LOOK WHO'S TALKING!

  

Let the one among you who is without sin

be the first to throw a stone at her. In response

they walked away one by one,

beginning with the elders.

John 8

Like many people today, I have had more than one job. I grew up milking cows, feeding chickens, herding pigs and loading lumber. I once loaded semi-trucks at a pickle factory. I have been a groundskeeper at a hospital, an orderly in an emergency room, a house painter, a garbage truck driver, a desk clerk, a bar tender and a campground minister for the United Church of Christ in Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. As a priest, besides being a pastor of several parishes, I used to write for THE RECORD every week for 15 years. I served as one of the trustees on the J. Graham Brown Foundation Board here in Louisville, making large monetary grants to charitable and educational organizations all over the state. I traveled all over this country and nine other countries giving retreats to priests, bishops and seminarians. I was a campus minister at Somerset Community College down in southern Kentucky and here at Bellarmine University. I developed a major continuing education program, did spiritual direction, built a teaching kitchen and coffee shop and taught classes at Saint Meinrad Seminary over in Indiana. I have published a few books, renovated several houses, and in retirement, renovated my old grade school and unused rectory down in Meade County into a new Family Life Center and Guest House. I was a volunteer in the Caribbean Missions for several years. Right now, I am sponsoring a seminarian in Tanzania and trying to finish building a church in Kenya. After all that, you might say that "I've never been able to hold a job!" 

One of the last jobs I had over at Saint Meinrad Seminary, before I retired, was to teach two classes a week to the guys who were about to be ordained priests in the spring. That class was entitled "The Transition Out of the Seminary and Into Pastoral Ministry." We covered most of the issues they would face in their first several months. Some have compared their transition out of the seminary and into parishes to that of leaving home, graduating from school, beginning a career, getting married and starting a family - but all at once. Some things we covered were of a very practical nature, like paying taxes and starting a saving plan for retirement, while other things were more psychological like dealing with the grief of going off and leaving their seminary friends after many years and the anxiety of entering a strange new community of people as a new priest.

One of the important subjects we covered was "how to enter a parish." I spoke of things like going in and establishing trust and building a bond with people before they even thought about correcting people from the pulpit. It seemed that some priests just couldn’t wait to get ordained so they could condemn other people’s sins! I spoke specifically about how unwise it is for them to say things in a homily like "you people" and how much better it is to say things like "we sinners." I warned them specifically about obsessing about condemning sexual immorality all the time. In my book, doing that always says more about the people doing the condemning than those they condemn!

This is exactly the issue Jesus dealt with in today's gospel – a bunch of salivating religious fundamentalists who just couldn’t wait to have a poor woman stoned to death for committing adultery!  The last time I checked, it takes two to commit adultery. Since the text says she had been “caught in the very act of committing adultery,” I have always wondered where the man was and why they were not as eager to stone him! This story has three scenes. Let's look at them one at a time.

(1)The religious authorities drag a poor woman into an open area where Jesus was teaching and make her stand there humiliated. She had just been caught in adultery. Yes, she was obviously used in the committing of adultery, but the religious authorities were also using her themselves - this time to trap Jesus in his speech so they could have something for which to condemn him! They thought they had a perfect trap because, on one hand, if he was too lenient, they could say "Aha! See! He teaches something different from Moses who told us that such women were to be stoned to death!" That could get him labeled as a heretic. If he were to be in favor of stoning her, then they could say on the other hand, "Aha! See! He is not as merciful and forgiving as he has been saying he is!" That would turn the crowds against him!

(2) In the second scene, Jesus realizes that they are using her to set up a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" trap for him, so he doesn't answer one way or another! Instead, he just stoops down and writes on the ground with his finger. What was he writing? No one knows, but some say he was simply making a list of their sins in the dirt. Once he had written his list of their sins, he stands up and says to those who were so anxious to stone the poor woman, "Let the one among you has never sinned yourself be the first to throw a stone at her!" With that he stooped down again and continued to add to his list of their sins.

