My Trip to the Grain Elevator in Jonesboro, Illinois

 “No Hello?” I interjected rising from my seat and approaching the table at the coffee shop in downtown Anna, Illinois.

“SniTer”,Yuri  exclaimed emphasizing the Tee while appreciating the save. What in the world brings YOU to crazy town? Penny, have you met Snyder?”

“Hmmm,” she said. “You DO seem familiar. I think we have but I can’t remember where.”

“Viroqua,” I said, "you were up there visiting that waitress Samantha and we went up to that Sanctuary place." 

“How much did you hear just now?”

“Nothing”, I lied, and she knew it. She swore and left out the back in similar fashion as the pale gentleman.  

“Don’t mind her Snyder, that’s just how she is. Kind of bipolar, one moment she’s lighthearted and the next minute she’s Frau Farbissina. I can’t explain the change but as you can tell it’s both swift and certain. 

“Yuri, you DID kind of prompt it with the Mary Anne thing. Why would you do that, especially in a public place like this. I could have been anyone. I can see why she’s worked up.”

“Hey look Snyder, Penny is a total head case and you don’t know the half of it. Did I ever tell you about the time where she cut off a lock of her hair and made me eat it just so that she could feel close to me?” Seriously, that’s messed up, and there’s a lot more where that came from. I know she’s the nurse and I’m the patient but the reverse should be true. 

“Yep, that IS a strange way of showing affection but regardless, you need her Yuri and you know it,” I replied.

“Maybe. In terms of getting admitted I guess. She’s got pull with the doctors because they all want to get with her but I don’t think they can. At least I don’t think they can because I get the impression that she’s faithful to her husband. Plus I just like looking at her and most of the time I absolutely love her conversation, just the ways she phrases things, her inflection, meter, word selection, everything. But sometimes she’s totally…uh you know, I already said it, Hitler’s paramour.  And while her last name is certainly Italian she’s German on her mom’s side. Did you know her Dad’s buried up there in the Choate Cemetary? 

“Nope, was he a patient as well?”

“Yep, in his later years. Didn’t last too long though, unlike me he hated it on the inside and I think that’s what killed him. He had lots of issues coming into Choate like most people, but it’s the ghosts there that seemed to compound the problem.”

“You mean like real ghosts or just voices in his head?” 

“Nope, I’m talking the type that even the sane people see. Well they don’t really see them but they see their shadows moving about in the hallways, yet there is no real person to cause the shadow to occur. Also, as the shadow passes over you there is a slight but perceptible lowering of the air temp, like about 5 degrees. This is unnerving for a sane person, but if you are going IN with problems sometimes you will get unpredictable results, as was the case with Vern. Poor guy, hung himself with a soiled Hanes T-shirt, trying to emulate that guy Robert Hunt down there in Cairo back in the 60’s.

“You got a vehicle right Sniter? Mind if we go for a little ride?”

“I’m right out front, where are we going?” I asked. 

“Just need to show you something, it’s only about 5 minutes up the road.”

“Ok, let me just use the toilet and then we’ll go,” I said as I got up to walk past the drum set to where the restrooms were. On my way I saw the card on the floor that was dropped by the pale man. It was laying on the blank side so I turned it over and it read “Woland Faust/Counselor”. No phone number, no address, no nothing, so I just threw it into the trash can when I arrived at the bathroom.

We left out the front door, got in my 2013 Ford Escape, as he directed me back up Main Street to the north about a mile, and then we made a right hand turn into the Mental Campus, but kept going, past the dorms of Sycamore, Cyprus, Magnolia and Cedar, the Admin Building, the Gorgeous Pool, and then up a gravel road. I knew from talking to the people in the admin building that one or possibly two of these dorms held the dangerously insane, and I seemed to remember that Sycamore was one of them. They all look fine on the outside, almost stately, multiple storied brick buildings, something you might see on an expensive college campus. I never was able to look on the inside, but heard that you are at risk of being attacked by the inmates if you do, so for liability reasons they don’t let you just walk around indoors. Outdoors is fine. 

As mentioned earlier, Choate is well kept, and the trees there are massive, with trunks about five feet in diameter, reaching eighty to a hundred feet into the sky. Very few people are visible on the grounds, and the tranquility is conducive to thinking, which is possibly why Yuri likes it here so much, but I think the main reason is Nurse Penny. Yuri is normally animated and conversant but seems relatively quiet as we drive through the campus so I ask him what's wrong.

