I'm glad you finally got out. I remember there was that period when I was out, and you weren't. I guess that "spiritual probation" for your "dirty" house was the final straw.
Welcome to Greasespot, Out-2! Have you been in Texas long? If you ever get down to the coast (Freeport area, especially), drop me a Private Topic. We could ram a couple beers at the beach.
I can so relate to your story. I too was witnessed to by my older sister. But the scenerios were reversed for us. I was booted in 94, and she only left about 2 yrs. ago. It was a tough 9 years or so cause the time we were out and she was in, she never talked to us. She lived 30 miles away.
Keep telling your story. I think it's wonderful that you've come here and shared your story. I've been trying to get my sister to come on board as well. I hope someday soon it will happen.
RASCAL,
quote:
I would never want to go back to being the vacuous (sp) empty person I was in those years.
I enjoy hearing your story. So glad you are out and healing. Therapy is wonderful, isn't it? I'd hate to think of where I would be and how I would be handling getting "out" if it wasn't for the objective ear to bend every once in a while.
Of course we were told in twi it was wrong to get outside counseling. Yeah, what do trained experienced professionals know about anything? It's much better to continue to be the blind following the blind. We're the faithful remnant! We're in the walls of Zion! We know everything! Oh, we don't CLAIM to know everything, but we act like we do. Everybody else is clueless.
I started attending a Church of Christ in our area a couple years ago. The church is HUGE, but it has a lot of sub-groups. I started attending one group and they invited me to go to their class. I forget what it was called, I guess it doesn't matter. The spooky thing is that the class was 12 sessions long. We were encouraged to participate, even give our opinions on things! I had a hard time with that because I didn't know if what I had learned in twi would sound bizarro or not. Turned out a lot of the stuff in the church class was similar to things in the first few sessions of piffle. It was quite a mental adjustment to go to a normal church with real people with problems. I also learned to quit arriving ten minutes early.
I feel somewhat of a hypocrite (sp?) going to church because part of my motivation is just to meet people. I did attend a divorce recovery group for a while recently, and that was quite helpful. I learned to be thankful to have my kids, rather than to look at them as a burden. A lot of the people in that group were dealing with custody issues.
I'm still riding the emotional rollercoaster, but it's smoothed out a lot. I started running again a couple years ago. I still have flashbacks to running in the Way College. I actually enjoyed that then. The three mile route out to Industrial Boulevard, past the Dolly Madison plant and back to the campus. Then to Kenyon Hall to record the aerobic points.
Whoops. Almost time for Seinfeld. I don't feel guilty about watching TV anymore, either....
What about when you went WOW to Albany? What about the Way College? What about U of CO (is that where you went?) What about when you were home working at Mickey D's? What about when I came home? What about you and former wife and how and why you split? What about what happened when you left, and why?
Onward... 1975... I went off to Boulder Colorado to begin college at CU. Being quite sheltered, I was pretty shocked at the nonsense that went on in the dorm. Being a good leaf, I very soon hooked up with the twig there and spent way too much of my time with twi activities. I took least a couple of seminars, or whatever they were called then, across the mountains in Grand Junction. They would cram 15 hours of a class into a weekend. I remember at least one round trip riding with some guy in his muscle car speeding and passing cars around blind curves through the mountains. This was when I-70 was just two lanes (one each way) in places through the canyons. Between my poor study habits and spending too much time with twi, I ended up with a GPA under 2.0 after the semester so I couldn't go back. That summer (1976) I did a state outreach program called Minutemen in Sterling, in the Northeast corner of Colorado. I was there with three other guys. J*d L*wm*n was our family coordinator. I'm pretty sure he went into the 7th corps. Funny I couldn't remember his name until just now. That was when the America Awakes album was released and the whole bicentennial thing was going on. Jed and I worked at a furniture store in Sterling doing deliveries, mostly. We had a good time together although we didn't get a whole lot of outreach accomplished. It was there that I got the news from CU that I would not be going back, so I decided to go WOW. Ah yes, putting God first.
So 1976 was my first Rock of Ages. It was at the Shelby County Fairgrounds in Sidney, OH. It seemed rather magical - all the love and the excitement of not knowing where I would be assigned and who I would be going with. I think the Rock was only 3 and a half days then. Later it would grow to six days and not be so magical.
On the last night of the Rock we opened up our envelopes and I was going to... Schenectady, NY! They sent six families of WOW's to the Albany area, the "Capitol District." Two to Schenectady, two to Troy and two to Albany itself. We all headed out with our glowing green lightsticks and drove to Columbus for a couple days of WOW training at the University of Ohio.
