A Flawed Legacy - 30

This gets rather confusing to me - at my age perhaps, but after spending almost three weeks on the road, moving and storing furniture, I caught a ride back to Charlotte where I was always able to find a bed at the YMCA and a number of churches to help me make up my mind on Sunday mornings.

As usual, I headed for the Labor office and got back on at Coca Cola, running that new product test line which apparently, no one else wanted to deal with it.  There was a lot of "down" time which I enjoyed and I could always find something to keep my busy. Obviously, I was doing a good job as they asked me to fill out a job application.

Then, one Friday night as I was in the Labor office looking for my check, a guy comes in looking for someone to work over the weekend.  Sounded good to me and I found myself on the way to Greenville, SC, where we were going to re-finish some floors under some knitting machines.  We would be there for the next three weekends as there was only so much area we could cover on the weekend and the floors needed to be dry on Monday morning.  It was a good job.  We started by serrating the floors to get all the "gunk" off of them, then vacuuming up the debris, washing them with acid and finally applying an epoxy coating.  It was a routine, work hard for several minutes, take a break and rest, vacuuming which was rather easy, washing with acid was a bit treacherous and then, spreading the epoxy evenly across the area.  By Sunday morning early, we were headed home.

We would come back to that location for three weekends in a row and then onto another location.  The manufacturer of the epoxy kept us bust most of the time.  One week, we were in Louisiana, the next week in Central Florida, another weekend in Miami.

I enjoyed doing this work, the guys I worked for were easy going and generous with the time cards, so I was making about the same on a weekend as if I had worked all week in a factory closer to home. There was one bad experience.  Acid is rough on your shoes, so I typically wore rubber boots and then one day I saw an ad for "tough" work shoes and was assured that they would withstand the acid.  So much for their claim.  I could feel my left foot getting warm so I convinced myself it was just a small leak and everything would be OK.  As a matter of fact, it felt like it was getting better as the weekend continued.  Then, I took my shoes off.   It looked like the left side of my foot was akin to a dressed chicken.  It was whiter than white and where the skin was broken, I thought I could see a bone.  My little toe and its "neighbor" looked as bad.   We stopped at a grocery store and I bought two jars of vaseline, filled my sock with it and slid my foot inside.  They dropped me off at the hospital when we got back to Charlotte and the look of my foot made the attending nurse throw up.  The student doctor who first saw my foot thought they might need to amputate it.  No way.  It didn't hurt.  I was going to watch it heal.  They wrapped my foot in a bandage leaving the toes outside and I walked back to the "Y".  It really did not hurt.  It never did.  Within a week, the healing was significant.  I could wear a slipper and by the following weekend, I was back at work.  It was a good thing that we weren't using acid that week.  I wore rubber boots and all I had to do was wash the floors with a soap concentrate.

I worked with those guys - and a few odd trips with my moving "buddies" and then I met a guy who was bored by a meeting we both were attending.  It was in a fancy house and I happened to see someone smoking on the porch.  Turns out it was my soon-to-be new friend who had come to the meeting only because his wife had insisted.  

The speaker was a man from India who was talking about how Christianity had turned him away from his previous life as a Hindu.  My concern was that he was turning what I believed to be Christianity into another version of the Hindi religion.  My new friend was not quite so kind.  When there was a break in the lecture, they offered us drinks and when he ordered a beer, I knew immediately that I liked the guy.  We would become very good friends.

He had amassed a small fortune buying and selling steel mills across Mid-America and now that his wife seemed to becoming quite ill, he decided to retire and they had they moved to the Gulf Coast of Florida.  He was curious as to why I had attended the meeting, alone.  My interest was because I had heard of the speaker in Sunday School at the Presbyterian church.  i decided to see for myself as one of the unanswered questions in my life had to do with death, was there actually a heaven or a Hell?  That really got us into a conversation and by the time the meeting was over, he was asking his wife if she minded if they took me to their home for a month or so.  I almost fell out of my chair.

He was serious and offered me $2,000/month to come live with them so that we might really search for answers to the questions we both seemed to have an interest.  The money seemed to be a really good idea to me and it sure beat, working for a living.

