Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 23: The Spirit in the Sky and the Jukebox at A&W

I exited Highway 99 in Yuba City because I'd seen the sign for an A&W Root Beer stand. My train of thought still was circling around the question of whether God communicated with people in any way shape or form or whether, as some thought, God was an impersonal creative force from which all life drew energy. The idea of a personal God who knew and sought out individuals in order to communicate with them seemed very unlikely to me. It also seemed unsophisticated and "low-brow." That's what the fundamentalists and Pentecostals believed about God. The impersonal life-force concept was not only more sophisticated, but also more attractive for a number of reasons--the main one being that an impersonal force had no explicit moral code which one was obligated to follow. The Jesus I had read about in the Bible spoke of a Father in Heaven who required holiness but who could be reached by prayer and who loved, listened to and cared for those who came to him with faith and accepted Jesus. Still, how was one to know for sure? Does God really somehow point the way for people as they struggle to find the truth and understand life? How was one expected to have faith if there was none there to begin with?

I turned the company truck into a space at the A&W and headed for the store to get a hamburger and a frosty mug of root beer. It was late in the afternoon, long past lunch, and so the place was empty. I was hungry and glad there would be no line. I stepped inside a big enclosed patio area with big tables and bench seats. A great place to take the family. I went up to the window, put in my order, and then sat at one of the tables to wait. While I waited my mind kept mulling that pesky question about whether God, if he existed, ever communicated with people in any way. As these thoughts occupied my mind, a young man came in, walked to the window and put in an order for a large root beer to go. As the girl poured it, the young man walked over to the jukebox, put in a quarter, punched some of the big lighted buttons and walked back to the window to get his drink. As the arm inside the jukebox selected the record and began to swing it over to the sideways-mounted turntable, the young man picked up his root beer and walked out. I watched as he hopped into an older model ford pick up. As he pulled out of the driveway, his first song was beginning to play. "How odd," I thought, "the guy pays for some songs and then leaves without even listening to them. What's the point in that?" I recognized the song instantly. They were still playing it on the radio from time to time. It was Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the Sky, a song about having faith in Jesus and going to heaven when you die. I picked up my burger and root beer and sat down to eat as the last notes of Spirit in the Sky faded. The jukebox mechanism dutifully put that record back in its slot and then reached for the next selection. As I took the second bite of my burger, I heard another familiar song rising from the jukebox. This time it was Put You Hand in the Hand of the Man From Galilee.

"Wait one second," I thought to myself, "how is it that, just when I am all perplexed and asking inwardly if God ever somehow communicates to people, just then some guy I don't know from Adam crosses my path and just happens to drop two Christian songs in my ears--and all for my sole benefit? "What's going on here?" I wondered. How was I to understand this strange coincidence? I couldn't help thinking that perhaps, just maybe, Someone was trying to give me a little hint at the answer to the question I'd just been wrestling with. This thought boggled my mind and helped prepare me for what was about to happen to me in Paradise.

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 22: Radio Preachers on the Road to Paradice

The day came for me to get in the company service truck and set a course for Paradise--California. I headed out early in the morning and as I settled in for the long drive up the I-5 I scanned the radio dial, as was my habit. I'd stop at a station if it were to be playing one of my favorites, but I was mostly looking for radio preachers. My determination to come to a conclusion about whether Jesus was a con man, a nut or really was indeed all the Bible claimed him to be was for me now stronger than ever.

I had finished reading the paperback modern English New Testament I'd been given the previous year. I was fairly certain Jesus was not a confidence man--out to scam gullible souls for his own profit or phony fame. The Jesus described in the Bible simply didn't fit the M-O of a con man. That narrowed the choices down. Could it possibly be that, for two-thousand years, millions of people had followed teachings and had even sacrificed their lives on the basis of some mentally ill man from the first century who'd believed a religious delusion that he himself was the only path to God? If that were the case, human history would be absurd--a planet thus deceived would be the laughing stock of the universe--if there were anyone out there to laugh.

The teachings attributed to this Jesus: were they the teachings of a schizophrenic, a delusional megalomaniac? That didn't seem to be the case at all. If it were the case, Christianity was the biggest fraud to ever come down the pike. I felt that, although I did not fully understand many of his parables and teachings and his dialogues about the nature of God and the way to eternal life, taken together they seemed to have a certain coherence and underlying logic to them. The Jesus I found in the Bible was not spouting theological speculations or mere personal religious opinions, but was making authoritative and bold declarations about God, himself and all humankind. If these things were not true, then he was a madman indeed.

I listened to many radio preachers of all kinds. Only a couple of them did I find intelligent and somewhat compelling. Most of the rest of them I felt were charlatans or out for money or, if sincere, then nutty as could be. Some wanted me to send in for a little piece of some cut up revival tent which was guaranteed to heal me or bring me money or success. Others were begging for money to keep broadcasting the gospel and saying they'd pray for me personally if I'd just send them money. I thought, "If--just supposing--if I were to ever, somehow, some way, to be convinced of the truth of Christianity, why then I'd have to be associated with all these nutty idiots. I'd be in their same Christian club." The thought of it made my intellectual skin crawl. No--I couldn't stand such an association, could never do it. No way. Not in a million years.

But then I'd think, "Well, what if it is real after all, and everything about Jesus were to be true? What then? Do I reject it all because there are some wacky religious fanatics running around doing stupid stuff in his name?" I had to admit that that wouldn't seem right. "I suppose I'll have to just ignore the crazy radio preachers and base whatever decision I come to on what I find in the Bible and whether I can believe it or not," I thought to myself. I continued in this vein, thinking, "...and even all that finally comes down to the one big question about Jesus. If he was not all that was claimed for him, I can forget the whole thing. No need busting my head trying to figure out if this or that miracle took place," I figured, "because if Jesus fails the test, then the whole thing--the Bible, Christianity, the church--they all go up in smoke and I can proceed with my life and not be bothered."

If in my mind I became convinced Jesus did not live up to what his followers had claimed for him, I felt I could then honestly assert that I had put the Biblical Jesus to a fair intellectual test and found that he and all the rest of it was unbelievable to me. These questions about the meaning of life, God, life after death and all the rest would no longer be worth my being concerned about. Could I believe what I'd read about him in the Bible or not? I still didn't have a definite answer to that one question. That's what I was hoping to I'd be able to determine at some point. Does God--if he exists--ever help a seeker with any hints? Does God communicate with people in some fashion? Christians claimed so. If so, how does he do it? As I pondered this last question, I notices a tall A & W Root Beer sign signaling a stand right near the next off-ramp.