(3) Jesus did not have to say much after that because her condemners began to drop their heads, to drop their rocks, and to drop out of the crowd one-by-one. It even says, "They walked away, one by one, beginning with the older ones." I suppose the longer we live, the more sins we commit. This leaves Jesus and the poor woman there alone. He stands up and says to her, "Neither do I condemn you! Go, and don't commit this sin again!" 

By saying that, Jesus does not wink at the seriousness of the sin committed, he merely means that we would all be better off if we spent more time being outraged at our own sins and less time being outraged by the sins of others. Rather than focusing on the woman's sin alone, by his actions Jesus simply says that everybody that day was in need of forgiveness. Jesus offered the grace and mercy of God to all equally - scribes, Pharisees, the woman, all who witnessed this event and all of us who have heard it read aloud again today.

Fellow Catholics! Jesus spoke to us often about judging others. He told us not to judge, lest we be judged. He told us not to go around looking for specs of sin in other people eyes when we have a 2 X 4 sticking out of our own and that we need to remove that 2 X 4 first. He told us that the measure we use to measure others will be used to measure us! He told us to forgive and we will be forgiven. He told us that all we can see are externals and only God can see into the heart! Sin is real! Sin is destructive - to ourselves and to others! We need, each of us, to become as outraged about our own sins as we do the sins of others.

When I taught young priests of tomorrow, some of whom were so anxious to get out there and condemn sin, I would tell them a story from my early priesthood that I am reminded of every time I read this gospel. There was a radio preacher in the area where I worked who loved to be on the radio to rant and rave about "sexual promiscuity in our culture today." He even went so far as to host a huge bon fire in front of his church one Saturday where he invited people to bring what he called their “dirty magazines, obscene clothing and other filth." The fire that day was huge. The following Monday, he ran off with the church's teenaged organist! As Shakespeare said. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks!" Personally, I have always preferred how Billy Graham put it when he said, "It's the Holy Spirit's job to convict, God's job to judge and my job to love."

Fellow Catholics! With what's left of this Lent, let us examine our own consciences, let us resolve to let go of our own sinful ways, let us rely on the mercy and compassion of God and let us offer that same mercy and compassion to our fellow believers who have also sinned!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP" 2025 #14

 

MY TIME AS A DESK CLERK, BARTENDER AND WINE STEWARD  

In the summer of 1968, when I was working at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon as part of the United Church of Christ's "A Christian Ministry in the National Parks" program for seminary students, I had a paying job in the main Lodge - several paying jobs in fact. My main job was the night desk clerk. Because I was 24 and most of the other student workers were under 21, I was a fill-in for the bartender in the bar and wine steward in the dining room. 

As the night desk clerk, I had to check people in who came late, answer the phone for calls from the rooms and be a guard over the front door. There was a "snack rack" at the desk where people could buy late night snacks. I am sure the Lodge lost money on that enterprise because every time I turned my head or got distracted by a phone call, the other student workers would steal candy bars and bags of peanuts and pretzels by the hands full. I never got blamed because I don't think anyone ever took an inventory of the situation. 

One night, a couple arrived late for their reservation which they had guaranteed. I helped them take their luggage up the steps (no elevator) to the third floor. I put the key in the door of their room and turned on the lights. I heard a young woman and a young man dive under the covers and yell out it shock! I quickly, turn off the lights and shut the door. I told the couple that I must have read the room number wrongly. I apologized and we went back downstairs and found another room for the night. What actually happened was two of the student workers, thinking the room had not been bought, decided to "occupy" it for their own entertainment! I said nothing and they said nothing the next day!

The only real "disaster" that summer was the night some parents brought their little girl in the front door who had been "slapped" by a bear. She had opened the camper door to go to the nearby bathroom and the light scared a bear who was prowling right outside. The light scared the bear and so he slapped at the light and his claws drew several lines down her neck from her ears to her chest! Her clothes were soaked with blood. Her parents were screaming and holding her out toward me and looking at me to "do something." I really did not know what to do, but call the Park Ranger Station to come get her and take her to the hospital or at least offer first aid! It was so cold that night that the blood had quit flowing from her multiple scratches. The coldness made it coagulate. The Park Rangers got there in a few minutes and took her and her parents away - supposedly to the hospital. 