A Flawed Legacy - 27

I spent a week with Blake and Eleanor, the first and last times we would ever be that close.  Of course, I was raised with my grandparents and Blake was like a big brother to me, although we were never too close.  I will never forget the first day I met Eleanor.  They were about to get married (January 10),one of the coldest nights I will ever remember) and they dropped by on Sunday, December 7, 1941 - the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Blake offered to get me back on the road, but first he wanted to show me what Yale - our previous home) looked like.  It had hardly changed, we did stop and see a friend and then, Mina Armstrong, my grade school teacher).  Of course, we went by the farm which had really changed and down some side roads I could recall.  Finally, we wound up near Capac where the highway headed for Inlay City, and a main highway headed for Detroit.  Blake seemed to think I had a lot of courage, hiking around America as he saw it.

My first ride suggested a highway that I did not know about, one that went around Detroit rather than through it and took me far enough to get on his recommended route.  Only thing, it passed by a prison and when a guy stopped, he made sure I wasn't an escaped convict he had just heard about.  He was headed for a town in Ohio that I forget its name for good reason.  He drove into the heart of the city and as I was trying catch a ride, the police stopped and made me show my identification, before telling me I could not hitch hike in the city.  I said OK, walked a dozen or so blocks and stuck out my thumb.  That was a poor decision as the cop came back and told me - at first, he was going to take me to jail for breaking the law.  Instead, he took me to the outskirts of town - far away from any traffic, and let me out.  I'll bet I was there for an hour before I saw one car and that was a local., who turned off a block from where I was standing.  The sun went down and I began to wonder what I could do.  Fortunately, a big Lincoln pulled up, asking where I was headed and told him Columbus - as that was the only city I could think of in that direction.

Turns out he was a nice guy, an ex-USAF pilot and when I told him I had used to "boy-sit" (not baby sit) for Colonel Paul Tibbets at Eglin AFB, he told me that they were friends.  (Tibbets was the pilot on the Enola Gay that dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima in Japan.  Now he was in business at the airport in Columbus)  With that info, he suggested I stay at his house that night and he would rake me to see the Colonel the next day.  He had a small mansion and had me sleep in their pool house for the night.  I had just got into bed and I heard someone dive into the pool.  I peeked out and saw a woman - in the nude, in the water.  Good idea, I made sure the door was locked, the curtains pulled and I got into bed and went to sleep.

He called me about 7AM and had me come to the house where he had prepared breakfast and we left a few minutes later.  He dropped me off at Tibbets' office, wished me luck and drove off.  I discovered the Colonel was flying in later, learned the boys I knew were all in school and I found some magazines to read while I waited.  A hour or so later my "benefactor" came back, we learned that Tibbetts was going to be much later and said he would take me to the bus stop where I could get a bus going to Charlotte, NC, which had been my original goal.  With that, he gave me a ticket envelope with a bus ticket for Charlotte and a $50 bill - the second one I had received along the way.  We parted ways as he told me, the next time I was coming through Columbus to call him and gave me his business card.  I discovered he was an official in the local city government.

I was in Charlotte by 4PM and found the YMCA where I got a room and went downstairs to get a cold drink and met a moving van driver looking for a "lumper" to help him the next day.  I was his man and he met me at 6:30 the next morning.  It was an easy job and he asked if I would like to ride with him on future jobs.  Yes, sir.  The next day, I discovered a Labor office and was sent to Coca Cola for the day and wound up lifting cases of 32 ounce filled bottles off the line and onto a pallet and I began to think I could not do that for eight hours.  I started to ask the supervisor when he told me they were shutting down that line and sent me over to a "testing" area where they were testing drinks.  All I had to do was start up a line as directed and stack cases of 12 ounce product on special pallets.  That would be my job for the next six weeks.

My moving van driver came by to pick me up for a couple of weekend jobs where we loaded up on Saturday mornings until we were done and I got two days pay.  I opened a bank account to take care of the money I was earning.

Meanwhile, I was studying my Bible on the evenings and was getting used to talking about what I was learning from my studies, all the while going to church, whichever was the closest one, wherever I happened to be.

