Analogue of a Lifetime

Dad
April 7, 2003

DFO 135312/82

(These items recalled purely from memory after 64 years!—For your encouragement!)

1. 1919: BORN FEBRUARY 18th, two o'clock in the afternoon‚ Tuesday‚ just three months after World War 1, in a tiny wooden four-room cabin at 1325 52 Ave. in the poor Melrose District of Oakland, California, across the Bay from San Francisco‚ during the Worldwide Spanish Influenza epidemic which killed four million people & almost killed my Mother & me, as she had it when I was born, & I had it after I was born!

2. I CAN STILL REMEMBER THAT LITTLE COTTAGE VERY WELL: It had a screened porch‚ a living room/dining room combined‚ kitchen & two small bedrooms with bath between. I can even remember the location of some of the furniture, although we only lived there for a couple years after I was born. Weighed 11 pounds, breastfed!

3. FATHER—POOR SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD ACCOUNTING CLERK, & sometimes brakeman. Swedish immigrant son of an even poorer Swedish immigrant shoemaker. Mother—German-Jewish-French-English housewife & sometimes lecturer for welfare causes, erstwhile atheist, recently saved & healed & raised from her deathbed only a little over a year before, to give her testimony & preach the Gospel. Daughter of a millionaire German-Jewish father, preacher, lecturer, college president, World traveller, author‚ investor & stock market gambler. He had bet on Kaiser Wilhelm to win World War 1, & therefore had just been nearly wiped out financially by the crash of the German Mark, & only held together by his other investments, still preaching, pastoring & holding evangelistic meetings. Builder of 50 Christian Churches in his lifetime, winner of many souls & recruited over 400 men for the Ministry!

4. 1920: LOVED TO TAKE FERRY TRIPS ACROSS SAN FRANCISCO BAY to the old Ferry Building & then a streetcar tram to Golden Gate Park with my Mother & nurses. Particularly fond of the Kiddycar Train & the spiral slide & the Japanese Tea Garden & climbing over its very steep bridge. Also loved to go from there to Fisherman's Wharf & watch them bring in their catches & eat clam chowder, & from there to Cliffhouse to hear all the strange music boxes which played instruments, the World's first methods of musical recordings. Also liked to watch the seals play around on Seal Rock just offshore in the Pacific.

5. OFTEN VISITED MY RICH AUNT ELLEN, MY FATHER'S OLDER SISTER at her lovely home in the formerly exclusive section of Oakland at 21 Westall Avenue, where I played with my little cousin Genie Boy, as we called him then‚ later Dr. Homer Brugge, a famous eye surgeon, renowned for over 2,000 corneal eye transplants! My Aunt had made her mint with a chain of millinery shops, or hat stores, at the direction of a Ouija Board, & did not favour our religion.

6. 1922: THREE YEARS OLD. WE WERE INVITED TO JOIN MY GRANDFATHER IN SOME OF HIS MEETINGS IN OKLAHOMA & hold our own meetings at some of his pastorates there. Had my foot crushed in an automobile accident on the way near Kansas City & was miraculously healed. Lived in a big old white two-story frame house next to the convent in Vinita, Oklahoma, had big German police dog named Ring.

7. 1923: FOUR YEARS OLD. MADE TRIP BACK TO CALIFORNIA to visit relatives & our 12-car auto caravan got lost in the Mojave Desert for three days without food & water, before found by Sheriff's posse. Then journeyed for meetings into Northern Canada at Owen Sound on Hudson Bay. I had my first real taste of real Winter, ice & snow, sledding, sleigh rides, & loved it!

8. 1924: HAD MY FIFTH BIRTHDAY IN THE PARSONAGE OF MY FATHER'S PASTORATE IN VIRGINIA HIGHLANDS JUST OUTSIDE WASHINGTON, D.C. Had had Christmas there also, along with the mumps! Got my first real wind-up train, burned my toy wooden car accidentally on top of the oil heater & fell through the ice into icy water in the basement of a house under construction‚ barely rescued by my brother! Rode my tricycle over to see my girlfriend about a block away, but hid under the table when she came out to see me.

9. LOVED TO VISIT WASHINGTON MONUMENT & THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE MUSEUM, especially the gem & jungle exhibits‚ & vividly remember the stuffed animals, particularly a poor sheep being torn alive by two eagles, & a shrunken head from the headhunters of South America! Camped our way South to Miami‚ Florida where Mother held a tent revival which grew into the great Miami Gospel Tabernacle seating 5,000 people, packed nightly!—Still stands on N.W. 5th Ave. & 33rd St.

10. 1925: HAD MY SIXTH BIRTHDAY IN A SMALL MIAMI APARTMENT NEARBY, then moved to a huge three-story eight–bedroom mansion on Bayshore Drive across from the Episcopalian Cathedral & the Miami Public Library where Jordan Marsh Department Store now stands. Loved to fish from the pier jutting out into Biscayne Bay just across the street. Drove my first truck & smoked my first cigar & had both eyes burned blind by a gas water heater explosion, but miraculously healed by my Mother's & old Leland Valentine's prayers!

11. 1926: SEVEN YEARS OLD. MOVED TO OUR NEW HOUSE AT 2119 NORTHWEST 24th STREET, in what was a middle-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Miami, 27th Avenue being the last borderline before the swamps of the Everglades only six blocks away. Started first grade at Comstock School under Miss Twitty.

12. EXPERIENCED MY FIRST HURRICANE, the biggest one that ever hit Miami‚ killed 2‚000 people, destroyed many homes & buildings, including the 12-story Meyer-Kaiser Building in downtown Miami, & left many boats on Flaggler Street & Biscayne Boulevard & in Biscayne Bayfront Park, including Kaiser Wilhelm's four–masted schooner-yacht. Destroyed our awnings & windows & warped our flooded wooden floor, but the concrete block home withstood the blast & we survived safely, thank the Lord—even our cardboard Cellotex cottage out back with old Leland Valentine, due to his prayers! (373:109.)

13. HURRICANE DESTROYED MOTHER'S NEWLY-BUILT TABERNACLE as a sign that God was not pleased with mammoth buildings & her pastoring when she should have been on the Evangelistic road following her first calling as an Evangelist. …

14. 1927: EIGHT YEARS OLD & IN SECOND GRADE, loved school & studies & teachers & pretty girls, but hated the rough always-fighting little all–American boys who always picked on the preacher's kid. Travelled on the road with my Mother & sister for the Summer, holding meetings & raising money to rebuild the Tabernacle, returning to the third grade in the Fall.

15. 1928: NINE YEARS OLD, STILL IN THIRD GRADE AT COMSTOCK SCHOOL, & STILL LIVING AT 2119 NORTHWEST 24th STREET. Tabernacle rebuilt, but Mother having trouble with Black Hand Mafia & Communist[s] of Miami. The Miami Boom burst, thousands of people left, crowds down to 500, & Tabernacle feeding hundreds of destitute poor in soup line at the beginning of the Great Depression.

16. ALTHOUGH WE WERE STILL LIVING AT 2119 NORTHWEST 24th STREET, we got fed up with the very rough lower-class crowd & their tough children who were moving into our neighbourhood & filling up my grade school, so my folks moved me. So in 1929 at ten years of age I began the fourth grade in the Buena Vista Grammar School, Northeast 2nd Avenue. I loved my new school & my new grade & my new teacher, dear old Mrs. Rice, who used to read us lots of stories & books about Russia & the Russians.

17. HAD MY FIRST BICYCLE & LOVED TO PLAY TENNIS at Buena Vista Park near the school. My Father usually drove us to school in his little Ford coupe with the rumble seat & sometimes also home, but I often walked home reading a book the whole three miles. That was also the year of the great Black-Monday October financial crash when the stock market collapsed, which is often designated as the true beginning of the Great Depression.

18. 1930: 11 YEARS OLD IN THE FIFTH GRADE, Mrs. Rice still our teacher, loved her very much, middle-aged grey-haired lady, very sweet but stern & firm. Loved to read, read many books, beginning with the Edgar Rice Burroughs science fiction & Tarzan books given me by a lady friend of my Mother's who was fond of me & brought me a new one every week, bringing it to church on Sundays, so I was reading a full–length novel every week at the age of 11!

19. 1931: 12 YEARS OLD & IN SIXTH GRADE, BEGAN HAVING SEMEN WHEN I JACKED OFF, which I had done frequently since the age of three. My Father gave me the usual sex lecture, but I'd already read many books on the subject & may have known more about it than he did. Loved girls, wanted them badly‚ but too shy, skinny & not very good-looking or attractive & not at all popular, as I was a loner, being both a preacher's kid‚ a Christian, a good student & a bookworm, already nicknamed "Professor" by ridiculing fellow students who didn't do so well—real devils!

20. 1932: 13 YEARS OLD & A GREAT YEAR! MOVED UP TO 7th GRADE, FIRST YEAR IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL AT ROBERT E. LEE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL, with Matti Mack Jones as our Principal & Ms. Robertson as homeroom English teacher, a beautiful young single with whom I promptly fell madly in love & who liked me a lot too. We were very close. Loved the new subjects of Geography & History & Anatomy. Used to jack-off to pictures of naked women in the Health-Science book.

21. THE WORLD WAS IN THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION‚ our church was down to a handful & our own family had to move out of our beautiful home into the back Cellotex cottage in order to rent it out to some wealthy members of our church, the Sater Family‚ at $50 a month for income, which was a lot of money in those days! The church offerings running as little as $10 a week to support a family of 12‚ my Mother & Father, brother & sister & myself & uncle & the rest of our household staff! Meals out were a real treat & only cost from 15 to 25 cents per seven-course dinner at nice restaurants downtown. Milk ten-cents a quart, bread ten-cents a loaf, gasoline ten-cents a gallon‚ ice ten cents for 25 pounds, & electric refrigerators, neon lights & radios just becoming popular. FDR was first elected President & remained so for 12 years, bringing in liquor, Socialism & first U.S. recognition of Communist Russia.

22. 1933: 14 YEARS OLD IN 8th GRADE, LOVED NEW SUBJECTS, MANUAL ARTS, liked to make things with my hands, won a prize for a draftsmanship drawing‚ liked to make booklets & won a prize for my illustrated booklet on the anopheles mosquito. Also loved new subject called General Languages, which really was etymology, the study of words & their roots & parts & the languages from which they came, original meanings, suffixes, affixes & all that sort of thing. Had a very good teacher of it named Mrs. Ure, an old grey-haired lady who really knew her stuff & fascinated us kids with the history of language & its origins. And as I was a great reader, I'm sure this was a great help to my vocabulary studies. We also now took General Science, which fascinated me, all the basics of the various sciences in a one-year Junior High School course, 8th grade.

23. I'D NOW FIXED UP MY OWN LITTLE STUDY IN THE CELLOTEX COTTAGE lined with bookshelves & a desk, kept a scrapbook of news clippings, built small radios, crystal sets, & made money selling some to my friends. Also started keeping a diary, including my sexual experiences & the girls I loved, etc., although I didn't have a chance to do any … fucking for a good many years, but did plenty of jacking. Had a good bicycle that I rode back & forth to school now & did all the mechanical work & repairs on it myself, painted it & took good care of it, as I was very mechanically inclined.

24. ALSO STARTED SNEAKING OFF TO MOVIES A GREAT DEAL, particularly after school on my way home‚ since I now had my own transportation, & movies only cost ten cents. I had been doing this off & on for several years, since I was about 9 or 10, particularly on visits to friends' homes & days of playing hooky from school, & sometimes at night when my parents were gone to church. Before I got my bicycle, I often walked two miles to the nearest cinema in the little suburban Miami shopping district of Allapattah. "Naughty!"

25. 1933: AGE 14. MOTHER NOW LOST THE TABERNACLE TO AN ENEMY‚ a leader of her denomination, millionaire lumberman, F.G. Weston‚ Chairman of the National Board of the Christian Missionary Alliance, who foreclosed on a $10‚000 mortgage on the Tabernacle for a loan for which he had said he never would ask repayment. Mother moved her congregation to Robert E. Lee Junior High School auditorium down the street only a block away on Northwest Fifth Avenue & 32nd Street, Miami. Most followed but some stayed with the denomination. Mother then moved her congregation to an old two-story garage building in downtown Miami on Northwest First Street, directly across from the Miami Courthouse, & turned it into a church building on the first floor & guest hotel on the second floor.

26. DURING THOSE DEPRESSION YEARS WE ALSO TRAVELLED WITH MY MOTHER IN THE SUMMERTIME ON THE EVANGELISTIC ROAD, & this Summer of '33 with her elaborate illustrated Bible dramas‚ accompanied by an orchestra & a truckload of scenery & a caravan of 14 cars full of actors & musicians, renting or getting free use of vacant, unused or bankrupt theatres or cinemas throughout the South & had a great time, usually one–week to two-week stands with a different drama every night, in which I often took some part.

27. 1934: I WAS 15 IN 9th GRADE, MY LAST YEAR IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL, & STILL LIKED MY STUDIES. Loved to listen to Latin rhythms from both Miami & Cuba & South America on my little radio, & late at night I could even get KDKA Pittsburgh‚ WLW Cincinnati with its late-night "Moon River" song-&-poetry sign-off program, as well as sometimes New York & Los Angeles. A crystal set was a very small radio, I usually made'm in little cedar boxes such as girls use for their jewelry, about 6 inches long, 4 inches wide, 3 inches deep‚ & we used them with a pair of earphones like micros today, a crystal & a very good antenna. At first I used coils with a slide tuner, later I learned how to incorporate the latest condenser type of dial tuner, & particularly enjoyed music very much. I often went to sleep with the headphones on & sometimes was wakened in the morning with them still on, by the sign-on of the radio station I had been listening to the night before!

28. 1935: I WAS 16 & NOW MOVING TO THE 10TH GRADE AT MIAMI SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL, to which I had to go by big yellow school bus early every morning at 7 o'clock & came home late every afternoon about four or five. But the school bus route was only a block away, 22nd Avenue Northwest, so it wasn't difficult. It was only difficult to make it to the bus by 7 o'clock in the morning!

29. I REALLY ENJOYED MY NEW SUBJECTS OF LATIN & GEOMETRY & WORLD HISTORY, making top grades, always at the top of the Honour Roll with grade averages in all my subjects from 97 to 100. I actually made four straight 100's one semester in World History, given me by my dear teacher Mrs. Tate, a middle-aged grey-haired lady who loved me very much & whom I liked very much as well, & who fascinated me with her knowledge of history, which I already loved to read, because it gave so much good background for my knowledge of the Bible. In order to understand Bible Prophecy you have to know history, World History as well as Bible History, in order to know what has been fulfilled & what's yet to be fulfilled. So this knowledge of history has become invaluable over the years in understanding the Bible.