My family constisted of D*r*ek C*ssm*n from Waukean, IL, Connie Somebody from Minnesota who I think went into the 10th corps and K*thy H*gg*ns who would become K*thy S*nk. (Would you like to buy a vowel?) She was in the 6th corps (interim year) and spent a LOT of time late at night, past midnight mind you, on the phone long-distance to her 6th corps fiancee, R*nn*e in Beaumont, TX. Long distance back then wasn't that cheap, and the phone bill was paid for out of the family fund which irritated me. But she was cool. I wonder where she is today.
The first week we hit town and it seemed surreal. Soon we found a house to rent, fully furnished including things like dishes and a vacuum cleaner. A lady was renting it outfor a year so she could go visit her ailing mother. We lived on 1974 Nott Street in Schenectady, NY 12309. You can look it up on Mapquest. I think our rent was $250 a month. I worked at McDonalds in Mohawk Mall which no longer exists - the whole mall that is. The darndest things you can look up on Google. I made $2.10 an hour. My WOW brother made $3.00 an hour at Sears working in the automotive department. I was envious. The girls worked cleaning houses. K*thy had a borrowed 1964 or '65 Mustang that D*r*k did a lot of work on. None of us was much over 20 years old.
I think all six of the WOW families consisted of two men and two women. Why did they do this? Nobody was complaining, that's for sure, but common sense would say to segregate the sexes. As far as I know nothing went on in our family, but there was a lot of "tension".
In October of that year I drove D*r*k's Rambler into the back of a Cadillac in a line of cars at a red light on Balltown Road. I just wasn't paying attention. I ended up losing my license because his car wasn't insured. And I was fined $250 which I never paid... until 2001!! Yes, in 2001 I got a notice from the Texas Dept. of Public Safety (aka as the DMV in most other states). They had done some cross referencing and I could not renew my TX driver's license until I paid the $250 fine to the State of New York. Thankfully there was no penalty or interest!! Doing the math (as my manner is, as an accountant - that comes later) even a modest amount of accrued interest on $250 over 25 years would have put that figure well into the thousands.
We ran two PFAL classes that year. One in the deep of the Winter and one in the Summer. They were both audio tape classses. During that year, if memory serves me right, they combined the Foundational and Intermediate classes and put them together and upped the "required donation" to $200.
I ran the tapes - they were on audio cassettes. There was one cassette that had the label on the wrong side so I actually played two half-hour segments in reverse order. And I don't think anyone noticed.
Then in June there was PFAL '77 at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. We WOWs were given special permission to go. Everybody thought we would be witnessing live the recording of the new piffle class to be used in the future, but that was not to be the case. No we were not misinformed, we misunderstood!
Near the end of my WOW year, somebody in leadership thought the Way College Division would be good for me, so I decided to attend there, but not for another year.
I was at ROA '76 as well. My first. I lost my wallet for the whole week and ate yogurt and nuts pretty much the whole time.
It was dirty tho'. Remember the black stuff they put down on the track to keep the dust down when the horses raced? And, we were camping in the middle of the track -->. By the end of the week everything I owned was charcoal!
Great story...keep going.
And I love watching you and sis' discover all these things about each other.
Home movies, lol! That was a hobby I had for a while. I made some strange ones a la Mr. Bill.
Let's see... the next year was 1977-78, and as we all know our years went from August to August. I went back home and worked at McDonald's and saved up for tuition to attend the Way C of E.
It's funny how kids today think working fast-food is beneath them. Around here the employees at such restaurants are, um, well English is not their primary language. I actually liked it. It was hard work but I learned a lot and made some good friends.
I worked an odd shift - 5AM to 1:30PM or whenever the lunch rush ended. I'd come in early and do the grunt work - filter the "shortening" in the deep fat fryers and clean the grills for another day. The word "grease" does not exist at McDonald's. It's "shortening" or "juices" depending on the context. I'd also help receive the deliveries and make sure the inventory was properly rotated. We had to wear those awful polyester uniforms and stupid paper hats. I never could totally get that onion smell off of my hands.
Eventually I was promoted all the way to "crew chief". Whoopee. I got to make the calls on how many hamburgers would get cheese.
To backtrack a bit, at my first McDonald's in Schenectady, they had real cash registers. You had to know the prices of everything and make change on your own. In other words, you needed a brain. Today, almost any cashier under 40 is clueless on making change. Amount due is $9.76. You hand over a ten, he/she punches it in. Oh wait, I have a penny... The cashier will just freeze. It's funny and sad at the same time.
