Thought I'd share this part of my story! Randy Written by Randall Watters |
| Thursday, 13 December 2012 09:39 |
I was conceived in New York City by design. My mother and father, Joy and Ken Watters, decided that having a 6 year-old beautiful little girl was not enough; they needed a boy. As my parents later told me, it was to help hold the family together. My mother prayed so hard that she told the Lord if she had a boy, she would give him to the Lord, like Samuel of Bible times (1 Sam. 1:11). This act of faith was destined to color the outcome of my life as you will see. I was born in Oklahoma City in 1952. I prayed as long as I can remember. Being brought up Baptist, I really didn’t like church at all, but was interested in God. When the Billy Graham Crusade came into town when I was about 9 years old, we went. When the call came to “come down and give your life to the Lord,” I was strongly moved to go. I have never regretted that decision. Nevertheless, I still couldn’t stand going to church. It all seemed such a strange departure from ordinary life. The last church I went to in my youth was the Garden Grove Community Church in So. Calif., as my mother worked as one of Dr. Robert Schuller’s secretaries. Although his church is now more famously known as the Crystal Cathedral (and in desperate financial condition), back then it was the first and only only drive-in church in the world, converted from an outdoor movie drive-in, with car speakers and all. That was just too much for me, even as a Cali boy. It was part of the polyester world of Orange County, California. I grew up next to Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm. Fireworks from Disneyland lit up our backyard every night in the summer. This was the outside parking lot at the Garden Grove Community Church circa 1964 - note speakers for car windows. Just a Country BoySanta Ana Canyon circa 1968 Just gaduated and off to Oregon for a (supposed) 3 month horseback tripI “broke out” in my junior year of high school, finally becoming proud of being me. Although we lived in a rural area, we had lots of kids my age and we were vandals and did crazy things, like holding a shopping cart next to the car, accelerating to 40 mph and letting it go down the street or into a trash bin. I got drunk at 12 in Ensenada with a buddy on a surf trip for his older brother. My vices started early! In high school I used LSD and hashish, and went out with the guys drinking beer on weekends. Yet I was able to be a near straight A student all the way up to my Senior year, when I then refused to do homework and got by on Bs and Cs, but of course I passed and never wanted to see a school again. I worked with my dad in a Ford agency and rode all kinds of hopped-up cars, ending up with two exhibition of speed tickets from street racing. I always had two cars: a good one and a beater that I would pick up from the wholesalers for $50 and just beat the crap out of it in the of acres of Irvine property that was seldom policed. I double-dated in high school for my whole senior year with another couple was a stus symbol. Gayla was my second girlfriend, having dated a much “wilder” girl in my Junior year in Las Vegas. Being typical Okies, we loved the country and my dad bought a small farm when I was in my teens. We raised all kinds of animals, including horses, dogs, cats, chickens, a raccoon, a goat, rabbits, snakes, quail, and much more. I also had guns and went hunting with my dad on occasion. The horse was later replaced by a motorcycle to terrorize the hundred miles of dirt roads behind our house. I could forget about church… this WAS my church. Renee and her sister circa late 60s By the time I was out of school, I moved down to Newport Beach with the hippie crowd, and my hippie girlfriend moved into an apartment on the beach that I shared with two long-time buddies. Renee was her name, and Edgar Cayce was her invisible guru. She was reading books by the Rosicrucians, and got me interested in it as well. This was 1971, and Russia was the big nuclear threat of annihilation, so I wanted to be on God’s side should I leave this earth! My Insecurities Led Me to the Witnesses One day I visited my folks and found a little blue book called the “Truth That Leads To Eternal Life” in the drawer that my mom had bought from the Jehovah’s Witnesses just to get rid of them. I quickly read it and showed it to Renee, who also showed interest. It seemed to have all the answers, which the churches didn’t. So we actually looked up a Kingdom Hall nearby and asked someone to study with us! Renee soon moved to Florida and became a JW. We even got our families to join! I was always looking for a sign from God. So this next one got me