30. ALSO, OF COURSE, STILL LOVED GIRLS MORE & MORE, BUT HAD LESS & LESS, because I was such a good little boy‚ entirely too good, with a very narrow-minded religion forbidding unmarried sex, & very little money to entertain'm & almost no time at all for dates, even if I'd been able to drum up one. I remember that about the only date I had my whole time in Miami High School was with a beautiful classy beauty named Betty Davidson whom I took out to a swanky cocktail bar lounge, more of a soda fountain, so teenagers were allowed. It had this very gorgeous nude picture above the bar, a reclining female‚ & I took her in there, I presume, to get her mind on sex, & she was a bit shocked by the picture & said‚ "I don't ordinarily come to places like this!" Well‚ I didn't either—in fact‚ it was only my second time! Ha!

31. BUT THEN ALMOST THE MOST EMBARRASSING THING THAT EVER HAPPENED IN MY WHOLE LIFE OCCURRED!: I had borrowed the family car I was now driving regularly for my Mother‚ & she had allowed me to take the girl out for a malt at this soda fountain bar. But when I reached for my wallet I discovered that in changing to my good trousers I had failed to include my money‚ & so as it came time for paying the bill, very shyly & totally mortified & humiliated, I had to explain to her that I had forgotten my money & could she possibly happen to have that much money & pay the bill & I'd repay her later! Of course, she was a little bit disgusted with me & we never had another date, but I did pay her back later at school. But she sort of sneered & considered I was a pretty poor date!

32. THERE WERE SEVERAL DIFFERENT GIRLS I LIKED IN HIGH SCHOOL, but they never gave me a tumble—in fact‚ I never gave'm a push, because I was so shy & had such a strict religious background. I was extremely idealistic, & the girls that I really fell for were girls that I had in mind for marriage: "Would she be a really good mate as the wife of a preacher?" Because of course that's what I definitely planned to be & knew I would have to be, since I loved the Lord & there was nothing else for me to do but preach the Gospel.

33. BY THIS TIME I WAS DRIVING MY MOTHER FULLTIME when I wasn't busy in school, & each Summer I would take her out all Summer long in her evangelistic meetings & drive for her & act as her porter, carry her bags & help her get settled in her rooms & help her with the advertising & typing up & laying out articles & ads for the paper & seeing to the distribution of literature & handbills, etc., & finally got to be her song leader as well.

34. SHE NEEDED A CHAUFFEUR because my Father had decided to quit the road as soon as I was old enough to drive well enough, & he stayed home & took care of the church while Mother & I travelled in the evangelistic ministry. She was very fond of big cars because they were easier on her back, which, though healed, was still a bit sensitive to vibrations, etc. Besides, in the Depression the big cars were the cheapest to buy second-hand because they were gas-guzzlers & people couldn't even afford their repairs, etc. But of course in our evangelistic meetings there was usually a mechanic around, a member of the church, from which we provisioned both repairs & gasoline, & often from the farmers as well.

35. SO DRIVING BECAME MY MAIN JOB AS WELL AS SONG LEADER & ADVERTISING MAN & male companion to take care of my Mother on the evangelical road. … Anyhow, we had very sweet fellowship together, a marvellous love affair in the Lord & in the spirit & in His Work, & admired & loved each other a great deal.

36. MOTHER WAS MY GREATEST ONE TRUE LOVE OF THOSE YEARS OF MY TEENAGE MINISTRY WITH HER ON THE ROAD! She tried to introduce me to girls & help me make dates with girls to go out on little outings, etc., I presume hoping to somewhat satisfy my desire for female companionship, but they were all very innocent affairs hardly touching each other, perhaps holding hands as we strolled through the park or to the cinema or around the fairgrounds, & kisses being a little peck on the cheek or the forehead & hardly any bodily contact whatsoever, all very spiritual & very platonic & beautiful, but unsatisfying sexually—that I'd do on my own, dreaming of them & looking at their pictures!

37. 1936: 17 YEARS OLD, 11th GRADE, MIAMI HIGH SCHOOL, still riding the school bus every day about ten miles back & forth to school‚ five miles each way, took about an hour each way‚ still living at 2119 Northwest 24th Street & enjoying new subjects in Senior High School, & still driving my Mother whenever she needed me, & all Summer long out in Evangelistic work.

38. THAT SUMMER WE SPENT A MONTH ON MIAMI BEACH IN AN OCEAN–FRONT APARTMENT WITH MOTHER'S BEAUTIFUL YOUNG SECRETARY, MARY LOU SMITH, who was three or four years older than I, but still very attractive & very sexy! In love with my brother, who wouldn't give her a tumble, she settled for me, & we had quite a few sexy sessions alone in that Miami Beach apartment!

39. WE RAN AROUND NEARLY NUDE MOST OF THE TIME IN THE WARM TROPICAL SUMMER WITH A LOT OF SWIMMING‚ & I can remember wearing my bathing trunks almost night & day—swam in'm, ran around in'm all day, & then they dried out enough to sleep in'm at night! I hardly ever took'm off—after all‚ they got washed frequently all day in the surf, as I loved to swim‚ especially underwater, & could swim resting on my back for miles! One time I swam all the way from South Beach up to North Beach, about five miles up & back‚ clear up beyond the Roney Plaza Hotel & clear back down to the dog track! Swimming, I would say, was my third love, girls my second love, & my Mother & the Lord's Work & the Lord my first love. Those three were virtually one & the same & inseparable—the Lord, His Work & my Mother.

40. SO AT THE AGE OF 17 THAT SUMMER WAS THE NEXT TIME I HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO FUCK A GIRL, & IT WAS MARY LOU! On a night when we were left alone while my Mother went to church with some other folks, we got to loving it up while she was doing the dishes & we wound up in bed in the back bedroom! I had a premature ejaculation‚ however—I was just entering when it went off—much to my chagrin & her disappointment! But anyhow, it was quite exciting! If I'd only known then what I know now about women, I could have very wonderfully satisfied her as well, but I had a lot to learn yet—sweet 17 & seldom been kissed, but still having a good time, usually, however, having to satisfy myself sexually on my own by masturbation.

41. IT WAS THAT YEAR IN THE 11TH GRADE THAT I ONLY GOT THROUGH HALF THE GRADE BECAUSE MY MOTHER NEEDED ME TO DRIVE HER IN EVANGELISTIC WORK in the middle of the year, the school year. In those days they had lower & upper half years called A's & B's, & I had just finished 11A, the first half of the 11th grade at Miami High School. In the course of that year-&-a-half of Senior High School, during the 10th & half of the 11th grade, I'd also experimented for a couple of weeks with a couple of other high schools, because I didn't like the mean students at Miami High who engaged in all kinds of deviltry!

42. I TRIED ALLAPATTAH'S ANDREW JACKSON HIGH SCHOOL, but it was just as bad if not worse, & then I tried Miami Edison in the Northeast where Lamont went, & it was just as bad. It seemed like all the kids in high school were rough toughs, always fighting & using foul language, & the schools were beginning to get full of New York[ers] at this time‚ & they had the foulest mouths of all, using "Jesus Christ" as a curse word more than any other word, & filthy language, & of course always talking about sex & girls‚ which to me‚ the way they talked about them, was wicked & sinful, & I think it was, even though it was a little exciting & I did hear a lot of things that I sort of secretly enjoyed but hypocritically condemned.

43. MID-TERM OF THAT 11th YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL, MOTHER SAID THAT SHE NEEDED ME TO DRIVE HER TO SOME MEETINGS in the North with L.P. Lehman, a marvellous opportunity on a big radio station, WWVA, Wheeling, West Virginia‚ right near Pittsburg, & other meetings with Jack Munyon & on the radio in Pittsburg. So we journeyed North in our big limousine, taking beautiful lovely sexy Mary Lou with us to the Pittsburg tri-State area where we stayed in Lehman's mansion out on exclusive National Highway just outside of Wheeling, & later in Jack Bunyon's mansion in Indiana, Pennsylvania‚ not far from Pittsburg. Holding meetings at night, Mom would speak on the radio programs in the morning & afternoons, etc. I was by this time leading the singing & singing solos as well as being her chauffeur & companion & caretaker.

44. THIS 1936 EVANGELISTIC TOUR TURNED OUT TO BE QUITE A LONG ONE! It lasted from the end of January‚ mid-term of my 11th year in high school, when I was 16 until I was 18 in 1937! So I stayed out of school in fulltime service for the Lord with her on both the road & in her Miami pastorate until I was 18 in 1937‚ when I returned to high school—but that'll come a little later with its year.

45. 1937: I WAS 18 & SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRADUATING FROM HIGH SCHOOL, BUT DIDN'T, BECAUSE I WAS OUT OF SCHOOL HELPING MOTHER with both her Summer & Winter evangelistic trips.

46. SO WE TOOK A TRIP TO CALIFORNIA & VISITED WITH MY BROTHER & his new wife at his lovely home in Carmel, near where he was teaching high school in Monterey. There he persuaded my Mother, along with my Father & my rich Aunt, that I must return to high school & finish my education. This was when I was 18, in the year 1937, & the high school year of the Fall of '37 was about to begin, in fact I was late, it was November—I was already two months late! There were only 7 months of the school year left & I had a year-&-a-half of school to make up‚ a year-&-a-half of high school credits, upper 11th grade & all of the 12th grade!

47. BUT THE FAMILY AGREED THAT I MUST GET BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL, & the high school agreed to take me even though two months late, due to my brother's good influence who was always very popular. So he agreed to take me in & let me stay with him & his new wife, newly married, virtually still on their honeymoon at their lovely home in Carmel, & ride with him to High School every day to Monterey Union High School near the gorgeous seacoast of central California.

48. 1938: FINISHED UP MY LAST YEAR-&-A-HALF OF HIGH SCHOOL IN ONLY 7 MONTHS & GRADUATED WITH THE HIGHEST GRADES EVER MADE IN THE 80-YEAR HISTORY OF THAT HIGH SCHOOL, & would have been Valedictorian if I had fulfilled the requirement of having attended the school for a full year. Also during that senior year I was given the various aptitude & IQ tests & found out I had an IQ of 178! So the Lord had given me, apparently, a very good mind & I still loved my studies. Amongst others, I took Spanish & drama in that last year, & Biology.

49. I WAS IN LOVE WITH MY BIOLOGY TEACHER, although I think she was more in love with me, & insisted on taking me on long lonely field trips to lonesome beaches! I kind of suspected at the time what she had in mind, but I was too shy & too scared to yield to such thoughts, although I thought about'm, & I'm sure she would have been willing if I had given her the least bit of encouragement. She gave me a lot of encouragement, held my hand & put her arm around my waist & kissed me, beautiful blonde Miss Hoeg!

50. I ALSO ENJOYED TAKING MY FINAL SUBJECTS IN HIGH SCHOOL, STILL PARTICULARLY LIKING HISTORY. In this case we took California History & American History, & made up several other units from various things that I needed for the basic units of graduation from a California high school, enough credits to graduate. So by the end of the school year I had'm, made it, graduated in June with top honours, sat on the platform as the top honour student, while the second top honour student, Bob McMenamin, gave the Valedictory Address. Frankly, I was glad I didn't have to do it! I had enough to do‚ cramming to get through the final exams! So I graduated then in the Spring with the Spring Class of '38‚ actually at the age of 19. I went back to high school at 18 & graduated at the age of 19 in June of 1938, Class of '38.

51. AFTER MY HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION IN 1938, WE IMMEDIATELY WENT FOR A ONE-MONTH VACATION TO YOSEMITE where I had that famous mountain climb & lost-in-the-woods trek, & got back in the night by a miracle of God! We camped out for the full month in a big 12-foot army tent we bought from some Gypsies & had a lot of fun. I took some hikes with girls there, but nothing serious ever came of it.

52. FINALLY WE LEFT YOSEMITE & MY MOTHER & FATHER BROKE UP, & Mother & I continued in Evangelistic meetings back to Miami‚ Florida while my Father went on about his business—my rich aunt Ellen finally set him up in a store of his own in Long Beach‚ California.

53. I FELL IN LOVE WITH SEVERAL OTHER GIRLS ON THE WAY HERE & THERE. You've heard about Ruth Leicht in Des Moines (see "Double-Header Love Letter," No.1333) & this one & that one. As a travelling evangelistic singer I was like the sailor with one in almost every port! Everywhere I went the girls fell in love with me & I fell in love with them & struck up quite a strong acquaintance, but ended up‚ of course, leaving them behind & having to carry on our fellowship only through correspondence & love-letter writing‚ which wasn't very satisfactory.

54. BUT IT GAVE ME A CHANCE TO PREACH THEM A LOT OF SERMONS ON PAPER‚ & nearly every one of them went into the Lord's work as missionaries or pastor's wives, believe it or not! So at least all the girls that I loved & fell in love with & eventually fell out with, I broke their hearts & melted them for the mission field or pastoral work. Sent every one of them off to Bible School & they wound up in fulltime service for the Lord, every single one of them, thank the Lord! So at least I did some good along that romantic line, to FF them all into the Lord's work! Hallelujah!—Your first FFer!

55. THE FALL OF 1938 I WAS HELPING MOM PASTOR HER LITTLE CHURCH ON NORTHEAST 2ND AVENUE & 23RD TERRACE, MIAMI‚ FLORIDA—THE OLD CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH BUILDING, a beautiful old building in old Spanish style with lovely pews, etc., which had been vacated by the defunct former congregation who'd lost their pastor & finally just disbanded. It had been turned over to us when we lost the roof of our church downtown in one of the yearly hurricanes.

56. IT WAS THERE AT THE AGE OF 19 IN 1938 THAT I CONDUCTED NOT ONLY THE MUSIC & THE CHURCH PROGRAM & BULLETIN BOARD & JANITORING & ALMOST EVERYTHING BUT THE PREACHING, but I also started doing some preaching myself in the Youth Society, which held young people's meetings in the basement. There my old girlfriend since I was 13 & she was 8, now she was 14 & I was 19, again captured my heart!—Delores! She & her wealthy father & mother began coming to our church regularly, the Saters, & we fell deeply in love, & within a year were engaged to be married, having asked her father & mother for her hand.

