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—Storytime with Grandpa!

1. (Techi: Thank You Jesus! Thank You for this time, Jesus, that Grandpa can tell us all these things now. We really do pray that You would please bless & anoint this time. Please do bless Grandpa & strengthen him. Help us to be good listeners, in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord!) Amen! PTL!

Texoma Lake Park to Ardmore!

2. After our first trip to Europe, we had come back to the U.S.A. for those conferences at the Dalrich Motel to get things straightened out between Jeth & Deb. After we'd been back in the U.S. only a few months, the Family started receiving quite a bit of bad, anti–Family publicity, & we were also having difficulties with Fred Jordan, the owner of TSC. We heard, in fact, that Fred was going to eventually issue an eviction notice* to Josh & me & the leaders of the camp at TSC, & also kick us out of his properties in California! So we thought it best, now that the conferences were over, that we get out of the State of Texas. (Techi: Also they were stringing that new phone line on top of your roof!) Yes, so we went up to Oklahoma, to Texoma Lake Park. We parked right on the edge of the lake in this beautiful big park where they had camping, & we really enjoyed it! (*Eviction notice: Notice from a landlord that his tenant must leave the house or property.)

3. Rachel tried to live with us for a little while there at the park, but it was a strain on her. We usually quit our work about six o'clock in time for the news, & then Mama & Rachel would fix our supper. We didn't go out to eat much, so the girls were cooking for me. (Techi: What did they cook?) The usual regulars that I like—a hamburger patty & mashed potatoes & gravy & some green vegetable like beans or peas‚ something simple you can get out of a can‚ because that was the easiest way. It's a lot of trouble cooking fresh vegetables, especially in a small space like the Cruiser. That was my usual diet whenever Mama cooked for me, because those were the things she knew how to cook, & after Rachel left‚ Mama had to do all the cooking, & she did real well! She'd never really cooked before that. I can remember her sitting back there on the bed by the cook stove reading her little cookbook & trying to figure out things to cook in our first days alone!

4. We'd get up in the morning & I'd cook breakfast, because I was good at cooking breakfast‚ & that was usually late morning. (Techi: And Mama would cook lunch?) Well, if we ever had any lunch, my favourite was either peanut-butter-&–jelly sandwiches or egg salad sandwiches, & Mama was good at that. And then she was good at fixing hamburgers & mashed potatoes & gravy & a vegetable at night. The mashed potatoes often came out of a mashed potato flakes box‚ but they were good! And the gravy she made was real good, she really learned how to make gravy!

5. (Grandpa studying map:) I've got to look up the town in Oklahoma where we stayed after the park. There it is‚ Ardmore, Oklahoma! I've been trying to think of the name of the town! See that little place right there?—Ardmore, Oklahoma! It was just North of Texoma Lake. Here's the border of Oklahoma & Texas, which is Texoma Lake. It's a big long lake! (Techi: So the lake is the border?) Yes.

6. Ardmore, Oklahoma!—How could I have ever forgotten that? I've been trying & trying to think of the name of that town! We finally got tired of staying at the park, especially when it got to be Wintertime! It was cold & we couldn't go swimming in the lake any more. (Techi: You used to go swimming in the lake?) Yes, in the Summer time. We'd paddle clear out in the lake with our little air mattress until the park ranger came over & told us it wasn't safe to be out too far in the lake because of the speedboats. We'd had a few close calls with them already! They'd speed right past & make these huge waves! He said it was forbidden to be more than so many feet from the shore, so we stayed closer to the shore after that.

7. But by Winter time it was getting really cold there in Texoma Lake Park! We were the only campers there! I remember we had a picture of Mama standing out by the faucet & the water dripping out was all frozen into an icy stalagmite! I'm sure there are some pictures taken of us there in the BOR. I remember one of Mama & me sitting at the picnic table eating, & one with Mama standing out there grinning because it was so cold the water dripping out of the faucet had built right up to a stalagmite!

8. Do you know what a stalagmite is? (Techi: Yes, I think so.) It's the kind of limestone formation that forms in caves, the ones that are formed by drippings from the roof of the cave. The water dripping down from above has sediment or minerals in it, so it builds down like an icicle, called a stalactite, from the roof of a cave. But then where it drips on the floor of the cave it builds up an opposite type of icicle called a stalagmite. The one from the roof is a stalactite & the one from the floor is stalagmite. The way I used to remember it was stalactite clings tight to the top, & stalagmite is like a little mite, it's down lower & builds up.

