How I Stole a Man’s Car and He Wound Up Marrying Me

In college, most guys have little economy cars, if any.  Not the most handsome man in all of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity.  Nope.  He drove an enormous family station wagon.  It screamed stability, future children, a house in the suburbs.  To me, at least.  To his fraternity brothers, it was dubbed The Party Wagon, and allowed them to cram in and go to the “$2.50 per carload” drive in theater.

When I started dating this guy, we never went anywhere on a single date.  The more the merrier was his motto.  First date was: “Hey guys, she said yes to going dancing at Ruby Begonia’s Roadhouse.  Hop in.”  The Party Wagon held nine people and we were always full.  Our second date was, “Hey guys, we’re going roller skating, hop in.” Our third date was up the coast at a sand dune beach and you can bet we were full again.  Out to Carrow’s restaurant for a late night sundae?  Table for nine, please.  My sorority sisters enjoyed coming along too.

Maybe he like the fact that I had to scoot over and sit squished beside him?

The only time there seemed to be less than nine people in his car was when I borrowed it on Sunday mornings to go to church while he slept in.  He loaned me his spare key, and I appreciated suddenly having wheels.

So all is going swimmingly in my new relationship.  Lots of ZBTs began hanging out with my sorority sisters too.  But then one of the ZBTs got the bright idea that our Chi Omega crest needed to be absconded with.  I have no idea why we kept our crest by the oft-unlocked back door.  It was a huge thing, probably 3 feet wide and 6 feet high.  You can imagine in which vehicle they spirited it away, probably with nine ZBT’s laughing their butts off.

The Chi Omegas were pink about it.  Vows of revenge.  Scouting teams were sent to storm the ZBT complex and certain other fraternities to find the thing.  I suspected it wasn’t in the ZBT house at all.  Sure enough.  Smack in front of the ZBT complex, parked on the street, the smug Party Wagon sat brooding over her contraband, a thin blanket thrown over a 3 X 6 object in the back.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and pondered my revenge, when behold!  The spare key!  I calmly started The Party Wagon and drove it to the Chi O house, we unloaded the crest, then I drove it back and parked it in the exact spot.  The ZBT’s were nowhere to be found.  Probably studying, they averred later.

No one even realized The Party Wagon had been on a turncoat mission until the next day, when they spied the limp blanket and realized the crest was no longer there.  Cries of “horse thief” and “call the police” ensued.  They were met with “breaking and entering” “burglary” from the Chi O’s.

“You stole my car!” exclaimed my Handsome Friend.

“Nonsense,” I replied.  “Your car is sitting right where you left it.  I did however, take back what WAS stolen.”

“You stole my car!” he repeated.

“Only temporarily,” I admitted.

Seven months after I met him, the handsome Party Wagon’s owner proposed.  Guess his heart was in the glove compartment and I stole that too.

Unlike the Party Wagon, I will never give it back.

Stripped of Identity

Washington State has just suffered the largest forest fire in the state’s history.  Electricity and cell phone coverage for entire communities failed, so families were not sure if the fires were coming their way.  Was it time to evacuate yet?  The firefighters mounted a herculean effort to save houses, but some families did not know how close the fire was. It wasn’t until they heard the roar as it sped down an arroyo near their house that they saw it coming, and coming fast.  One family drove off with their dog and a purse while everything they had burned to the ground.

 After the fire moved on, they were allowed back home where they surveyed melted refrigerators and shells of cars.  One man said that the fire burned his house but spared his stack of firewood.  On the news was a photo of everything salvaged from the fire, consisting of a broken teapot, a little porcelain figure, and a few knick knacks.  File cabinets of important papers were nothing but a melted mess.  Treasures of the past smoked indolently.  One of the men interviewed on TV said “My family’s identity is gone.  Who we are as a family is burnt up.”

Our family once wound up with nothing but a suitcase of clothes.  None of our household goods.  No photographs, no favorite chairs, not even our dog’s bed.  But it was not as a result of a tragedy, and we did get them back after about a year.  It was an interesting study in discovering who we were.