57. THE FALL OF '38 I HELPED MOTHER WITH THE PASTORATE THERE & also took her out to meetings other places. [Some people] had been giving us a great deal of trouble & persecution because we'd had … a guest speaker & he'd exposed [these people] & revealed how they were the chief sponsors of Communism & all their various other chicanery. So they had really gotten it in for us & we had had a lot of trouble with them. They were the leaders of Communism in those days, as well as the leaders of Miami. …

58. SO I'M 19 & IT'S NOW FALL OF 1938 & I'M HOLDING YOUTH MEETINGS in the Church basement & loving Delores whenever I had a chance! We got into some pretty ardent kissing bouts, hugging, massaging & loving, petting—what they used to call "necking" in those days—but never got around to anything actually sexual, sad to say—I wish we had! Usually I'd have to go off somewhere afterward & jack-off, & maybe she did the same, I don't know. But we really got aroused & excited & I would get very hard, but every time I would try to get in, she'd refuse, "No no, not till we're married!" She had one of those Mothers who teach their girls to be so strict! Well, so we planned to get married.

59. I WAS 19, WORKING FULLTIME FOR THE LORD IN OUR PASTORATE, THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, then called the Church of the Open Door, on Northeast 2nd Avenue. After leaving the Alliance Mom called her church the "Church of the Open Door." I was now working fulltime for the Lord pastoring & also taking some evangelistic trips‚ still deeply in love with Delores. Several other girls were madly in love with me‚ as by this time I was full–grown‚ getting a little bit better looking‚ a little more manly & huskier & popular as a singer‚ but extremely spiritual.

60. THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT I RECEIVED THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT UNDER A LITTLE SYRIAN WOMAN MISSIONARY EVANGELIST who came to our church to talk about her missionary work in Syria. She prayed for the young people‚ invited us to come forward one night, put hands on each of our heads & prayed for us to be baptised with the Holy Spirit, & I definitely felt a discernable change in my life, a real infilling of the power of the Spirit! But I did not yet speak in tongues nor have any other outward manifestations—although I had considerable inward change & felt the direct leading of the Holy Spirit from then on in my daily walk & life, moment by moment, & sought the Lord much more earnestly & studied my Bible more‚ memorised Scripture, & was particularly interested in Bible Prophecy.

61. AT THIS TIME IT LOOKED LIKE WE WERE GOING TO SETTLE DOWN IN MIAMI WITH THIS NEW CHURCH. The church was going fairly well, though my Father was in California—he had left my Mother at the behest of my rich aunt who promised to set him up in business & persuaded him to leave Mother, as she always had tried to do, not liking my Mother's religion. So he had departed, gone to California, left me to take care of my Mother, & we were doing very well & getting along fine together in the Lord's work.

62. AT THIS TIME THE LORD DREW MOTHER & DR. KOGER VERY CLOSE TOGETHER, Dr. Emmet Bascom Koger, Miami's City Physician, who also had a large lucrative private practice & a very good income & was considered fairly wealthy according to the standards of the Depression. He had a beautiful home on the Southwest side of Miami & helped to support Mother & me during those very lean years that she & I were pastoring together at the Church of the Open Door in Miami. He helped us buy a little home out in Cambridge Lawns, South Miami, in those days for only $25 down & $25 a month, a lovely three-bedroom Spanish-style stucco house which we beautifully furnished on credit time payments.

63. DR. KOGER USED TO COME OUT & SPEND EVERY NIGHT WITH US, or at least half the night, sometimes all night, treating my Mother & massaging her legs, which gave her quite a bit of trouble. She had a sort of dropsy or diabetic condition of the legs & they were quite swollen, quite large & fat & gave her considerable pain & discomfort in those days, so he would faithfully & lovingly tenderly massage them & also massage her back where sometimes it would be tense or sore where she'd had her spinal operation.

64. AND FOR ALL I KNOW, MAYBE HE MASSAGED HER FRONT TOO when I wasn't around, because they were very very close to each other & loved each other a great deal, & I certainly wouldn't have blamed them! In fact I almost wondered why they didn't, even at my age, as my Dad had deserted her & she was lonely & in need of companionship, with nobody left but me. My brother & sister were both gone & married & had families of their own.

65. SO NOW IN '39 I WAS 20, SERVING THE LORD FULLTIME, HELPING MOTHER PASTOR THE LITTLE CHURCH near downtown Miami. That's where I got the Bible in Pictures, by the way, handed me by the Chairman of the Board of the congregation, who found the machine & the rolls of film & books stored in the basement closet of the church & handed'm to me & said, "Here, Dave, take this, we won't be using it anymore, you might as well enjoy it!" I used to show the pictures to the Youth Society‚ etc., but most of all I learned a lot just from looking at them myself, a whole Bible education better than I ever got in any Bible College‚ & I hope you've enjoyed them too! (See "BIPS," Nos. 642-644, 732 & 1143-1168.)

66. SO WE MOVED OUT TO THE LITTLE HOUSE IN CAMBRIDGE LAWNS‚ SOUTH MIAMI‚ & would make the long trip into Miami for our various church services. Funds were very low, it was still the Great Depression, & FDR, in spite of all his efforts since his election in 1932 & re-election in 1936‚ still hadn't been able to pull the country out of the Depression despite all his various socialistic money-spending sprees, but at least he made the people happier, thinking they were better off. He was re-elected again in 1940 & '44, he had brought back liquor, & was the first U.S. President to recognise the new Communist regime of Russia. In fact‚ he was elected primarily on those three planks: To bring back liquor, recognise Russia & try to bring back prosperity, which hadn't yet occurred—not till he got'm into WW 2!

67. WE WERE SO BROKE SOMETIMES THAT ONE TIME WE WEREN'T EVEN ABLE TO PAY THE CHURCH ELECTRIC BILL & we had to have candlelight services, which was very beautiful I thought. And sometimes we had to really scrape to meet the payments on our house & furniture, but Dr. Koger always came through with a big help. He had a steady salary as Miami City Physician, as well as a good income as a private physician with a private practice.

68. SO WE WERE GETTING ALONG VERY WELL & VERY HAPPY & I WAS VERY HAPPILY ENGAGED TO DELORES & PLANNING TO GET MARRIED, WHEN SUDDENLY WE HAD A BAD ACCIDENT, crashed head–on into the side of a city bus in a borrowed car, which landed both Mother & me in the hospital! I knew the Lord was talking to us, to me about Delores, that she was not exactly the girl for me for the Lord's work‚ she was not spiritual enough. She was rich & sweet & beautiful & had everything a man could desire, except she was not very deep spiritually, & that was what I desired the most because I desired the Lord & His work more than anything.

69. AND I KNEW THE LORD WAS SPEAKING TO MOTHER, BECAUSE HER CHIEF MINISTRY HAD ALWAYS BEEN EVANGELISM & evangelistic meetings on the road, ministering to various churches, so that I knew that pastoring was not her main forte. The Lord had tried to show her this in many ways for many years, but now here in 1939 I was 20 & we had this accident, & the Lord spoke very strongly to both me & Mother, & I spoke very strongly to her, that I believed the Lord wanted us back out on the evangelistic road, to leave the pastorate & go!

70. ABOUT THIS TIME WE LOST THE CHURCH ANYHOW—I think they sold it to the Alliance—& had to move to a little store room in Little River (I think they called it Lemon City) & had more trouble with the [ACs], who had padlocked us out of a temporary school auditorium we were using. The Congregational Church building was sold out from under us & turned into a garage later.

71. SO FINALLY WE WERE TRYING TO FIND SOME OTHER PASTOR to take over the little church group, & we found this fellow, J.E. Fernandez Comacho, supposed to be a Cuban, turned out to be Jamaican Mulatto who had been educated in the Catholic Church as a Jesuit Priest (we got to the point where we weren't too sure he wasn't still a Jesuit Priest!) but brilliant, a dramatic & powerful oratorical speaker. But he was also a medical doctor & got the church secretary hooked on dope, stole our car & ran off with her & the church funds to California!

72. THE CASE WOUND UP IN COURT with him being hauled back to Miami by the FBI, but we never got our car back & we never got the secretary back either, & we never got back any of the money he stole! In fact, he was such an orator & a lawyer as well, he pled his own case before the jury & had them in tears & made fools of us, & the [AC] newspapers ridiculed us, & virtually drove us out of Miami‚ so it was impossible for us to continue there any longer. The Lord really put the squeeze & the pressure on us, so we finally just had to leave! The church had gone down to almost nothing, nearly nobody, so Dr. Koger finally agreed that it was time for Mother to go back on the Road!

73. BY THIS TIME 1939 HAD PASSED, DAD & MOM MADE UP, & SO IN 1940 WE WENT BACK TO CALIFORNIA, shortly after which Dr. Koger died of a broken heart! I too forsook brokenhearted Delores, & on the way in some meetings in Canonsburg‚ Pennsylvania‚ I met two other lovely young 17-year–old twin sisters I fell in love with, the Kemper Sisters‚ Laura Lee & Lois Lee, both filled with the Spirit & brilliant pianists & singers, a perfect team for our work! But their father promptly sent them off to college to keep us from getting married, said he wanted to make sure his girls got the kind of an education he hadn't had a chance to get! That's also where Perry Como cut my hair & sang songs in his barbershop, the Shop of the Five Singing Barbers!

74. 1940: WE MOVED TO LOS ANGELES‚ CALIFORNIA & LIVED AT 441 NORTH LAKE STREET. By this time World War II was on full blast & the U.S. was coming close to getting into it, I was 21 & registered for the draft, & we started the Mother Layne's hospitality Home in San Diego for the servicemen to have a home away from home, of whom there were very many in the area, Camp Pendleton & the Navy & the Marines & all the rest, big bases around there.

75. SAN DIEGO WAS PACKED WITH SERVICEMEN, & this wealthy millionairess woman, dear old saint of God, Mother Layne, wanted to do something for them to try to reach them with the Gospel, so she sent us down there to see what we could do. She paid all our expenses, we stayed a couple weeks & came back with the report that it looked like, in talking to them & visiting with them, the thing they missed the most & longed for the most was home, of course.

76. WE SAID IF SOME KIND OF A MISSION COULD BEGIN THERE IN THE WAY OF A GENUINE HOME where they could feel at home & with a homey atmosphere, we thought it would really appeal to them, a place where they could go & get off base & away from the foul & violent atmosphere of the military camps & bases, a place where they could find a home away from home! So she bought a huge estate with a gorgeous big old mansion‚ many many rooms, where they could be entertained.

77. WE STARTED IT, BUT WE COULDN'T STAY THERE BECAUSE MOTHER'S CALL WAS EVANGELISTIC WORK, & I WAS BEING DRAFTED INTO THE U.S. ARMY! But Mother Layne got a good couple who appealed to young people, & they would go & pick up the men by the busload & take'm out there, serve'm refreshments & games & fun & girls—well, hostesses, pretty girls from the various churches to serve them sandwiches & tea & coffee & juices & whatnot—& then wind up with a kind of a little informal living room vesper service in the evening before they either had to go back to the base, or if they had leave they could stay overnight.

78. SOMETIMES THEY HAD WALL–TO-WALL SERVICE MEN on sleeping bags & pads in every room in the house, & they loved it! There were tennis courts, a pool & all kinds of things for their recreation, & lots of pretty girls to interest them & talk to them & visit with them, a good social life & good atmosphere & a wonderful chance to give them the Gospel as well as a lot of Love & show them they were really loved! So it was a very good experience, particularly for me to get so well-acquainted with servicemen, just before I was going to land in the Army!

79. BECAUSE WHILE STILL IN MIAMI AT OUR HOUSE IN SOUTH MIAMI, CAMBRIDGE LAWNS, I'D HEARD THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR, SEPTEMBER 30TH, AS I RECALL, 1938. On my shortwave radio late one night I heard of Hitler's invasion of Poland!

80. BY THIS TIME IT WAS 1941, I WAS 22 & REGISTERED FOR THE DRAFT! In fact, I had to keep notifying the Draft Board in Miami of my many changes of address, because we were travelling around all the time. So at this time I received my notice to report for induction all the way from Miami, but by the time the notice caught up with me the date of induction was already passed! So I wrote my Draft Board in Miami, where I had first registered while there, that I would be there as soon as possible. So Mother & I drove cross-country to Miami in five days—3000 miles!

81. NOW IT'S ALREADY DECEMBER 1941 & I'M 22 & ON MY WAY TO MIAMI TO BE INDUCTED INTO THE ARMY! And on the way, I'll never forget it, December 7, 1941, we heard on the car radio as we travelled, of the bombing of Pearl Harbor! This of course was a tremendous shock to the nation & the thing which got the US into the War!—To FDR's delight!

82. SO THEY WERE DRAFTING MEN LIKE MAD THEN & my draft number happened to be a low one & already my number had been called up & I was already late for induction! So by the time I got to Miami they were already broadcasting a list of delinquents, they called them "draft-dodgers"—I hadn't actually been dodging it, but had just been travelling around & was late—& there they were broadcasting my name on the radio from a list of draft-dodgers!—Those damned [ACs]!

83. SO THERE IN MIAMI JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS 1941, I HAD TO GO TAKE MY MEDICAL EXAM FOR THE ARMY! The doctor passed me with my own consent & desire to do something different & get into the Army & away from my Mother & out of the Lord's work, & I was a real backslider! I wanted to see what the World was like. So I found out! I got inducted just a few days before Christmas!

84. I'LL NEVER FORGET THE THREE BEAUTIFUL GIRLS WHO CAME OUT, A BIBLE COLLEGE TRIO, AT THE TRAINSIDE & SANG FAREWELL as I took off on the train to the Induction Center in Northern Florida. I went to the camp there in Northern Florida & was sworn into the Army & spent Christmas day in the Army in fatigue uniform, washing dishes & cleaning shrimp for officer's mess, & Christmas night hearing the worst cursing & foulest language I think I'd ever heard in my life from the other five men in my six-man tent!

85. MY HEART SANK & I WAS SICK OF THE WHOLE THING ALREADY! I hadn't been in the Army two weeks & I was already wishing I could get out‚ but it was too late! Because of my high IQ I was sent immediately to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, after the induction period of two weeks, up into the cold & the snow of Washington‚ D.C. area to the home of the U.S. Army Engineers, where I began taking U.S. Army Engineering Basic Training.

86. YOU KNOW THE REST OF THE STORY: I wound up with frozen heels & double pneumonia & a temperature of 106 degrees F. (41degrees C.!) in the hospital, dying, unconscious three days, until finally I yielded to the Lord, after He really put the screws on, & told Him I would serve Him for the rest of my life if He would let me live! I told Him I was ready to go if it was time to take me‚ but if He wanted me to stay, then I would be willing to give my life to Him, full time‚ & serve Him the rest of my life.

