Making Ends Meet, Part 3

The Ship That Never Came In

For a couple of reasons I consider my decision to go far away to college one of the worst decisions I have made in my life. First, although I was a decent tennis player, I did not have the level of play and ranking to attend a top ranked university. A midwestern school would have provided an opportunity for an athletic scholarship with a compatible level of competition. Secondly, I was also not a top-notch science student. While in high school I had become interested in petroleum geology, and gathered information from major oil companies. One person I spoke with was a geologist on furlough who had attended the University of Arizona and was now working in the petroleum industry in Venezuela. I decided to go to the U of A and major in petroleum geology. My current view of the worldwide dependency on oil and the reality of “Peak Oil” makes my early interest laughable.

As a walk-on I was No.3 on the freshman team. So coupled with midwestern tennis skills and mediocre science grades this decision was misguided, or unguided. My parents struggled to help me as they struggled to make ends meet but because of out-of-state tuition, that help was not sustainable. I dropped classes. I got depressed. I quit. 

After returning home I attended Goshen College part time as a “townie”. One morning after a class period I went to the Union Building snack shop.  Another “townie”, Glendon “Dick” Brunk  and I talked for awhile and right then and there we decided to drop out and go to Arizona to find work. We left that day in my ‘54 Chevy. Only now can I imagine what our parents must have felt. The Chev had a converted floor shift with lots of air holes. It was February and we froze our butts off. Once in Arizona we got jobs digging trenches in caliche rock as part of remodeling a guest ranch.   

At this time the Vietnam Conflict was heating up. I received a letter from the draft board informing me that I was to report to Chicago for a physical exam for military service.  I passed the physical and returned to Arizona. Rather than being drafted and serving in the infantry as a combat soldier, I enlisted in the Army Security Agency and was inducted in Los Angeles in October 1964. 

From an uncertain time in Arizona, going into the Army gave me a sense of permanence and financial security. A little pay, three squares and a place to sleep.  Uncle Sam made ends meet! This didn’t last long (19 months) as I got out of the Army as a Conscientious Objector. That was a good decision.  But what next?

I returned to Goshen College with a vision of studying Anabaptism and Bible in preparation for seminary. Plans were cut short by marriage to Alice Bender and we left  Goshen College before graduating. We had a plan to serve as Vista Volunteers on an Indian reservation – just making ends meet. Vista fell through and we ended up, through Mennonite contacts, working for a fundamentalist mission in Window Rock on the Navajo reservation. Our pacifism and their patriotism did not mesh and we were back at Goshen College within a few months. This time we finished our degrees. Alice’s parents helped us a great deal. 

From Goshen College Alice and I moved with a group to Sarasota, Florida, to join three couples wanting to form a small Christian community. I worked as a tennis pro at a country club.  After some time it was obvious that this community was not going to be. Kirstin, our first child, was born during this period and finances became more and more challenging. It was an interesting time of living off private lesson fees and equipment sales at the club. No guarantee. If it rained for a week there was no income. Month after month our income and expenses barely made ends meet. 

As the Sarasota venture came to an end we decided to go to Immokalee, Florida to work with the farmworker movement. Again, no pay. Just volunteering and hoping things would work out. We lasted a while on food stamps and handouts from friends. I worked in a food coop, thus helping with food needs.

After a few months we decided to move to Reba Place Fellowship, a Christian communal church formed in 1957 in Evanston Illinois. It offered a major change from our “normal” finances because our needs were taken care of totally by the community. Income from outside jobs went into the church treasury and our family received a monthly stipend for basics – toothpaste, groceries, etc.  The fellowship was recognized as a monastic order. We had in essence taken a vow of poverty. This lifestyle fit with my Anabaptist beliefs at that time and I felt at home at last. At night when I walked from work into the community area I would weep with a sense of peace.

For nine years the Reba Place experience was good. Susanna and Peter were born there and we had good family times.  But I started getting restless and felt we should leave the nest and return to Goshen and build a new life. In reality, while at Reba Place my income was never enough to cover our family expenses. The computer engineer at Northwestern University and others with adequate incomes probably subsidized our family. It worked out, but I wasn’t really making ends meet.

In the next and last post on Making Ends Meet learn how I gave that up the peace and security of Reba Place for new challenges.