in trouble. I was sitting in the den, reading the “Truth” book. I just had so many reservations, so I said to the Lord silently, “If this book is true, let that cat (who was standing in the doorway disdainfully looking at me)… and before I could complete MY THOUGHT the cat jumped up into my lap, fulfilling the wish and scaring the HELL out of me! I decided it was too weird to be a sign from God, but I became a Jehovah’s Witness anyway. I was hooked. This happened in Canoga Park in 1972, a year before all JWs were to give up smoking or be disfellowshipped. I smoked a pack a day and tried everything to quit, without success. I realized that I LIKED smoking, and that was my problem! So one day I was sitting in the driveway and just started crying, because I could not quit. I put my heart in the Lord’s care, as I gave up trying. I couldn’t even ask for a miracle. I got one, however! The next morning I woke up and didn’t grab for a cigarette. I DIDN’T WANT ONE. What?? This was too weird. This happens to NOBODY (none that I ever heard of). The Lord actually TOOK AWAY THE DESIRE to smoke, and to this day I haven’t had the desire at all and haven’t smoked once either. Renee moved back to Florida and got busy in the "truth." I proceeded to study with my mother, sister, and brother-in-law and converted them to the Witnesses around 1973. Renee got her mother, sister and brother-in-law baptized, too! My dad let us do what we wanted, but he knew better than to get into it. Renee wanted to get married, but it was so close to 1975 and I had to do all I could to save others! I got baptized in 1972 at an assembly and soon was appointed as magazine servant in the Canoga Park Kingdom Hall, where I lived at that time. By 1974 I was a card-carrying TRUE BELIEVER in the WT as being the only true religion, and all others would be destroyed soon at Armageddon. I used to take camping trips up north and leave “Truth” books all over the place, even hiding them under rocks and in strange places for people to find. I canvassed Los Angeles Airport on several occasions and gave away hundreds of magazines in one hour. But this was not enough. I loved the high of being so “in control” in my life that I wanted to have more responsibility. I took a trip up the California coast in 1974 to ascertain where I could pioneer where the need was greater. I found one congregation in San Luis Obispo that had only a couple of pioneers, yet had a whole town of 30,000 to cover, of which 15,000 were students. I went out 6-7 days a week and knocked on almost every door in San Luis Obispo in only six months, and I ended up with six “Bible studies” that got baptized from my efforts. Helen and I in SLO, early 1974 The Crazy PioneerIn late 1974 there was a Kingdom Ministry that sent out a call for Bethel volunteers to serve a minimum of 4 years in the Big House for $14 a month. Now, this was a real test for me. I hated big cities, and was scared to death of New York City, especially the cold and hot extremes of weather. (California boy here!) Not to mention that back then New York had about the worst crime rate in the nation. (Nowadays that is probably Compton, about 7 miles from where I now live!) I went door-to-door with the pioneers, often doing unworked territory in Topanga Canyon where all the hippies lived, and locked apartments that we conspired to sneak into. We developed sneaking into locked apartment complexes as an art! We even blitzed the Los Angeles Airport inside lounges on occasions, handing out free backissues of the Watchtower. It wasn’t too long before I asked my dad if I could work part-time at my job at Valley Park Ford as a tune-up man, and he set it up so I could work 3 days a week while I pioneered. My pioneer partners and I would put in 140 hours a month like it was nothing. We even worked Charles Manson territory! I "special pioneered" for about a year and a half... the last six months before I signed up for Bethel was spent in in San Luis Obispo, Ca. where I baptised 6 locals before heading off to Brooklyn Bethel in 1974. I was a ministerial servant. My family getting ready for the assembly at Dodger Stadium in the mid-70s Let’s Go To BethelTIME IS SHORT! I felt that the world of people was about to destroy itself, with the fear of world events that seems to draw so many into the JWs and other cults. We all want to live in a secure family, and some of us prefer to lose our identity in something much larger than life. It does wonders for any insecurities! Fortunately for me, one of the elders in the San Luis Obispo congregation had recently returned from Bethel, and told me all about it. All the fights, the smoking, the crime, and the idiosyncrasies of the old men who lived there. For