87. I WAS IMMEDIATELY HEALED‚ MIRACULOUSLY, IN SUCH A SUPERNATURAL WAY THAT THE DOCTORS WERE ASTONISHED! Then I spent several more months in the hospital as they checked everything out & made sure I was healed, but they were worried about my heart because it had loud murmurs & palpitations & paroxysmal tachycardia—they called it nervous heart—with a very rapid beat. Sometimes it would speed up to 160 times a minute & they thought I was going to die!

88. THINKING I WAS DYING, THEY HAD SENT FOR MY MOTHER & she stayed nearby while all these tests were going on. Finally they released me to her custody & care‚ saying that she must keep me in bed, that I was not able to do anything strenuous‚ but if she'd keep me in bed fulltime I might live for a year!—Ha! But I had promised to serve the Lord fulltime, so I went out straight into fulltime evangelistic work with my Mother, & have been serving Him fulltime ever since, thank the Lord!—Now over 40 years!

89. BEFORE I WAS RELEASED, MOTHER HAD TO LEAVE TO GO BACK TO CALIFORNIA, so that when I was finally mustered out, I took my mustering-out pay to go by & see the Kemper girls in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania & found out that their father still had'm far off in college & there was not a chance!

90. SO I WENT TO WRIGHT FIELD, THE ARMY AIRFORCE BASE NEAR DECATUR, OHIO, HITCHED A RIDE ON AN ARMY PLANE TO PALM SPRINGS, of all places, rode in the baggage compartment because there wasn't room upstairs amongst the officers, landed in Palm Springs, hitchhiked to Los Angeles where my folks were still living at 441 North Lake Street‚ & went back to work for the Lord in evangelistic work with my Mother! PTL!

91. 1942: BY NOW IT WAS 1942, I WAS 23 & PROMPTLY FELL IN LOVE WITH ANOTHER GIRL in Northern California, a marvellous pianist, a beautiful dark-haired dark-eyed Italian girl named Evelyn Gapen, & nearly married her! But my Father this time broke it up because we had some very hot loving sessions in the car in our little home parking lot in Hollywood!

92. BY THIS TIME WE HAD MOVED TO A HOUSE MY FATHER HAD RENTED NEAR HIS WORK IN HOLLYWOOD, as he was now working as Comptroller of Westmont College in Hollywood, a job my brother had got him in this new college that he & his old friends had formed. Since my brother was a Wheaton graduate, this was to be the Wheaton of the West, & my brother also taught there.

93. SO MY DAD FOUND A THREE-STORY HOUSE OUT IN THE HOLLYWOOD HILLS at 1821 Oakden Drive, up in Laurel Canyon, & he used to walk down a mile to the bus line on Hollywood Boulevard & take the Hollywood bus into college everyday & back home again at night.

94. MEANWHILE MOTHER & I WERE TRAVELLING IN & OUT IN EVANGELISTIC WORK HOLDING MEETINGS, & at this time we landed in the very Pentecostal Alliance Church in Sacramento, California, where the former Baptist preacher's wife had had a marvellous baptism of the Holy Spirit, beautiful messages in tongues, but no interpreter!

95. SO IN THEIR PRAYER MEETINGS MOTHER BEGAN INTERPRETING MESSAGES IN TONGUES BEAUTIFULLY, & I was thrilled & inspired by this beautiful manifestation of the Holy Spirit & longed for greater spiritual manifestations in my own life! We had many prayer meetings in which we received many wonderful messages from the Lord, & I became dissatisfied with the cold dry Alliance denomination which had cooled off & turned against tongues & manifestations & had gotten pretty dead & dry!

96. MEANWHILE, EVELYN GAPEN, THE GIRL IN PITTSBURG, CALIFORNIA (NOT PENNSYLVANIA!), THAT I FELL IN LOVE WITH, another brilliant pianist I almost married, came down for a visit to our lovely three–story Hollywood home in Laurel Canyon, & we would often park out on our hilltop parking lot late into the night petting & necking & kissing very ardently, till my Father was apparently afraid I was really going to get into it‚ or into her, & he said‚ either get married or else! Well, by this time she had to go back to High School, she was fairly young‚ 17, so he said, "Well, you can let her finish school & think it over." But in the meantime, some of you already know the rest of the story!

97. 1943: I'M 24, & DURING ONE OF OUR VISITS HOME TO OUR HOUSE IN HOLLYWOOD, we would often go out to church & visit other churches, so we visited the little Alliance Church in San Fernando Valley, the Little Church of Sherman Oaks. I went there alone one night to a youth meeting & saw this very pretty girl leading the meeting & playing the piano as well‚ preaching like a house–a–fire! Her subject was: "Be strong!"—& I weakened!—It was Mother Eve!

98. WE BEGAN GOING TOGETHER, saw each other frequently & spent a lot of time together. She was the secretary of the church & the youth leader & pianist & a little bit of everything & a very smart girl, deeply spiritual, really loved the Lord, & was serving the Lord fulltime, as I was.

99. WE GOT CLOSER & CLOSER TOGETHER, ALL PURELY SPIRITUAL AT FIRST! I would walk down a mile to the bus line, take a bus to the interurban streetcar line in Hollywood over to Studio City, & then take another bus clear out to her little church in Sherman Oaks. Then I would walk another mile up into the hills where she lived with her cousin, who was the Pastor, & his wife, & climb up the hill to her little cabin on the side of the mountain!—About a 15-mile two–hour trip all the way!

100. WE'D HAVE SWEET FELLOWSHIP & WOULD TALK ABOUT THE LORD, READ THE BIBLE & PRAY, all the time getting closer spiritually, even finally a little more closely related romantically & finally physically! We began to kiss & love until we were getting pretty ardent & spent quite a few sessions in pretty strong lovemaking, kissing & hugging & loving, but never going as far as sex, sad to say, not even masturbation!

101. BUT I ALSO KEPT THE LONG-DISTANCE PHONE LINES BUSY FROM MY HOME IN HOLLYWOOD TO HERS IN SAN FERNANDO VALLEY, to the point that the phone bill got so high that my Father said, "Either I'm going to cut off the phone or you're going to get married!" And I said, "Okay, Mom & Dad, I want to get married!" My Mother, I think, was really testing me. She liked Eve because she was spiritual & she was a good pianist—not as good as we'd hoped—but she said, "OK, Son!"—Although she wasn't fond of her personally.

102. THEN BEGAN THE BIG FAMILY FEUD AS TO WHICH SIDE OF THE FAMILY WAS GOING TO MARRY US & WHERE!—In my Grandfather's church in Hollywood or in Eve's cousin's church, Carl Hatch, out in San Fernando Valley where we'd met. A lot of the movie stars lived there with their children, & her Young People's group was made up mostly of movie & TV stars' children & the young folks of the people who worked in the movie & television industry, including several well-known names that I don't have time to mention here.

103. SO THERE WAS THIS BIG FAMILY FEUD OVER WHETHER MY GRANDFATHER WAS GOING TO MARRY ME AT HIS CHURCH OR CARL HATCH WAS GOING TO MARRY ME AT HIS CHURCH. Since in the U.S. the bride usually gets her choice, I said, "It's customary for the bride to get her choice & it was at her church that we met. Carl wants to have the wedding very much & is willing to perform it for free & have quite a celebration & reception, etc." So my Mom finally relented & reluctantly agreed to let us get married at Carl Hatch's church in San Fernando Valley, the Little Church of Sherman Oaks.

104. SO WE SET THE DATE, AS I RECALL, FOR SOMETHING LIKE SUNDAY‚ JULY 23RD, 1944. By this time I was 25. Mother took me out & bought me a set of rings for Jane & a new suit of clothes & everything was set for the wedding‚ advertised, etc.

105. MARY KEASTON, A WEALTHY VALLEYITE‚ WAS SORT OF OUR FAIRY GODMOTHER IN OUR ROMANCE who helped to bring us together & keep us together in spite of some of my Mother's opposition. We'd spent a lot of time together in her home, so Mary Keaston took us & helped us get our blood tests, etc.

106. THEN EVE & I GOT INTO A FEW ARGUMENTS & I BEGAN TO HAVE QUALMS ABOUT HER & HER STUBBORNNESS & WILFULNESS & for the first time I saw her really spunk up & get that fiery nature of hers going! I was still having a little difficulty with my Mother crying & weeping that we weren't going to get married by her father, my Grandfather, & she said he & all our relatives were hurt & offended because we wouldn't get married at his church, blah blah!

107. SO I WAS VISITING EVE IN MARY KEASTON'S HOME ONE FRIDAY NIGHT & WE WERE ARGUING ABOUT IT. Eve had cooked me a nice spaghetti dinner to show she could cook—I didn't know until later that was one of the only three dinners she could cook: Spaghetti, creamed tuna & stuffed peppers! GBH! Those were her three specialties, God bless her, & they were good, & she could cook. And she could play the piano & she sure could preach, God bless her, & she did love the Lord.

108. BUT THIS RAGING CONTROVERSY WAS GOING ON AT MARY KEASTON'S BETWEEN THE TWO OF US, on the eve of our wedding with the wedding all planned & preparations & decorations & everything at her cousin's church‚ & here I was bemoaning that I wasn't going to get married at my Grandfather's church, because my Mother said if I didn't get married there she was going to refuse to come & my Father would refuse to come—in fact, they did refuse to come!

109. WE WERE BOTH DOWN IN THE DUMPS & Mary Keaston was so upset, she finally got disgusted with the both of us & suggested a fairly good solution‚ "Well, why don't you not get married either place! Here's the keys to my car & here's $300"—she was a wealthy woman in the horse & leather business‚ a widow whose husband had died not long before—"So why don't you guys take off tomorrow, Saturday morning, & go get your wedding license. You've got your blood tests, now all you have to do is go down & buy the license, the license bureau's still open Saturday morning, & go & get married someplace else! That way neither one will have a right to complain, or they'll both complain!"

110. SO EVE & I WENT TO BED THAT NIGHT, (separately, of course—we were still quite narrow-minded along that line) debating the idea, & the more I thought about it as I lay awake during the night‚ the better I liked it! I was always shy & hated the idea of facing so many people at a big wedding, church congregations at that, with all the fuss & folderol & whatnot, so the idea of running off & eloping & getting married privately in a quiet little private ceremony appealed to me greatly! And Eve finally decided if that was the only way she was going to get me, she'd better get me while the getting was good, & she consented & relented.

111. SO THE NEXT MORNING, SATURDAY JULY 22, 1944, WE TOOK Mary's car & her $300 & got a marriage license at the nearest marriage license bureau in Glendale, California, & asked where was the nearest preacher, & they said they had a Methodist Church preacher on call! They phoned him & made an immediate appointment for us, he called in his organist & we went there & we had a nice little private church wedding all by ourselves, Eve & I & the preacher & the organist on the platform of a big empty church, while the organist played beautiful soft music! He only charged us $10‚ knowing we were both Christians in fulltime ministry for the Lord—& I really liked it!

112. THEN WE TOOK MARY'S CAR & HEADED FOR THE WARMEST PLACE I COULD THINK OF, PALM SPRINGS, which I had always liked ever since I landed there when I came back from the Army a couple of years before. We drove as far as we could, but by this time it was getting late & dark & I didn't want to drive any further—in fact I didn't want to wait any longer for my wedding night!

113. SO WE STOPPED IN POMONA, CALIFORNIA, AT A CUTE LITTLE HOTEL, I think it was the only one in the town, a little 3 or 4-story hotel, & when the desk clerk found out we were just married, he gave us the Bridal Suite on the top floor, a beautiful room & reasonable, & we had our wedding night! I'll never forget it!

114. I WAS AS HARD AS A CUCUMBER & AS BIG, & SHE WAS EXCITED TOO, BUT I COULDN'T GET IT IN! She was so nervous & so tense & inhibited, that her vagina had constricted tight as a clam, & no amount of shoving would make it! So I think I finally just ejaculated prematurely on top of her & she was kind of upset & I was a little upset too, but I tried to comfort her.

115. ANYHOW, NEXT MORNING WE GOT UP & TOOK A BATH, (we'd loved a lot all night, but nothing more serious) & even went to church, because we were still quite churchy & felt you should always go to church on Sunday morning. Then we came home, packed up & checked out & drove the rest of the way to Palm Springs on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon.—While at Eve's home church, where we were supposed to get married, they announced that we'd eloped!—And the whole church screamed! Ha!—Hit the headlines too!

116. MEANWHILE IN PALM SPRINGS WE SHOPPED AROUND FOR A NICE MOTEL & booked in for a week's honeymoon! Actually we didn't make it for a couple of weeks—still couldn't get it in! So I took her to a doctor to see what was wrong, & he said she was just too tight, just from nerves, a vaginal muscular stricture, & he tried to open her up with an instrument but still couldn't get her open wide enough! So it wasn't until we got back to Mary Keaston's home in San Fernando Valley that we finally made it, two weeks after we were married!

117. WELL, I HAD NO JOB, NO PLACE TO GO BUT BACK TO MY MOTHER'S WITH MY NEW WIFE, WITH WHOM MOTHER WAS NOT TOO SATISFIED! Soon they learned to hate each other, living together so closely, since Eve was very dirty & messy & unparticular, just the opposite from my Mother. Mother, I'm sure, was also jealous, & so was Eve, of my love for my Mother. So they fought five years till parted!

118. ALTHOUGH I WAS MARRIED IN 1944, IT WAS A RATHER MISERABLE YEAR IN SOME WAYS, although at least I did get a lot of sex for the first time in my life, real satisfying fucking sex! But I soon found out that Eve thought it was carnal & sinful & fleshly & that I shouldn't want it several times a day & in the night, at least 2 or 3 times every day & night! She thought that was just too much! But I had to have it anyhow, so I went ahead. I believed that the man was the head of the house & I dominated her & we had it anyway. (1Cor.7; Heb.13:4a; Mk.10:7-9; Eph.5:22–25; Col.3:18:19; 1Cor.11:9.)

119. SO RIGHT AWAY WE WENT IN EVANGELISTIC MEETINGS WITH MOTHER. Eve played the piano fairly well, I sang & Eve got to playing even better‚ & we finally worked out as a pretty good evangelistic team, Mother doing the preaching‚ me showing my pictures & slides & lecturing before the service, & then leading the singing & giving the illustrated song‚ with Eve playing the piano.