“Oh, nothing, just thinking about the whole Piano family, kind of a tragic mess all the way around. In a way I wish I’d never made the trip to Iquitos back in 97, so that I would be have never met Penny, and in turn gotten to know the whole Piano story. On the other hand I can’t imagine my life without her since she is the only one that gets me at the core, and one whom I don’t have to pretend to be anything. Pretty rare.  In any case I’m going to show you the Cemetery where the residents were buried, and where Vern is now. Hopefully she’s not up there as well since she tends to his grave spot on occasion. 

“Turn here,” he says as we make a left onto a dirt/gravel road and head up to the top of a hill. “The grave yard is right up ahead about five hundred feet.”

“I don’t see a thing,” I said.

“Not much to see really, there’s only just one generic gravestone, none of the actual graves are marked. Most of the families don’t have enough money to actually buy one, and Lord knows Choate ain’t going to spend the money.”

We pull off to the side of the road and walk up towards the solitary stone. It is a gray stone sitting in the grass about two feet high by about four feet wide. The grass and weeds are growing up in the front, covering up the lettering that says 1877 – 1939. Above the dates it reads ANNA STATE HOSPITAL CEMETERY, which is clearly visible. As stated earlier, this IS the only marker, so if you want to visit your loved one you just have to know where their spot is. Obviously though there are very few visitors since according to the sign the last person here was buried in the same year Hitler invaded Poland. 

“I know what you’re thinking.” said Yuri. You’re probably wondering how Penny’s dad was buried here since he was obviously alive after 1939, aren’t you.” 

“Yep, sure am,” I replied.

“Good question since Ole Vern hung himself back in 2009. I really don’t know the answer myself except that Penny told me that she pulled some strings to get him buried here but I can’t imagine WHAT strings. Just know that it saved her and her family a lot of money. Her ex-husband, Eugene “Bubba” McCue, offered to pay for the burial expenses but she refused. She didn’t want to owe that poor excuse for a human being anything, regardless of how much money he’d inherited from his parents. In any case I ponder the whole family from time to time, Vern, Cynthia, Mary Anne, Johnny, Penny, and Bubba. What a tragic mess, so I’m glad they were able to work out the burial thing here for Vern. Mary Anne is pretty well taken care of as well, but as you probably heard earlier, I’m not supposed to talk about her anymore.”

I looked up over the entire cemetery where the grass was a vibrant green with the blue sky behind it just as vibrant. Here in Anna the colors always seem as if they are enhanced in a photo-shop type of way.  While there are no grave markers or stones, there are trees, solitary trees spaced about fifteen yards apart from each other scattered throughout the cemetery. They are spindly, sticking up about 15 feet, some branches have sickly foliage, but most don’t, just seemingly dead spindles sticking up into the vibrant sky. Adjacent to this there is a patch of woods, about twenty yards wide by about one hundred yards long, and beyond that is again the extra clear blue sky since we are on top of a hill, the highest in the area.

“Vern is actually buried somewhere over here as he points to a spot near where the woods meet the cemetery. I assume this because sometimes I’ll see Penny kneeling here, so that’s my best guess.”

“OK,” I said, “but why did you feel the need to pull me out of the nice cool coffee shop into this sweltering grave yard to look at this poor excuse of a cemetery and the grave site of someone’s Dad that I hardly even know?”

“What time is it?” Yuri asked.

“Almost noon I guess, why?”

“You’ll see, there something happening here tonight at 7:30, and before you head out of here you need to see this. It happens every three months on the 19^th, right here, rain or shine, cold or hot. Looks like your visit was timely. Just be here tonight around 7:15, it’s polite to show up a bit early. Park your car down the road, nobody really takes their car up here. We meet by the generic head stone you saw up front, and then we all move to the anointed grave of the month, which is marked by the sickly trees that you see scattered about. THEY are actually the markers.  Now, I need to get to work. Can you give me a ride over to Jonesboro? I work at a grain elevator now, and don’t even ask me why they let a group home resident operate one of them. I DO know what I’m doing though. They know it and I know it. They just asked me not to advertise my relationship with either Choate OR The Cardinal House, since I’m sure it’s some type of OSHA violation for me to even be near one of these places.”

“No problem,” I said, “but under one condition.”

“What?”

“That you show me what you do there,” I said. “I see these behemoths all over the Midwest and I have no idea what goes on in there.”