I had no work scheduled one week, so I got a bus ticket and went to Charleston, SC, where I had always wanted to visit and found it to be expensive until a Police office told me about a Mission just outside of the city.  I found it and discovered some new friends, a couple who had started it in an old house with a half dozen potential bedrooms, so I stayed with them and spent my days looking for people who could help us fill the bedrooms with cots and places to hang clothes.  By the end of the week, we had discovered a lot of help.  Charleston has many significant families, wealthy people willing to help us get the Mission underway.  I had a call from my van driver and would spend the next two weeks travelling with him.  

A Flawed Legacy - 22

I found my way to the YMCA, paid a week's rent in advance - thanks to my new friend, and found my room.  Not fancy, but more than adequate.  Met some of my neighbors and left to explore downtown Tulsa.  First thing I noticed was that we were directly across the street from the Public library which turned out to be a God-send, a place to study, especially about those matters I was uncovering in my study of the Bible.  I had read through the Newer Testament two or three times, always stopping when I came to the book of Revelation.  Something seemed to tell me, I was not ready for that, yet! 

Earlier in the week, I had called each of the Methodist churches in downtown and when one merely had a recording telling about their services, I opted for the First Methodist church where a young woman had answered and enthusiastically informed me that this is where I belonged.  She was right, as it turned out.  I was not that impressed with what I saw in my journey around downtown, so I went back to my room and continued my study of the Bible.  By this time, I had three legal sized sheets of paper with questions I needed to find answers to.  Saturday, I took a bus out to explore the campus at ORU and was really impressed.  The book store was open so I went in to look around.  I "happened" to notice a case where they had buttons reflecting Christian thought and I chose on that appealed to me. When I took it off of the card, I noticed verse of scripture that intrigued me.

When I got back to my room, I opened my Bible and searched for the verse, Acts 1:8, which read, .."you shall have power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be My witnesses, both in Jerusalem and Judea, and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."  What did that mean?  It posed lots of questions for me, so I went back one verse and read:  "He (Jesus) said to them (the disciples) It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority." Now I began to realize how much I had to learn.

Apparently, I had chosen the right church.  The Pastor reminded the church that Sunday morning, that he was "called" to teach what the scriptures had to say.  I decided then and there, to become one of his more serious students.  The congregation fascinated me.  I had been attending Methodist churches most of my life and was accustomed to enter and be seated without being recognized by others, but here, they seemed to know that I was a visitor and reached out to be certain that I knew I was welcome.  And they sang songs I recognized from my youth.   I felt certain that I had found a home.  That was confirmed as they had a separate choir of older folks that sang, "It gets sweeter and sweeter as the days go by, Oh what a love between my Lord and I."  I happened to note one older fellow who really poured himself into singing that song, so I hurried to meet him as the services ended.  "You sang that song as if you really meant it.  Can I ask, do you?"  "Oh yes, son, I meant it with everything that is within me."  I knew that I knew, I was in the right place.

I found plenty of work through the Manpower office, so I began to feel very comfortable with my life - except that I knew, I would be returning to San Diego, shortly.  That would change.

Out of the blue, I had a phone call from Janice.  She was asking me, .."what are you doing in Tulsa?" I was asking her, "What are you doing out of prison?"  She didn't answer.  When she asked me if I was coming back to San Diego, I needed to have an answer to my question, first.  Apparently, she was not going to tell me.  I guess I got my answer when an officer met me in the lobby of the YMCA with an order to pay $600 for child support.  Fortunately, I had the money, but I responded to the order by appearing in court with the payment and my question, "How could she be asking for support when the last I knew of her whereabouts, she was in prison?"  The Judge had no answers, of course, this was a matter for the California courts to settle.  I obtained an address of the "Family" courts in San Diego and wrote to them, asking the question I had posed in court.  I never received a response, nor did I hear from her for several weeks.

My life continued on with no problems finding a job.  My best experience was going to work for an Engineering firm to work in their mail room.  I loved it, learning new skills, and fortunately catching the eye of a VP who told me they were about to move.  I told him of my experience working with other companies in a similar situation and I would up with a new task, and much more money.  It was a real opportunity for me as we wound up "celebrating" our move by having the employees take their personal items and walking a few blocks to their new office.  It helped that the move made the front page of the Tulsa papers and I now had visual proof of my ingenuity.