It happened when I was 16 years old.  Dad got a job in San Francisco, and our family drove out from Illinois.  Mom and Dad found a house for rent, completely furnished.  The owner was an Englishwoman who returned to England for a year, leaving not only her furnished house, but her dog as well, a beautiful incorrigible Irish Setter, as wild as the cliffs and wind of his breed’s homeland. 

Since the house was furnished, Dad called the moving company and told them to keep our stuff in storage for a year.  Other than a suitcase of clothes I had come with, I had nothing of my past.  But the owner said we could have whatever clothes she left behind. 

The Englishwoman's house we lived in.

It was odd living in that house, wearing someone else’s jeans.  Reading her books, watching her TV, petting and walking her dog.  We used her china in her hutch, ate off her placemats, used her cleaning products, and slept in her beds on her sheets.

Nothing from our past life came with us.  My former high school friends?  Not one picture.  None of my mom’s lovely things.  None of my dad’s files.

Teenagers love to fit in, to belong to a club, to have an identity.  Poof!  Mine was gone.  At first sad, I came to look at it as liberating.  I could be anybody.  Mom let me get a few new clothes at the back-to-school sales, and it was the perfect opportunity to leave my nerdiness behind.  It was an interesting time to be washed clean of Who I Was.  But I couldn’t resist the urge to belong, to prove myself, and be part of a club. 

Some things about me would never change, for I did not become the athlete I dreamed about.  I didn’t lose ten pounds nor suddenly get smarter.  Instead, I joined the drama club just like I had at my old school. I still loved history.  But I did try some new clubs at school.  Our family became closer than ever.  I discovered a book by John Muir in the bookshelf and carried it with me.  I took the Irish Setter for long walks in the hills and had time to think.  Up in those hills, I ran into many rattlesnakes, found a few springs, and watched a bronze Irish setter’s joy through the waving grasses in the golden California light. 

John Muir said, “On the mossy trunk of an old prostrate spruce about a hundred feet in length thousands of seedlings were growing…so favorable is this climate for the development of tree seeds, and so fully do these trees obey the command to multiply and replenish the earth.  One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature – inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste.  And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out.  It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and we soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unsupendable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies around us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.” –My First Summer in the Sierra

Victims of the Washington State fires will have a lot of rebuilding to do.  But in spite of the man on TV saying, “My family’s identity is gone.  Who we are as a family is burnt up.” there are constants.  I hope you get through it and rediscover who you are. 

Even though most of us will not suffer the loss of our home in a fire, nevertheless, if the chance ever presents itself to leave belongings behind and move to a strange place with your family, take it. 

Especially if there is a dog and a book by John Muir.

Should Teachers Wear Uniforms?

“I would not mind wearing a uniform at all,” said my daughter recently.  She’s a fifth grade teacher.  Should teachers wear uniforms? 

Consider the people that do wear uniforms: airline flight attendants, police officers, firemen, nurses, surgeons, lab technicians, and pilots.  Uniformed teachers would be immediately recognizable to students and parents.  While they currently wear necklaces with ID tags, a uniform would lend a voice of authority to their position.

The article suggested that teachers be awarded stripes, and Daughter loved this idea.  She’s been teaching for ten years, and thought stripes could indicate this.  She’s a National Board Certified teacher, meaning she’s had extra years of training and passed difficult tests in order to be certified to teach in every state of the union.  Pilots get wings, teachers could get some badge to indicate their training.

When parents start screaming at her, as they have and do, a uniform with merit stripes might be a visual reminder that this is not just a pretty young woman who babysits, she is a highly trained professional with five years of college and two years of National Board Certificate training.

Do uniforms for teachers smack of militarism?  Are nurses, doctors, lab technicians and flight attendants militaristic?  Firemen and policemen have ranks, and are not out trying to take over the world.  Pilots’ uniforms are very similar to military uniforms, and they are not trigger-happy war mongers.  Most military personnel aren’t either, they are just doing their job and coming home to families.