The Del Mar McDonalds experimented with new "modern" cash registers where the cashier had to fill in little circles on a card with a #2 pencil and stick it in a reader, just like an exam at school. Not surprisingly, that didn't last long.
Yeah, that was a rough year. Living with the parents, working at McDonald's going to the beach.
Yeah, outintexas used to make hilarious "home" movies, with the help of younger brother.
texas, I hope you still have those! Did you get them transferred to video.
I'm in some of them. In one of them we were on our trip in the motorhome before ROA '76 and going WOW. I was pretending to sit on a cactus but I actually did!
Some of them had our mom's cats in them.
oh yeah, and wasn't there one where you and brother and friends are moving around on just your butts? (done with stop-action)
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Shellon
Welcome!
I'm sorry for your losses, yet encouraged by your strength and stamina.
I look forward to further of whatever you choose to tell us.
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outandabout
Hi, Bro,
I'm glad you finally got out. I remember there was that period when I was out, and you weren't. I guess that "spiritual probation" for your "dirty" house was the final straw.
Please continue with your story.
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rascal
Welcome!!!! Very interesting, talking about emotional growth being put on hold.....Man if THAT isn`t a great description of life in twi.
The growth is tough and yet well worth the effort.
I would never want to go back to being the vacuous (sp) empty person I was in those years.
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GeorgeStGeorge
Welcome to Greasespot, Out-2! Have you been in Texas long? If you ever get down to the coast (Freeport area, especially), drop me a Private Topic. We could ram a couple beers at the beach.
George
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A la prochaine
OutinTexas,
I can so relate to your story. I too was witnessed to by my older sister. But the scenerios were reversed for us. I was booted in 94, and she only left about 2 yrs. ago. It was a tough 9 years or so cause the time we were out and she was in, she never talked to us. She lived 30 miles away.
Keep telling your story. I think it's wonderful that you've come here and shared your story. I've been trying to get my sister to come on board as well. I hope someday soon it will happen.
RASCAL,
Yes, it was barely an existence wasn't it.
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outintexas
I will continue in the coming days, for sure. I enjoy writing. It seems to run in my family.
I've been in Texas since 1988.
Stay tuned for more
:)-->
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Belle
Welcome OutinTexas!
I enjoy hearing your story. So glad you are out and healing. Therapy is wonderful, isn't it? I'd hate to think of where I would be and how I would be handling getting "out" if it wasn't for the objective ear to bend every once in a while.
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outintexas
Of course we were told in twi it was wrong to get outside counseling. Yeah, what do trained experienced professionals know about anything? It's much better to continue to be the blind following the blind. We're the faithful remnant! We're in the walls of Zion! We know everything! Oh, we don't CLAIM to know everything, but we act like we do. Everybody else is clueless.
I started attending a Church of Christ in our area a couple years ago. The church is HUGE, but it has a lot of sub-groups. I started attending one group and they invited me to go to their class. I forget what it was called, I guess it doesn't matter. The spooky thing is that the class was 12 sessions long. We were encouraged to participate, even give our opinions on things! I had a hard time with that because I didn't know if what I had learned in twi would sound bizarro or not. Turned out a lot of the stuff in the church class was similar to things in the first few sessions of piffle. It was quite a mental adjustment to go to a normal church with real people with problems. I also learned to quit arriving ten minutes early.
I feel somewhat of a hypocrite (sp?) going to church because part of my motivation is just to meet people. I did attend a divorce recovery group for a while recently, and that was quite helpful. I learned to be thankful to have my kids, rather than to look at them as a burden. A lot of the people in that group were dealing with custody issues.
I'm still riding the emotional rollercoaster, but it's smoothed out a lot. I started running again a couple years ago. I still have flashbacks to running in the Way College. I actually enjoyed that then. The three mile route out to Industrial Boulevard, past the Dolly Madison plant and back to the campus. Then to Kenyon Hall to record the aerobic points.
Whoops. Almost time for Seinfeld. I don't feel guilty about watching TV anymore, either....
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A la prochaine
Sweet Story ... keep sharing.. I love it!
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outandabout
OK, so when are we going to get the whole story?
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outandabout
What about when you went WOW to Albany? What about the Way College? What about U of CO (is that where you went?) What about when you were home working at Mickey D's? What about when I came home? What about you and former wife and how and why you split? What about what happened when you left, and why?
