was hard to distinguish between stations at night) but they provided hours of amusement for the cost of one battery — those oblong nine-volt jobs with two connectors at the top.
Many teens dreamed of growing up to become like their favorite disk jockeys, Ron Riley, Clark Weber, Dex Card or, maybe, Bob White.
Bob White, WSAI-AM 1360, Cincinnati, was the radio name of a man who later settled with his family in the Wabash Valley. Like many show business people, he had an every day identity. He was known on the street as Jack Teiken and, until failing health in the last couple years prevented it, he was a regular at the Brazil Rotary Club each Wednesday at noon.
Amazingly, for people in show business people, John Patrick Teiken (the name given him at birth) and his wife, Barbara, were married for 50 years before her passing in 2000.
Jack died May 3 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Indianapolis at the age of 77. He is being laid to rest today.
Jack began his broadcasting career in Oakdale, La., a career spanning more than 40 years with almost half of those years spent in the Wabash Valley.
In 1968, after he left Cincinnati, he moved to Terre Haute to work at WBOW radio.
In 1970, he and Barbara bought into the local Brazil radio station transforming it into WWCM-AM, the first country music station in the Valley.
A few years later he and his partner built WWCM-FM.
The stations were sold and Jack moved on to other parts of the U.S. to pursue his broadcasting interests. In 1989, he and his family moved back to the Wabash Valley where he worked at WSDM until his retirement from broadcasting.
He then started JPT Advertising Agency that he operated until his retirement in 2001.
Bits of Jack’s radio work lives on in recordings.
One such recording, known as an air check, was made on Friday of the Labor Day weekend, 1965.
Although the voice is younger and sounds lighter, one knows it was Jack Teiken on the air as Bob White.
His on-air patter was familiar to those listening to 1960s radio.
For example:
• “I had a very unfortunate accident today. A little kid came up to me and said, ‘You know, you’re Number One on my hit parade.’”
“I said, ‘Really?’”
“He said, ‘Yeah and then he hit me.’”
• He called the music playlist the “Color Countdown” (taking advantage of the newest rage in TV - color broadcasting.)
• “We’re celebrating the three liberties: Life, liberty and the pursuit of Ann Margret!”
In the air check, he plays Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind” — played on a real vinyl 33 1/3 rpm record, no doubt — with commercials for Cincinnati’s Coney Island amusement park and Burger Chef restaurants.
Jack was part of the DJ team known as the “WSAI Air Force” in those days.
It was 2002 at a Rotary meeting in Knightsville that I first met Jack. He was always willing to talk about his radio days and I was a willing listener. I wish I had taken notes or recorded his recollections.
I also wish I would have taken him up on his invitation to play golf, but somehow I never got around to it and now it’s too late.
But, Jack was most proud of his family; of that there was no doubt.
As a family man, I was most impressed to hear him talk about his family. He would say, “I have four daughters and they’re all beautiful.”
Jack was an entertainment business success story who managed to keep his priorities in line.
He will be missed.
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