“Ok, but I’m not supposed to but I will since I really don’t care if I get fired or not, cuz I don't need the money. Let’s go.”

As mentioned previously, Jonesboro is adjacent to Anna, so the ride down East Vienna Street only takes a few minutes and then we pull into the parking lot where all the 18 wheeler grain trucks pull in. 

“Park right over by that little red Mitsubishi there by the steps.”

I approach what looks to be an office and slide into the spot next to the red car with the license FTGILINI which I suppose stands for The Fighting Illini. Yuri asks me to wait in the car for about five minutes, and then runs up the half stairwell with the yellow guardrails into what appears to be some type of office. As I wait I ponder the whole situation here, wondering why and how Yuri would get a job as a grain elevator operator, although my internal question is unfounded since I have no idea what a grain elevator operator does, other than operate the grain elevator, whatever that means. It just seems that Yuri is always able to obtain jobs where he is OVER employed, and if they don’t fire him in the first couple of months then he actually learns the jobs so well that he becomes marginally under employed and somehow makes himself appear indispensable . Of course he’s not indispensable, and he knows that, but he also knows that perception is the better part of reality, and also that most managers or supervisors in America are inherently lazy or if not actually lazy then have a penchant for the path of least resistance. In other words once you have a worker that you can trust, you really want to do everything you can to keep that person since it is whole lot easier than finding a new employee, training them, putting up with their mistakes and the resultant liability. Yuri’s a bit rough with people, which in this case are surly grain truck drivers, but it’s easier just to keep him than it is to go through the hiring training process. The manager knows he’ll have to train the new person himself which is a HUGE hassle in addition to his current duties. He’ll also have to deal with getting to know the new guy, talk himself into liking him, putting up with his foibles, pretending to care about his family, and so on. In other words there is not just the hassle quotient but the risk. What if they guy is psycho which is highly probably here in Anna? What if he lied on his application? What if he reports the firm to OSHA or to the Fair Labor Standards Board, or to Wage and Hour? In other words new employees are to be avoided at almost all costs when you have somebody currently getting the job done, even if it’s performed with mediocrity. By retaining Yuri the management knows that they won’t have the training or breaking-in hassle and nor will they have the liability. They are correct on the first one since Yuri’s illness is latent. 

Yuri is not exactly good with people in the long term, but in the short term he’s fantastic and is why he can talk himself into most jobs for which he is definitely not qualified. Nobody makes small talk, quips, and jokes better than Yuri, and like a relief pitcher he’s good for an inning or two. After that he starts to fray around the edges until it becomes clear why he’s in Anna and not fit for the front porch.

After a few minutes I see Yuri waving at me, and motioning to come into the office so I get out of the car and sprint up the five or so steps into an area that looks like a cross between a reception area and a break room. Behind the laminated counter stood a large, fully bearded, bald man with a pale complexion and a lime green shirt. His head looked kind of like a thumb with a frowny face drawn on it. He pulls a couple of papers from the printer and then pushes one of them towards me and says, “Here’s a release form. Just sign and date the bottom, and grab a hard hat from the rack over there.”

“Thanks Quimby,” said Yuri as he motioned me to follow him. 

We went through another door but could still see outdoors through a window. Yuri then started telling me about the job, how he would watch for the truckers to come in, greet them, weigh the truck, test the grain load for moisture, dump the grain into the loading pit, weigh out the truck, issue a receipt to the driver, transfer the recently unloaded grain it to the distribution floor using the cupolas in the elevator shaft, transfer the grain to the tripper cart via the conveyor belt, drive the tripper cart to the appropriate loading chute from which the grain would travel down into the storage bin below. Pretty simple in concept, but once a load is delivered you can be pretty busy until you get the grain into the bin. Fortunately there was one truck that pulled in, so I was able to watch the entire process front to back, and I gained a newly found respect for Yuri in doing so. It was like watching Rube Goldberg’s Mousetrap Game, with Yuri acting as Rube. 

Actually he was only acting like Rube in one respect. What people don’t understand is that Rube Goldberg didn’t really invent the Mousetrap Game, but the game’s design was based on Rube’s penchant for creating complicated machines to perform a simple task, very much like this grain elevator in my opinion. I mean the basic purpose of this place is to receive, buy, and store grain for resale. Trucks bring it in, you pay the trucker’s company, store the corn in the corn bin, soy in the soy bin, and then when you sell it then you just load it into the buyer’s truck, weigh it, and draft his bank account for the amount. Why do we need all of these belts, conveyors, pulleys, moisture monitors, trippers, etc? Overkill if you ask me, but that’s just a layman’s opinion. 