that reason it was no surprise to see these things when I got there in November of 1974. I came in with a class of over 100 “new boys,” all of whom signed away their personal lives for at least 4 years (by the end of the first year over 50% of them had left prematurely, with a black mark on their record). One fellow who joined me from Hawaii en route to New York on the plane was a young man named Dennis, who after his first year, was caught visiting the brothels of 42nd Street Manhattan and was disfellowshipped and sent back to Hawaii. The next day President Nathan Knorr “had him for breakfast” in front of 2000 fellow Bethelites, outlining at the morning text discussion exactly what Dennis had done. Within an hour, half of the Witnesses in Hawaii knew what Dennis had done and no doubt it left him near-suicidal. This was common treatment for anyone who dared to embarrass Knorr and his New World Society. I knew that would never happen to me! I would rather be DEAD. World Trade Center circa 1975 New ResponsibilitiesOut of the 100 brothers who came to Bethel in my class, only two were assigned to the pressroom, where books and Bibles were printed. Myself and Lewis Williamson. Lewis was from a holler in Kentucky and because of my okie background we became close buds. We even took out across the country in a car for summer vacation one year, visiting his family and friends and seeing much of the United States. We camped in Yosemite National Park with my nephew Kenny, and I would love to scare Lewis with bear stories. He carried a big stick with him the whole hiking trip! Lewis and I both ended up working on the big MAN web presses that printed all their Bibles as well as anything on the fancy Bible paper (which is really the same paper used to roll cigarettes). There was no air conditioning in the factory, and we would run those big presses in the summer with 100 degrees outside and 110 degrees inside, sweating our butts off and breathing the heavy ink that the presses spewed out constantly. For my first year of Bethel I had a constant sore throat just from all the ink in my lungs! But we both became press operators in less than a year. I was also the only one in my group that I know of that got assigned to room with a Bethel “heavy,” Milan Miller, who traveled around the world setting up the MAN presses, which were worth about a half million apiece at the time. In addition to sharing a great room in the 117 Columbia Heights building. I learned a lot about the Society from Milan, a kind little man that I respected a lot. The rest of the new boys got assigned to live with up to 3 or 4 others in the Towers Hotel, which had been newly purchased and renovated for housing. Try sleeping with 4 others in one open room, who come in from their congregation meetings at all hours of the night, and many of them were fond to drink! Not fun. But I had lucked out. Every new boy is assigned to a Bethel table and is expected to show up at least every morning for breakfast and the daily text discussion with Knorr or Franz or some other Bethel overseer. Four on each side of a long table, with a table head on one end and a table “foot” on the other. The table head was a Bethel Elder (a step above a regular elder, more on that later), and the foot was usually the same or a regular elder who could take over if the table head was missing. Food was passed from one side and if you were #10 you may not get too much to eat! Most all the food was grown on several farms the Watchtower owned in the New England area, including livestock, fruit and vegetables. That’s how we could live on $14 a month. It was virtually a commune. At my table, we had one of only two single sisters that I knew at Bethel. She was Judy Martin, and as far as I know she is still at Bethel, as I see her picture in some of the publications to this day. I grew to love this girl secretly, but didn’t tell her for a long time. When I finally did, she was not at all interested. I was crushed. But I was lucky it didn’t work out, for she never would have left the Watchtower. I kept myself out of trouble, not an easy thing for a young man living in New York City “surrounded by Satan.” (When I first arrived at Bethel I went up to the tower top at 124 Columbia Heights and looked around all of Manhattan, saying to myself, “This is the only safe place in New York City!”) Randy Watters the original and rest of the story HERE
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BTW the new freeminds.org site is almost ready! Looking for good bloggers, vloggers, and help with the site. All of my previous sites will be included in one place, thanks to Juan Viejo. It should be up within a week. I think you will like it! - Randy