----

In the dining room, my job was to filet a cooked trout at the table. I learned how to remove the skeleton of a trout in one piece. Another of my jobs was to open bottles of wine and champagne bottles for special occasions.  I knew how to uncork a wine bottle, but I knew nothing about opening champagne bottles. I remember clearly my very first effort at table side. It was the couple's anniversary. I stood near the table, not paying attention to where I was pointing the bottle, easing the cork out with my thumb. All of a sudden the cork came out and hit the woman in her temple with a loud pop! One of the waiters came rushing over to tell me that I needed "to always put a white towel over the cork when opening champagne!" The woman was very gracious about the catastrophe and the man did not insist on suing the Lodge for my mistake, but I learned an important lesson that I remember every time I open a champagne bottle!  

----

As a bartender, I was what you would call "definitely untrained." I knew so little that I had to read the book discretely placed under the bar and out of sight each time I mixed a drink. People knew I was a student and so sometimes they would tell me what they wanted and how to mix it. I am sure they got more liquor in their drink than I was supposed to pour, but nobody mentioned it out loud. 

I especially remember an older woman who sat at the bar on a bar stool so she could talk and enjoy one martini after another. At some point, I thought she was getting to her "limit" so I prepared myself to say "enough!" As she started on the "last" martini I served her, she tried to drink it all with one sweep! She leaned forward at first and then started to lean back, but continued to lean back until she fell completely backwards and onto the floor! She got up, brushed herself off, wiped her lips with a cocktail napkin and said "thank you very much" as she disappeared waddling up the steps to her room! 

On my last night as a fill-in bar tender, there was a "tradition" that I did not know about! To celebrate the occasion, bartenders had to consume a famous "Volcano" drink which consisted of a jigger of everything in the bar! I am not much of a drinker, beyond a gin and tonic maybe once a month, but I was not about to break a sacred Crater Lake "tradition." It was a nasty drink, but I did finish it. As I was finishing it, I couple feel my limbs going numb so I timed myself to head to my room as soon as I could finish. 

I started up the steps. I made it up to the second floor. As I started up the steps to the third floor I was using my hands to reach for the steps until I reached the third floor. By the time I reached the fourth floor, I was on my hands and knees. Having reached the fourth floor where the student workers lived, I crawled down the hallway to my room and pulled myself up by the doorknob and fell into my bed. I don't remember the rest of the night, but I certainly woke up with one gigantic headache the next day! 

I found out that day that I had earned the right to have my name engraved on the bar's "hero plaque" for finishing a "Volcano!" I guess you can say that that was the last time I have been called a "traditionalist" - right there in a national park bar back in 1968! 

MY SIX SIBLINGS

 

EASTER 1958?

FRONT ROW L to R: Nancy Louise, Lois Ann and Catherine Marie (Kaye) who died a few years ago of a brain tumor. 

BACK ROW L to R: James Ronald, Brenda Jean and William Gary

In 1958, my youngest brother, Mark Anthony, had not been born yet. He was born June 2, 1961 while I was in minor seminary at St. Thomas Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.  

Yesterday, he found out that he had just escaped a major health crisis - the second in his life. When my mother was pregnant with him, her doctor told her that she would almost certainly deliver a "dead fetus." He came out very much alive! He spent a few days in an incubator, but has been healthy ever since. 

He attributes this recent escape from a major health crisis at age 63 to the many prayers offered for him even by people he does not know. 

THE JONAH COMPLEX

    The Convenience of Playing Small

THE SIN OF WHAT WE HAVE FAILED TO DO

The word of the Lord came to Jonah: Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and preach against it; for their wickedness has come before me. But Jonah made ready to flee to Tarshish, away from the Lord. He found a ship, paid the fare, and went away from the Lord.

Jonah 1:1-3

In the first pages of the Bible, we are told that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. This mystery both triggers fear and fascination causing us to attempt to be more than we are or less than we are, but not fully who we are. As Abraham Maslow said, “We both crave and fear becoming truly ourselves.”