After watching him go through the entire process on this initial truck load I asked, “How in the world did you get a job like this?”

“Experience,” he said. "I used to work as a second mate on a large freight boat that went up and down the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The first mate showed me the ropes regarding how to load the grain into the various hulls of the boat, except up there in the Thunder Bay docks we would be loading about 30,000 tons into the hull of the ship at a rate of 1,500 tons per hour, through 18 loading chutes. We had to be careful to make sure that the ships draft or depth stayed less than twenty six and three quarter feet otherwise we could get fined by the seaway police. You dump 30,000 tons of grain into a boat it’s going to set down a bit. Also, we had to be careful that the grain was evenly distributed throughout the five hulls since an uneven load could cause the ship to list or in some instance even capsize, and that would certainly not be optimal. Anyway, when I told the pale fat office dude in the lime green about the complexities of and responsibilities on that ship he gave me the job on the spot. Yes, I certainly exaggerated the complexities, but sometimes that’s necessary. Anyway, Quimby’s glad he’s hired me and that’s what counts, right?”

“Right. Didn’t know you worked in Thunder Bay. I was there back in 73 but didn’t really stop there, was just passing through.”

“Yep,” Yuri said. “Was that when you were on your way to that commune in Oregon?”

“In a way”, I said, but first I met you at The Family of Man commune in Washington. 

“Yea, I was pretty spaced back then”, he said laughing.

“Like you’re not now,” I joked. 

Actually Yuri has improved a great deal since the communal days in the 70’s. At the Family of Man everyone thought Yuri was this heavy duty spiritual shaman type guy, but not because of what he would say but because of what he didn’t say.  Yuri played it for everything it was worth too. He would dress in a single piece filthy white robe like a monk, tied by a rope around his waist, as he would walk with his goat and a cane, never saying anything. Then, every Wednesday he would take off his cloak and walk naked up to the top of the mountain with his goat, and stay there all day long, just staring toward the east. He would remain there all day and come back at sundown. Once back in the communal camp he would then issue some type of statement that was really simple but because of his aura, waist length dark hair, two foot Chinese beard, and deep dark glazed brown eyes, the whole commune would attach all kinds of unintended meaning to it as if Yuri was the Oracle at Delphi.  For instance one day when arriving back at the camp, he put is cloak back on and just stood by one of the fires, hair hanging by his waist, beard grazing his stomach. Those who were curious would gather around until such time that Yuri felt he had a quorum and then issue a proclamation such as “When one faces the eastern shore the sun shineth upon his face in the morning.” Another one he used on a rainy day was, “The rain falls on man and beast alike yet the goat remains dry.”  Of course he didn’t or couldn’t  tell the crowd that he kept the goat under an overhanging cliff during the rain storm. By doing so the goat was ascribed an aura of holiness all its own by the hippies, since they all though that due to its holiness that it was impervious to the elements. Hippies are pretty gullible and will swallow almost anything if you look, speak, and act in a way that nobody understands. 

After each short proclamation there would be whispering throughout the crowd, with everyone speculating as to the deeper meaning, of which there was none.  The problem was that Yuri could never be called out on this because part of his persona was that he could only speak one sentence per week, and that was on Wednesday. Kind of like the Guilty Remnant effect on The Leftovers. As it says in the Book of Proverbs 17:28, “Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.” Especially when the fool wears long hair, a long beard, walks down the mountain naked with a goat and the year is 1973. Doesn’t work as well in 2017.

 He never had to explain it because like the Guilty Remnant he wasn’t supposed to issue more than one sentence a week. Therefore, when asked concerning the meaning of his heavy oracles, he would simply stare them in the eyes without any expression at all, except for that slight twinkling of his deep set, dark brown eyes. (The members of the Guilty Remnant weren’t allowed to speak at all, but they could write things down on a piece of paper.) 

And that was it! Yuri wouldn’t talk until the following Wednesday when he would again come down from the mountain, issue another obvious proclamation, and the hippies, especially the hippie chicks would just eat it up. Yuri took full advantage, receiving many favors from his groupies.