120. THIS WAY WE EVENTUALLY TRAVELLED WELL TOGETHER CLEAR TO FLORIDA FOR A CHRISTMAS CAMPAIGN AT OUR OLD CHURCH IN MIAMI, still the same old Congregational Church then. This was Christmas 1944‚ the end of the year that we got married, & we were already in Miami! There it was that Eve got pregnant on a little island out in the middle of Biscayne Bay! We had paddled out in a rowboat & were both in our bathing suits on this lonely little deserted island & we found a little hollow in the sand & fucked real good, & that's where she was impregnated with Deborah!

121. IN THE MEETINGS WHICH FOLLOWED IN FLORIDA‚ EVE BEGAN TO SHOW CONSIDERABLY & IT WASN'T LONG BEFORE DEB WAS ALMOST DUE! It was in her 8th month that my Mother decided it was about time to get back to California & find a home & a hospital, so we drove all 3000 miles back there by car, only to find out that my Father had moved out of our old Hollywood home to the college, & we had no place to stay! So my brother invited us to stay in one of the rooms of the girls' dorm at the new Westmont College, Los Angeles‚ which was still there in Hollywood at the old Cutler Academy location on Westmoreland Ave., just off Beverly & Vermont Boulevards near downtown Los Angeles. We made preparations to go to a hospital in Glendale to have Deborah.

122. IT'S NOW SEPTEMBER 1945: Eve had Deb at the Glendale Hospital on September 10.

123. IN SPITE OF DEB'S ARRIVAL, WE CONTINUED ALONG WITH MOTHER IN HER CALIFORNIA EVANGELISTIC WORK, Eve carrying the little babe-in-arms everywhere we went. But Westmont College had now moved to Santa Barbara, California, having bought the old Lucky Baldwin & Diamond Jim Brady huge luxurious estates in the exclusive Montecito Hills!—And my Dad had to move with them‚ so he bought a big army tent & camped out in the woods nearby!—And we camped nearby in our little 14-ft. trailer!—And when their tent burned down when my Dad accidentally caught the woods on fire, my Mom & Dad moved in with us!—Can you imagine?—Four adults & a toddler in a 14-footer!—Yes, you can, ha!

124. SO WHEN EVE BECAME PREGNANT WITH OUR SECOND CHILD, AARON, MY MOTHER SAID, "WELL, THAT'S IT! NO MORE TRAVEL FOR YOU, YOUNG LADY! You & your two babies have to stay home!" So she insisted that we leave Eve home with two-year-old Deb & pregnant with Aaron at my Father's nice new two-story home in Goleta near Westmont College.

125. EVE WAS VERY SAD!—SHE FELT THAT THAT WAS THE END OF HER MINISTRY FOR THE LORD, & NOW ALL SHE WAS GOING TO HAVE WAS BABIES & BE HOME ALONE with her father-in-law without me, as I & my Mother travelled on the road. My Father was away most of the time all day long anyhow, as College Treasurer. So my Mother & I went on to evangelistic meetings in Northern California. But by & by I absolutely insisted that Eve would have to come along, I couldn't do without her & she & Deb were lonely & needed me.

126. I WAS GETTING PRETTY USED TO SEX, COMPANIONSHIP & A TINY FAMILY OF MY OWN BY THIS TIME, & I just had to have'm, so I insisted. But upon my insistence, my Mother declared: "Well, if you insist on having them along, I insist you're not going with me, & you'll have to find another job!" So I said, "Well, OK!"

127. —I'D WAITED FOR YEARS FOR THAT RELEASE, because I'd promised the Lord I'd serve the Lord with my Mother as long as she continued in the Ministry & needed me. But now she said, "I'm quitting the road, since you're married now & having two children, we can't travel together anymore, that's too much! I'm going to quit & go home & stay with Daddy. He's got a good job & I deserve to retire, so you'll have to find something else to do!"

128. THE FACT OF THE MATTER WAS, THAT MUCH LATER ON SHE FOUND OUT CHILDREN WERE A GREAT ASSET & ATTRACTION IN THE MINISTRY, & after we had four she begged us to come back & be with her in her meetings, & we were for awhile, but that's a long story.

129. SO WE WENT BACK HOME TO GOLETA & LIVED WITH MY DAD WHILE I TRIED SEVERAL JOBS, worked for the Santa Barbara Post Office for awhile, worked for a construction & lumber company for awhile, & I got more kinds of experience in different jobs waiting for some opportunity to serve the Lord. But as nothing else turned up, my Mom agreed to take me to her next meetings in Canada if I'd drop Eve & Deb off at Eve's folks' mansion in Louisville, Kentucky, on the way—to have Aaron there at their Baptist hospital June 21, 1947!—So we did.

130. SO WHEN AARON WAS DUE, MY MOTHER & I WERE CLEAR UP IN CHATHAM‚ ONTARIO, CANADA! She had hoped to get away from Eve as far as she could. So Eve stayed with her parents in Louisville & had Aaron there, far away from me, & I was away from her, & our marriage wasn't getting along too well, especially when she was staying with her wealthy parents, who didn't approve of me anyway‚ a poor travelling Gospel salesman!

131. SO AARON WAS BORN JUNE 21ST‚ ON THE SUMMER SOLSTICE OF 1947, in Louisville‚ Kentucky‚ & my Mother & I went back to California without them! I'm sure she was trying to break us up & dump Eve & the kids‚ so we had our 10:36er problems too! Eve spent 3 months with her folks until she was able to travel‚ then they came back & joined us again in Goleta.—I insisted!—But my Mother said, "It's just too much! We can't go on like this or on the road any longer, so you'll have to go!—Leave us & go on your own!"—I was fired!

132. SO IN THE FALL OF '47 WE BORROWED A TINY TRAILER FROM AN OLD FRIEND, Mrs. Linger, the mother of one of my old sweethearts, & moved it to Eagle Rock, California, where we lived in the Eagle Rock Trailer Park with our two children, while I started back to school at Southern California Bible College in Pasadena on the GI bill for vets of WW 2.

133. I CONTINUED THROUGH THE SCHOOL YEAR INTO 1948 when we found that Eve was pregnant with her 3rd, Ho! I saw by this time that I couldn't keep on in Bible College with a family of five, the wife & I & three children on so small an income‚ but that I needed some fulltime place of service for the Lord. Besides, I was disgusted with what they taught you in Bible College, it didn't seem to be doing me any good, & I was fed up! I wanted to get back into fulltime service for the Lord—real hot battlefront service like I'd been in before!

134. SO IN THE FALL OF '48 I ASKED MY DENOMINATION FOR A PASTORATE, which seemed to be about the only thing a fellow with a wife & three children could survive in! It didn't seem we could go on the evangelistic road anymore, at least that's what my Mother told us & convinced us of! If I'd only known then what I found out later & know now, I would have kept right on doing the same kind of work we had been doing, without my Mother!—And continued to live by faith!

135. SO IN '48 WITH HO ON THE WAY, I ASKED MY DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT FOR A PASTORATE. He said he had none, he had some 600 applicants, men of his denomination, standing in line for California pastorates! Virtually everybody in his denomination wanted to go to California, lovely beautiful mild-temperatured rich California! So I said, "Well, how about something nobody else wants?"—He thought awhile & finally suggested:

136. "WELL, I'VE GOT A LITTLE MISSION OUT IN VALLEY FARMS, ARIZONA, WHERE THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE A CHURCH BUILDING, but they want somebody to come that knows something about building. I understand you know something about building, so maybe you could go out there & help them build a church. Right now they're just meeting in a little Community Hall, a little Sunday School group started by two girls, Alliance missionary trainees for India." Since it was a real missionary challenge & the only thing he had, I said, "I'll take it!"

137. SO I TOOK AN 800-MILE TRIP OUT TO THAT TINY ARIZONA DESERT COTTON-FARMERS' VILLAGE OF VALLEY FARMS & CANDIDATED, preached there one Sunday morning & Sunday night to the little tiny group that was there, only about two dozen people. I think that night it was only a dozen, a few women, a few children & the two missionary girls. The Lord was really testing me!—I don't think there was a man there but me!—And they voted me in as Pastor! I was to get the Sunday morning offerings, the Sunday night offerings were to go to the expenses of the church, whatever they might be, & of course there was no church building!

138. SO IN THE FALL OF '48 I WENT BACK & PACKED UP EVE & THE KIDS IN A LITTLE CAR that some dear old Belgian Pentecostal friends had sold us, a nice little Model A Ford that looked like new for $400, & drove to Arizona just a few days before Ho's birth! In fact, we arrived just before Christmas, 1948, & he was born on January 9, 1949! I was 30 & beginning my first fulltime pastorate all my own!—And my last!

139. WE WERE THERE BUILDING THE ONLY CHURCH IN VALLEY FARMS THROUGH THE YEARS OF '49 & '50. I built the church, pastored it, & preached in it, really learned to preach—hadn't really preached without pictures very much before—studied & taught Bible Prophecy. But I soon got fed up with the churchy people & went out to the surrounding Mexican towns & Indian reservations & evangelised & got a few converts & brought'm into the church & infuriated the church people with these "dirty greasers" & "filthy Indians"! I also preached too hard at'm for a pastor, but like an evangelist would, which pastorates won't stand, until finally they got fed up with me too & told me it was time for me to go!

140. JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS 1950, ONLY A LITTLE MORE THAN A MONTH BEFORE FAITHY WAS TO BE BORN, FEBRUARY 2, 1951, THE CHURCH HAD THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT FIRE ME! I'd gotten the church built & it was organised & running fairly well‚ although we were still living mostly on outside income from our mail ministry, as the church offerings averaged about $10 a week for us, me & a wife & 4 children! But at least they did furnish the house free & they paid the utilities & payments on the property, so all we had to trust the Lord for really was our food.

141. I TRUSTED THE LORD FOR THE MATERIALS FOR THE CHURCH BUILDING & they gave very little. I built it mostly of secondhand material, secondhand lumber‚ secondhand windows, secondhand doors‚ went out to wrecking yards & bought secondhand plumbing, secondhand heaters, everything was used & second-hand! It was amazing what I found in the scrap yards! But from the people with their little meager Sunday night offerings, only a little came in toward the concrete foundation & the roofing‚ etc.

142. THEY WANTED ME TO PLASTER IT‚ BUT I SAID‚ "WHY COVER UP THAT BEAUTIFUL ADOBE?" That was another thing they got mad at me about, I wouldn't finish the church! I put in a ceiling & a nice concrete floor‚ but I didn't want to plaster over that pretty rustic adobe! I said, "It's beautiful!—Why, back in ritzy California, natural adobe blocks are all the style! They just coat'm with a kind of a clear paint so you can see the beautiful brown adobe, it's very rustic & artistic & very much in style right now with the rich people of Southern California!"—Nothing doing! They had to plaster it & make it a white church! So that was another argument we had, & finally we just had to come to a parting of the ways!

143. BY THIS TIME, TO SUPPLEMENT MY INCOME & IMPROVE MY TIME AFTER BUILDING THE CHURCH, I'D TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF THE GI BILL OF RIGHTS TO TRY TO FINISH MY COLLEGE EDUCATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA AT TEMPE, a 120-mile round–trip by Greyhound Bus twice a week! I'd packed all my classes into Tuesdays & Thursdays, just enough to meet the requirements of the GI bill, so I only had to go twice a week, & was gone all day Tuesdays & Thursdays. I took an early Tuesday morning Greyhound bus & came back late Tuesday night just in time for a Young People's meeting; took an early morning Thursday bus & came back late Thursday night for another meeting.

144. WE HAD LOTS OF MEETINGS DURING THE WEEK—I believed in having meetings for children, meetings for Tiny Tots, meetings for Live Wires, meetings for the Youth Group, for all kinds of age groups, especially the youth, etc. We were packing in the kids & the youth & a few of their parents, & the Lord did bless our ministry, as well as a few Mexicans, Indians, bums, etc., until the church finally got fed up!

145. IT WAS EVEN FILLED UP A FEW TIMES ON CHRISTMAS, we put on Christmas pageants & packed'm in, it was the only time it was ever full, with about 100 people, & the church folks liked that! But in between, even when we got some fine people coming‚ rich people, I would offend them with something I said, always socking it to people about giving & forsaking all & serving the Lord, & the average church people don't take to that very readily—only you!—Ha!

146. SO HERE IT WAS CHRISTMAS 1950, & RIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS THEY VOTED US OUT OF THE CHURCH! Dear Eve said at Christmastime she felt like Mary on her way to Bethlehem with no place to stay! Although the church very kindly said they'd let us stay there at least until Eve had the baby.—How nice of those old meanies! But I think they thought she was going to have it sooner than she did, but she didn't, thank the Lord‚ until February 2nd—Faithy, at the nearby hospital in Florence‚ Arizona!

147. BY THIS TIME I'D FOUND A FACULTY HOUSE NEAR THE UNIVERSITY IN SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA, exclusive little suburb of Tempe where the college was located, a very nice house which they rented to us very reasonably for only $50 a month, which I figured I could pay out of my $110-a-month veteran's income & trust the Lord for the rest. So we farewelled at the church & moved, as soon as Eve was well enough to travel.

148. I CONTINUED GOING TO COLLEGE THERE UNTIL THE END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR‚ SPRING, 1951. By then I'd also gotten fed up with secular college! That wasn't what I wanted‚ that wasn't where it was at, & I really got fed–up‚ so I told'm, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to go back to Bible College!"—I thought maybe I might still get some more out of that.

149. SO IN JUNE 1951 WE PACKED UP IN OUR LITTLE MODEL A Ford, with almost as much stuff packed on top of it as there was inside, until it was almost two stories high with baby beds & bedding & luggage & everything! I'd sold my 500-book library to the local Arizona Bible College, which was not a Pentecostal School, so I didn't care to go there, but I gave it to'm for $20—I couldn't take the books, but I could sure use the $20!

150. WE DROVE THAT WAY ALL THE WAY TO MY MOTHER'S NEW HOME WHERE SHE WAS NOW LIVING IN MONROVIA, CALIFORNIA. There we stopped for a visit before going to Bible College at Costa Mesa. She had some little prayer meetings in her living room at her home. I was going to try to find a job for the Summer so that I could go back to the Bible College‚ which at this time had moved to Costa Mesa, California, & was getting bigger & richer & less spiritual, although one of the leading Bible Colleges of the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination.

151. SO HERE IT WAS SUMMER OF 1951, RIGHT AFTER FAITHY WAS BORN THAT I QUIT UNIVERSITY & WENT BACK TO CALIFORNIA. We knocked about a bit till my Mother finally got fed up with us, & I decided I wanted to go instead to Amy Semple MacPherson's LIFE Bible College in Hollywood.