When we lived in the Philippines, nearly every professional had a uniform, from car rental offices to street sweepers.  My daughter’s school has a high amount of immigrant children, and other countries are used to teachers wearing uniforms.  When they see a teacher, they expect this level of professionalism.  Imagine being used to airline pilots and surgeons dressed in uniforms, then suddenly moving to a country where pilots and surgeons show up in aloha shirts and sandals.

Young teachers may be inspired by the visual reminders of their elders’ years of service. Yes, teachers can get past burnout.  The older teacher eating the ham sandwich in the staff lunchroom is not just a 53-year-old, slightly chubby, graying, bespectacled woman. She has been through thirty years of report cards and conferences, recess duty, runny noses and assemblies. She (or he) can inspire and illuminate.  They’ve had the joy of seeing apathy turn into passion, confusion turn into understanding.

Let’s give teachers a professional uniform and merit stripes.  What do you think?

Moses and the Promised Land, or Finding a Home

This week is Vacation Bible School, so I signed up to help out.  About 150 kids come bouncing through the church door every morning.  Thank goodness for the energetic teenagers who volunteer too.  The theme this year is Wilderness Escape, and they talk about Moses leading the children of Israel from Egypt, through the Red Sea, and across the desert to the Promised Land.  The theme includes trusting in God, whether to provide or to lead.  The pastor gets to dress up as Moses, and carries around tablets of the Ten Commandments.  Charlton Heston has competition, in my opinion.

I’m new at Vacation Bible School. I never attended one before, nor helped at one.  There are lots of games, movies to watch, songs to sing, and new friends.  A little girl named Cayden told her mom after

the first day that it was the best three hours of her life.  One must not credit our Vacation Bible School too much.  Cayden has more charm than average.

My job was to serve in the Israel village, where there are crafts.  The kids get to make rope, sand art, sandals, tambourines, and “make bread” which is mostly “play with dough”.  My tent is the butter-making tent.  It’s pretty simple, we put cream in a small plastic bottle, the kids shake it for five minutes and voila!  Butter.  They can take a popsicle stick and put it on a Ritz cracker to sample their handiwork. Food in the wilderness!  We chat a bit about God’s provision.

I've had lots of wilderness experiences, from canoeing down a scary river in British Columbia (the Stikine) to facing a forest fire in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area.  

But the my Journey to the Promised Land, complete with manna from heaven and directionless wandering, came when I left a close knit extended family in a community I loved, and moved from Southern California to Seattle.

We had two daughters, age 3 and 1.  It was so nice living only six miles from Mom and Dad, as well as my two brothers.  We had a nice little house in a pretty little community, and a fenced backyard for the German Shepherd Dog.  I loved our church and I was in a babysitting co-op.  Perfect.

Then Hubby got a new job, and we had to move.  The job was a dream come true for him, but for the first year he would be on probation, making a mere $10,000 a year.  We had decided that I was going to be a stay-at-home mom, so we would live on our savings as well as a supplemental job he had with the US Naval Reserves.

Our plan was to rent a house in Seattle once we got there.  We thought we’d better take our furniture up there at the outset, for we did not know if Hubby would get any time off to come back down and move it north.  We rented a Ryder truck and towed our one car, a Pinto station wagon.  The Pinto decided he was not leaving So Cal, and put teeth in his protests by breaking down right before we even started off.  

No matter, we thought, we are towing the Pinto anyway!  He doesn’t have to work.  We planned to stop off at Hubby’s sister’s house on the way up.  Her husband was a mechanic.  We had the Ryder truck for a whole week, so we hoped Pinto could be easily fixed and we’d be on our way.