9. This was actually our third visit to that Park. We'd first discovered it on an outing with Mother Eve & the kids, & I don't know if I told you this before, but the next time we went there was when we were fleeing from the States on our first trip to Europe in 1970. Now we'd come back to the States months later & had gotten the leadership strengthened & settled, & we were again departing.

10. One day the manager of the park came around & said, "I'm sorry, we're going to have to ask you to leave within a week because So-&-so is coming to inspect the campgrounds."—A governor or somebody. And he apparently didn't think it would look too good to find somebody still camping there in December in the Winter. There wasn't much to do there any more anyway, & we had no hook-ups, so we decided to go to a regular commercial trailer park. And the nearest one was at Ardmore, a few miles North of Texoma Lake Park.

11. Can you see where Ardmore is on the map? Texoma Lake is that lake right underneath it. It was a big lake, it went for miles & miles, so they made the lake a part of the border between Texas & Oklahoma. And we felt safer over in Oklahoma than we did in Texas where the persecution against the Family was the hottest & our enemies were the fiercest! There were lots of churches & preachers preaching against us‚ & Fred was turning against us.

12. So we moved up to this trailer park in Ardmore, it wasn't in the downtown area of Ardmore, of course, it was on the fringe of Ardmore. But it was close enough in that we could walk to a big shopping mall with a lot of stores, & we'd walk over there, buy our groceries & walk back. Of course, hardly anybody walks in the U.S.A., especially any distance or out on country roads or anything! So we'd come back from the supermarket carrying our little bags of groceries, & people would go by in their cars looking at us like, "What kind of people are these?" (Techi: Because you were walking?) Yes‚ & the cops especially! I remember them coming by one day, slowing down to a crawl & eyeing us suspiciously!—Because robbers that break into houses carry bags of stuff off with them, too, ha! But after looking us over, me being an old man & she being a woman, we looked pretty harmless, so I guess they decided to leave us alone. (David: You were living in your motorhome then?) Yes, in the Ark.

Life in the Ark—Cable TV!

13. When we first moved into the trailer park, we were able to get plugged in to get electricity. They also had water there, so we hooked up our water, & they had sewage lines, so we hooked up our sewage. We had all the conveniences of home now‚ although in a very small space.

14. But I noticed this wire hanging down from the light pole that was right beside us, & I wondered what it was! I finally thought, "I'll bet it's that new thing they call cable TV! The last guy that was here probably unplugged it from the back of his TV & took off!" So I thought, "I think I'll try that & see if it works." I could just reach out my window & grab the wire. So I took it & plugged it into the back of our TV, & sure enough, it was cable TV!—Ha!

15. That was our first experience with cable TV! Of course, it only had four stations on it, but it also had a weather station‚ which was very interesting. You could tune in the weather at any time of the day or night, & they had three big gauges: A big temperature gauge to show you what the temperature was; a big hygrometer to show you what the humidity was, & you could just about guess when you were going to have rain; & a great big barometer to show you the atmospheric pressure.—All these three major readings that you needed to know the weather. When the barometer goes up it means fair weather, & when it goes down, it means wet weather. So these gauges were rotating all day & all night. It was the only station that went all night long‚ with these three meters on it, & that was very interesting.

16. While we were in Europe & the Mideast we were thankful to get the news on our little tiny radio from BBC. But now we were in the U.S.A.—the "bad ol' U.S.A." (not "good ol' U.S.A.")—& we could again get TV news. I think the last time we'd had TV news was while we were living in the Cruiser (Ark) at TSC. I'd gotten this little tiny miniature TV which worked on battery or electricity, so I wired it up at the foot of our bed on a shelf from the battery light socket by the bed. It had a battery light there, & I wired the wire around to the back of the TV, so we had battery TV. I think that was when we were still at TSC with the 300 hippies, & Mama & I were living up in the woods out of sight, so we'd gotten used to watching the 6 o'clock news on TV. They had David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite & a lot of famous newscasters in those days.

17. (Techi: Was it the same TV that you were plugging in the cable TV?) Yes, it was. Still our little TV. The screen was only about 10 inches (22 cm.) wide, but it was good because it was small, & only something small could fit on that shelf at the foot of the bed. (Techi: And it had four stations?) Yes, besides the weather. (Techi: What else did they show?) Oh, all kinds of things—movies, news, ads & whatnot—& of course it was all black-&-white.

18. (Techi: They didn't have colour TV in those days?) Well‚ you could get it then‚ but colour TVs were very expensive, about a thousand Dollars. Of course, we couldn't afford a big TV, & we didn't have space for anything too big. And they made most of the colour TVs big in those days‚ because only the people who were rich & could pay for them wanted colour, & of course they'd make them big TVs.

