A Saturday Evening Post

A nine year old boy searches for crabs among the rocks as the tide rolls away from the shore, the little boy squints his eyes, trying to spot the crabs in the orange glow of the sunset. He shivers against the chill as the mist of the waves crashed against the bluffs. Sounds like the set of the movie Water Horse?  This was the setting my father grew up in back in the ‘Old Country’ in Scotland.

When they visited his grandparents in the country, the beach was as far from their front door as it would be to walk across the street. At the ages of nine and seven, they were expected to drive the cows into the barn using little sticks. My dad always felt a little ridiculous as such tiny boys, driving these huge animals with little sticks, but the cows moved. Once the cows were driven in, they had to shut them in, and shovel manure out the window of the barn.

In the 1950’s, Scotland’s economy had been beaten badly by WW 1 and it went through a deep recession in the 30’s and then WW 2 left them devastated. My grandmother only had shoes when the weather was too cold to go barefoot. Consequently, my father grew up poor. My grandfather worked as a construction worker, and did what he could for them. However, times were hard. They had a little house in Glasgow, as a little boy, my uncle was fascinated by the fire, he liked to throw things into it and watch them burn. He found a piece of paper on the table nearby and threw it into the flames, he was delighted as the fire caught it and the updraft carried it up the lum, (chimney). He was confused when his mother was not delighted. He discovered It was the rent for the week that had just literally ‘gone up in flames’. Later, the boys collected tobacco from old cigarette butts and put it in an old pipe and smoked it.

Extreme poverty was not the only problem, but there was also political and cultural turmoil. My grandfather fought in WW2 as a merchant marine, the branch of the military, that brought supplies to the military bases, but this story is not so simple. The Scots were allies of the United States, while the Irish army remained neutral and refused to help in the war. For Ireland, their neutrality was only to spite England. Irishmen who wanted to fight Hitler had to leave and enlist in the British army. In return, Ireland blacklisted these soldiers making it impossible to work in Ireland, so they moved to other countries.

You can imagine how conflicted a poor Irish boy growing up in Scotland might feel, as the emotional repercussions of this didn’t heal for decades. He was spared much of this conflict, as his family emigrated to Brooklyn when he was 10 years old. My grandfather was one of many who saw no future in Scotland and decided to move The United States.  My grandfather injured his eye while working in a construction company, instead of getting medical care, he was able to purchase the airfare for himself and wife and three children.

               My father met Richie in class that same fall, Richie was excited to meet this kid from Ireland. He pictured the adventurous Irish almost as vikings. Then he met Johnny, a bewildered kid who didn’t look like he was sure where he was, lost in this metropolis. It was a good thing for Johnny because Richie taught him the ropes of the big city.

               After school, Richie moved out to Eugene, Oregon and rented a house from a gentleman in the church. Richie was converted along with several other friends from New York, and rented the house together with Rodney (an Oregonian native, who was on the spectrum). Richie was enthusiastic about his new found faith, and in the summer of 1971 convinced, my father and a friend to come and ‘check it out’. My father rode freight trains as far as Pennsylvania till the cops caught him, and told him to go home. Instead, he hitchhiked from Pennsylvania to Oregon, and stayed with Richie and Rodney in the ‘boys’ house. Rodney constantly plagued him following him, reading scripture to him. It was an unwritten rule that they attended church and bible studies for the summer, So my dad did, till he returned to New York.

My dad hitchhiked back to New York to finish his education. While working in the monotonous, but dangerous labor of maintaining the underground network of pipes in New York, his thoughts frequently returned to those Bible studies. He couldn’t shake the feeling of how easy it would be for his life to end at any moment in the tunnels under the city. He never thought about where his soul would spend eternity until that summer. So the following summer he hitchhiked again from New York to Eugene.

               This time he studied with more purpose, but he claimed he always felt like he was waiting for a moment when he knew he was ready, he wasn’t sure what it was supposed to feel like. One day, a couple of his New York buddies came to the house and told him to get in the car, they flanked him, somewhat resembling a seen in the Godfather, like he was being kidnapped. Instead of taking him to a dark alley, they confronted him about his need for salvation. He says if they hadn’t done that he didn’t know if he ever would have been baptized. That was when he turned his life over to Christ.

Rodney baptized him in a pond in a park in Eugene. One of the beautiful things about being ‘on the spectrum’ is the lack of inhibitions that he had. He saw the condition of my father’s soul through a simpler lens. He simply understood that my father had not obeyed scripture. He was willing to tell him that his soul was not destined for heaven. God used his fervency to bring my father, and many others to Christ.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my grace is made perfect in weakness” -1 Corinthians 12:9

               Sometimes we know what we need to do, but we just need a little kick in the pants. In the case of my dad, God used imperfect people. To perfect my father To bring us to a point where we are ready to except his grace.   My dad’s destiny had long been influenced by his New York buddies, as has mine. The same buddies had decided to match him with my mom before he ever left New York! Turns out it was a good match and the rest is (my) history!