This is a very old problem. It goes all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve. According to that story, at the end of creation God, humans and the animals lived in harmony. They were interconnected and interdependent. As a colorful Baptist preacher said at one of my graduations, “In the beginning, God was happy being God. The animals were happy being animals. Human beings, however, have never been happy being human beings. They've wanted to be God one day and animals the next!” Because we are created in the image and likeness of God, we all have the chance to become our very best selves. We all feel something inside, a quiet “maybe” that is often silenced as quickly as it surfaces. We enjoy and even thrill before the godlike possibilities we see in ourselves and simultaneously shiver with fear before these very same possibilities. As a result, the overwhelming majority of people fail to achieve a life even close to what they are capable of achieving.  In face of their godlike possibilities, they let their fear of possibilities overpower their thrill of possibilities. Afraid of being different, afraid of being uncomfortable and unsafe, afraid of failure and ridicule, they give into their innate tendency towards mediocrity and conformity, even to the point of sabotaging their dreams for the sake of comfort and safety. However, if they deliberately settle on being less than they are capable of being, they will be deeply unhappy for the rest of their lives.

“We both crave and fear becoming truly ourselves.” I read recently that obesity is growing in our culture, but narcissism is grower even faster.

Narcissism is the term used to describe excessive vanity and self-centeredness. The condition was named after a mythological Greek youth named Narcissus who became infatuated with his own reflection in a lake. He did not realize at first that it was his own reflection, but when he did, he died out of grief for having fallen in love with himself. 

Narcissistic personalities are characterized by unwarranted feelings of self-importance. They expect to be recognized as superior and special, without necessarily demonstrating superior accomplishments. They exhibit a sense of entitlement, demonstrate grandiosity in their beliefs and behaviors and display a strong need for admiration which might explain a rise in bullying among the young.  

Some believe that our culture’s present narcissism epidemic, the fixation on indulging and exalting oneself, can be traced to the heyday of the self-esteem movement that baby boomer parents, teachers and media gurus promoted several years ago. Rather than stoking healthy self-confidence, as was their intent, such messages may be responsible for a decline in the work ethic and a growth in feelings of entitlement and inflated egos.

When narcissistic people talk about church attendance, they usually say things like “I don’t go because I don’t get anything out of it!” “I, I, I!” When they say things like that, they put themselves in the center of the picture. It’s all about them! Church attendance is really about giving, not getting. We go to Church to give God worship and praise! We go to learn to give and serve others!  

When narcissistic people talk about marriage, they talk about what it will do for them. They are like that woman in an old Guinness Book of Records with the most marriages. When she was asked about it, she said, “All I ever wanted was someone to love me!” No wonder she failed at it so many times. People who marry successfully get married to be love-givers, not love-getters! As Jesus said, “It is in giving that one receives!” Receiving is not a goal, but a by-product, of the marriage or ordination commitment. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “There are two sacraments directed toward the salvation of others: Holy Orders and Matrimony. Just as priests are not ordained for their own benefit, but for the benefit of those they serve, married people marry for the benefit of their spouses and their children.”

When narcissistic diocesan priests talk, they tend to focus on what the Church owes them, focus on the imagined privileges other priests have that they don’t have and even act out to stand out. They demand to be treated as special, even without demonstrating any special qualities.   

When narcissistic young people talk about what to do with their lives, they usually ask themselves “what do I want to do or what do I want to be” that will make me happy? The real question is not what do we want to do, but what is God calling us to do and be” that will lead us to happiness?  Jesus was right, “Those who seek to save their lives will lose them, while those who seek to give their lives away, will save them.”  Albert Schweitzer was right when he said, and narcissistic people will never get it, “The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found out how to serve.”

Pope Francis talks a lot about a “self-referential church,” in other words a narcissistic church. He says that when the Church does not look beyond itself, when it is always focused on itself, it gets sick. The Church is the moon and Christ is the sun. The Church exists to reflect the light of Christ to the world, not to live within herself, of herself and for herself. 

The other extreme to narcissism is self-deprecation or the minimization and devaluation of oneself. Humility is about accepting the truth about who we are, without exaggerating it or minimizing it. “Humility” comes from the Latin “humus,” meaning “earth.” “Humility” means “grounded.” A truly “humble” person, truly in touch with his strengths and weaknesses, neither inflates his worth nor devalues it. Humility is ultimately about truth.