“Hey,” Yuri yelled interrupting my reminiscing. “You didn’t exactly have all oars in the water back then either. While I may have looked crazy I was at least receiving carnal pleasure on a fairly regular basis from my adoring, albeit deceived, adherents. You on the other hand joined Shiloh, which was a bona fide cult in my book, and one WITHOUT carnal pleasures.”

In a way he was right, but in a way he was wrong. I had just turned twenty the month before, was out of money, and had just hitchhiked to Eugene where I did find a job with the US Forest Service working as a tree planter. The first month or so was fine, but when we got into November the Cascades got hit with a heavy snowfall, thereby ending the tree planting work for the time being, thereby ending my paychecks for the time being. All my money had gone to paying the rent for a motel room which I shared with another tree-planter named Big John, whose real name was Johnny Piano, yes, the aforementioned brother of Mary Anne and Penny Piano. Big John, was not that popular with the other tree planters because he was always just so gung-ho about working. The rest of us hated our job so much that when we arrived at the top of the mountain with our trees and planting gear we would hope that the temperature was below freezing and we could go back home. Not Big John, he always wanted to plant, kind of got a thrill out of it, but to the point that it was really weird. Plus half of his face was missing, which he tried to cover up a beard, but it didn’t work well since in order to grow a beard you need an actual face from which it can grow. He would try to do like this comb over thing, taking the excess hair from his mustache, his left sideburn, and right hand side of his face (the only side), and pulling all three areas onto the left side of his head, somewhat covering the left side of what would normally be his face. It worked from about a hundred yards away, but if you any closer than that it was obvious that there was a problem. If he hadn’t have been such a jerk about everything I would have felt sorry for him. May have even gotten to know him a bit, but he did tell me some things, like about how is face got so jacked up with the acid, although at the time I didn’t know it was Bobby Albright who had done the deed, albeit in self-defense. I didn’t even know the backdrop until my encounter with Carolina.

The snow cover lasted longer than anticipated so I was pretty much broke, walking around downtown Eugene somewhere around 19^th and Washington. As I was headed eastbound on 19^th a multi-colored sin bin pulled up alongside of me and a group of about six far-out colorful freaks jumped out and wanted to let me know that Jesus loved me but also wanted to help me. They asked me what I needed and I remember responding that at the moment I really didn’t need or want any help except that I did need a job, and due to my recent experience with the US Forest Service I DID know how to plant trees. When they heard this they pointed to the east and said that a Christian group called Shiloh planted trees and that I should talk to them. The directions were fairly simple, just walk east on 19^th Street about a mile until I hit University Street, and the Shiloh compound is on the southeast corner. They gave me some type of tract which I promptly tossed after they were out of range, walking toward the commune that would alter everything. 

I walked the mile east until I reached University Street, where the massive Shiloh commune was, housing about 120 Jesus Freaks at the time. I walked up the diagonal pathway where I was greeted by a stocky, but not fat, medium height full bearded man who introduced himself to me as Bob Grenier, pronounced Bob Grin-YAY. It’s French I guess. His hair was not that long but you could tell he was definitely a far out dude. Apparently he used to be a drug runner plane pilot in the Caribbean somewhere, but now was a greeter here at this commune, not the leader, but definitely significant. He explained the situation, about yes they did have tree planting jobs there at Shiloh, but not for pay. They planted trees for Jesus, lived communally, sold all their possessions (of which I had none), and if I wanted to join them I could, and room and board were provided. Since I lied and told him that I was a Christian already I didn’t have to go through the whole sinner’s prayer thing, so really all they needed from me was a verbal ok and we’d be good to go. (You can Google Bob Grenier and he comes right up since he is somewhat famous today as Pastor of Calvary Chapel, Visalia. Bob is a whole story in and of himself.)

I pondered the words of Bob Grenier there for about 10 seconds, and then said sure, thinking that if it didn’t work out I could just split, and little did I know what significance would be attached to that word inside The Commune. I did qualify my commitment in that I’d just try it out for a couple of months and then we’d take it from there. The couple months ended up being five years since I was immediately put on a work crew for tree planting, all pay going to the commune, which I guess is the whole idea of a commune and I was fine with it. 