19. So anyhow, now we had lots of TV!—Four channels, plus the weather. Ardmore itself had its own little TV station, & then they brought in a couple of stations from Oklahoma City on the cable. (Techi: If you hadn't plugged in the cable what would you have had?) One station, Ardmore, that's all. (Techi: And did they have a selection of programs?) It was typical small town TV. They had the usual different serials & soap operas & ads, & at night they'd have at least one major movie, etc.

20. We'd usually watch TV at night after we'd finished our day's work writing Letters & relating dreams & all kinds of stuff! I don't know whether you've looked at the old Books & the old Letters lately, but a lot of them were written right there in Ardmore. I remember at Texoma Lake is where we got the Letter, "They Can't Stop Our Rain!" (ML #128.)

"Chronolog!"—And Decision to Leave the U.S.!

21. Anyway, one day we got a message from Jethro. He said, "I've got to come up & see you about something important. They're going to have a very uncomplimentary, antagonistic show about us on national television." It was a show called "Chronolog," & each week they specialised on a different subject, a different exposé or different themes‚ & they were planning, in a coming program a few weeks away, to come all–out against us.

22. The camera crew had come & interviewed some of our folks in Texas, & they'd even gone to London—where Ho was by this time—& had interviewed him! They'd also filmed our new Family Homes in Amsterdam & Copenhagen, as I recall. They were really getting around & making this a big issue. They were trying to dig up dirt about us, all the negative mud they could find!

23. So Jeth came up very sober, along with Deborah‚ as I recall, & said‚ "They're going to have this show by such-&-such a date‚ Dad, & if you're going to go back to Europe anyhow"—which we were planning to do but we hadn't decided on when—"we think it would be good for you if you get out of the country before that show comes on, because your face will be pretty well-known. They'll have pictures of you & all that."—Which was true.

24. Jeth felt the whole country would be stirred up against us after this show was aired. And it did make us a lot of enemies & kind of turned the tide of what we'd been having, almost nothing but good publicity, which had won us a lot of friends & a lot of disciples. It helped to start turning the tide against us to where we got a lot of enemies & the harvest in the U.S. began to dwindle.—Because of the bad publicity we weren't getting as many new disciples, etc.

25. It was a big smear campaign‚ of course done by the ACs. They had found out somehow—I don't know how—about our change of heart. … [T]heir first nationwide show on us that was very favourable—"First Tuesday." But somehow they found out [about] our trip to Israel, so now they were determined to smear us & were preparing for this big national TV show. They had smeared us in a lot of places locally, but this was a national TV show on NBC! Anyway, Jeth said, "If you're leaving anyway, we think you ought to get out of the country before this show comes on!"

26. So I told Jeth‚ "Well, we'll pray about it." I think the hardest thing I had to give up was the TV news!—Ha! But I realised that if I stayed past this show that was coming out on a national TV network that was going to crucify us, I wouldn't feel very comfortable being in the U.S. after that! I also got a word from the Lord about it when I was praying. I said, "Lord, do we have to give up the news & TV? That's all very important!" And the Lord gave me a message, He said‚ "The work I have called you to do around the World is far more important than these mere shadows!" He was talking about the shadows on television, because that's what they are. Whenever we needed to make a major decision, we would pray to make sure it was of the Lord, & I was concerned about not having any more TV, & the Lord told me that. So I knew we had to go! (Since then, thank God, English-speaking TV news has become much more widely available, thanks to satellite technology & companies such as CNN!)

27. So I phoned Jeth & told him that we'd be ready to go at a certain time, & if he could come up & make the arrangements we'd appreciate it. So Jeth & Deb came & spent a few days with us while he was making the arrangements & bringing the money that we needed for our tickets to Europe again.

28. We had to leave the Cruiser behind, of course, we couldn't fly that, so Jeth came up with another driver, & he & the other driver drove the Cruiser back down to Southern Texas, to the place where Brother Paul had bought them a school building, & they had quite a camp there!—What they called "Selah, Texas"! Jeth was in charge & running things & they did pretty well. Come to think of it‚ I have an idea that Jeth thought it would be not only a good idea for me, but also for him if I got out of the country! Ha! I never thought of that before! But now that I look back at it, I can see that I kind of cramped his style!

