Chapter Thirty-Three Every-other-weekend

Thirty-Three
Every-other-weekend

My study with Charles went well and in about a year I made my dedication to Jehovah and symbolized it by getting baptized. I was baptized at the Woodland Hills Assembly Hall on Cinco de Mayo (May 5th) 1979. So, just this past May I had my 30th anniversary of my baptism.

Charles Clark and his family moved to Yerington, Nevada. Brad and I drove up to visit them. On the way up we took a dirt road over to Bodie, California. Bodie is a ghost town high up in the Sierra Mountains. We had to drive quite a way on that dirt road. Bodie is a State Park but it’s been left pretty much in its original state. It’s not like the ghost town in Calico, California which is on the way to Barstow. Both are interesting, but Calico has been renovated and made into a tourist attraction. I know I enjoyed our wondering around freely in Bodie and I think Brad did too. There are strict rules about defacing or trying to take souvenirs. You just walk around and enjoy the history.

Our visit in Yerington was nice and relaxed. Brad, Paul, Charles and I went trout fishing near Yerington. I think Charles and I did most of the fishing. Brad and Paul just explored around. I don’t remember catching a lot of fish, but we had a good time. While there Brad and I accompanied Charles and his family to the local Kingdom Hall for meeting and we went out in service with them on Saturday. I think it was the first time for me to do rural witnessing which was quite different from our local field service.

After Brad got his driver’s license, we took a trip up through Salt Lake and into Idaho. We stayed over in Pocatello in the Southeast part of Idaho. The motel we stayed overnight in had a mirror on the ceiling, not by request, and a waterbed. Pocatello was one of the isolated areas in which prostitution was still legal. A holdover from the old Wild West days. A little West of Pocatello was American Falls at which a large dam had been built and was pretty impressive. It was near American Falls that we went to the Crystal Ice Caves. We didn’t go down too deep but in the caves it was right around freezing temperatures. The Native Americans and early frontiersmen use it to store food and furs.

We kept heading further West along the Snake river passing near where Evil Knievel made his motorcycle jump across a Snake River canyon. On our way West we drove up into the Sawtooth Mountains. My memory is a little hazy here, but I think we drove up through Ketchum and Sun Valley on our way up to town of Stanley which was located on a large lake. All the country up there in Idaho is beautiful. We eventually ended up in Boise the Capital of Idaho. In Boise we visited the old Idaho State Penitentiary. The accommodations were pretty harsh. I think somewhere I have a picture of Brad in one of the cells. We went to Sunday meeting there in a Boise Kingdom Hall and met some nice friends.

From Idaho we headed back towards home going through Reno and staying over night at one of the Casino. Reno is a lot like Las Vegas but not as big and less flamboyant. I don’t remember if it was before or after Reno, we stopped in a small town to pay a visit on Ben’s mother. Ben was Brad’s stepfather. We next stopped in Sacramento and visited a historic fort but didn’t get by the capitol nor to Sutter’s Mill. From Sacramento we made our way back home to Pasadena. It was a nice long father-son trip and Brad got to put his new driver’s license to use.

Not too long after Brad had concluded his year or so living with me and returning to live with Sue, I moved from the apartment on N. Allen to a one bedroom apartment with a pool on Washington Blvd. just west of Hill. On Brad’s weekend visits we go swimming, play games or just mess around.

It was during this time while I lived in the apartment on Washington that another major change occurred in my life. For three years during that time I regularly auxiliary pioneered which means that I’d perform a minimum of sixty hours of field service each month. Part of that time I would do magazine witnessing by a donut shop at Washington and Hill. On somewhat of a regular basis I would see this foxy looking lady in a Datsun 280Z stop at the donut shop. I thought she was really an attractive woman, but driving that sporty Z I thought she was a “fast lane girl”. One day she says “hello, brother”. Whoops, she’s a spiritual sister. That was good news. I later found out that when she stopped at the donut shop, she had her three kids in the Z with her and she was on her way to San Diego to visit relatives. I also found out her name was Ann Miller and she was in the Alta Vista Congregation which was nearby.

During those early days of circuit assemblies at Woodland Hills we use to serve food at lunchtime. You could get the food at either stands inside the hall or at the cafeteria next to the hall. I worked in the audit department for our circuit and I was assigned to supervise the sisters we used as cashiers. Who showed up on my list of cashiers? Yep, Ann Miller of the Alta Vista congregation.

One day just before a circuit assembly, I had to distribute to all the sisters an information handout on new cashiering procedures. I decided to deliver Ann’s handout to her at her home; after all she only lived a few blocks from where I lived. I think she was surprised to see me at her door, but we hit it off pretty well. However, she informed me that she would be shortly moving back to San Diego.

Well, I wasn’t going to let this foxy lady, er ... I mean charming sister get away from me. In the next chapter I’ll cover commuting to San Diego for love.