Unlike Moses and the Children of Israel, we did not have too many problems on the journey itself, other than making a tight turn and having the trailer hitch jam.  Hubby was whacking it to get it loose when some people came home and got upset we were blocking their driveway.  The owner yelled and griped at us, but Hubby and I spluttered our apologies, and he calmed down.  We were able to get the trailer hitch undone, rehooked, and got back on the road.

The mechanical brother-in-law fixed the Pinto station wagon, and we arrived in Seattle on a Sunday afternoon.  We had to have our belongings out of the truck by Tuesday evening, or would have to pay high fees. If we couldn’t find a house to rent by the day after tomorrow, and get all our stuff moved in, we would have to rent a storage unit.  It was money we didn’t have.

We were able to park the truck at the Ryder rental place, then simply drove to where Hubby would be working and found a nearby hotel.  We thought we’d start looking for rentals from there.  In those days, there was no Internet; we found places for rent in the classified section of the newspapers.  It was a beautiful July afternoon in Seattle, so we started driving around looking at neighborhoods.  It hit us that it might be rather daunting to find a place to live and be moved in in a mere 48 hours.  We needed to get crackin’ and find a place fast.

Whereupon, the Pinto decided he was having none of it and broke down again.  We didn’t even know where we were, only that there were a lot of trees and blackberry bushes around.  It looked like there might be some houses up ahead.  Hubby thought he could fix the Pinto if he could find an auto parts store.

We walked up the street, not really knowing where we were going, turned left, and two houses in, came upon a man sitting in his car, which was parked in his driveway.  He was listening to music.  We spoke to him through the open window and asked directions to the nearest auto parts store, explaining our car had broken down.

He said, “Hop in, I’ll take you there!”  We grinned.  When the first place did not have it, he took us to a second, and then back to our car, where he waited to make sure Hubby could get it fixed.  The man explained that his wife was ill with cancer, and that he got so bored sitting in the house while she napped.  He was out in the car listening to music and getting fresh air when we appeared.  Happy to help, he said.

There are angels among us.

Thankful for long summer evenings in Seattle, we were able to look at several rental houses that evening.  It boggled my mind how trashy people kept their places, expecting to be able to rent them.  A few were still occupied and would not be available for weeks.

Monday morning, I drove further afield, looking at neighborhoods.  I was used to Southern California’s style of homes, and the little old fashioned bungalows in Wallingford or Fremont were strange to me.  I headed south of the airport, and bought a local newspaper at an Albertson’s grocery store. 

By lunchtime, I had no leads.  I joined Hubby and his new hire mates for lunch on their first day of work.  None of them could believe that I would find a place, move all our goods, including the refrigerator, washer and dryer into the new house by myself, and have the rental truck back by the next day, Tuesday.

Nor could I, frankly. 

And that was assuming I would even find a place available, especially since I wanted a 3 bedroom with a fenced yard.  A CLEAN 3 bedroom with a fenced yard.

When Moses got to the Red Sea, he did not ask how many could build a boat, or how many could swim.  Probably none of them considered that the seas would part and they would walk across dry land.  It doesn’t say that they walked across damp sand or mucky low tide bogs.  Nope.  Dry land.

If this place was really going to be the perfect place, then it had to benefit the landlords too.  What kept going through my mind was “The place you seek is seeking you.  The place you need, needs you.”  My needs were going to be met by that very same God who could part the Red Sea.

In a local paper that afternoon I found a 5 bedroom place listed.  Cul de sac.  Nice place for little kids.  We made an appointment to go see it at 7PM, even though it was listed for a higher rent than our cut off.

When we arrived, waves of children came streaming out of neighborhood houses to gawk at us and inquire if we had any kids.  We did, so they decided we were worthy candidates.

The house was huge, clean and empty.  Five bedrooms, three bathrooms, big deck, big fenced yard backing up to a field.  We asked if the landlords would consider lowering the rent, explaining the probation and low pay of the first year on the job.  They asked what we could afford, and we weren’t too far off from what they wanted.  We agreed on a rent.