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 21: A Hippy Wedding

Sometimes in one's life events converge in a way which leaves one wondering, "Am I meant to learn something from all this? Is someone or something trying to get my attention?" The weeks from late May to early June of 1972 had that sort of feel to them, as if things which were meant to be were coming together as intended. Cher and I had planned the wedding we wanted. Many things were coming to what seemed an ordained consummation. To begin the series of events, I turned twenty-two years old on the twenty-third of May. Eleven days later our wedding day arrived. It was to be a hippy wedding in every aspect, except that we had a real official Episcopal priest, Father Olsen, do the ceremony. He however, though not too radical to look at, did have a very progressive and hip outlook on the world and religious matters, so from that standpoint he fit right in with the counter-culture spirit of our ceremony.

Cher and I had made our own wedding invitations from scratch, writing them out by hand. After listing the day, time and location, there was a note at the bottom which read, "Bare feet requested." We thought this a nice touch. Cher had made us matching off-white smocks from muslin material. On the backs of them were embroidered brightly colored sun, moon and stars. It was a small wedding with perhaps thirty or so in attendance. Cher's sister, a committed Christian and talented singer sang to us as we stood in a shady spot, held hands and prepared to take our vows. Family members and friends stood in rows of circles around us. Someone had brought gardenias and in the warmth of the June day their fragrance was nearly overwhelming. As Father Olsen opened his Bible and began, "Jesus himself blessed this sacred institution by performing his very first miracle at a marriage ceremony in Cana, of Galilee..." At this moment I was as emotionally high and full as it seemed possible for a person to be and not faint or simply die from sheer joy. We exchanged our rings and vows in the shade of an expansive old Magnolia tree and then milled about the lawn in our bare feet and muslin hippy smocks while family members and friends came up to congratulate us. I felt half in a dream and under a spell of love which seemed so deep and of such an eternal nature it seemed a spiritual experience.

After the wedding we had a simple, modest and casual reception pool-side in the back yard of my mom's home there in Riverside. We mingled for a while with our guests, then it was time to get in Cher's green Volkswagen bug and head for our honeymoon in Desert Hot Springs. Friends had waxed the car all over and had written well-wishes through the white haze. Long strings with empty cans attached clanged and made a racket at we headed down the street to our new life together.

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 20: This Way to Paradise

By the spring of 1972 I had given up hope of ever making a career as a Fuller Brush salesman. As an alternative, I'd landed a job doing something I had more experience with: working with fiberglass. I found an entry level job at the Corl Corporation factory in Riverside. At first I was just a "finisher," wet-sanding and machine buffing fiberglass tub-shower units to eliminate imperfections left from the manufacturing process. These tub-shower units were mostly sold to mobile home manufacturers. Fiberglass finishing was miserable and unrewarding work, often spent on one's knees or bending in awkward, unnatural positions in order to get at the spot which needed sanding or other attention. In addition, after hours of sanding, the very fine-grit sandpaper we used would wear right through your fingertips until they oozed blood. I soon figured out why all the experienced finishers had their fingers wrapped in masking tape. I found the work tedious in the extreme and the hours dragged until my lunch break when--glorious retreat--Cher would come with a friend and we would have a sweet half-hour to visit with each other. Then I'd reluctantly force myself back to the drudgery and a seeming eternity until the final whistle blew signaling the end of my tortuously long shift.

Within a couple of months I was promoted to a much better position. I would now be one of the company's two fiberglass repair reps who would be sent to repair products in the field. These were shower units which were flawed or had been damaged in some way during installation. I had a company pick-up truck to use in which I carried a complete fiberglass repair and refinishing kit. I also had a company credit card and a small expense account. The mobile homes in which our products were installed would wind up in parks all over California as well as in the various states of the southwest. I was usually sent out to do a week-long loop. I would be sent to the repair order which was farthest away and then make repair calls as I headed back to Riverside. I liked the variety of work and the road trips to various states. My boss would give me my upcoming repair trip by telling me the the farthest city on my itinerary.

"You are going to Paradise," my boss told me one Monday morning. I was a bit unsure whether he might be joking around. "Excuse me, what did you say?" I replied. "I said I'm sending you to Paradise" he said with a bit of a smirk, emphasizing the word Paradise. "C'mon," I said, "What's the deal? Where am I really going?" "O.K, here's the deal: you are going to Paradise--Paradise California--to do a repair up there and then I have a few more for you as you come back down." I still wasn't sure he wasn't pulling my leg until he showed it to me on the map. There it was, right up at the top of the state, near Chico. This conversation struck me as particularly odd, especially since I'd been reading the New testament for several months and had begun to wonder about whether there really could be other "dimensions" to our existence or other facets of reality beyond the purely physical world of material objects. "So," I thought, "I going up to Paradise--wait until Cher hears about this!"

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 19: The Proposal

The time had come. I walked into the little jewelry store and came out with a plain gold band. It would have to do double duty, first serving as an engagement ring and then, about six months later as a wedding ring. It's circumference seemed impossibly small as I looked at it and it wouldn't even go on my little finger, but its size was my best guess and anyway we could have it re-sized later if needed. The next thing to decide on was the actual manner of my proposal itself. My counter-culture thinking ruled out the standard venues, such as some up-scale hoity-toity restaurant or any other Hollywood-style setting. No, in keeping with my hippy sensibilities, I would keep it low-key and simple. Christmas was only a few weeks away and I could make it a gift or perhaps combine it with another gift. Cher played acoustic guitar and the one she currently had was not in the best of shape. Yes--a new guitar was called for. At the guitar shop I talked with the owner and considered my budget. Money was no object--I was willing to spend thousands, if I'd had it. As it was, I had a few hundred. After agonizing over all the various brands to choose from, I settled on the best I could afford-- an Ibanez. I bought a nice new case for it, paid the store owner in cash and carefully nested the shiny new guitar in the plush velvety interior of the hard-shell case. Once home I took the guitar out and, in the little compartment in the case used for picks and things, I placed the small white cardboard box with the little gold ring inside.

