The Lenten season will soon be upon us. It's the time of year that one of my friends, also a Catholic, refers to as his "desert journey".
I thought he said "dessert journey" and I told him I'd be glad to go along with him and have some pie. He pointed out that maybe, since it's Lent and all, I should take my own desert journey and give up eating pie for 40 days.
We Catholics are notorious for sacrificing or "giving up" during Lent. Personally, I've always felt that rather than deny myself something pleasurable over the course of the holy season, it would be much more righteous of me to do something unselfish for others.
I thought perhaps I could start by sharing my pie. That way everyone wins. Of course, I'll need to get more pie.
Now the idea of the 40 days of Lent being likened to a "desert journey" is a reflection on the 40 years that Moses spent in the desert, leading the Israelites to the Promised Land. We've managed to narrow it down to 40 days for our own purposes because someone must have figured out that it should never have taken the Chosen People that long to get from Point A to Point B.
The only reason it did was because Moses was so fiercely stubborn.
That and he walked slow. His bunions really bothered him. And the Lord, with his wonderful sense of humor, led him to Mt. Sinai and said, "Here, Moses. Take two tablets and call me in the morning."
So it's no wonder the people were getting so testy on their desert journey. And at one point they had had quite enough and turned on Moses.
"Come on, Moses! It's been almost 40 years and we're getting nowhere! Day after day, the same thing. Tear down the campsite, trudge through the heat, up one sand dune and down another, step in camel poop and ruin another pair of sandals!
"And what do we get to eat, Moses? A bunch of weird, stale cookies that fall out of the sky. Then you do that trick where you tap the rock with the stick and--presto chango--we all get a drink of water! Whoopee!
"Well, yesterday we noticed something when you tapped that rock. It's the same rock every day! We've been walking in circles! We're lost, aren't we? And all because you refuse to stop at an oasis and ask for directions!
"This is why we build golden calves! For something to do! We're going crazy out here, Moses!
"Then to scare us, you come down from that mountain looking like you've seen a ghost, you've aged about 90 years, you're muttering some nonsense about a bush that's on fire, then you tell us that you've got some new rules for us that are written on a couple of slabs of rock! Is the heat getting to you, Moses? Well, we can't take it anymore!"
After putting up with all of that, it must have been disappointing for Moses to find out that God would not let him enter the Promised Land. Everyone in his group was jumping up and down, whooping and hollering, "We made it! Yay! It's the Promised Land! There it is! Come on, Moses. We'll race you!"
"No, that's all right. You guys go on ahead and I'll catch up later."
Now that was probably one of the most unselfish acts of all. To lead a whining, belly-aching, and faithless throng on a desert journey for 40 years, without cable TV, while knowing full well that he himself could never cross over into the Land of Milk and Honey.
Sometimes it probably did appear that Moses had no direction, that he didn't know where he was going. Yet he forged ahead on his desert journey with no map, but only faith.
And often that's what life is like, isn't it? We seem to wander aimlessly, without direction, wondering if we're really getting anywhere. But, like Moses, we don't stop to ask for directions, because if we have faith, that is our road map. We know we just have to keep moving.
So when Lent rolls around, have a good desert journey and take time out for a piece of pie.
________
Copyright by Wendel Potter
In some circles back home in Fullerton, Nebraska the "Phone Booth Story" became legend.
As it often happens, and it did in this case, a tale can take some bizarre twists as it travels from one ear to another. But I'm going to clear things up and tell the story the way it really took place.
I remember it well. And I should. As it turned out, it was my first brush with the police.
Every small town has its "characters," usually colorful folks who, for one reason or another, stand out from the crowd. Helen Harper was one such citizen. The main reason she stood out was because she weighed upwards of 400 pounds. There was a lot to stand out.
Helen once paid a visit to our town doctor and he ordered a physical exam. They needed to record her weight, so they sent Helen down to the grain elevator. It was the only place in Fullerton where there was a scale that would support her.
I would guess that Helen, at that time, was somewhere around 35 (which also happened to be her shoe size). She was married to a wiry little man in his 70s and they had at least eight children. She could have been hiding at least one or two more. Helen always looked like she was about to give birth to octuplets.