152. SO IN THE FALL OF '51 WE MOVED TO A LITTLE APARTMENT NEAR AMY'S ANGELUS TEMPLE NEAR ECHO PARK, LOS ANGELES, & I STARTED LOOKING FOR A JOB. One of the first things we wanted to do was get Deb & Aaron into the first & second grades of a Christian School, as they had been before, so we looked around & found a good Christian school at Los Angeles Evangelistic Center near Beverly Boulevard & Alvarado, not far away from Echo Park, just a short schoolbus ride, & it turned out they had a school bus that came up Echo Park Avenue right past our place & picked up children there! We had seen it go by, which led us there.

153. LITTLE DID I DREAM THAT I WAS SOON GOING TO BE DRIVING THAT SAME SCHOOL BUS PICKING UP MY OWN KIDS! Because when I went to get our two children in, they said, well yes, they'd take them, & since we were Christian workers they'd give us half-price! But then Dr. Wheeler, the Superintendent said, "Hey, do you know how to drive a bus? Our bus driver's leaving, & we desperately need a bus driver!" I said‚ "Well sure, I've driven big cars & trucks & trailers, sure, I can drive a bus!" He said‚

154. "GREAT! WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO START TOMORROW MORNING AT $150 A MONTH?" Boy, I'll tell you, $150 a month sounded like a fortune to me then! I said‚ "Sure, why not?" He said, "Okay‚ show up here at school with your kids tomorrow morning & stick around & see how things go & talk to the bus driver & work on the map & the route, & then ride with the bus driver on his route in the afternoon & learn his route, & then you drive with him on the next morning as well‚ into school, & by that time you'll have learned the route & can take over his job!" And so I did!

155. FALL 1951: TWO KIDS IN SCHOOL & THE OTHER TWO STILL VERY SMALL & EVEN IN DIAPERS! That's when Eve really got discouraged & thought, "My God‚ two kids in diapers! Am I never going to have anything but babies for the rest of my life! Will I never serve the Lord fulltime again?" Well‚ she didn't realise she was really serving the Lord fulltime right then, taking care of & training those kids for the Lord's service, which gave birth to our Family of the future! They were the future & they were her ministry, thank God! Without her & them there wouldn't have been a Family—including me! So PTL!—& thank her & honor her for it!

156. I'D ONLY BEEN DRIVING THE SCHOOLBUS FOR A FEW DAYS WHEN ONE OF HIS TEACHERS QUIT! She was the teacher of his Junior High School 7th & 8th grade classes—Mrs. Outhouse was actually her name, the pastor's daughter, a former missionary to Chile. She'd got fed up with those rascally little American kids & wanted to go back to her mission field of Chile! She said, "There I can teach school & kids behave like civilised little gentlemen & ladies & study & are real Christians!"—And Mr. Wheeler the School Superintendent had to quick look around for a new teacher!

157. SO AS I DROVE MY SCHOOLBUS IN ONE MORNING HE CAME RUNNING TO ME & SAID, "DAVE, DAVE, HAVE YOU EVER TAUGHT SCHOOL?" I said, "Well, I've taught Sunday School & I've taught in schools." I had lectured in schools many times & sometimes to student bodies, & I had lectured when I was a senior in high school rather successfully, & I'd of course done quite a bit of preaching by this time. So I said, "Oh sure‚ I can teach school, but I don't have any finished credentials, degrees or anything." He said, "Oh, that doesn't matter! This is a private Christian school, you don't have to have any credentials as long as you fill the schedule & the qualifications. It pays $150 a month, so you'll have $300 a month between the bus & teaching! Besides that,

158. "I CAN JUST TELL BY LOOKING AT YOU YOU'RE A TEACHER!—TEACHERS ARE BORN, NOT MADE!" Ha! Well, I'm glad he was led of the Spirit! So he led me into the schoolroom right after I'd just brought in my busload of 30 kids, & the Junior Highs were settling down for a class, 7th & 8th graders, in a big room with 50 students, about 25 students in each grade, in a long narrow room with a desk in the middle! I'll never forget Mrs. Outhouse as she saw me walk in, she rose with relief & said,

159. "AH, THE NEW TEACHER! Thank God I can get out of this madhouse & go back to Chile where the children are civilised!"—And she cleared off her desk & pulled the stuff out of the drawers & stomped out!—And I mean, when she stomped out, there was some stompin'!—She was a huge giant six-foot-six redhead, a rawboned‚ gigantic woman with a temper as red as her hair—& she left! And there were Brother Wheeler & I standing with our mouths hanging open, stunned‚ astonished, dumbfounded & almost dumb! He said‚ "Well, Dave, I guess it's all yours! God bless you!"—& he pointed to the desk & walked out! Ha! I'll never forget that, that was really something!

160. SO I WALKED OVER TO THE DESK & GRINNED AT THE KIDS & they could all see it was pretty funny, so we all laughed! That broke the ice! Then I said something about‚ "Well, I hear that already three teachers have quit on you guys this year, I may be the fourth one!" And I cracked a few jokes & talked to them, & we cut up a little bit & I said, "Well, maybe I won't last very long either—it depends on how you treat me—or maybe how I treat you—whether we get along together or not, but I'm willing to try!—Are you?"—And they all shouted, "Yes!"—And acted like they really liked me already!

161. I THINK THEY REALISED I WAS NEW AT THE JOB & A BEGINNER, SO THEY HAD A LITTLE MERCY ON ME & REALLY TRIED to be a help at first & really tried to teach me what they were studying & showing me the ropes & the way around, making sure I got the textbooks, etc. Mr. Wheeler brought in a stack of two grades of textbooks & said, "Here‚ I don't know where they're at—you'll have to ask the kids." So I asked the kids where they were as we came to each new class & each new book‚ & we sort of studied along together.

162. FOR THE FIRST FEW WEEKS I WAS BUSY STUDYING HALF THE NIGHTS, TOO‚ TRYING TO CATCH UP WITH THEM, AS WELL AS STREAMLINING THE BUS ROUTE! I got more & more students on my bus as the bus became more reliable & the parents trusted me to drive, & as I was willing to make a very regular route & always on time. Pretty soon I was hauling 50 kids to school every morning on a 30-mile route each way, picking them up all over North East Los Angeles, all the way from the house we had moved to in South San Gabrielto the school!

163. OUR HOUSE WAS ONLY HALF-FINISHED, BUT I FINISHED IT & BUILT ANOTHER HOUSE ALONGSIDE OF IT WHILE WE WERE THERE. And besides that‚ I was driving 30 miles each way, picking up 50 students in the morning & letting off 50 students in the afternoon, & teaching school all day for 6 hours, from 9 o'clock in the morning till 3 o'clock in the afternoon, two classes of 50 students, 7th & 8th grades, Junior High School, considered the most difficult disciplinary ages of all, ranging in ages mostly about 13 & 14.

164. HOWEVER, WE DID HAVE A FEW OVER-AGED GIRLS ABOUT 15 & 16 WHO'D ALREADY HAD BABIES & couldn't get into any other schools because they were unmarried mothers & pretty wild sexy gals. … Actually it turned out we had a lot of fun & I learned a lot, & they learned a lot & we finally came to a pretty good relationship!

165. I TAUGHT THERE FOR TWO YEARS, FROM THE FALL OF 1951 THROUGH THE SCHOOL YEAR '51-52, & THEN THE SCHOOL YEAR OF '52-53. In the Summertime in between I went out & bought that house in South San Gabriel & finished building it. I started driving the bus when we were still living in the tiny two-bedroom apartment in Echo Canyon, but by the end of the first school year I decided that I had a permanent job & a good enough salary that I could afford to get a house.

166. SO WE WENT OUT & FOUND THIS LITTLE TWO-STORY THREE-BEDROOM HALF-FINISHED HOUSE IN SOUTH SAN GABRIEL, a little Shangri-la hidden Mexican valley south of the very exclusive swanky town of San Gabriel, but this was called South San Gabriel. I bought it for only $200 down & $50 a month, & didn't realise the guy didn't have a building permit & I didn't bother with one either, so I just went ahead & finished the house as it was.—It had an unfinished house next to it, just the framework up, & I finished that one too & rented it out!

167. SO I TAUGHT SCHOOL & DROVE THAT SCHOOL BUS ROUTE FROM SOUTH SAN GABRIEL FOR TWO YEARS, clear into the school, which was in part of Hollywood near Beverly & Alvarado, at the Los Angeles Evangelistic Temple, which later became O.L. Jaggers' World Church. He bought'm out while I was still teaching school there.

168. IN '53 BEFORE THE '52-'53 SCHOOL YEAR WAS OVER‚ AT THE BEGINNING OF '53 WE AGAIN HEARD ABOUT THE SOUL CLINIC! We had heard about the Soul Clinic when I was still in Arizona at our little church‚ & had listened to them on the radio from Los Angeles. We were quite thrilled with their idea of missionary work without much training‚ going to the field by faith, no matter how old you were or how many kids you had or how little education!—Very attractive!

169. SO IN EARLY '53, BY THE TIME MY SECOND SCHOOL YEAR WAS NEARLY DONE IN LOS ANGELES TEACHING THOSE WILD INDIANS OF THE ASPHALT JUNGLE‚ I FELT LIKE I WAS ABOUT READY FOR A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN OR A FURLOUGH! Eve was quite thrilled with the Soul Clinic & we'd been attending some of their meetings, as well as some of the Latter Rain meetings, & we were getting closer & closer to the Lord & deeper & deeper in the Spirit & manifestations of the Holy Spirit & gifts of the Spirit, & we wanted to get back into real fulltime evangelistic work, especially missionary work, & I wanted to go, of all places, to Israel as a missionary to the Jews! Ha!

170. SO IT WAS THEN IN THE WINTER DURING THE SCHOOL YEAR OF '52-53 that we heard the appeal on radio for missionaries to the Jews, missionaries to Israel! Fred Jordan was going to send missionaries to Israel! His Jewish Missions Director, Abe Schneider, got on‚ a converted Jew, & appealed for missionaries to Israel! We were already praying about quitting my job & going to the Soul Clinic school & training to be missionaries to Israel, & we were trying to get something from the Lord on it, & that's when I had the vision of the Red Light on top of the antenna. ("The Call of David," No.79.)

171. THE LORD TOLD ME HE HAD MADE ME LIKE THE PROPHET EZEKIEL‚ AS A WARNING LIGHT TO THE NATIONS! Then we got the Third Chapter of Ezekiel as well, & we were convinced that the Lord wanted us to quit my job & go to the Soul Clinic—which we did. I threw out as a fleece‚ "Lord, I'll tell my Superintendent, I'm not going to leave him or the kids or the bus route flat—I have to give him some notice. But as soon as he can get a teacher & a bus driver, then I'll quit." So I gave him a month's notice, & I think it was only within a week or two that some old teachers he used to know showed up, who could teach school & the man drive the bus!

172. SO I WAS ABLE TO QUIT & JOIN THE SOUL CLINIC SCHOOL THEN & THERE IN THE WINTER OF 53! By this time we had bought our old black 18-foot trailer that we eventually sold to Castro in Cuba after we drove it all the way to Miami! So we took our trailer & parked it in a trailer park near the Huntington Park Soul Clinic Nursery School for our kids, an old frame building where Fred had had his school before, but they were making him move out with all kinds of fire regulations & persecution, but where he still had a Nursery School for the children.

173. WHEN WE ASKED FRED'S SISTER LOTTIE IF WE COULD JOIN THEIR SOUL CLINIC SCHOOL, SHE SAID‚ "WELL, WE DON'T HAVE ROOM FOR YOU in any of our buildings, but if you can furnish your own housing, you can eat here at the downtown school building"—5th & Towne, where our own COG Family began to live just 17 years later!—And from which we grew to become much greater than the Soul Clinic! So I said to Lottie, "Fine! We know how to live by faith!" So she said, "Good!—If you can trust the Lord & live in your trailer, you can eat here!"

174. SO WE PARKED OUR TRAILER IN A TRAILER PARK IN HUNTINGTON PARK at $25 a month, which we were going to trust the Lord for.Each morning at 7 a.m. we'd drop our four kids off at the Soul Clinic Nursery School in Huntington Park, & then drive that ol' yellow cab clear downtown, six miles, to the 5th & Towne Soul Clinic School building & mission, attend classes & meetings all day, go witnessing & do all the rest of the things they did. We also ate our three meals a day there, & the kids were fed their three meals at the Nursery School, & then we'd go back at night, pick up the kids & drive back to our trailer exhausted & spend the night! It was quite a rigorous schedule, but I'd been used to worse, teaching school & driving the school bus! So this was almost a vacation by comparison!

175. BY SUMMERTIME '53, WE WERE SUMMONED IN & TOLD THAT WE HAD BEEN SELECTED TO GO WITH THE LARGER FAMILIES TO OPEN THE NEW SOUL CLINIC FAMILY SCHOOL IN TEXAS AT TSC‚ THE RANCH! Because the city was driving Fred out of his Huntington Park property, all families with children were going to have to move, there was no room for them downtown at the building, that was full of singles & bums‚ so he was going to open up his old family ranch, the Texas Soul Clinic Ranch‚ later TSC, which was just a Ranch at that time & not yet a TSC School.

176. HE'D BEEN USING TSC AS A BOOT CAMP FOR TRAINING MISSIONARIES TO ROUGH IT & see if they'd survive out there on the Texas desert by faith. So he wanted me to go there & help get the new Family Soul Clinic School started, because I had the experience in teaching & pastoring & a little education, etc. An old farmer was already there teaching the missionaries to milk goats & plow fields. So Lottie asked,

177. "WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO GO TO TEXAS BY FAITH? You can live on the property, but you'll have to furnish your own food & housing—all the buildings & cabins are full." We had our trailer, so we were all set for that!—"But," she warned, "you'll have to trust God for your own food, because out there everybody has to trust the Lord & live by faith—there's no other support!"

178. I SAID, "SURE! WE'RE USED TO LIVING BY FAITH!"—On the road in evangelistic work & pastoral work & school & all the rest, so that was nothing new to us, so we said, "Sure!" They said, "OK, get going! We'll see how you survive out there first, then let you know later whether we'll appoint you to become one of our missionaries to Israel!"—Ha!

179. SO AWAY WE WENT TO TEXAS!—IN THE SUMMER OF '53! I'd just been offered a better job working with the government & for more money‚ but the Lord had been really dealing with me in messages, verses, heart trouble, all kinds of things‚ so I finally realised God was wanting me to go, & we went!