They explained that they HAD to get the place rented by Tuesday, for the landlady’s father was dying and she had to get to Michigan.  Could we come sign the lease the next morning?  They had been trying and trying to rent it.  I could not fathom it was still empty when I considered the other places listed.

Tuesday morning I signed the lease by myself along with my handy power of attorney.  The Pinto decided one last time to break down, this time evilly doing so right after a blind corner on a steep hill.  I could be killed, I pleaded with him.  He relented, started again, and up the hill we went.

However, how was I going to move all our things in?  I considered the Millionaire’s Club, where one hires luckless guys for odd jobs.  I rejected that idea, being a woman alone in a big house.

I called the Ryder truck place, and asked the woman at the desk if she might know anyone who I could hire.  Did she!  Yes!  Her son and his pal were just home from college and needed work.  If I could give them each $5/hr (this was in 1984), they’d be happy to unload me.  They’d even drive the truck down for me.

They worked hard.  We had a gaggle of giggly neighborhood children helping too, and by the time Hubby got home that Tuesday evening, we’d gotten everything in the house, and the truck was returned.

We lived in that house for four years, which was longer than anywhere else I had lived in my life, until we moved here.  We remodeled the kitchen with the landlord’s hearty approval, I planted things and made the garden pretty.  The landlord came over with gifts from time to time.

Today at Vacation Bible School I asked a kid if he thought that God would really provide or lead someone through the wilderness.  He said he guessed so.

I told him that he was right.  Impossible good comes true. 

I've seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn't ever end
Even when the sky is falling
And I've seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That's what faith can do.

Immigration Problems

I once stood on the western shore of Scotland and looked out at a boiling sea, listening to a lyrical melody called the Skye Boat Song. It’s a beautiful sweet waltz about a perilous water crossing.  As I stood there, I wondered how any of them had the courage to even go out fishing, much less take the perilous journey to the New World.  I’d be terrified.

But if I had been living during the Irish Potato Famine, I suspect I would have tried to emigrate.  If I had been my mother-in-law during World War II, I would have done the same thing she did—get out of the Ukraine, out of Germany, out of Europe.  If I was living in the murder capital in the world, San Pedro Sula, Honduras, I would try to flee. 

There were 1,411 murders last year in San Pedro Sula, which has a population of 752,990. Gang violence has people shackled to their homes. Experts say that the effectiveness of Mexico’s battle against drug cartels has pushed crime south to Honduras.  A recent article in the Seattle Times said that people were afraid to venture outside their homes after 2PM. Most of the undocumented children crossing into America say they are from that most murderous town, San Pedro Sula. 

Until 2008, these children would have been given a brief interview and sent back. But in 2008, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Acts (TVPRA) was passed to reduce child sex trafficking by strengthening due-process protections. Kids now get formal proceedings before an immigration judge.  Of course, the system is miserably backlogged, so the kids are placed in foster homes or with relatives where they tend to grow up.

A tough problem. Some say we should now repeal the TVPRA, that we don’t want these children.  The best solution would be that Mexico and the US team up to stop Central America from being a major transit point for the Columbia drug trade.  But that will take years.  Meanwhile, what to do with the children?

It might help to examine why people are upset about all these children coming. 

Is it because of the fear they are going to cost us money?  If a stray cat came to my door, I’d give it food and try to find its owner.  A child is going to get the at least as good.  Where do I send my check?  The Red Cross?  But what would I do if 57,000 cats came to my door?

Money is scarce, need is ubiquitous.  Help must come from not only federal money, certainly, but churches, companies, families, and aid groups too.  If there are 76,000 kids coming in per year, and each one is placed in foster care (many aren’t, they go to relatives’ homes), and foster care provides $10/day for caregiving, how much is that a year from each of America’s 300 million? I think it works out to a dollar per American per YEAR, or .003 per day.