The Shiloh Commune, founded by John Higgins,  was seen by many as a religious cult which until recently I have always vehemently denied, but upon reflection there was a definite teaching about rejecting your family to follow Christ, using the scripture about how if you don’t hate your family then you are not worthy of Jesus. Yes, the families were upset with their children joining Shiloh, mine included. My mother tried hiring a de-programmer but couldn’t afford it so she sent my brother James Gregory out to Oregon to rescue me, but that didn’t really work out since I talked him into joining as well. Ugh, I feel this about killed my mother, and I do mean literally killed her, indirectly, but literally. I regret it to this day in that regard, but only the part about talking my brother into it. The net result for me was and is positive, and life changing. Nonetheless, regardless of the outcome, the friction between Shiloh and the parents of their ‘brainwashed’ children did give the Commune one of the major earmarks of a cult, that being the active disparagement of the family. I had forgotten about this aspect of Shiloh all of these years and it was only brought to mind when I was watching HBO’s The Leftovers, and The Guilty Remnant. One of their main sayings is, “There Is No Family”. Struck a chord, not a pleasant one. 

Many of us thought about leaving, and those who acted upon these thoughts from Satan were called the Splitters. If you only thought about leaving you were simply going through Splitting Trials. If you actually split you were probably not in God’s will, which is normally not that big of a deal, unless you are twenty years old and thousands of miles from home, and have to go back to living on the street. It was a bigger deal in the fall and the winter, and since I came into the commune in November of 73 it was a pretty big deal. At times I did think it was nuts, and actually thought I was nuts for doing this. We mostly slept in rows on a floor in our sleeping bags, but one time I actually secured a little bunk in the basement along with about thirty others. It was December by that time and for some reason the basement flooded and I was awoken buy this big Indian screaming about all his stuff floating away, and I remember thinking that I really belong back in New Jersey with my biological family. This would be a great time to split, but my stuff was all soaked or gone and the time wasn’t right. The time was never right. 

It should be noted that in reality most of us weren’t really children, although not really adults either. I had just turned twenty, and most of the others were around that age, but there were some who were as young as sixteen and others as old as thirty five. The young ones typically had families that were so dysfunctional that their families didn’t care enough about them to rescue them. The old ones were exempt from rescue also since they were definitely full blown adults and therefore no one could make a case that they were being unduly influenced. As mentioned the majority were around twenty, in the gap between childhood and adulthood, still trying to figure things out, and therefore vulnerable in the eyes of society. In this case Society was correct. In another sense the religious order of the day was somewhat sickening and the children were revolting against fake religion manifested by the Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and other mainline churches, where NOBODY seemed to be excited about Christ and went to church for reasons we could not comprehend. They certainly never talked about Jesus, even IN church. It seemed so far from the intention of the Scriptures, and the Shiloh teaching seemed pretty darn close. It still does, even now.

Thank you John Higgins. Near the end of the Commune's existence you were accused of brainwashing us, stealing from us, and using us to increase your wealth. Maybe, but I doubt it. The only people that would really know for sure would be the brothers in Shiloh's accounting office in downtown Eugene who handled all the income and expenses. They also handled paying off hundreds of thousands in Student Loans and other debts that us derelicts had chosen to previously ignore as we wandered about the continent. Add to that medical and dental bills, past, current, and future,  and whatever else we had brought with us.  Yes, some of us had tough jobs and didn't always eat that well. I  remember the brethren in the Syracuse commune sorting soiled hospital laundry all night long in the hospital's basement in order to support the organization, and yes, at that time you had a pretty comfortable life style, but I wouldn’t really call it opulent, yet the contrast at the time was stark. Nonetheless you are still active today, furthering the cause of Christ whereas many of your accusers have long since faded from discipleship and the work of Jesus. The long and short of it is that if you had not risked your own life and career in founding Shiloh there would be thousands who may not have met Christ otherwise, me being one of them. Sorry for the late thank you. Still you could have been a little softer on the family thing, and you should watch The Leftovers on HBO. You probably don’t watch HBO and would frown on me watching it. 

It should also be noted that I didn’t exactly lie about the whole Christian conversion thing to Bob Grenier, since two years earlier,  in 1971 in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania  I did pray with this crazy dude who tried to lead me to Jesus. I think I mouthed the prayer with him as did my girlfriend Sue Ellen, but it didn’t really stick since we continued our carnal ways for the duration of our relationship AND we never attended the services of whatever church we were supposed to be attending. We did think about it, but not for very long. However insincere, I did count this transaction as technically binding, especially when someone wanted to gauge my Christianity since I could pull this technicality out at will and therefore avoid the awkwardness of the sinner’s prayer. In any case I think Bob prayed with me for something, but I never had to go through the whole welcome to God’s kingdom thing from the commune members, although I now know how legitimate that really is. In any case I was able to slip into the communal machinery with little fanfare which was more my style.