180. AFTER SEVEN BLOWOUTS ON THE WAY, WE LANDED IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT TEXAS DESERT IN THE TWO HOTTEST DRIEST MONTHS OF DROUGHT THAT THEY HAD HAD IN 20 YEARS!—For two solid months it was in the upper 90s or 100 (35-40 degrees C.!) every day in the shade, & no shade to speak of, & no rain!—Nothing but dust! But we stuck it out! We didn't have to‚ at that time, attend any classes or meetings, we just sort of existed & tried to survive! But we really enjoyed it! The kids loved the Ranch life‚ the wide open spaces, they loved Texas & they liked all the farm animals & tiny critters & snakes & bugs & lizards & frogs & horny toads & everything else they found, & had all kinds of fun & interesting experiences!

181. PRETTY SOON FRED SENT THE WORD THAT HE WANTED US TO START THE FAMILY SCHOOL BY FALL '53 & would I be willing to teach there & help them build it? I said, "Sure!" Meanwhile I put in the water system & helped on some of the construction. But the more I worked there for the Summer, the less & less I liked some of the people I had to work with‚ who were not very spiritual. One old guy, the old farmer in charge, especially got it in for me & I for him!—All he wanted missionaries for was to milk goats & plow!

182. SO I FINALLY GOT PRETTY WELL FED-UP & TOLD FRED: "SORRY, but I'm afraid we just can't go along with everything you believe. We still believe in churches & we still believe the churches will receive the message of witnessing & soul-winning. So we think maybe we ought to make our ministry going to the churches, invade the churches & sell them on witnessing & soul-winning." He said, "Well, I tried that, but it didn't work—they wouldn't receive it! Sorry Dave, that's too bad, sorry you won't keep on with us." I said,

183. "WELL, I THINK I'LL GO BACK TO LOS ANGELES & BACK TO SCHOOL-TEACHING, my job is still open for me there. I think that's what I want to do too." Israel was closed by that time, they were not allowing any new missionaries, just replacements for former old denominations, & I was in a quandary what to do!

184. SO IN THE FALL OF '53 WE WENT BACK TO CALIFORNIA! My Mother was still living there at the time, & that's when she got me the job with Dr. Michelson, an old friend of hers, the converted German Jewish judge, Dr. A.U. Michelson, who had a Christian-Jewish ministry trying to evangelise the Jews with his radio program, the Hebrew Christian Hour, on some 500 stations around the World! He had a Hebrew-Christian Synagogue right in Boyle Heights, the heart of Los Angeles Jewry, & he offered me a job to come work in his office & be his assistant pastor. And he gave me a nice house for my little family.

185. BUT COME END OF THE '53 SUMMER‚ I WAS FED UP WITH MICHELSON & HIS JOB TOO, NOTHING BUT OFFICE WORK ALL THE TIME! I preferred school teaching, so I asked O.L. Jaggers if I could have my old job back at what was now the World Church Christian School, & he said sure! They also gave me back my schoolbus–driving job, which I wasn't too fond of.—Ha! God was really gonna lay it on me this time, so I'd get fed up with it all‚ forever!—Jobs, school, churches!—The works!

186. SO I WENT BACK TO SCHOOL TEACHING AGAIN FOR ANOTHER YEAR THERE, '53-'54. It was now about three years we had taught there altogether, until I got fed-up with that again! That's when I had so much heart trouble, & when I asked the Lord what I was supposed to do—the Lord was speaking through messages & everything—He said:

187. "GO SELL ALL THAT THOU HAST & GIVE TO THE POOR, & COME FOLLOW ME!" Well, I had more then than I'd ever had before, two houses full of furniture, car & trailer & a wife & four kids & a good income‚ & an income from the house I was renting next door! But I said, "Well OK, Lord, You said it‚ I'll do it!" But Dad (my Mom & Dad were living with us now!) fussed & said, "You shouldn't quit one job until you're sure you've got another one!" But I said, "Well, I've just got to obey the Lord & do it by faith!"—Amen!—And we did!—God's job!

188. SO‚ PTL‚ MOTHER HAD INVITED US TO SOME MEETINGS BACK IN PENNSYLVANIA. She said, "If you can make it by October," (that was 1954) "I'd be glad to have you & the kids—& Eve too, of course—to help in the meetings, help you get started in evangelistic work again." So we said OK! So at the end of the school year I quit again! We rented our houses for awhile, but finally we got fed up with that too & let'm go—burned our last bridges!

189. SO THAT SUMMER OF '54 WE TOOK OUR LITTLE TRAILER, FORSOOK ALL, SOLD EVERYTHING WE COULD, PAID ALL OUR BILLS, & BY THE TIME WE LEFT LOS ANGELES, ALL I HAD LEFT WAS A WIFE & FOUR KIDS, CAR & TRAILER & $30! But we started out on that by faith, 3000 miles across the country, to work our way back clear across the country for the Summer till the following Fall in October, when we were to join Mother for a meeting—which we did, praise God! We worked our way all the way & stopped over at TSC! I thought maybe they'd take me back, but they wouldn't. They said:

190. "IN FACT, IF YOU DON'T GET OFF THE GROUNDS WITH WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO TELL US, WE'RE GONNA THROW YOU OFF!" Ha! I was getting pretty radical! So we left & went to help Mother in her meetings. We finally got to New Kensington, Pennsylvania‚ in October 1954, living in our little black 18-foot trailer, all six of us, parked on the church grounds, & had a good meeting, tried to teach the people soul-winning & witnessing, but all they wanted to do was come to church & pray.

191. THE CHURCH FOLKS SAID, "THE LORD WILL SEND THEM IN, WE DON'T HAVE TO GO OUT & get'm!" So only about two or three people ever showed up to go witnessing house to house. Meanwhile the church was all fasting Sunday dinner to stay in the church & pray for a couple hours for souls! I said, "Well, now, why don't you get up off your knees & go out & get'm! You can't just stay here in the barn & expect to reap the harvest! Let's go out house to house!" "Oh no, we've gotta pray, the Lord will send them in, blah blah!" They just didn't want to!

192. SO THAT'S WHEN I FINALLY REALLY GOT FED-UP WITH CHURCHES & CHURCHIANITY & CHURCH CHRISTIANS! I said, "This isn't for me! I'm sick of it & sick of them!"—And they were pretty fed-up with me too, always harping on witnessing, etc., & so was my Mother.

193. AND THAT'S THAT NIGHT WHEN I NEARLY DIED, OR I DID DIE, woke up dead sitting up in my body, body lying flat on the bed behind me & I was half in & half out, half in one World & half in the other, & the ghost of Dr. Koger stood in the corner of our little trailer & I had that marvellous experience which sent us almost immediately packing off to Miami to start a Soul Clinic School that the Lord had given us the vision of in Miami‚ which we did! (See No.679.)

194. WE GOT TO MIAMI AGAIN, AT CHRISTMASTIME 1954. Mother had a Christmas meeting there in which she invited us to join her, & a couple other meetings on the way. So we got to Miami by Christmas again. But after that meeting she didn't have any more meetings & I didn't have any more job!

195. SO I WANTED HER TO JOIN ME TO HELP START A CHRISTIAN SCHOOL THERE IN MIAMI, A SOUL CLINIC SCHOOL. I said, "With your faith & mine & our work together & the good team we are & the friends you have & the friends we have & your mail ministry & mine, we could support it by faith & trust the Lord & have a really good going-great Soul Clinic School here, & you could be one of the teachers! You're getting old now, but you'd have a good job & teach these young missionaries & soul-winners all the things you know about living by faith & serving the Lord, & it would be a wonderful thing!" I just thought maybe she'd really think it was great!

196. BUT SHE SAID, "NOT IF IT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH FRED JORDAN & THE SOUL CLINIC!" She didn't agree with Fred Jordan & his radical teaching & policies & she didn't like the Soul Clinic. She was quite stultified back in her denomination again, expecting to retire on a pension with them. So all my persuasion fell on deaf ears!

197. WHILE I HAD LEFT LOS ANGELES WITH ONLY $30 BUT ARRIVED IN MIAMI WITH $300 BY FAITH, OUR MONEY WAS RUNNING OUT! Mother left with Dad to go back to California, forsook us, & we were left there alone with almost nothing!—No school‚ no job, nothing but my little six & taxi & trailer! So finally when we didn't even have enough to pay our $25-a-month trailer space, Eve said, "Well, I guess you'll have to go out & get a job, we can't live on nothing!" But the Lord had told me to come there & start the school, & I knew that was the place‚ so I didn't know why we couldn't find a building, couldn't get started.—I soon found out!

198. THAT'S WHEN I WENT TO WORK FOR THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY‚ JOHN MARSH, 12TH FLOOR OF THE MIAMI COURTHOUSE FOR $50 a week‚ much less than I'd earned as a school teacher!—We managed to survive on that for a few weeks, then I got the revelation to quit & again live by faith & start Soul Clinic classes here & there‚ & God wouldn't desert me!—So I soon had about eight classes going in various churches & the mission‚ from West Palm Beach to South Miami—& the Lord never failed! (See No.897.)

199. THEN WE GOT THE WIRE FROM FRED THAT HE HAD FIVE MISSIONARIES COMING THROUGH FOR SOUTH AMERICA, COULD WE HOUSE THEM? We didn't have a house, so with the $100 he sent, we went out & rented one for $50 a month out in the jungle by a canal, near the airport! It turned out to be a very convenient location after that. We housed his missionaries as they came through, got'm cheaper tickets, helped'm in & out of the airport & sent them on their way!

200. WE THEN STARTED OUR LITTLE SOUL CLINIC SCHOOL IN THE SPRING OF '55 WITH ONE STUDENT HOUSED THERE IN THAT TINY ONE-BEDROOM COTTAGE while we stayed in the trailer outside! That first student was our little Willie Brummet, who turned out to be a legal stenographer & secretary, just the thing we needed to help in our work & our prayer letters, & by June of that year we were able to rent a big house with two houses on the property & lots of bedrooms‚ & had the Florida Soul Clinic School going full sway with 40-some students & sending out 21 missionaries to seven Latin American countries, & going great guns! HAL!

201. WE ALSO BOOKED FRED'S "CHURCH IN THE HOME" GOSPEL TELEVISION SHOW ON A LOCAL TV STATION, SO THAT BY THE FALL OF '56 (& THE FALL OF FRED JORDAN IN HIS DIVORCE & REMARRIAGE TO WILLY, HIS WILLY!) HE WANTED US TO GO OUT FULLTIME ON THE ROAD FOR TV. We felt something big was coming, & the Lord warned us that there was going to be a collapse of the Soul Clinic for some reason, & we asked God what to do, what was my attitude to be toward "Saul" (Fred), who was now offering to employ us fulltime for TV? The Lord clearly answered: "As David with Saul!" So I said, "OK, Lord, here we go!"

202. SO WE NOTIFIED THE WHOLE SCHOOL & FRED WE WERE GOING TO CLOSE UP THE FLORIDA SOUL CLINIC, & told everybody to go out to the mission field or out witnessing & win souls, or back home to their churches & teach witnessing, & keep witnessing & winning souls! This broke our dear little Willy Brummet's heart!—I think she was in love with me, but I didn't know then I could have more than one wife, & there was no more room in our new trailer, so we had to let'r go—with tears!—She later went to work for another missionary group, TTL! GBH!

203. FALL OF '56: WE MOVED INTO OUR NEW 35-FOOT TRAILER WHICH WE HAD BOUGHT FOR THE PURPOSE, WITH A BIG METRO FIVE-TON TRUCK! With truck & five-ton trailer loaded, we were ten tons & 50 feet overall! We farewelled Miami again & struck out on the road with our four young kids, going from town to town booking Fred's TV Show, "Church in the Home," distributing his newspaper, & booking his film about the Soul Clinic in the churches, a very interesting full–length one–hour sound & colour dramatic movie!—"Reap the Everlasting Harvest!"—Hallelujah!

204. WE BOOKED MEETINGS FOR OURSELVES IN THE CHURCHES with the children & the movie‚ & sometimes slides, sometimes Bible Prophecy—a mixture of youth evangelism, witnessing, Soul Clinic & Church in the Home television—a little bit of everything! We would settle down for a month or so in one area, park the trailer, & while the kids went to school & ministered locally in churches & witnessing‚ I'd leave Eve at home with the kids to take care of them & her ministry & theirs, & I would go out on the road & book Church in the Home on television & radio—on over 300 TV stations & 1100 radio stations in those ten years on the road for "Church in the Home"!

205. IT WAS JANUARY '57 BY THE TIME WE GOT TO JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA & we heard the news that Fred had divorced his wife & married Willy‚ which was a big scandal in churches of that day‚ & the Soul Clinic virtually collapsed! Nearly all students‚ teachers & missionaries left, & all he had left was his TV show & me! So I saved the kingdom for the time being.t

206. FOR THE REST OF '57 WE TRAVELLED FULLTIME FOR TV & ON INTO THE WINTER OF '58, WHEN WE FINALLY MOVED TO AN OLD MANSION IN LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, WHERE WE STARTED ANOTHER LITTLE SOUL CLINIC SCHOOL. Fred then invited us that Summer of '58 to go back & headquarter at the Ranch at TSC, which had folded up & nearly everybody left except the old farmer, & he & I didn't get along. There were still a few missionaries there, but we finally got fed up with him & I told Fred I couldn't get along with him & he wouldn't leave but Fred wouldn't fire him, so I said, "I'm not called to this thing out here in the desert, anyhow! I want to preach to the Jews! I want to be with my people!"—Not in Jerusalem, since I couldn't go there, but Miami Beach!—Ha!

207. SO AT CHRISTMASTIME 1959 WE DROVE OUR TRUCK & TRAILER ALL THE WAY BACK TO MIAMI FROM TEXAS & soon found another big old house in Southwest Miami where we parked it & started another little Soul Clinic School there. By Summer 1960 we'd moved it to our Sharon Colony on Key Largo, cleared the jungle there & staked out lots for trailers & invited people to come down & live for the Lord & go to missionary training school!

208. WE WERE THERE ON KEY LARGO FOR MOST OF '60‚ but finally I got fed up with that & moved to a little cottage on South Miami Beach where I could be closer to my Jews in my spare time when I wasn't on the road for television, which I was most of the time.