When Christmas day came I travelled to Cypress where Cher and her sister were living with their mom. I had gift wrapped the case which held the guitar, trying not very successfully to disguise the tell-tale shape. She was thrilled upon opening the package and discovering the guitar and wanted to sit down and begin playing it. I had to coax her into opening the little compartment so she would find the other surprise it held within. Upon opening it there was, of course, a moment or two of no reaction as the meaning of it sunk in. Then suddenly she threw her arms around me and gave me a very long, very tight and reassuring hug. "Yes," the answer was "yes!" She ran to the other room to tell her sister who came to the living room to give us both a hug, along with her somewhat surprised congratulations.

We talked over wedding dates and somehow choose June 3 of the upcoming year--1972. Why we couldn't wait just a few weeks until her eighteenth birthday I cannot now recall. Whatever the reason, it added the complication of us having to get a parental permission form filled out and submitted to the county clerk. We decided we'd have an outdoor wedding on the big lawn adjoining All Saints Episcopal Church. This was the very spot where, just one year before, on a warm June evening I'd first encountered a whole flock of Jesus People who had gathered there to praise Jesus and listen to their hippy preacher. In the six months since then I had read through the New Testament and Cher and I had had a number of conversations about God, yet I remained very much the agnostic and skeptic. I was not about to make any feigned profession of faith just to get myself on the same spiritual page as the woman I loved. On the contrary, I wanted to keep a very sharp and bright line between my feelings for her and my evaluation of the things I was reading in the Bible and hearing from Christians.

I was unaware that serious Christians do not believe in marrying someone who is an unbeliever or is of another faith. However, an acquaintance of Cher's--a "brother in the Lord"-- took her aside and strongly counseled her against, "being unequally yoked together with an unbeliever." She told me later what he'd said to her and she let me know she was not interested in his advice and would marry me anyway. This comforted me and increased my confidence that she loved me as deeply as I loved her. It however made me a bit leery of the rules these Christians felt obligated to follow and often tried to impose on one another. I'd perhaps have to watch my step in the future.

It was one thing to believe some Jesus character walked on water or rose from the dead two-thousand years ago--it was quite another to have some dusty old book dictate your personal life choices. The Ten Commandments were OK, I supposed, on some level, but this "following Jesus" and "living for the Lord" 24/7 was really a bit much. I felt completely and comfortingly convinced I was a basically good and moral person. I didn't need any all-seeing God snooping around my life, looking over my shoulder and second-guessing me about every little thing--especially when it came to things like sex, or smoking or an occasional "hell" or "damn." Those things were my business alone and no one else's. Hey--I would never snatch a purse from an old lady or murder anyone or knock over a 7-11 so give me a break already. God's judgement and repenting and all that is for really evil people like Charles Manson or Richard Nixon or General Westmorland and the like. Surely God must have bigger fish to fry than to monitor a nice twenty-one year old guy who happened to be in love with a seventeen-year-old Jesus girl. After all, it wasn't like I was trying to talk her out of her Christianity--heck, she could stay a Christian forever, it really was irrelevant to me. Let's not mix faith and God with life and romance and personal decisions, I thought. Faith is for church and Sunday service. I could see I would have to keep from letting my feelings for Cher sway me toward making some emotional decision against my better rational intellectual judgement--not to mention against my absolute autonomy and right to run my own life the way I saw fit. Yes, a guard would have to be kept.

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 18: Only Half Way Across the River

It was the the fall of 1971 and the family had just come from the hospital where we'd said our last goodbyes to grandma Randall. I was still an atheist/agnostic materialist with a cynical view of all religious claims and a particular hostility toward Christianity. However there was one new complication in my personal world: I was dating--and deeply in love with--a young Christian woman--one of the "Jesus People," an emerging subgroup within the evolving cultural landscape of the late sixties. Her freshly minted faith and my agnosticism made for interesting, and occasionally tense, conversations. We were about to have one of those now. After my hospital visit at my dying grandmother's bedside, she had said to me, "I'm praying for your grandmother, and so are some others at my sister's church--we put her on the prayer list." That was something I was not in the mood to hear and which flew in the face of my coldly rational outlook on things. I got angry with her and spit out suddenly, caustically, "What is it with you Christians? Didn't you hear what the doctor said? The woman is dying. She'd old, her time is up, and she's dying--d-y-i-n-g. Your silly prayers aren't going to do her one damn bit of good. You and your Christian friends can pray all you want; biological reality says that old woman will be dead by this time tomorrow. Damn it, there's nothing to do. Get over it! Face reality--stop pretending your prayers can change the hard facts of this uncaring material world. Damn, just don't give me any more of that crap about God and prayers and all that spiritual mumbo-jumbo! Let's just drop the subject!"

I think I even surprised myself at the emotion behind the words I'd thrown at her. She hadn't done anything to deserve my Mr. Rational mini tirade. As I recall, she didn't argue back, but had simply said, "Well, we'll pray anyway." and left it at that.

The call from the hospital the next day was that our grandma had somehow made it through the night and so had survived for one more day. Her condition however remained unchanged. The following day my dad gave us the news that grandma was somewhat improved. Perhaps this would be one of those long drawn-out deaths that only came after a weeks-long or, God forbid, months-long series of family-fatiguing ups and downs. The day after showed surprisingly good improvement and, to everyone's amazement, grandma was alert and talking. The following day saw grandma walking the halls and telling the nurses about Jesus. The doctors had no explanation. They were as dumbfounded as was the family.

