Mulan mentioned the rain in Seattle in the thread entitled “Rain, rain, rain”. Nathan Natas, the dead ringer for Brother Knorr, explained that New York gets more inches of precipitation. Billy Goat alluded to light deprivation as a contributor to depression. I identify will all three of those observations.
Dr. Evoy delivered me on the one year anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day at the Renton Hospital. I recall living in the 40’s on Union Ave. in Seattle. The corner store sold ice cream cones for a nickel. But soon, we were back in Renton, living upstairs in the dance hall turned Kingdom Hall. My mom would let me push the metal chairs together and roller skate until dad put a stop to such frivolity in Jehovah’s house.
The rain continued as we regularly visited my great-aunt Harriet in Puyallup. I always pronounced the pulp mill town’s name as”Peuuuuuuuuuu-wallup“, much to my dad’s chagrin. Harriet was a cranky anointed spinster who chastised me for my precociousness, overusing the refrain: “Little children should be seen and not heard.”
Rain never stopped me from walking by the bus stop, cutting through the woods to Highland Park Grade School. (Highland Park was a poor area, consisting of WWII military barracks converted into rentals. ) When a teacher observed me crossing the street in front of the school, she reported me to the principal. “Were you j-walking, TMS?” “No, I was k-walking!” Neither the principal nor my parents found that remark humorous.
My other anointed relative was my maternal grandfather, Adolph Joseph. He collected the rain runoff in barrels. The soft water was useful in cleaning, a sort of universal solvent. A.J. was a wordsmith, knowledge-oriented and long-winded. His Watchtower comments were five minutes long and his prayers longer. During most days, he sat in a sort of recliner, underlining Bible verses alternately red or blue with one of those red/blue pencils. If awake, he was always ready for discussion. Once, when I was 14, he offered that Adam and Eve were not merely naked in the Garden after their sin, but nude! I added that they were likely exposed. A.J. liked that and considered me a consultant after that.
Short bald A.J. was a gardener extraordinaire. Leaks, potatoes, raspberries, blackcaps, strawberries, etc. Compost, lime, manure and water were his raw materials. His woodshed was always filled with several sizes of wood, kindling, scraps, nails, all categorized. Sieves separated gravel into sizes. Nails were taken out of boards and straightened and the boards saved.
A.J. deferred to me in field service as I had the smoother approach. His effectiveness lay in his inability to differentiate religious truth from any other truth and religious need from any other need. None of his approaches would ever have made it past a district overseer for convention use. We approached a Czechoslovakian man, working in his garden. He made it clear he was too busy to listen to anything. A.J. took off his coat, grabbed a hoe, and motioned for me to start hand-pulling weeds. In a few minutes, we were inside the Czech’s abode. The householder offered my grandfather a beer. He accepted. “And the lad?” I drank my first beer in field service.
My family rented an older home in downtown Renton with a basketball goal on the garage. I perfected not only my two-hand set shot but my dribbling skills as I skirted the many puddles. I bonded with Dennis Kuder, a very smart neighborhood boy who liked me despite my strange religion. “We all have our little holies!” he said.
TMS