209. WE LATER LEASED AN OLD HOTEL ON SOUTH BEACH FOR THE SUMMER OF '61 & started another Soul Clinic, giving nightly "Bible in Pictures" lectures to my family, guests & a few Jews! My Mom & Dad visited us there, & Ho (12) went back to California with'm to help take care of my Father, who'd had a stroke & was partially paralyzed.

210. BUT FINALLY WE SAW THE JEWS DIDN'T WANT THE BOOKS, SO IN THE FALL OF '61 WE MOVED BACK TO THE HUGE OLD NINE-BEDROOM Gautier mansion, right downtown in Miami near where Jordan Marsh now stands—215 N.E. 15th Terrace, right across Biscayne Boulevard from where I used to live as a little 6-year-old boy 35 years ago on Bayshore Drive!—I was now 42.

211. THERE WE CARRIED ON OUR SOUL CLINIC SCHOOL INTO '62 TILL WE GOT CHASED OUT OF MIAMI BY OUR FIGHT WITH THE [ACs] OVER EVOLUTION! They condemned our building, our house & us, & the Lord warned us we had to get out of town, so we did. We took our little family & Jeth in our new 1962 Dodge Motor Home to California, & enroute in Utah I married Deb & Jeth at the ages of 16 & 21! But they soon got tired of us & Bible studies, & went back to the Ranch in Texas, TSC. The old farmer was gone now, & Fred asked us if we'd like to go back & stay on the Ranch & take care of it for him.

212. SO WE ACCEPTED FRED'S INVITATION & WENT BACK TO TSC & LIVED ON THE RANCH ALONE, JUST OUR LITTLE FAMILY & NOBODY ELSE, FOR FIVE YEARS, '62 TO '67, while I still travelled for TV. There Aaron & Faithy graduated from a small country High School at nearby Huckaby & thoroughly enjoyed the refreshing pure country farm life, raised cattle, goats, sheep, horses & pigs, while Deb & Jeth returned to Miami to finish his college—& get away from us!

213. IN 1964 FRED SAID HE WANTED TO HAVE SOMETHING AT THE NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR, So we booked this little space only ten feet long & three feet deep (about 3 x 1 meters) against one big blue wall in the Protestant Building, & we set up a little booth there advertising "Church in the Home" TV, managed most of the time by Ho (16) & Faith (14), while Aaron & Eve took care of the Ranch.

214. I KEPT WORKING FOR CHURCH IN THE HOME TV WHILE THE KIDS OPERATED THE EXHIBIT & WITNESSED & got a lot of names & addresses & won a lot of souls, until Fred said he didn't think it was worth it & he was going to close it down & wouldn't operate it the next year of '65 ('cause it cost $5000 a Summer!)

215. IN SPITE OF FRED, WE WENT BACK THERE TO THE FAIR IN '65 anyhow‚ as you've heard the story, about how Grandmother saw the vision of the deserted plow in the unfinished field. (703:70,71.) We had had her visiting us on the Ranch, & she was quite an inspiration with her messages in tongues & interpretation & prophecy, etc.‚ & the Lord warned us to go back to the World's Fair & continue our exhibit there for the following Summer of '65‚ as the New York World's Fair was only held in the Summers of '64 & '65. So we did & it was a fruitful ministry, but Fred never forgave us for it, as it cost him another $5000!

216. IT WAS AT THE FAIR THOSE SUMMERS OF '64 & '65 THAT HO & FAITH REALLY GOT THEIR TEETH INTO FULLTIME MINISTRY! Ho was really in charge, with Faith as his assistant‚ but Eve & Aaron too were working there part time. Most of the time Eve & Aaron took care of the Ranch in our absence, along with my sister's son‚ David Booth.

217. DEB & JETH ALSO CAME UP IN '65 & HELPED AT THE FAIR, & it was through this that I got them jobs with Fred in California, where they worked until I invited'm to re-join us in '68 in the Huntington Beach Light Club birth of the Children of God!—Much to Jeth's reluctance!—But he came because Deb insisted it'd be good for their little wild Indians! But his heart wasn't in it. However, they were good business managers & helped keep things organised while I was away, & they continued with us, following afar off for ten years, until they left us in the RNR of '78.

218. TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORTER, 1967 WAS THE YEAR OF "MILLIONS OF MILES OF MIRACLES" (No.897) when we travelled with my Mother with us clear up into Canada & then clear down to the Bahamas & back to Texas, where we got the message that we should go eventually to the Land of the Setting Sun—California! (Nos.77:9-11‚ 897:180.) But we had to wind up things with both the Ranch & Fred in Texas, pack up‚ load up & marry our "Teens for Christ": Josh & Faith, Caleb & Lydia & Aaron & Sara—all married by me!

219. SO WE DIDN'T ACTUALLY MAKE IT TO CALIFORNIA UNTIL CHRISTMAS OF '67. There it was in '68 that we took over the Light Club a mission for the hippies, at my Mother's encouragement, & she died, having finished her fight, kept the faith & gone on to her crown, leaving us behind to finish the job!

220. IN '69 OUR NEW MOM, DEAR MARIA CAME, & IN THE SPRING OF '69 WE TOOK OFF, driven out of Huntington Beach by persecution there, onto the road with our Hippie Gypsy Caravan, which grew from about a dozen vehicles & 50 people to around 35 or 40 vehicles & about 125 people! Across the United States from West to East & up into Canada, & finally down to Texas, we travelled all the year of '69 to February of '70.

221. WE ARRIVED IN FEBRUARY 1970 ON THE RANCH AT TSC, & most of you know the story from then on. Because there on the Ranch we soon grew to 250 & finally to 350 by the time Fred kicked us out! But we saw pretty severe persecution coming from the [ACs] for various reasons, & Fred was making it hot for us, & they were after us! Fred had warrants out for us for trespassing on his property, when he had loaned it to us by his own word to stay there, & we hadn't done anything wrong! So I decided it was time to take my long longed–for trip to Israel to find us new quarters—we were going to start a Kibbutz in Israel!—The Promised Land! Ha!

222. SO IN SEPTEMBER 1970 MARIA & I FLEW OFF FOR EUROPE on Icelandic Airlines, with a planeload of all hippies but me! I was the only oldster on the whole plane, the only one that didn't look like a teenager or in their early 20s! But I had a beard, so I was accepted as pretty hip too!

223. WE STAYED A BIT IN OLD LONDON, & THEN WENT ON A EURRAIL TOUR THROUGHOUT EUROPE, wound up in Italy & took a boat to Israel & spent a few months there into 1971.—From here on it's all in the Letters, for by this time the MO Letter ministry was really rolling, writing home to you folks, teaching, preaching, leading & guiding you in your affairs, the leadership of which we had left in the hands of Jethro & Deborah.

224. THEN IN 1971 WE HAD TO GO TO CYPRUS …, & with my revelation that Israel was not where it was at…! You can read all about it in the famous Letter "Breakdown," in which the Lord gave us the revelation that Israel was not it, that was not what He wanted us to do, to move all our hippies to a kibbutz in Israel…!

225. SO FROM CYPRUS WE KEPT WRITING YOU LETTERS IN '71, THEN JOURNEYED ON BACK TO LONDON‚ & finally decided that Jeth & Deb were making such a mess of things that we were going to have to go back to the States & try to straighten them out. They were on the verge of divorce & were getting kicked out of TSC‚ so we had to go back & try to help them salvage the situation, which we did, staying for awhile at the Dalrich Motel in Dallas‚ having conferences & getting many revelations from the Lord about what to do & what He was going to do with us! Read'm!

226. THE LORD SHOWED US HOW GREAT OUR MINISTRY WAS GOING TO BE & HOW WE SHOULD NOW PIONEER EUROPE & send off teams there, so we began by sending Ho & Faith & different ones to London‚ etc.‚ & eventually others to Paris. Meanwhile, Maria & I camped alone for months in beautiful Texoma Lake Park—all through the Winter of '71–'72! When we thought we'd finished the job of getting Jeth & Deb straightened out‚ we'd been in the U.S. about a year, from May '71 to April '72.

227. IN APRIL '72 WE FLEW BACK TO LONDON, arriving on exactly the same day of the year, April 13th‚ as we'd last arrived the year before in London from Israel! Dear Ho put us up for a couple months in the little toiletless cabin down in the beautiful little village of Horsmondon, loaned to him by the Boy Scouts or some church, GB'M! Then we found the tiny little house in Downham for only 17 pounds a week & moved there & devoted our full time to writing & a little FFing of the now famous "King Arthur"! (Nos.501-522)

228. BY 1973, MO LETTER PUBBING WAS REALLY IN FULL SWING & THEY WERE EVEN BEGINNING TO SELL ON THE STREETS, PRAISE GOD!—While the kids "cracked" some big houses & estates in the London area for the hundreds of new disciples, & a Poor Boy Club! The Revolution for Jesus was on the way!—Already numbering over 2000 of us!

229. IN FEBRUARY OF 74 THE LORD WARNED US TO LEAVE LONDON by an outstanding revelation that you've heard about (see No.633 & News Reprints of FF Headlines, Vol.IV, pg.4611) & we left in March for Tenerife, where we lived for almost three years, from '74 to '77! We stayed first at the Belair Hotel, then at the Girasol.

230. WE'D STARTED OUR FFing WITH ARTHUR BEFORE WE LEFT LONDON, & our FFing pioneering continued at the hotels in Tenerife, from which came much good fruit, including Davidito! We finally got an apartment on the cliff there, & eventually a house up in Las Cuevas in the highlands near Orotava when we found we had a baby coming! Our house was Number 11!—Is it still there?—Loved it!

231. DAVIDITO WAS BORN JANUARY 25, 1975, AT THE MATERNITY CLINIC IN PUERTO DE LA CRUZ, TENERIFE. Praise God, he started a Childcare Revolution throughout our worldwide Family with Childcare Letters & all kinds of Childcare information & pregnancy & birth & mothercare Letters & information & books & more, so that you got the benefit of all of that from Davidito's birth, God bless him!

232. IN '76 FFing WAS GETTING INTO FULL SWING & REALLY HOT, SO WE MOVED DOWNTOWN to an apartment right near the Capricco Club where we did most of it, & we were in all the clubs there before we were finished!

233. WE CARRIED ON OUR FFing THROUGHOUT '76 until we finally had to flee in February '77, due to persecution. We fled to Mainland Spain, then to Madeira, then back to Lisbon & finally back to Madrid for awhile, where we lived in some apartments & Moraleja during the RNR. Then we returned to Portugal, then back to Madrid again, busily hearing from the Lord & writing all the time!—Read'm! (Nos.570-650)

234. FINALLY WE WENT TO SWITZERLAND IN THE FALL OF '78 & spent the Winter there, & the next Summer in Malta, where we had trouble & were driven out again by persecution through no fault of our own. (See No.797‚ Parts 1-4: "The Maltese Doublecross!") So we returned to Switzerland.

235. BY CHRISTMAS OF '78 THINGS WERE GETTING PRETTY HOT IN SWITZERLAND TOO, with the release of all the persecution & TV documentaries & newspaper articles & tirade & campaign against cults & isms following the Jonestown tragedy. So again we fled from Switzerland, where they were going to have specials on TV & in the German magazine editions all about us & my picture & whatnot‚ so we decided it was getting a little too hot & I'd better move!

236. SO WE ARRIVED IN VILLE FRANCHE, FRANCE, ON CHRISTMAS OF '78 at the lovely old house there on the cliff looking down on that beautiful little harbour on that incomparable French Riviera sea coast of the Mediterranean, one of the most beautiful places I think I ever saw! We were there until dear Tim's defection in February, when we considered it necessary to move for safety, lest he should become an enemy.

237. SO IN FEBRUARY 1979 WE MOVED OUT OF VILLEFRANCHE TO NICE, just in time to get an apartment for only a couple weeks before Maria had Techi on March 19! With our enlarged Family & staff, we now felt it necessary to move all the staff from Villefranche‚ so we moved to a large house in Cagnes. Then when someone else defected for awhile, we found it necessary to move ourselves & our personal staff along with Techi into a small apartment in Domaine de Loup.

238. BY THEN THE CAMPING SERIES WAS IN FULL BLOOM! SO IN 1980 WE MOVED TO ROQUETTE & STARTED GETTING OUR TRAILERS & had a good summer of camping out in various places in Southern France, until we finally rented a farm near Aix & moved all the trailers up there‚ & between the house & the trailers we had enough room for everybody! Then at last we had to leave dear France as well!

239. BECAUSE OF SEVERAL WARNINGS & DREAMS, WE FLEW TO SOUTH AFRICA IN THE SUMMER OF 1981, & spent six months in Capetown learning all about South Africa & the South Africans, still busy writing Letters‚ now books & all kinds of things! Because of the Lord's warning that we were all going to have to move out of the North, we then went back to Portugal to help the WS Units still in Europe to move out, & finally left Europe ourselves in February of '82 & headed South into the Tropix, where we have now been for nearly a year! TTL!—Along with most of you GBY! TYJ!

240. WELL THAT'S A YEAR-BY-YEAR ANALOGUE of our travels & exploits & various experiences through 64 years of my lifetime!—From the very beginning in 1919 to February 18, 1983, it will be 64 years! So Praise God! Hallelujah! TYL! I hope you didn't get bored.—We certainly didn't! It kept us hoppin'! So PTL! GBY!—And we certainly hope that's not the end of my life—not yet!

241. WE HOPE 1983 WILL BE A GREAT NEW YEAR! From the various interpretations we've received, it sounds like I might even live more than that! For it seems that the longer we live, the more we're accomplishing, the more we're writing, the more we're publishing, the more we're feeding you, the more we're winning souls & witnessing & evangelising the World, going into all the World preaching the Gospel to every creature, until we've just about done that! God has really blessed us & we've won millions of souls, distributed hundreds of millions of pieces of literature & have gone into over 100 countries‚ & our Family now is composed of over 100 nationalities speaking 40 languages!

242. WE NOW HAVE GROWN FROM MY LITTLE FAMILY OF SIX UP TO OVER 20,000, including thousands of Music Club members, all of us living in about 10‚000 different Homes! So the Lord has certainly fulfilled His promise, that if I'd forsake-all & follow Him, He'd reward us 100-fold! Only He's done more than that for me! He's done it over 10,000 fold in the way of Homes & Family, & ten times ten thousand in blessings & support & rewards & souls for His Kingdom forever!—Amen? PTL! TYJ! So hallelujah! GBY!—IJNA! ILY!—The rest you know!—YOU are the rest!

1983 is up to YOU & ME & the LORD! Let's make it our greatest year yet! Amen? PTL! GBAKYAMYAB!—In Jesus' name!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family