Now the family trooped back to the hospital, this time to visit the same woman we all thought we'd be burying about now. As we had done before, we each took turns sitting by her bedside. When my turn came and I entered her room, I could hardly believe the change in her appearance. Was this really the same old woman who, just four days ago, was at death's doorstep? It didn't seem possible. Yet there she sat, smiling, and her eyes now full of light and life. She seemed anxious to talk to me. "It was all so beautiful," she said with an air of wonderment, as if still seeing something fresh in her mind's eye. "What was beautiful gramma?" I asked. "The rainbow, and the river and, well, just everything--it was all so full of light and the colors--my!--the colors were so vivid. I've never seen anything like it! There were so many more colors than I even knew. The beauty of it all just took my breath away," she said with her eyes closed as if remembering and relishing it afresh in detail. Then her voice took on a different, almost matter-of-fact, down-to-earth seriousness as she reached out, took hold of my hand and said, "He told me I could not stay--that it was not my time--that I wasn't finished yet and would have to go back." "Who told you, gramma?" I asked. "Why Jesus did," she replied and continued, "I wanted to stay with him more than I could say, and I somehow knew he knew it, but he kept saying to me, 'no, you must return, just for a little while' and I didn't want to, but knew I had to because it was not my time yet." She went on, "We were right in the middle of the river. I could see the other side and the hills and beautiful sky and oh, all the colors, but he just turned me around, very gently, and I knew I had to go back to my side of the river. That's the last thing I remember until, until I woke up here--was it yesterday?" "I don't know gramma, maybe, I said. "I just know you were really sick and we didn't think you would make it." I was dazed by what I was hearing from her. I didn't believe it was real in any sense of the word--just something that happens sometimes when people are very sick and on medication and things--but I could not deny the tone of absolute certainty in her voice as she was telling me about what she'd seen. It was clear to me that she had been genuinely deeply moved by the whole experience--or hallucination, or whatever it was.

I had no idea what to make of it all. My girlfriend could have really needled me now about my earlier scoffing at her prayers, but I don't recall her doing so. She probably just said something like, "Praise God--he is so good!" when I told her the news. I wasn't about to admit to anything supernatural having been at play in my grandma's recovery or any prayers having anything to do with it. Yet somewhere inside of me the perfect steel architecture of my starkly rational understanding of the universe creaked and shifted. One key rivet had popped and now the whole taut and steely structure was not quite as snug and inflexible as it had once been. Grandma may have beaten the Grim Reaper, but the Hound of Heaven was still at my heels.

Postscript:
Grandma Randall went on to live a full twelve years more, from 1971 to 1983. During those years she travelled twice to Alaska, bought a house in Chino Hills; did lots more gardening; painted pictures; blended more Green Drinks and taught Sunday school and crafts. As she had done in her previous eighty-six years, grandma always received, with humble gratitude, all the "gracious plenty" God had to give her. She lived a full and blessed ninty-eight years.

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 17: Grandma Randall Crosses Over

Even health food nuts die, eventually. It seemed grandma Randall's time had come. My dad used to drive out to visit and check on her on her little 5-acre place in Romoland, an undeveloped rural area not far from Hemet. There she lived alone, grew all her own food, and played her favorite hymns a little Hammond organ. On one of those visits, dad noticed she was quite jaundiced. He took her to see a doctor who promptly admitted her to the Circle City hospital in Corona for tests. Nothing was found in the first set of tests, so more were scheduled. I should mention that our dad was the administrator of this small private hospital and so grandma got the best of care. Further tests were inconclusive and could not pinpoint a source of her problem. Meanwhile, grandma was going downhill, getting weaker by the day and losing weight rapidly. X-rays were taken to check for anything which may not have been detected by the other tests. Everything looked OK. Nonetheless, grandma condition kept worsening. Finally, for lack of anything to do, it was decided to do exploratory surgery to see if the doctors could find any explanation for her rapidly failing health. Finding nothing they sewed her up and sent her back to her room.

The doctor attending her said our grandma didn't have any disease, cancer had been ruled out, no infection could be found--in fact no medical cause for her worsening condition was apparent. The nurses monitored her vital signs and kept her comfortable. Another week passed by and her condition continued to deteriorate. The day came when the doctor suggested to my dad that the family be called in because, "Your mother's time has come. She is eighty-six and her organs are simply shutting down. Your mother is dying of old age, nothing else. The family should see her this evening--I don't think she'll make it through the night." I went to the hospital accompanied by my girlfriend and soon-to-be fiance', Cher, to say goodbye to my grandma. This was all new to me. I knew next to nothing about dying people or what to do around a dying person. I met the family in the hospital cafeteria where they had gathered. My dad filled us in on what the doctors had said about her condition. There was nothing to be done. She was comfortable, not in pain, but failing fast. It was after nine o'clock. We each ate our chosen comfort food from the cafeteria vending machine and chased it with coffee which was overly strong, being left on the hot plate much too long.

We held our little family meeting there at a round table in the nearly empty cafeteria. It was a small hospital, after visiting hours, and there were only a few others in the cafeteria, mostly hospital staff. As my toddler cousin entertained herself pouring piles of sugar on the tabletop, we each took turns acknowledging the inevitable along with our sadness and agreeing that grandma had had a long and full life. It was decided we would take turns privately saying our goodbyes to grandma in person, one at a time. My turn came and I walked tentatively down the dimly lit hallway, not knowing quite what to expect. What I found was a woman who looked much too small and already dead. Her face looked only vaguely familiar, for her teeth were not in. But more than that, her face looked starkly skeletal, her cheeks and eye sockets sunken to an extreme degree. There were the obligatory tubes and wires and things still dripping and monitoring while doing their own death watch. Besides the occasional soft beep of of her heart monitor, the only other sounds were the rattles and gasps which came at unnervingly long and infrequent intervals. The time between them was so long I would get myself poised to spring out of the institutional bedside chair and go call into the hallway for the nurse. Just when I was about to do this, her chest would heave and noisily draw in another gurgling gulp of air. This happened several times in the few minutes I spent with her and it set my nerves on edge. I didn't say anything to my grandma's form and didn't even know what I could or should or wanted to say. I just kind of did my duty--a nightmarish duty it seemed--by spending those minutes in her room. I felt at a loss for what to even to think about during those minutes. I felt out of place, embarrassed at my own awkwardness. To myself I seemed like an intruder, even as her grandson. I escaped back to the cafeteria in the briefest time decency would allow in order to show I had done a proper farewell and had not just stuck my head in the door of her room. I felt a little guilty for not knowing how to say goodbye to a dying loved one. They hadn't taught us that in vacation Bible school. It being late, and all of us having taken our turns, we hugged one another and each headed home. Someone from the hospital would call in the morning with the news.

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 16: Wrinkled Faces and Grandma Randall's Green Drink

Matilda Randall, my grandma, was a Baptist Mother Teresa. At least she shared a good many character traits with the little Albanian saint. She also had Mother Teresa's deeply wrinkled and leathery brown face. From both faces, with their shining deep-set dark eyes--radiated a deep goodness--a grace--a love which was both kind and gentle, but which was certainly not soft and marsh-mellowy. In contrast, this gracious loving radiance was solid, rock-like, even severe, if that term can be connected with the concept of love. This was a love that one sensed came from beyond the individual and her personal particular emotions. Instead, it emanated from, and was entwined with, her life's mission. Both these women of God were indeed on a mission: Saint Teresa to bring God's loving embrace those dying alone in the world's gutters, and Saint Matilda to bring that same embracing love to the little sphere of her family's world.

That's why Grandma Randall started Riverside Christian Day School in her own home for her first grandson and a few neighbor kids. She went on to Shepherd that school as it--and her grandson, Tony--grew. That is why she saw to it that us kids were enrolled in Vacation Bible School each summer. That is why she tried to get us to eat the good, wholesome, organic food which she grew in her very own garden where she spent a good deal of her time.

The food she fixed for us was one aspect of grandma's love we least appreciated at the time. We considered grandma a health-food nut. We loved Swanson's frozen dinners and Tater-Tots. We really did not care for chard or kale or wheat germ or millet. Topping our list of least appreciated health food was her infamous Green Drink. Grandma Randall's Green Drink was her own concoction of every healthy item known to humankind blended up all together in a big Hamilton Beech blender and served--not chilled with ice, no: cold drinks were not good for you--but at room temperature with a little green foam still bubbling on top of your glass. We hated that stuff. When we complained about the taste, she acted amazed: "Don't say that; why, it has chlorophyll--very good for your liver-- and wheat germ; which has lots of vitamins and fiber; and millet, and celery and..." she would go on to list a half-dozen of the who-knows-how-many ingredients, all found in her Green Drink--as if this somehow answered our complaint. In her fixation with health food grandma Randall was way ahead of her time!

Grandma Randall played a significant and unusual two-part role in my conversion. Part one was that she prayed for me, the black sheep of the family. Not so unusual, that. I suppose all grandmothers pray for their grandchildren--at least I know all Baptist grandmothers do. Come to think of it, praying grannies may be God's most effective below-the-radar force in his dogged and unrelenting campaign to draw a lost world back Home. The other part Grandma Randall played in my conversion was truly an unusual one. She died. Sort of...

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 15: Grandma Randall vs The Episcopalians

I have mentioned that the three of us kids were raised in the Episcopal church. My brother was an acolyte, helping the priest by performing ceremonial duties during worship such as carrying the processional cross and lighting alter candles. As a young child witnessing the worship ritual and hearing the recited prayers, the impression that settled upon me was that these adults were mostly bored with the whole matter and were personally uninvolved in the motions they were so deliberately and carefully walking themselves through. I felt a little resentful at being made to share in their boredom. All the robed people up by the alter doing their important tasks of positioning this or that object exactly here or there seemed to me to move way too slowly. Not only that, but they would unnecessarily drag out what they were saying to make it take as long as humanly possible to drone out the required words. This slow-motion performance seemed very tedious to my young, wandering and restless mind. I'd sit there next to my sister on the hard old oak pew in my white starched long-sleeved shirt and clip-on bow tie and crane my head back as far as it would go until I was looking straight up. I'd let my eyes wander in among the big dark brown wood beams which crisscrossed the high ceiling and intersected with one another in mid-air. Meanwhile, the distant voice of the priest droned on and on as it read, in that sophisticated and practiced high-church monotone fashion, from a prayer book or perhaps some mimeographed sheet.

This Episcopal tradition came to us through my mom and her parents, who presumably had received it from their parents. My dad's mom, whom we called grandma Randall, was a Southern Baptist and worked to deliver us from Episcopalianism by exposing us to Baptist influences whenever and however she could. I don't think we ever attended any Baptist Sunday services, but us kids were packed off to VBS--vacation Bible school--every summer. There we would make things such as real leather wallets on which we tooled designs such as eagles or crosses or pine cones and then we'd finish it off with shoelace-sized leather stitching all around. We made Indian beaded bracelets from kits and pictures pounded onto copper sheets and then mounted on wood plaques we had stained ourselves. Grandma Randall was in charge of the craft component of her church's VBS and she saw to it that we had good quality materials and tools to work with.

I'd have been happy to do crafts all day, but the gospel lessons could not be overlooked. We'd needed to hear a Bible story and most often that meant the giant flannel-board was brought out. As I recall, the flannel-board stories were done by missionaries who were home on furlow. The story might be Daniel in the loin's den or Jonah and the wale, but what ever it was, it ended with a miniature Billy Graham crusade-style plea by the missionery for us to invite Christ into our hearts to become our Lord and Savior. Heads would be bowed and all eyes closed (except for some curiosity-inspired peeking). You'd raise your hand if you wanted to, "answer the knock of Jesus and open the door of your heart." Did I ever raise my hand? I don't know. I can't say I remember ever doing so, yet I wouldn't be surprised if I were to find I had. Nothing even remotely similar to this ever went on at the Episcopal church. That might be the reason that VBS felt kind of like spiritual contraband. I felt a vague guilt, at being involved in something a bit clandestine, something we were not really suppose to be doing. It was, on the part of my grandma, perhaps a kind of "sneaky" evangelism--sneaky for the sake of the kids. Grandma Randall was trying to steer us away from the spiritually sterilizing and stultifying influence of the Episcopal church.

Don't miss the next episode: Grandma Randall goes to meet Jesus.

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 14: A Good Dad, and Loved

Meanwhile, While my buddy and I were chasing dreams of striking it rich as crab-catchers in Alaska, my dad, at the age of forty-eight, was entering the newly created Medex program. It had been pioneered at Duke University in the late 60's to meet the projected future demand for health care. In 1971 California was getting aboard this new health-care train. Dad heard about the program because he had been a Navy corpsman during WWII. In signing up, he joined the first class at UCLA of those who would go on from there to become "PA's"--Physician Assistants. This new category of medical professional was created by an act of congress and UCLA was chosen as the institution in California which would train the first new recruits--drawn mostly from the ranks of retired Navy corpsmen.

My dad's career path was, in a number of ways, an unusual one. He had joined the Navy in order to get away from a stern, cold demanding father, Dr. George Borand Randall Sr. [A Google search of his name shows him listed in Senate records from 1918 as a "Randall, George Borand, Noncombatant Commissioned Officers of the Army."] From all accounts, he had left private medical practice to become an Army physician during World War I. He saw combat in Europe and had suffered lung damage due to inhalation of German mustard gas. It seems he spent the rest of his life on a military disability pension and never returned to full time private practice.

As near as I can tell, my dad never received any fatherly warmth or affection from this man and never--in words I ever heard him express--mourned his passing. In 1940, at age 17, dad made his move to leave home and escape the icy presence of this man for good--he joined the Navy. Both his parents signed the required permission slip for this underage young man to join the military--his father willingly, his mother reluctantly. He came to the Naval Training Center, San Diego for boot camp and, later, as a corpsman, to Camp Elliot with the U.S. Marines. From there he shipped out with the Marines to the South Pacific shortly after Pearl Harbor. Like most of the men of his generation, dad never offered up stories of the war years. One had to pull them out of him with direct questions. In his later years I spent time in conversation with him about these events and can recall just the basic outline of his story. [I now regret not getting an audio recorder and documenting those conversations.]

Dad saw combat in many of the South Pacific theaters, as they are called in military terms. He was aboard ship convoys when kamikaze raids rained down on them. He vividly described the frantic ship-board efforts at putting up smoke screens so the Japanese suicide pilots diving down at full speed from straight overhead could not see their intended targets. He also told of the charming life of the natives on the island of Samoa and how he became a special favorite of a local chief after circumcising the Chief's infant son. Dad picked up a number of Samoan phrases which we kids heard often growing up: Saweela peesa, fi moly moly! Roughly translated, "Shut your mouth--keep quiet!" Another was a song the Marines had made up which was set to the tune of Deep in the Heart of Texas." I would put the Samoan lyrics to it here, but I suspect, though I am not sure, they may be "R" rated.

After the war, dad was reunited with his wife, Olive, a Navy Wave. They began a family soon thereafter and my brother, "Skipper" was born in 1946. I followed four respectful years later, being born in Minneapolis in the middle of 1950. Two years later, when our parents moved to Southern California, our sister, Lauren was born. A couple of years were spent in West Riverside and then we moved into a new tract home on Gertrude Street in Riverside proper. The tract of middle-class stucco homes had been carved out in the middle of hundreds of acres of orange groves, and was still virtually surrounded by many of them. In spring the fragrance of orange blossoms filled the night and was sometimes nearly overwhelming. In winter it was the pungent odor of the smudge pots alight along with the sound of hundreds of wind machines keeping the air moving and the oranges from freezing.

One thing I came to learn--to deduce really--about my dad was his deeply felt inadequacy at not living up to the expectations that he become a physician like his father. Whether his father had imposed this on him or whether he had imposed it on himself, I never did learn. It was, I thought, too personal, too delicate a question for a child, even a grown one, to broach with a parent. Perhaps it could have been tactfully done, but I never did pursue this line of inquiry with him. This insecurity expressed itself in any number of ways. One was that, in the late fifties, dad signed the family up to a local country club there in Riverside--Azure Hills. That was the club where all the doctors, Attorneys and wealthy businessmen belonged. Being a surgical supply salesman, it made a certain amount of sense to join the club, but even as a nine-year-old I could tell we didn't really belong there. We didn't really fit in. It was nothing you could quite put your finger on--one just knew. Dad also didn't really mind when, in later years, people mistook his references to, "being in the medical profession" as meaning he had been a doctor. He didn't mind and often would not correct people's mistaken impression. Perhaps he challenged this inner dynamic later in life when he self-published a book about his experiences entitled, Don't Call Me Doctor.

My dad was a great guy who grew closer and closer to God in his later years. Because of that primary and spiritual relationship he was changing and becoming more Christ-like up unto the very end of his life. He was dearly loved by his family and by everyone who ever met him. People who, decades ago, had only known or worked with him a few months sent notes of great fondness and deep regret at the news of his passing in 1999.

I will write more about him in some future post on some future Father's Day. I know where you are dad. Thanks for all you did to raise me and try to get me on the right road--even when, early on, you were not sure yourself where it was. You left this world with grace, dignity and deep love. You are missed.

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 13: The Best Laid Plans of Pot Heads

As summer came to a close, I made a visit back you see old friends in Seal Beach. That is where, not long after high school, I had shared an apartment with my brother, who was a biology major at Long Beach State. It was in Seal Beach from 1969 to 1971 that my political radicalism and general anti-establishment outlook were nurtured beyond what they had been during my high school years. This may have been partly due to the fact that virtually everyone I knew and hung around with in Seal Beach were pot smokers and most of us also dabbled in the "recreational" use of other drugs, such as Peyote, Mescaline, LSD, Hashish and uppers. The last on that list, Benzedrine--which nearly everyone in the restaurant business used in order to accomplish our very fast-paced work--I used from time to time while working as a seafood chef at a local restaurant called Walt's Wharf. I lived near both the beach and the restaurant and could walk to work. I handled every kind of seafood all afternoon and evening long. Cats would follow me home at night.

One of my pot-smoking buddies, a close friend, was a moody and very philosophically-minded misfit--a lot like me. Barry and I would spend time together alternately complaining about the way society was arranged, how shallow it and its people were in general, and brainstorming alternative ways of arranging society so life would be less "plastic" and superficial and become more "real." We both fiddled around on guitar and knew a few cords and a few folk and bluegrass songs. One old bluegrass song we sang went like this: Ceegar-eets 'n whusky 'n wild wild women, they'll drive a man crazy, they'll drive him insaaaayne / Once't I was married and had a good waf, I had enough money to last me for laf / I met with a woman, we went on a spree / She taught me to smoke and dree-ink whus-key / Oh, ceegar-eets and whiskey..."

Barry had heard from a mutual friend who'd recently come back from working a crab boat in Alaska. He'd worked for something like two months straight and had made about five-thousand dollars--which in those days was very big money for guys our age. It was difficult and dangerous work, but that dangled jackpot of money was strong incentive for us just then. Barry and I talked it over and decided to North and give it a shot. We collected our resources and came up with enough money to get his old '55 Plymouth station wagon road worthy. Beyond that, we had enough for gas money to get us there--and even a couple hundred to spare. After packing the car with all the provisions we'd need--canned sardines, peanut butter, two cartons of cigarettes, a lid of carefully-hidden pot and some books by Krishnamurti and Dostoevsky, we set out from Seal Beach on a beautiful and mild mid-October day. We hopped on the 405 north and caught the I-5 in San Fernando. Once on the 5 we felt we were truly on our way. It just happened that, this being fire season in southern California, there were several major fires ravaging the foothills north and east of the city. This filled the horizon with billows of reddish brown smoke and darkened the sky. It felt to us like we were escaping a city which was doomed to some long-foretold apocalyptic end. We talked about this as we drove away from L.A. But soon, taking the place of those thoughts, were youthful testosterone-fueled dreams of doing dangerous and manly feats of gritty ocean courage aboard some rugged ship in those deep cold Alaskan waters. We would come back all buffed, sinewy and flush with cash!

One tactical concern of ours was my somewhat unresolved draft status. A year-and-a-half before I had refused induction into the Army and was told my formal indictment would soon follow. It never did--and, as it turned out, never would. Because of this unresolved legal matter, we felt it would be wise to try our crossing into Canada from a minor border town rather than a major one. Our plans had us driving across a good portion of British Columbia in order to get to Prince Rupert, from where we would take a ferry to our destination, Sitka. We decided to skirt a crossing at Vancouver and instead go east via Hwy 546 to where Hwy 9 heads north. We would attempt our crossing at the little border town of Huntingdon, near Abbotsford. Our thought was that the border guards there would be less diligent and watchful for draft-dodgers than at Vancouver. Although I prided myself in being a draft fighter, and not a draft dodger, I knew that my coming into Coming into Canada might look suspicious to the authorities.

As it was, our plan failed on all counts. We were turned away for "lack of financial resources." In short, the Canadian government felt that, should we have a mechanical breakdown, or for any other reason, have problems in reaching Price Rupert, we would have insufficient funds to assure we did not become an undue burden to Her Majesty's Sovereign State. What was required was proof of a U.S. bank account, in one of our names, with at a current balance of least $2,500. That we did not have. Consulting the good old Drawing Board, we decided to look for work in the nearby farming communities bordering Sumas. We felt sure some farm or business could use at least one--if not two--strapping young men as laborers. We approached this and that farmhouse--no luck. We tried getting dishwasher jobs at every little restaurant we could find--no help wanted. We tried gas stations and auto repair shops. We looked in the local paper. No jobs were to be had anywhere it seemed. Reluctantly, and in utter defeat, we pointed Barry's '55 Plymouth wagon back south and headed for home. Sometimes the best laid plans...

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 12: It Soothes the Soul of the Savage Skeptic

As the summer of 1971 was nearing it's still warm--and to me almost magical--glowing end, everything in my immediate world seemed to enter of period of transition. One change, the most significant to me, and the news of which I welcomed as if I'd won the lottery, was that Cher, the seventeen year old young woman I had fallen in love with that summer, broke up with her boyfriend. I had been hoping this would happen and felt our budding relationship could now deepen and grow. I had told her as much in poem form. We began to see each other more regularly now, spending time together horseback riding and often just talking for hours.

Our conversations were most often about Jesus, the Bible, and spirituality as well as current events such as civil rights and the war in Viet Nam. Earlier that summer, she had given me a copy of the album her sister had recorded with her church group, Konoinia. That was the first "new" Christian music I'd heard--except perhaps for a couple songs, spun off from the Jesus Movement, that made it to radio such as Put Your Hand In the Hand of the Man From Galilee and Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the Sky. Attending church with her on Sunday evenings, I had begun to become familiar with contemporary Christian music--the Jesus-People music. I remember Debbie Kerner was the song leader and a soloist at All Saints Episcopal, leading the newly formed congregation of former hippies in choruses of, We Are One In The Spirit, which included the lines, "We will work with each other / We will work side by side / And we'll give up our dignity and crucify our pride / And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love / Yes they'll know we are Christians by our love." This revolution in Christian music seemed to burst upon the late-sixties/early-seventies scene in a rapid proliferation of Jesus People music, composed and performed by groups such as, The Way, Mustard Seed Faith, Love Song, Selah, Blessed Hope and Children of the Day.

This new musical expression of the gospel message, with styles from folk to hard rock, was very controversial and much debated within the "mainline" churches, but had a profound effect on me and many in my generation who had written Christianity off as irrelevant. When we heard our music, we were much more receptive to the message it brought. That message was the same orthodox come-to-Jesus message you'd find at any Billy Graham crusade, only to us much more palatable when filtered through Fender or Peavey amplifiers and accompanied by familiar, contemporary music played by very hip/hippy looking twenty-somethings with joyful abandon and enthusiasm. This music, with its gentle-as-a-dove gospel lyrics about the love of Jesus, cleverly snaked its way, serpent-like, into my soul. This served to contemporize the dusty two-thousand-year-old message of Jesus in a way my twentieth-century mind could grasp and identify with on some level.

Here I should make it clear that, although I had come under what seemed a veritable barrage of Christian influence from every angle, I was, in fact, not any where near being or becoming a follower of Jesus. I was very much a skeptical "outsider"; observing the Jesus People as they gathered, listening to their music, and continuing to read the modern English New Testament I'd been given and challenged to read. At this point, the "alter calls" I sat through at the conclusion of every Sunday evening service were as irrelevant to me as a Don Adams TV commercial for "twenty acres of beautiful pine-covered God's-country mountain property in Big Sky Oregon." Wait. On second thought, I'd have been a much more likely potential customer for that TV-commercial property than for the Jesus gospel acreage they seemed to be offering me on Sunday night.

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, Part 11: Of Brooms and Baptists

It was becoming clear to me now this would not be the easy and quick sale I'd hoped it would be. This seemed confirmed as my gaze drifted from the picture on the wall of the giant Jesus at the U.N. building to the big black Holy Bible atop the buffet keeping company with the family photos. To the woman's question about how my day was going, I observed that it certainly was hot outside today and I sure appreciated the cold lemonade. I didn't want to admit to her this was my first day as a Fuller Brush salesman and that I had yet to make a sale. I think she sensed this though. As I reached down in to my sample bag and brought out a slim catalogue of our latest products, she said, as if making a further comment on the weather, "Do you know that God loves you very much and sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for you?" There followed a moment of awkward silence as she waited for my answer and I tried to think of something to say which wouldn't blow the sale. "Um, yes" I said, "my grandma is a Baptist and I know they told us that at vacation Bible school." I figured this acknowledgment of mine might put this topic to rest and we could get on with discussing our new line of products made especially for the modern kitchen. It was not to be.

She reached over and, before I could draw my hand back from the table, she placed hers on mine. She tried to make eye contact with me but I saw it coming and turned my head as if I had just heard something in the distance which called for my attention. Anything to avoid what I was afraid would come next. She gave my hand a little squeeze and said softly, almost confidentially, as if just between us, "I'm glad you know about Jesus, but do you believe in him? Have you placed your trust in him and asked him to forgive your sins and come to live in your heart?" Another even more awkward silence ensued. I no longer cared about making a sale, I just desperately wanted to extract myself from this embarrassing inquisition as soon as possible and get back to knocking on doors where no one was home. The problem was that this woman had my catalogue under her other hand and the unspoken one-sided agreement seemed to be that, if I would just listen to what she had to say, she was willing to buy something from me afterwards. The odd thing was that her teen-aged daughter had taken a seat at the table with us as if we were going to have a little family discussion. She may have been a mute for all I knew, for she never said a word the whole time. I suspected though that she was praying, with her eyes open, the whole time. I somehow got the impression that I was not the first salesman to fall into the snare of this mother-daughter evangelical tag-team. "Well," I began, "I think Jesus was kind of a revolutionary and said lots of things about love and peace and brotherhood sort of like Woody Guthrie did and the establishment just couldn't take his radical ideas and so they had him killed as a rebel." With this answer I had managed to move things to slightly safer territory. I didn't really mind speculating about Jesus' political troubles in some abstract fashion, but to discuss my sins and how Jesus had died to forgive them was beyond the pale. "The Lord has called us," she said, mercifully letting go of my hand, "to tell everyone the good news of the gospel and promised that his Spirit would help them to see the truth and come to Jesus. I will pray for you that God will lead you to the path of salvation." With that, it seemed she'd done her duty and would soon free me to go on my way. I felt our tension--mine and hers--dissipate somewhat and she asked if I would like some more lemonade. "No, thank you," I said, "I need to be going and so..." She opened the catalogue and pointed to the Easy-Breezy kitchen broom with matching dust pan. After filling out the order form I collected my things and she showed me to the door. I wished her a good day and she in return said, in a sincere tone, "God bless you." Before I turned to go I saw her daughter, still seated at the dining room table, now with her head slightly bowed. I continued up the street in an odd daze of unreality at what had just happened. I'd never forget my first sale as a Fuller Brush man.

This encounter was just one of a number of them I seemed doomed to experience in the next ten months. I would come back to the car where it was parked downtown to find a gospel tract tucked under the wiper. I'd absent-mindedly give the radio dial a spin only to have it stop on a station blaring some preacher. I'd bump into an old acquaintance from high school and they'd start witnessing to me about being "born again." I'd go into a public restroom and there would be a psychedelic sticker saying One Way--Jesus! Mostly these things irritated me, but in tandem with my reading the gospel accounts, they felt "aimed" at me by I knew not whom.

Father's Day 1972 Revisited, part 10: Death of a Salesman

A person can't spend all his time falling in love and thinking about God--one has to make a living. My dad was letting me, his 21-year-old grown son, stay with him but he also expected me to find a job and pay some for my upkeep. I began pouring over the classifieds in our local newspaper, the Riverside Press Enterprise. I had been a paperboy for them back in the early sixties. The day after Kennedy was shot, I rode my route with my big canvas handlebar bags stuffed full with the papers I'd folded and banded that afternoon. As I peddled to my customer's neighborhood, people were stopping me left and right pleading with me to sell them a paper. They pull their cars along side me, waving a dollar bill in offer for a ten-cent paper! Unfortunately, I had not had the entrepreneurial foresight to stock up with extras before starting my route that day. But I digress. That was in 1963. It is now eight years later and I am living with my dad on a little horse ranch and trying to find a job.

I ran down the columns of minuscule type: Auto mechanic; Bartender; Carpenter; Drill-press Operator; Estimator; Fork lift Operator; Fuller Brush Salesman... Hmmm... Career opportunity for motivated person. No experience necess--will train. Base pay draw against commissions for first 3 weeks, straight commission after. Apply in person, Mon thru Wed. In the late-fifties, the Fuller Brush man used to come by our house twice a year. Dad would always buy something--whether he needed it or not. Being a fellow salesman, they shared a special kinship which would not let dad send the poor guy away without an order or some sort, if only for a whisk broom or two. Perhaps the Fuller Brush man was a fellow Mason and had given dad the secret handshake. Then again, dad had nearly zero sales-resistance himself and so perhaps would have bought something no matter what. I think the man came by our house as regularly as he did because he knew 2982 Gertrude Street was a sure sale.

I put in my application to become a Fuller Brush Man and aced the interview--which probably everyone did--and then, after being shown how to fill out an order form, was given a big Fuller Brush sample briefcase, a catalogue and a territory to work. Off I set, a spanking new salesman with shiny black slacks, white shirt and tie and with my long curly hair carefully rubber-banded and tucked up at the nape of my neck. The mustache had been allowed, but not the beard. It had been reluctantly sacrificed to The Man in the interest of gainful employment.

There were fewer and fewer housewives these days so I'd often have to knock on five or six doors before finding someone home. Then, it would invariably be either an elderly couple, or a middle-aged woman in her forties or fifties. In the course of an hour, I'd found a few folks home, but no one in need of any of our well-made and handy products. I was beginning to get discouraged when, at the next house where someone was home, I got invited in. This seemed a good sign. The woman who'd greeted me with a friendly smile looked to be about forty. Being late July it was quite hot out, perhaps in the mid-nineties, and as she ushered me to the big maple Early American dining room table she called out, "Cynthia, please bring some lemonade for this young man." As I seated myself I noticed, on the wall near where I sat, a large framed picture of a giant half-transparent Jesus standing outside the U.N. building. He had a concerned look on his face and was rapping a knuckle on one of the upper floors. This Jesus had sandy blond hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and was draped in Ben-Hur-like first-century robes. I began to feel an itch under my white collar. As Cynthia smiled and handed me a big glass of lemonade and her mom, with a note of concern in her pleasant voice asked me, "How have your sales been so far today?" I already didn't like the direction the conversation. I could see I'd have to try for a quick sale and, I hoped, a speedy escape...