It is this truth that Jesus spent his ministry trying to teach. He taught it to the religious leaders of his day who were so arrogant and self-inflated that they started out talking about God and ended up thinking they were gods. He taught it to the marginalized of his day who were so beaten down that they did not recognize their own goodness and the image of God within themselves.  All this is summarized so well in the Magnificat when Mary talked about the “mighty being pulled from their thrones and the lowly being lifted up from their dunghills.”

God has entrusted gifts to us to be used! When we do not use our gifts, even deny we have them, we neither serve God nor the people we are called to serve. Jesus told us that we are the light of the world, our light is not to be hidden, but shared with the world.  When they are shared, the credit is not to be absorbed by us as if we were the source of that light, but that credit is to be reflected back to God. Seeing our light, people are to give God the glory and praise.         

This is why I love that little sawed-off guy in the gospels, named Zacchaeus! He wanted to get a glimpse of Jesus coming down the road, but he was too short to see above the crowd! He could have said, "Oh, well, maybe next time," but he didn't. He found an alternative. We are told that he "ran ahead" and "climbed a sycamore tree"  alongside the road where Jesus would be passing by.  Because of his ingenuity and determination, Zacchaeus not only got to see Jesus,  but because Jesus was able to see Zacchaeus in the tree and because Jesus admired his determination, Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus' house for dinner!

”Nothing stings like the realization of a missed opportunity, but what stings even more is the realization of a refused calling. In that arena, the prophet Jonah is a patron saint.

Jonah was called to preach to the people of Ninevah.  He considered himself a poor preacher on one hand and the Ninevites not worth saving on the other. To get away from his unwelcomed call, he went down to the docks and bought a ticket on the next ship sailing in the opposite direction from Ninevah. He thought he could outrun God!

In his version of a get-away-car, Jonah is pictured going to sleep in the bottom of his boat while a storm raged, a symbol today of “denial.” The psychologist Abraham Maslow calls such spiritual and emotional truancy the Jonah Complex: “The evasion of one’s own growth, the setting of low levels of aspiration, the fear of doing what one is capable of doing, voluntary self-crippling, pseudo-stupidity, mock humility.”

We are afraid of failure and success. A calling makes us wonder if we are good enough, smart enough, disciplined enough, educated enough, patient enough, and inspired enough. We manage our fear by “going to sleep,” “settling for too little” and “self-sabotage.”

The truth is this: all of us have answered “yes” in some areas and “no” in others. We both crave and fear becoming who we are called to be!

There is also the underlying fear of being seen by others as self-centered, arrogant, and living a life’s that extraordinary and hence unacceptable. Here we reserve a special kind of ridicule and resentment against those who are more successful or talented than the majority. We often punish our best talent and coddle mediocrity. There is a lot of pressure to conform, as mediocrity is granted more acceptance while giftedness often means being differentiated to the point of isolation, and standing out can mean getting shot down more easily because the target is clearer that way. It is understandable why many people would prefer succumbing to a simple life meeting their basic needs, and actually being rewarded by the institution for it, instead of battling it out in the bloody road towards self-actualization.

Thomas Merton was right, “The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.” Sometimes,  under mock humility, we set low aims for ourselves and call it virtue. The possibility of becoming remarkable shoots a thunderbolt of fear into many unremarkable people.  As the Confiteor says, maybe our biggest sin is not what we do, but what we fail to do! Michelangelo put it this way. “The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” 

 

CAN'T SEE OR WON'T SEE?

 

If you were blind, that would not be a sin. But

since you say you can see, when you are actually

blind, you remain in your sin.

John 9:41

So far, we have been to the desert, the mountain and the well. Today, Jesus invites us to admit that we either can’t see or won’t see and invites us to go to the eye-doctor to have our eyes “checked.”

Tyler Perry is a successful African-American playwright, actor and screenwriter. Perry attributes his success to what he calls “spiritual progress,” especially the “spiritual progress” that resulted in making peace with his own father. One of his profound insights was around learning that “parents do what they know how.” He finally realized that he could not change his history with his father, but he could change the way he wanted to remember it! “My life changed,” he said, “once things changed in me!”