Are we upset because we feel our culture is changing, and change frightens us? Our community is filled immigrants.  The languages on the signs in my community are Spanish, Somalian, Korean, and Ethiopian.  Women walk to the community college in veils. There is a plethora of faces and styles.  Of course, we may not agree with certain immigrant’s customs.  I examined my interactions with different groups and noticed when I got annoyed and considered the reasons why.  I got annoyed at a Vietnamese service provider who ignored me and whispered in her native tongue to a fellow worker.  But I’m not annoyed at Vietnamese, I’m annoyed at rudeness.  I have to remind myself of what’s really behind the frustration I feel when, for instance, I see an East African woman who has 10 children in her car, none of them wearing seat belts, nor in car seats.  But I was not angry at East Africans, I was angry at people who put their children at risk.  I was frightened when a Latino gang started shooting guns in the parking lot I frequent, but I am not frightened of Latinos.  I’m frightened of people shooting guns in the parking lot.  Latinos don’t have a patent on that.

E pluribus unum.  Our national motto.  Here come the tired, the poor, the hungry teeming masses, yearning to be free.  If we don’t really mean what the sign says, we’re going to have to remove the Statue of Liberty.

Littering and Holy Ground

When I was in the seventh grade, I remember shouting “LITTERBUG!” at a girl in the outdoor lunch arbor.  She’d dropped a sandwich wrapper and let it blow away.  Moments later mine blew away and I ran after it and picked up hers too.  She called me a litterbug as well.  I wonder if my disgust had any effect on her.

I cannot fathom the reason for litter.  Seriously.  What would impel anyone to fling garbage on the ground on their community?  Throw trash out the window?  It’s so easy and tidy to have a litter bag in the car. 

Signs along the road urge motorists to call and report littering.  It probably cost taxpayers gazillions to clean it up.  For a society that bemoans heavy taxes, you’d think we stop throwing out litter then paying someone to clean it up.

The main street near me, Pacific Highway, is now awash in litter, by far worse than a mere five years ago.  Drifts of it pile up by the abandoned bank.  Gutters full of it are in front of La Tienda.  The former grocery store, now a dollar store, has papers blowing across their parking lot like cottonwood fluff in June.  The woman in front of Mo Betta Platinum Beauty Salon was sweeping up a two foot snowdrift of fast food cups and hamburger wrappers. The former KFC, now a Vietnamese Pho shop, has added more trash receptacles, and the Goodwill has an attendant so that people don’t dump junk there.

On a trip to Bavaria recently, I was agog at their prim villages and neat roadsides.  There were fastidious sidewalks, swept forests, sparkling rivers, and persnickety yards. Is it too much to ask that the richest nation on earth try harder?  I was embarrassed when the German relatives came to visit me, and pondered the differences in societies and cultures wherein one littered and one didn’t.  It made me want to go eat a sausage.

I started thinking about “holy ground” and wondered about sacred places. Seems ironic that Moses had to take off his shoes in the wasteland desert because the place he stood was holy ground. Very little but thorns and scorpions in deserts, but this was the very place deemed sacred. So how do we get people to view their community as worthy of being clean? The first step, for me at least, might be seeing neighbors as something other than ignorant and lazy. Moses, who had a speech impediment, was the very one chosen to speak for public speaking, and impel a people to leave their homes and strike out across the wilderness.  Who knows, maybe a former “LITTERBUG!” might be leading a campaign today to stop litter.

Some ideas on ways to forestall litter in your community:

1.      Contact your city hall and ask them to clean it up, have anti-litter campaigns, town clean up days, and more trash bins.

2.      Contact elected officials.  Got a state representative in your neighborhood?  We do.  I’m calling her.

3.      Contact local businesses and ask them to help.  More trash bins?  Hire a sweeper truck? Employee patrols of trash pick up?

4.      Contact local TV or newspapers.  Our newspaper has a “Rant and Rave” section where you can submit your complaint or praise for community action. Perhaps the TV is having a slow news day and can urge people not to litter.

5.      Organize a Clean Up Day with your church, Scout group, or community.

6.      Post signs urging people to stop littering, and use trash bins.