29. He had taken a trip up to the state of Washington & all around, & he was getting to where he was really preaching! He was getting all these Christian youth groups to listen to him & he was sort of trying to imitate my style. But he didn't quite have the same spirit & I had to caution him a few times on some of the things he was doing. He became a great success in the Northwestern U.S. & going around converting whole houses of Jesus People to join us!—And they did a great job in those days. In fact, one woman who was the head of the whole Jesus People Army joined—Linda Meissner—& brought her people in, & we were sweeping the country! But Mama & I needed to leave the country before that "Chronolog" show came on, so we did! We packed & did our forsake all, kissed most of our stuff goodbye & left it all in the Cruiser, except for our personal clothes.

Ardmore to Chicago to London!

30. As I recall, this time we got a night plane from Ardmore to Chicago, where we would have to change planes for the transoceanic flight. In fact, we flew across the Arctic Ocean. Let me show you our route on the map. There's Illinois, & here's Chicago! (Techi: Is Chicago a state?) No, it's a big city on Lake Michigan. (Techi: Inside where?) Illinois. Here's Illinois, & here's Chicago on Lake Michigan. Now take a good look at that so you know where it is.

31. And now we are going to London! Here's London way over here‚ & this time we flew direct to London, we didn't have to stop off in Iceland. (David: What airline did you fly on?) I don't remember‚ but it was one of the major airlines. The shortest route to London from Chicago was like this, up across Canada, Labrador... (Techi: Across Greenland?) It was close to Greenland. They stayed pretty close to land nearly all the way in case they had any trouble.

32. So from Ardmore, Oklahoma, we flew up to Chicago first, & we landed in Chicago, as I recall, at night‚ or late evening at least. Then we caught a big jumbo jet plane from Chicago that evening. Jeth had made pretty good arrangements so we didn't have to wait too long to change flights. I think we ate a farewell dinner with them at the airport terminal before we left, & Mama & I climbed on board with our limited luggage.

33. (Techi: Did you still have the same suitcase?) I think I had my little metal suitcase & Mama had a larger one & we checked both of those through so that all we had left were our carry-ons—various bags with shoulder straps & whatnot.

34. So we climbed aboard this big jumbo jet! You know what those are like‚ they have a lot of aisles & sections & whatnot. We were still flying cheap "tourist class" & we flew all night then from Chicago, almost across the Arctic, near Greenland, & then down to London, landing in London in the morning. I can remember coming across Ireland & the Irish Sea as it began to dawn. And this time, being on one of the big airlines & not a cheap outfit, we landed at Heathrow Airport.

Funny Story about April 17th!

35. So now we're coming to London where we didn't know at the time we were going to stay for nearly two years! And by the way, a funny thing happened as we were going through Immigrations at the airport! The Immigrations officer said, "April 17th. You landed here last time on April 17th. Do you always do that?—You just come on April 17th?"—Ha, ha! He thought that was really funny! (Techi: Did you leave on April 17th?) No, we had arrived there from the Continent on April 17th on our way back to the U.S.‚ & now we were coming back from the U.S. & we arrived in London again exactly one year later on April 17th! (Techi: That's funny‚ Grandpa!) Maybe the Lord did that to make me remember that date!

36. We first left the U.S. in September '70, we toured Europe & the Middle East, we were in Haifa for Christmas, & then back to London on April 17th, 1971, by way of Cyprus, & then back to the U.S. Now we were leaving the U.S. a year later. We got back to the U.S. in '71, & we were there for a whole year, & now we were landing in London on April 17th‚ 1972! (Techi: So that was about 19 years ago.) Yes!—And we're getting close to your birthday now, David—1975! (Techi: That's really exciting!) But we've got to quit now because we've run over-time. So we'll quit with landing in London, & I'll tell you later what happened from then on. (Techi: Only three years till David's born! Neat!—And seven years until I'm born!) Okay, shall we pray?

37. (David: Amen! Thank You Lord! Thank You Jesus for the fun story that we had. Thank You how we've gotten so far. Thank You for how You've been helping Grandpa to remember all of this, & thank You for how we can learn some good lessons from Grandpa's experiences. Thank You also for how it's just so much fun & so interesting to be able to hear what happened back then before we were even born. Thank You for blessing & anointing Grandpa in telling us these stories‚ in Jesus' name.) Amen! PTL! GBY!

Picture captions:

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SUN & FUN camping at Texoma Park, Okla. Summer & winter 1971.

Maria washing her hair with water out of the lake!

Exercising!

BACK TO WORK! Note Maria's typewriter on camp table—she was taking pic!

It was so cold the water dripping out of the faucet had built right up to a stalagmite!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family