I, too, had to learn how resentment can keep you stuck and how you can free yourself by going to an “eye doctor” and have your eyes opened. The ability to see in a new way is like being let out of prison, having your chains cut and throwing off a heavy load of stinking garbage. Like Tyler Perry, it was only when I chose to “see my past in a new way” that I was no longer a victim of it.

We cannot do anything about our pasts, but we can choose whether we want to be victims of it. Once I began to understand that my own father “did what he knew how,” I was able to move from anger to compassion. I constantly thank God that I was able to bury all that resentment, even before I buried him!

“Seeing in a new way” is exactly the conclusion Jesus came to in his search for clarity during his forty days in the desert. Coming out of the desert, he began to preach “conversion.” That conversion is summed up in the Greek word “metanoia.” “Metanoiete” means “you, change the way you see!” Change the way you look at things and heaven will open up to you. Once things change in you, things around you will look very different.” The devil tried to get Jesus to change things. Jesus resisted that temptation. Instead, Jesus called for an internal change within people, believing that if people would change inside, things outside them would also change. A new life begins with having your eyes opened!

Today we have a wonderful story about a bunch of blind people: one who can’t see and others who won’t see. All of them need Jesus in order to be able to “see.” In this wonderful story, Jesus uses the occasion of healing physical blindness to tell us something about the healing of spiritual blindness.

The man born blind, not only regains his physical sight, but step-by-step he begins to see Jesus in a new way. At first, he says he tells people he doesn’t know who this Jesus is who healed him. As the story unfolds, he calls Jesus a “prophet” and finally “Lord.” 

The Pharisees and his parents can see physically, but they are spiritually blind and refuse “to see in a new way.” The Pharisees are blinded by their own rigid religious structures. They can’t see the beauty of this great healing, a blind man getting his sight. All they can see is that this healing took place on the Sabbath day and healing was illegal on the Sabbath. The parents are blinded by their fear of being ostracized by neighbors, friends and organized religion if they admitted to this healing. They conveniently choose not to know and not to see. “Ask him,” they say, “he is old enough to speak for himself.” Both Pharisees and parents are afraid of “seeing in a new way” because it would mean their cozy little routines would be disrupted. It was convenient for them not to see and so remain stuck in their chosen blindness.

I am amazed when I talk to “stuck” people. I believe that most people who are stuck are basically people who are blinded by “the way they see,” by their inability to “see in a new way.” They whine and cry and wait to be rescued, but they cannot change their minds and look at their situations from a new angle. They can’t “let go” of their old way of thinking and seeing, and so remain stuck in their blindness. They are like the monkeys I read about several years ago. To catch these monkeys for the zoo, people would cut a hole in a tree, just small enough for a monkey to put its his hand into. Then they fill it with peanuts. When the monkey sticks his hand into the hole and grabs the peanuts, he cannot pull his hand back out. Instead of letting go of the peanuts, they howl and cry till someone comes and hauls them off to the zoo. All they had to do was to let go of their grip on the peanuts. People are a lot like that! They cannot let go of the way they see things and so remain trapped, whining and crying all the while.

Some people simply cannot “let go” of the way they see things. They clutch at beliefs like: life ought to be fair, parents ought to be perfect, spouses should not let each other down, the church ought to be perfect, things ought to make sense and people ought to respect you, love you and meet your needs. And, of course, when life isn’t fair, when parents and churches aren’t perfect, when spouses let them down, when things don’t make sense and when people do not meet their needs, they fall apart and remain stuck in their belief that if they just don’t like it enough, it will go away. All they would have to do to free themselves is to “let go” of their old beliefs and “see things in a new way.”

Jesus was right, “If you were physically blind, there is no sin in that, but when you choose to be blind, your sin remains, you keep your own suffering going.” Tyler Perry is right, too, when he says, “My life changed once things changed in me.” As one of my favorite old saying goes, "It's easier to put on slippers than it is to carpet the world!" It's easier to change ourselves than it is to change everybody else! 