As the King in King & I said "And ETC ETC ETC"
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excathedra
i really like you two siblings
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outintexas
Okay, okay!! Sheesh!! I'll get to all that in the coming days. Watch this space.
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outandabout
I sent you a PT.
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A la prochaine
You two are the cutest sibblings ever!!! But it looks to me that big sis' is getting a little bossy here...
:D-->
Texasone...I had big sisters ... I know exactly how it feels.
;)-->
Outandabout...I'm just kidding!
:D-->
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outintexas
Onward... 1975... I went off to Boulder Colorado to begin college at CU. Being quite sheltered, I was pretty shocked at the nonsense that went on in the dorm. Being a good leaf, I very soon hooked up with the twig there and spent way too much of my time with twi activities. I took least a couple of seminars, or whatever they were called then, across the mountains in Grand Junction. They would cram 15 hours of a class into a weekend. I remember at least one round trip riding with some guy in his muscle car speeding and passing cars around blind curves through the mountains. This was when I-70 was just two lanes (one each way) in places through the canyons. Between my poor study habits and spending too much time with twi, I ended up with a GPA under 2.0 after the semester so I couldn't go back. That summer (1976) I did a state outreach program called Minutemen in Sterling, in the Northeast corner of Colorado. I was there with three other guys. J*d L*wm*n was our family coordinator. I'm pretty sure he went into the 7th corps. Funny I couldn't remember his name until just now. That was when the America Awakes album was released and the whole bicentennial thing was going on. Jed and I worked at a furniture store in Sterling doing deliveries, mostly. We had a good time together although we didn't get a whole lot of outreach accomplished. It was there that I got the news from CU that I would not be going back, so I decided to go WOW. Ah yes, putting God first.
So 1976 was my first Rock of Ages. It was at the Shelby County Fairgrounds in Sidney, OH. It seemed rather magical - all the love and the excitement of not knowing where I would be assigned and who I would be going with. I think the Rock was only 3 and a half days then. Later it would grow to six days and not be so magical.
On the last night of the Rock we opened up our envelopes and I was going to... Schenectady, NY! They sent six families of WOW's to the Albany area, the "Capitol District." Two to Schenectady, two to Troy and two to Albany itself. We all headed out with our glowing green lightsticks and drove to Columbus for a couple days of WOW training at the University of Ohio.
My family constisted of D*r*ek C*ssm*n from Waukean, IL, Connie Somebody from Minnesota who I think went into the 10th corps and K*thy H*gg*ns who would become K*thy S*nk. (Would you like to buy a vowel?) She was in the 6th corps (interim year) and spent a LOT of time late at night, past midnight mind you, on the phone long-distance to her 6th corps fiancee, R*nn*e in Beaumont, TX. Long distance back then wasn't that cheap, and the phone bill was paid for out of the family fund which irritated me. But she was cool. I wonder where she is today.
The first week we hit town and it seemed surreal. Soon we found a house to rent, fully furnished including things like dishes and a vacuum cleaner. A lady was renting it outfor a year so she could go visit her ailing mother. We lived on 1974 Nott Street in Schenectady, NY 12309. You can look it up on Mapquest. I think our rent was $250 a month. I worked at McDonalds in Mohawk Mall which no longer exists - the whole mall that is. The darndest things you can look up on Google. I made $2.10 an hour. My WOW brother made $3.00 an hour at Sears working in the automotive department. I was envious. The girls worked cleaning houses. K*thy had a borrowed 1964 or '65 Mustang that D*r*k did a lot of work on. None of us was much over 20 years old.
I think all six of the WOW families consisted of two men and two women. Why did they do this? Nobody was complaining, that's for sure, but common sense would say to segregate the sexes. As far as I know nothing went on in our family, but there was a lot of "tension".
In October of that year I drove D*r*k's Rambler into the back of a Cadillac in a line of cars at a red light on Balltown Road. I just wasn't paying attention. I ended up losing my license because his car wasn't insured. And I was fined $250 which I never paid... until 2001!! Yes, in 2001 I got a notice from the Texas Dept. of Public Safety (aka as the DMV in most other states). They had done some cross referencing and I could not renew my TX driver's license until I paid the $250 fine to the State of New York. Thankfully there was no penalty or interest!! Doing the math (as my manner is, as an accountant - that comes later) even a modest amount of accrued interest on $250 over 25 years would have put that figure well into the thousands.
We ran two PFAL classes that year. One in the deep of the Winter and one in the Summer. They were both audio tape classses. During that year, if memory serves me right, they combined the Foundational and Intermediate classes and put them together and upped the "required donation" to $200.
I ran the tapes - they were on audio cassettes. There was one cassette that had the label on the wrong side so I actually played two half-hour segments in reverse order. And I don't think anyone noticed.
Then in June there was PFAL '77 at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. We WOWs were given special permission to go. Everybody thought we would be witnessing live the recording of the new piffle class to be used in the future, but that was not to be the case. No we were not misinformed, we misunderstood!
Near the end of my WOW year, somebody in leadership thought the Way College Division would be good for me, so I decided to attend there, but not for another year.
To be continued...
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excathedra
laughing about the $250 ticket 25 years later.... amazing !
you so funny and write so well !
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outandabout
I didn't remember about you going Minueteman. Nor did I know of the car accident during your WOW year. (Does Dad? Ha ha)
And the class being $200. I remember being at the Corps Week meeting when they decided to do that, and everybody stood up and clapped!
And the glowing green sticks!! I forgot about those!
Like you said about me, "There's stuff in there about you I never knew about!"
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A la prochaine
Texasbro',
I was at ROA '76 as well. My first. I lost my wallet for the whole week and ate yogurt and nuts pretty much the whole time.
It was dirty tho'. Remember the black stuff they put down on the track to keep the dust down when the horses raced? And, we were camping in the middle of the track
-->. By the end of the week everything I owned was charcoal!
Great story...keep going.
And I love watching you and sis' discover all these things about each other.
Like watching someone else's home movies!!
:D-->
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outintexas
Home movies, lol! That was a hobby I had for a while. I made some strange ones a la Mr. Bill.
Let's see... the next year was 1977-78, and as we all know our years went from August to August. I went back home and worked at McDonald's and saved up for tuition to attend the Way C of E.
It's funny how kids today think working fast-food is beneath them. Around here the employees at such restaurants are, um, well English is not their primary language. I actually liked it. It was hard work but I learned a lot and made some good friends.
I worked an odd shift - 5AM to 1:30PM or whenever the lunch rush ended. I'd come in early and do the grunt work - filter the "shortening" in the deep fat fryers and clean the grills for another day. The word "grease" does not exist at McDonald's. It's "shortening" or "juices" depending on the context. I'd also help receive the deliveries and make sure the inventory was properly rotated. We had to wear those awful polyester uniforms and stupid paper hats. I never could totally get that onion smell off of my hands.
Eventually I was promoted all the way to "crew chief". Whoopee. I got to make the calls on how many hamburgers would get cheese.
To backtrack a bit, at my first McDonald's in Schenectady, they had real cash registers. You had to know the prices of everything and make change on your own. In other words, you needed a brain. Today, almost any cashier under 40 is clueless on making change. Amount due is $9.76. You hand over a ten, he/she punches it in. Oh wait, I have a penny... The cashier will just freeze. It's funny and sad at the same time.
The Del Mar McDonalds experimented with new "modern" cash registers where the cashier had to fill in little circles on a card with a #2 pencil and stick it in a reader, just like an exam at school. Not surprisingly, that didn't last long.
Yeah, that was a rough year. Living with the parents, working at McDonald's going to the beach.
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outandabout
I remember you mentioned that to me, that period of "going to the beach." You jokingly said that was when you were "tripped out."
You and youngest brother would sleep in, watch Twilight Zone and then go to the beach.
I was so totally envious that you had had such a lovely little iterlude.
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A la prochaine
Strange Home Movies a la Mr. Bill!!!
Mr. Bill gets ignited by lighter fluid
Mr. Bill gets rolled over by a dump truck
Mr. Bill gets his arms ripped off
Mr. Bill gets flattened by a boulder
Mr. Bill gets beheaded by a ravenous dog
Oh, this little plastercene man sure lived an adventurous life!
I used to die laughing watching those episodes. Thanks for bringing that little tid-bit of my past back to my recollection!
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outandabout
Yeah, outintexas used to make hilarious "home" movies, with the help of younger brother.
texas, I hope you still have those! Did you get them transferred to video.
I'm in some of them. In one of them we were on our trip in the motorhome before ROA '76 and going WOW. I was pretending to sit on a cactus but I actually did!
Some of them had our mom's cats in them.
oh yeah, and wasn't there one where you and brother and friends are moving around on just your butts? (done with stop-action)
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excathedra
love you guys
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