Another thing to consider was that I really DID believe in God, and being twenty, homeless, car-less, approaching winter, and three thousand miles from family in New Jersey, I was indeed feeling vulnerable, and therefore was more inclined to do whatever God saw fit. I certainly didn’t want to upset Him, but I don’t want to leave the impression that my relationship was based in fear, although that was certainly a part of it. I had been hitchhiking around Canada and America since June, having left Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania with ninety dollars total, and through the entire five months I never wanted for food or shelter. Jobs would pop up when I needed them including an Orange Julius job in Seattle, First Mate on a fishing vessel in Prince Rupert, mason in Aberdeen, Washington, and of course the US Forest Service in Eugene. And now this. It was indeed true that I was not running my life but my life was just running me. It’s kind of always been that way, not ideal, but somehow, in my case it’s worked out fine. 

We may mock Evangelicals like the Lighthouse group from Yreka, or Crazy Rick in Elizabethtown, or Bob Grenier from Visalia, but they do their job. Because of them things happen. Without them they really don’t. Yes, they strike out a lot. Yes, there are cases like mine where I just wanted to avoid them, and get away. But they register, not because of who they are but sometimes in spite of who they are. They are not the most elegant, nor especially well spoken, but they are obedient and faithful. Just like Laura and Larry Potts from Cairo, or Jimmy the 80 year old janitor at Elizabethtown College who would speak to us about Jesus as we urinated on the porcelain, knowing that he had a captive audience. I still remember that big toothy smile, his white hair, and the way he held the toilet brush in his hand, dripping onto the floor as he conveyed the gospel of Christ.  All of us cool hipsters would of course mock him and his Jesus outside of the bathroom, but again it would register, Not much, but a little, kind of like a mustard seed. Jimmy knew we mocked him. Didn’t care. He was 80 and about to transition. He had the type of wisdom that we mocking nascent hippies couldn’t penetrate. 

Nothing flashy, no miracles in the moment, no walking on water, just faithful in the little Christian tasks set before them at the moment. Most of them they forget what they’ve done, and they rarely see the lifelong effect in this lifetime. I’m sure that Bob Grenier has long forgotten our first encounter on the lawn of 1910 University Avenue that November afternoon, and the impact on my soul and indirectly the souls of others. I don’t mind, he’s busy bearing fruit. 

“Don’t get any on ya Quimby!” Yuri yells from the grain sampler machine. 

Sayonara”, Quimby yells back, as he lumbers out towards his red vehicle parked out next to mine. 

“Is Quimby a first or last name”, I ask Yuri once Quimby is out of earshot.

“Not sure, don’t really care. I mean like if his first name is Quimby then he really doesn’t need a last name and if his last name is Quimby then I would say he doesn’t really need a first name. Therefore your question is superfluous.” 

“Just trying to make conversation Yuri, geez.”

“Exactly my point,” said Yuri, “again superfluous.”

“You sure are fond of that word today.”

“Shut up Sniter. There is no need to perseverate on the superfluous. We got work to do.” 

“We HAVE work to do,” I corrected. 

Yuri started to give me the finger, but then the Holy Spirit dissuaded him so he just ignored me and went about his business wiping down the dust around shafts and counters. “Gotta keep this place out of the five o’clock news,” he remarked. Apparently Yuri needed to keep the dust levels down in order to keep the whole place from exploding which they are prone to do when the dust particles become too numerous for the volume of space. The static electricity could set it off from your sweater or when you touch the doorknob maybe, I don’t really know for sure. What I do know is that these things blow all the time, and usually there are two explosions, the primary one with the dust particles and a secondary one where the dust on the walls is pushed into the air, exploding again. That’s why Yuri is wiping the walls I guess, to prevent the secondary explosion but I’m not sure why he would care since the first explosion would probably take us both out anyway.  Yuri told me that there have been 638 explosions at grain elevators in the USA, killing more than 250 people in the process and it is his job to not become 639.

But seriously, is being 639 such a bad way to go? Sounds pretty instantaneous AND you save on the casket since basically you are vaporized, and even cremation is pointless since that’s already done and paid for by the grain elevator company.  Plus it would provide details as to exactly what the afterlife is really all about, like the ultimate adventure. You just don’t want to go out in disobedience, but 639 would not be an act of disobedience. Carelessness maybe, but not disobedience.