And talk about pushing her weight around. Rare was the person who messed with Helen.
Bell Telephone tried it. Helen was behind in paying her bill, so her phone was disconnected.
Take that, Helen! Yeah, right.
Upon discovering why her phone didn't work (I wonder if they called her to tell her she had no phone service), Helen ripped the telephone off the kitchen wall and wildly drove her blue Plymouth station wagon downtown to Ma Bell's business office where she slammed the phone down on the manager's desk, and told him quite plainly where he could stick his dial tone.
And that is where the Phone Booth Story begins.
It took place on a summer evening back in 1968. There were four of us young men who had wandered downtown, probably to get a Coke at Clara's Cafe, then to walk the small town streets looking for harmless adventures.
We had passed by the telephone company's branch office and turned at the corner where there sat, fittingly, a phone booth. We ventured on about a half block when we stopped and turned. The blue Plymouth station wagon had driven by and pulled up to the curb on the corner.
Helen Harper jiggled out from the driver's side and headed for the phone booth. Without phone service at home, this was her only alternative if she wanted to place a call.
Our curiosity got the best of us. We were extremely interested to see how this woman was going to fit into that phone booth. We figured it was worth watching. After all, teen aged boys will be boys.
Helen pushed on the glass doors and began stuffing herself inside the booth, filling every square inch. It reminded me of that famous old college prank where fraternity brothers would see how many of them could fit inside a phone booth. With just Helen in there by herself, it looked like the entire university.
What happened next was totally unrelated to our mission and, to three of us in our group, totally without reason. But, as Helen dropped in her dime and began dialing, one fellow among us, on a strange and fateful impulse, reached down and, in one fluid motion, scooped up a handful of gravel from the parking lot where we were standing. He reared back and let the rocks fly in the direction of the phone booth.
My two innocent cohorts and I stood frozen, watching in amazement. It unfolded like a slow motion movie. The spray of gravel pummeled the phone booth and that was followed by the sound of breaking glass. We could actually see the glass shatter and hear the bellowing of the woman inside the booth.
Suddenly we unfroze and began running. That's what level-headed teenagers do when they smell fear. They run like panic-stricken dogs.
After a couple of blocks, we stopped to gather our wits and three of us asked the perpetrator why he had suddenly decided to kill Helen. He had no reasonable answer. So we figured, he's on his own. We went our way and he went home.
The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. Later, we couldn't help returning to the scene of the crime. I guess we wanted to make sure there was no blood. Fortunately there wasn't, although glass was everywhere (along with four or five candy bar wrappers) and there was no sign of the station wagon.
The next evening, I was over to the house of one of the friends who had been with me the night before. We were alarmed when his dad sought us out and told us that one of our local policeman was in the living room and wanted to question us.
Sam the policeman was an aging, friendly sort and when we walked into the room, it showed in his eyes that he knew we hadn't done anything wrong, but he needed to know who had. He told us that Helen hadn't been injured in the incident the night before, but when he had arrived, she was standing on the corner violently shaking glass out of her big cotton tent of a house dress.
It seemed Helen had spotted a couple of girls across the street from the phone booth. Sam had tracked them down and asked them if they had seen anyone in the vicinity. They obliged and gave Sam our names. So we obliged and gave Sam the name of our friend who had launched the preemptive strike.
Now, come to find out, Sam had already been down to my house, so it wasn't long before my parents showed up to join the festivities. My dad was fit to be tied, mostly because I hadn't already mentioned anything about the previous evening to him.
He explained to me that running away was the worst thing a guy could do in that predicament. Somehow, I begged to differ. I just couldn't feature myself walking up to an angry 400-pound woman covered with shattered glass and saying to her, "Excuse me, but my friend over there took a sudden notion to watch a phone booth implode with you inside and I'll be glad to call a cop and have the lad sent up the river if you'll just promise not to sit on me."
Well, I think I was grounded for a week after that. The boy who threw the rocks had to make restitution. And, fortunately, Helen Harper never found out where I lived.
So, in a nutshell, that's the legendary Phone Booth Story, just the way it happened. And (sorry, Dad) but if I had it to do all over again, I'd still run like hell.
____
Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter
