Chapter Seven--To Kansas and back in two years

Neodesha, Kansas is a nice place. The population in 1965 was about 4,000 as I recall. Located in the southeast corner of the state, bordering with Oklahoma and Missouri and set at the convergence of two rivers on U. S. Highway 75, the town could be described as quaint. It was also fairly quiet. Some of the closest larger towns are Independence and Coffeyville and just to the south, Bartlesville, Oklahoma. There were quiet tree-lined streets and neatly kept older homes. There was some industry that provided jobs for the residents and there were nice schools, churches and parks—a good place to raise kids.

Three families made up the Church of Christ. As far as we knew, these were the only members of the Church of Christ in all of Wilson County, population about 14,000 in those days. They had met in a small native rock building for many years. The building was narrow and the part back of the pulpit area, probably intended for future Sunday school rooms, had never been completed, you stepped down to the dirt. The little building could not have held more than 30 persons, if that many. Our family of seven immediately doubled the attendance. The Bartlesville church offered us support, if I would get a new building built. We did, and it stands there today, on the north end of 8th St. We drove by it one time while going or coming from Topeka.

Before we went to Kansas, I had preached for a small congregation on the north shore of Lake Lavon in Collin County, Texas which, ironically, had more folks attending each Sunday morning than the Neodesha church. They had Sunday school all together and made a point to start the morning service a bit early, so that they could be out and home before noon. There was a woman in the congregation, who presented quite a formidable presence, who would fold her arms and clear her throat rather loudly as the clock neared the noon hour as the sermon labored on. I always took this, and wisely I think, as a subtle signal to bring it to a close. If I gained nothing else from that experience, the ability to be able to quickly wind it down and quit almost on cue has proven to be a useful homiletic tool at times. We were back in that area several years ago and drove by the old church building. It was falling down and was covered with high weeds and vines.

Thinking back on it, I wonder how they stood to listen to me. My thinking is that a lot of the rural churches, of any kind, get very used to providing the training ground for the younger minister. Its probably not that they are any less spiritual or less godly people, they just learn to overlook inexperience and youth and sometimes just turn off their switches when an especially bad sermon comes toward them. A caution to the young preacher: watch it when a parishioner tells you at the church door how much they “enjoyed” the message. But I digress.

One incident that occurred in our Kansas sojourn was truly a life-changing event. Carolyn got real sick. She was taken to Wichita in an ambulance and I followed in the car. She was admitted to St. Francis hospital, basically in a coma. The doctors in Neodesha did not know what her trouble was and sent her to a bigger hospital. The doctors at St. Francis did not have a clue either. One doctor told me as we walked down the hall, away from her room that she might die. That was a real comforting thought, knowing that back at home there were five children who would be in need of some kind of mothering if that occurred. This was, to me, an unacceptable prospect so I spent the next couple of days praying over her comatose body. I made a deal with God: raise her up and I would always be his minister. My point was that I loved her and I knew that God loved her, so since we both loved her, she needed to be awake to know it. Well, she came out of it and was discharged. She was weak for several months. My mother had come up to stay with the children and I guess was glad for the way it all turned out.

I signed a bill for about $1,800.00 and told the sisters there that I would pay when I could, as we did not have any insurance. I was grateful to God for having healed her. I would guess it was God, for it was not anything the hospital or the doctors did that brought her back.

So, God did his part. Now it was up to me to do mine. A few days later a couple showed up at the door and said that they had sold some land and wanted to tithe a portion of it and gave me a check for about $1,800.00 (which took care of the hospital bill). Talk about faith!

Being a new minister in town, I had met the Baptist preacher, the Assembly of God pastor, a delightful fellow with the Independent Christian church and the Disciples minister among others. Thus I became friends with and would get to visit with them from time to time as I became involved in the community. Something finally dawned upon me. All these men seemed to genuinely believe in God, in Jesus and the cross and held the scriptures in high esteem. They seemed to be very spiritual and very much at ease in their respective positions.

But something was wrong. All my life, from my youth up, it had been drilled into me as I sat and listened to sermon after sermon in rural southern churches decrying the various errors of the Baptists, the Methodists, the this and the that. It appeared to me and I was convinced that I was definitely in the right church believing the right message and worshiping God in the right way. I do not ever remember, and my memory may be faulty at my present age, but I can not recall ever hearing any preacher referring to the statement attributed to Alexander Campbell (a Scotch Presbyterian preacher who, with another Presbyterian, Barton Stone and others in the early 1800s began a movement to restore what they termed New Testament Christianity) that we were Christians only, but not the only Christians. Somehow that fact had either escaped me or I was never exposed to it.

As I said earlier, I do not now see how they stood me, but I am glad that I was tolerated. When we got to Kansas, I begin to understand that I was really ill-prepared for the job at hand, but Jesus said that we should not look back when our hand is put to the plow. I had to study a lot, because I had not done much of it in the past. I had to pray a lot, because I felt I really needed help from above. I remember working on the book of Romans and trying to see what Paul was trying to get across.

Well, trouble began to raise its head. I saw the other church folk from the “denominations” to be sincere and dedicated believers. I saw in Paul’s message to the Romans that the thing that really makes the difference is faith, or belief, or trust, in Jesus and not in ourselves or a in a group for that matter. It began to dawn on me that Jesus died on the cross and was raised on the third day and in that act, because he was without sin, was made sin for everyone who will accept that he arose victorious over sin and death and is right now at the right hand of the Father, being an advocate for any one who falls short. Salvation, then, is not an act, a ritual or a set of steps that one takes. Salvation is a free gift to anyone who can let go and let God, who can trust in what Jesus did, who can allow God to dwell in his or her spirit (the new birth). So, as I began to realize these things, that these people, these other church people were not necessarily wrong and that I, may in fact, have some ideas about religion, about church and about what its all about that may not be altogether right.

By now, I had begun to experience a genuine joy, able to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was my Father and that I actually had salvation and possessed eternal life here and now because of what Jesus had done for me. And that there were many more brethren out there than I had ever imagined!

I guess I got overly excited and misjudged my audience as I shared these things with them. They demanded my resignation. Later, in a called meeting in Coffeyville where there were representatives of several congregations from all over the area, I was formally forbidden to ever preach or teach or lead a prayer or lead a song in a Church of Christ because of my heresy.

I was unsuccessful as a recruit for National Life Insurance. I lasted just a couple of months. We wound up back in Dallas as I was able to be rehired at Collins Radio. At least we now had some income again. The year was 1967, and our furniture was in a friend’s barn out at Lake Lavon and we were homeless.

Chapter Six--the family expands to fill the home, and other considerations

Hindsight often, and it certainly does in this case, gives a much more accurate assessment of a set of circumstances and subsequent decisions that play out as actions that eventually lead to yet another set of circumstances. For a few weeks right after my discharge I attempted several employment scenarios with very limited success.

This, looking back on it, was a lot like the Big Spring time. Maybe, at that point, I just needed structure. Maybe being able to function outside of the structure of a job, having a schedule to meet and quotas to fill and having lots of help with decisions, requires a good deal of maturity, which I probably had not attained at the age of 23. I had experienced four years of marriage, four years on military bases working a somewhat rigid schedule. I had taken on the responsibility of three small children. But, did all this add to my maturity or did it contribute to my confusion and indecision as to what course to pursue. Time was of the essence.

I chose the familiar, at least to me and not necessarily to my wife. I had experienced Dallas as a child and as a high school student. I somehow knew that there was money to be made, jobs to be had and that we could indeed survive. So, we went to Dallas, found work and rented a place to live and raise the kids. Carolyn did her job well and without much fanfare. I look back on it now and know it was a hard time for her. Three little ones, and soon another was on the way.

First was Richard, born at the Chanute, AFB hospital in Illinois, Nancy, born at the hospital in Wichita Falls, Texas because Shepard AFB did not have hospital facilities for maternity cases and Randall, born in the base hospital back at Chanute. By the time Amy came along, we were out of the service and she was born in a Garland, Texas hospital. By the time Russell was born, we had migrated to Wylie, Texas and he was born in the little hospital there. Five small children and some were in school already.

During this period, from 1960 to 1965, we lived in several rent houses in several small towns and I worked at Collins Radio Company as a general maintenance technician and Carolyn kept the home front. I tried several things, attempting to extricate myself from the factory. I briefly sold organs for a music company, sold automobiles, or at least tried and eventually wound up preaching for a small country church in north Collin County. This led us to Neodesha, Kansas in 1965. I do not know for sure whether it was that I had a call to preach at that time, or was it a job that I was able to do fairly well at and it was not factory work. Only God can know that for sure, but I feel like He blessed us in the work there and helped me to grow in a spiritual sense and to see other possibilities.

Hindsight, again, comes into view here. We must have had a great gift of faith in those days. We walked by faith and certainly not by sight. We did not have any money in savings, as it seemingly took every cent we could raise just to get along month to month. However, we went to visit that little church in south east Kansas because I had answered by mail a preacher-wanted ad in one of the gospel papers. We drove up there from Wylie and they hired us that Sunday afternoon for a salary of about a half of what I had been earning in the factory. Carolyn and I had agreed, in the car as we drove behind one of the church families on the way to their home for lunch that day, upon a figure that we would accept. That was the figure they offered later that afternoon. We had some good times in that town, but before two years had passed trouble was a-brewing, religious trouble, church trouble. And I quickly tried to learn to sell insurance.

Chapter Five--a short detour down patriotic lane

Reader, note the comment thanking me for my service to my country in the “comments” section after the previous chapter. This has stirred me to response. So, please allow me a short detour of the love story. I’ll get back on track later.

Initially I volunteered to “serve my country” much more for economic reasons than patriotic ones. There was not a shooting war during those days, but we had our enemy. We were to be always and forever ready to respond to an attack from any direction. We used words like cold-war, nuclear deterrent, early warning systems and nuclear strike capability. Long-range and fighter aircraft were being reinvented almost constantly.

I taught Tennessee farm boys, New Yorkers and even airmen and officers from NATO countries, among others, how to troubleshoot and repair generators, starters, ignition systems, inverters, compass systems, autopilots, actuators and flight control systems on the B-29, the B-36, C-119, F-86, the F-101 and a host of other airplanes that memory fails to recall. The men in my classes learned about volts, ohms, resisters, pentodes, and triodes and NPN and PNP transistors, bridge networks, phases, direct current. voltage regulators and how to use a Simpson meter. Our motto was to “keep ‘em flying” and I think we were successful.

It was real and effective vocational education. In four and a half months we would process a 19-year old boy into a knowledgeable and capable flight line electrician who could work on the most sophisticated equipment of the day on live flight lines all over the world. I know this because that’s what happened to me, only they then made me teach it to others instead of actually doing it.

It is amazing as I sit to write this that all that stuff is still in my head after all these years. I have several documents, mementos, diplomas and certificates on the wall in my little office here at the house. Each one has meaning, but the three honorable discharges, one from the Marines, one from the Air Force and one from a later stint in the Army Reserve, still give me a sense of pride for having been there and done that. And when I see an honor guard post the colors at a public gathering, or see a TV shot of the flag with the National Anthem playing, especially the one with the shot of the jets flying by in formation, I can’t help it, tears run down my face.

Chapter Four--The Air Force Days

It was just a few blocks to my folks’ house and this was a time without cell phones so we walked and left our boxes unguarded until we could go and get the car. One thing for sure, from then on for quite a while, we traveled lighter.

I’m not sure that they were aware that we were coming that day, or any day for that matter. However, as I recall we were civil to each other and got through about two weeks of togetherness. Looking back on that incident now, I don’t remember trying to see Carolyn’s side of what probably was a very traumatic time for her. I guess I was either dense, ignorant, young and inexperienced at married life, or all of the above.

I don’t have the exact chronology down but it was soon, meaning no more than a day or so, that I was in an Air Force recruiter’s office in Waco signing documents that would change my life. One vivid memory from all that was the look on his face, and the words that came out of his mouth when I put the duffle bag (with all my Marine stuff) on the gunny’s desk at the Marine reserve center in Waco. He said “you can’t do this” and I told him that I had already enlisted in the Air Force regular as I walked out the door. About six or seven months later, I got an envelope in the mail from the Marines. It was an honorable discharge.

I do not have an accurate memory of the thought processes that brought about the above scenario. It may have been that I felt that the Air Force would be a better choice for us to stay together and I knew that it was already in the works to go into the regular Marine Corps for missing reserve meetings. Frankly, I probably did not have a real firm grasp on the mechanics of the military. The way it played out worked for us, but it could have been much different.

Carolyn and I spent our last night together in a downtown Dallas hotel, paid for by the Air Force. We did not have a firm idea at the time as to just when we could see each other again. There were tears.

The next morning I went to the big armed forces induction center on Commerce Street with about a hundred other guys and we were tested, poked, questioned, measured, weighed and finally deemed fit to serve. We all raised our right hands and swore to uphold some stuff that I have forgotten, but what it meant was that you just did what was commanded without any question. Few, if any of us had a clue as to the implications and the ramifications of our actions on that day.

I was shuttled to the airport and told to get aboard a DC-3 for a short ride to Lackland AFB, Texas. Carolyn had gotten on a train for Kansas to be among her kin for the duration. You would have to ask her what she was feeling during that time. It was the third of October and we had been married the 18th August. Doing the math quickly, it does not add up to a lot of real time as newly weds.

Fast Forward. Another DC-3 ride and It’s November and I’m in a PATs (personnel awaiting training) barracks at Chanute AFB, Illinois. I think we were there for two or three weeks waiting for our slot to start school. There was not a lot to do but march to chow three times a day and maybe play some basket ball or just wait. My waiting was interrupted one afternoon when a runner came for me. I had a visitor at the Guesthouse.

Who had found me in this cold place, so far from Texas? Glorious reunion! Wonderful afternoon! Carolyn had come to stay with little money and a few things for housekeeping in her suitcase. She can tell her story about this time in “Snowstoryhere.” Suffice it to say that my belief in the protection of angels and the working of God’s Holy Spirit and the visitation of His hand on our lives, even upon our rather mundane and everyday lives and even when we are not acting as spiritual as we possibly could was strengthened in those days. This became especially true when the one I deeply loved was living in a world so close to my world in the little Illinois town of Rantoul and I was separated from her by a guard gate with military police. I had placed myself under the control of the government and could only move at their will.

However, I was eventually able to get what the government called separate rations and was allowed to rent a house and live off base. That sounds simple, but money was not in abundance on an airman’s salary in those days. Enter those angels again. I finished my electrical school, taught for awhile, was assigned to Shepard AFB, Texas for a time and then back to Chanute where I taught electronics until discharge. We survived it all, stayed married, had kids (with the deliveries paid for by the government) and on October 3rd, 1960, I was able to drive away from the guard gate at Chanute a civilian once again, having honorably served my country for four years. I was free, but now what?

Chapter Three--The Newlyweds

Actually, it was probably neither the Post Toasties nor the vanilla ice cream that provided the initial basis for the attraction. The particular behavior may--and I use the term may very cautiously--have been a contributing factor. There may have been and, in fact were, several contributing factors that influenced our mutual attraction in the beginning. And, here again I would exercise caution in suggesting that she felt any attraction at this point. Hopefully she did have some interest.

Suffice it to say that soon we both experienced a strong desire to be together, perhaps a stronger pull than either had felt before. At this date, we really can not—and we have discussed this—remember exactly when or how the decision was arrived at to be married. It is safe to say that earlier, neither intended to be married that year, had not even entertained the thought. But, when the thoughts came, and indeed were entertained, it seemed the right thing to do.

We were both so young at 18 and 17 that we had to get parent’s and guardian’s permission to purchase a license to marry from the Taylor County Clerk’s office, a fact that may seem strange to young folks today, as the law has changed since then. In those days a male was not an adult until he had reached the age of 21, but a female was considered an adult at 18. Anyway, we secured the license and stood before my father Elwyn Snow, in the chapel of College Church of Christ in the afternoon of August 18, 1956 as he read the vows. I do not remember one word he said. I think I must have said “I do” a couple of times.

If we had asked ourselves questions like, “are we using common sense?, are we financially stable? or, how are we going to manage to eat and have a place to call home? we would have had to answer in the negative. We were not prepared for marriage but once it was a fact we were determined to make it work and failure did not have a voice in it. That very fact probably contributed greatly to our being able to celebrate our 50th this year. Oh, there were those who said it wouldn't last, but we were determined to prove them wrong.

We drove to the city of Big Spring, Texas after the ceremony in a 1947 Plymouth. We had purchased it for the sum of $60.00 about a month before the wedding. To get an idea of that car, picture the very back row of a note-lot today where they put the dogs that sell for $995 or less without warranty. It probably has several dents and scrapes, the upholstery is shredded and the paint was once but no more.

I think we had looked up colleges and decided there was one in Big Spring that might be less expensive since we were now going to have to pay our own way. We were admittedly somewhat naive. I had made the trip a day earlier and secured a place to live: $8.50 a week, upstairs with a bath at the end of the hall.

I had a job at the Montgomery Ward store as a stocker, but was subsequently laid off at the end of my second week. The pay was in cash and was delivered in a little brown envelope with the calculations for hours, the amount and the taxes, handwritten each Friday. My hourly rate was ninety cents. Thus the term “pay envelope” was an actuality in the 50s. I just remembered a short-term job I had in Abilene at S. H. Kress & Co. that also paid in cash in a little brown envelope.

I think it was at this time that the “mac and cheese” story occurred. We were literally out of money and getting very hungry. We did not go seeking for aid at the local welfare office. I do not think there was such a thing back then. We searched through the apartment and came up with a few coins. We went to the grocery store. The store had those little blue boxes of Kraft Dinner on the shelf for fourteen cents. We had barely enough. By the time we got back to the apartment, we were ready to eat and could hardly wait for the macaroni to cook. That stuff was good! I still like it to this day. It’s a kind of comfort food, sort of a memorial of being delivered from the pangs of hunger.

The way service stations looked in the 50s was a bit different than they do today. There were two gas pumps, regular and ethyl on an island in front. To pump gas (these were the newer electric kind with a little hand crank the side. By turning the crank, one cleared the previous sale. The numbers showed gallons and amount. There was no automatic stop when the tank got full, one had to let off on the lever on the handle on the nozzle, or one would wind up with gasoline on one or the car or the concrete driveway. There was a small office with a cash register and maybe some fan belts and filters hanging up on the wall. There was a pit that one walked down into so as to be able to reach the lower parts of a vehicle for oil changes and actually greasing the chassis parts (most vehicles today have sealed bearings and greasing is not possible).

My job in the service station business was repairing flat tires. The pay was a fifty cent commission per flat fixed. There were no machines in those days where the operator could push a button and the thing automatically separated the tire form the rim. The tires back then had tubes and had to be wrestled off the rims with what were called "tire tools" and a big hammer. They went back on the same way and often times, if one were not very careful a hole could be torn in the tube that had just been patched meaning a repeat process. Needless to say, even in those times, the 50 cents didn't always cover the sweat and skinned knuckles.

I remember a couple of times putting the Plymouth on the rack and removing the pan and rod caps and placing newspaper under the inserts to eliminate the knocking of the old worn-out engine for a few more miles. The Plymouth finally breathed its last and went to rest behind the station.

Money was tight. I had joined the Marine Corps Reserve in Abilene before I met Carolyn. In hindsight, joining the Marines sure complicated things in the beginning. Big Spring did not have a reserve unit. I had gone to Camp Pendleton with the 2nd 90mm Gun Battery in Waco earlier that summer. I was missing meetings and the Corps was threatening me with a full-time job, i.e., active duty. It was decision time. We decided to get ourselves somehow to the little town near Waco where my folks had just moved and regroup.

I still have a vivid memory of stranding on the deserted downtown street of Valley Mills, Texas, the lingering smell of diesel exhaust from a Trailways bus, the sounds of the driver going through the gears growing fainter, looking at my tired bride standing in the middle of tied up cardboard boxes of everything we owned at the time. It was midnight.