What about you? What situations do you need to “look at” in a new way? What people do you need to “look at” in a new way? Is the way you have been “looking at” these situations and people still causing you pain? Maybe it's an old relationship that didn't work out, someone who did something to hurt you in the past, a business partner who stole from you, a relative who cheated you, a change in the church you didn't like or a child or sibling who disappointed you! If so, ask God for healing! Ask God for a new set of eyes! Once things change in you, life around you will change for the better for you! Sometimes, all you have to do is to "let go" of those "peanuts" you are holding onto by "choosing to change the way you look at the grip you have on them!"

 

 

"YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP" 2025 #13

 

ALL JACKED UP AND TOO HEAVY TO LIFT

At the end of my summer, working in Crater Lake National Park and preaching in the campgrounds on the weekends for the United Church of Christ, I had to find a cheap way to get home. I was actually thinking of delivering the tractor section of a tractor-trailer rig from California to somewhere in the Midwest. That would probably not have been a good idea, but I did actually entertain the idea. A young man, who also worked at the Lodge,  had driven out west in a 1953 Buick from Connecticut, wanted to go back there on a motorcycle and wanted to get rid of his old car. He was willing to give it to anybody for free. 

The Buick’s right front tire had come off on a California highway on his trip out West and had to be welded back on which meant that it could never be changed. The compression in the engine was so bad that the only way to get it started was to get a push on a hill. He gave me the keys and signed the ownership papers over to me and dared me to drive it back to Kentucky. 

Another student, who was going my way, and I got a push in front of the Lodge to start our 2600-mile trip home. We always parked on a hill and never turned off the ignition. We did have one flat tire in Wyoming, but it was miraculously on the front left, not the front right. There was so little traffic for miles and miles that we barely pulled it off the road. All you could see in all directions was tumbleweed  We found a bumper jack in the trunk and started to jack up the car to change the tire. When we got to the top of the jack, we noticed that the car was still sitting on the blacktop. The car was so heavy and the bottom plate of the jack was so thin that the post, instead of lifting the car, had pierced the plate and had been driven down into the asphalt. 

Panic set in! We were in the middle of nowhere, twenty miles from the small town of Medicine Bow, Wyoming. We had two trunks full of clothes and the other things we owned. No one was driving by, especially people who would pick up two rough looking young men in a broken down 1953 Buick with two trunks! 

We tried our best to pull the jack post out of the asphalt and try it again, but it would not budge! Trying to pack our stuff into the trunk, if we were forced to hitchhike to the next town, I found a second jack. It was a miracle find for sure! This time it was a scissors-jack. We were able to jack-up the car, change the tire and continue our trip after having been saved by not one miracle, but two! 

To this day, I have always worried about going off and leaving that bumper jack pole sticking up out of the asphalt for someone to hit, but there was absolutely nothing we could do to dislodge it, even with the car's bumper. We were forced to go off and leave it! 

Somewhere in Missouri, we experienced our third miracle. We never turned off the motor unless we were on a hill where we could "pop the clutch" to get it started. We stopped at a restaurant and instead of leaving the motor running, I accidently turned it off! After we ate, we came out to the car and could not get it started. We were forced to call AAA for help that we could not afford. While we were waiting for them to show up, I tried starting it one more time. Miraculously, it started just as the AAA truck was pulling into the parking lot! We gunned it and peeled out of the parking lot without drawing attention and getting a hefty bill from the AAA truck driver!  

We finally made it to Kentucky, but the car never started again no matter how many attempts I made! My only regret was that I did not store it in some barn so that it could be restored in a few years. The body, the exterior paint job, the chrome, the upholstery and interior were in perfect condition. Over the years, it completely rusted in a field beside a farmer's barn. 

The Buick’s former owner, who gave me the car, showed up at the seminary on his motorcycle a few weeks after school started because he did not believe that we had made it. Obviously, he did not believe in miracles! 

PS

My brother Mark was telling his friend Aubrey about my flat tire experience in Wyoming. He thought it was so funny, he did a watercolor of the scene. Notice the "jack" in the middle of the road, near the center line! 

                                                                                                               by AUBREY