“Have Sword Will Travel”
Roy and Tom Ottowell were my first roommates. Roy and I moved into Tom duplex. That turned out to me a total disaster. Roy put his dog in the basement. We come from field service one day to find Roy’s dog had completely destroyed everything Tom had storied down there plus Roy hadn’t been down there in a couple of days so there was dog shit everywhere. We told Roy that either he or his dog had to go. We all ended up renting a different a one bedroom duplex on Crawford Street. The rent was only $90 a month. Tom got the upstairs bedroom and Roy and I shared the basement area without the dog.
Tom was a diabetic and a strange duck. He was studying to become a Jehovah’s Witness. He had a college education and was a draftsman for Beech Craft. Being an engineer he loved his 1966 Corvair. A person couldn’t ask for two people so totally different from each other than Tom and Roy. Roy was a 5’3” redhead who was literally bouncing of the walls with nervous energy. At Bethel he would get the nick name “The Bany Rooster.” Tom stood at 6’ 4’’ and walked around like a ghost. Tom love to walk around the house munching on a bag of Doritos. He would walk into a room and look around and just say “Hum.” Years later I found out his wife would call him “The professor.” All I have to say about that is “Hum.”
I spent most my time with Roy since we not only worked together but pioneered together too. To be honest Roy was a strange duck too. He was raised in the religion too. His mother was one of “The anointed” ones. This is a very small group of Jehovah’s Witnesses that plan to go to heaven and not live forever in a paradise Earth like the rest of us. They believe according to Revelation that this number would be only 144,000. Back in the sixties there was just a few thousands of these around, out of millions of Witnesses. Even though the society says these numbers should be dwindling down. The opposite is true. Almost 50 years later and their numbers are about the same. That’s a whole other story. Roy told me his mother would walk around the house and say “Please god take me out of here, I’m sick of this place.”
Roy introduced me to the wonderful music of Bob Dylan and Joan Collins. My favorites at the time were Simon and Garfunkel. It’s really funny now looking back how much music effects our lives. How it marks the different time periods we go through.
I was very self-righteous back then. I was a full time minister for the Lord. I knew everything about everything. I even printed a business card that would tell people how wonderful I was. It said this on it.
“Have Sword will Travel”
Contact
Casarona---Salina Kansas
SS AAA
“Have gun will travel” was a nineteen fifties western TV series. It stared Richard Boone as Pallitin the gun fighter for hire. I thought of myself as a spiritual gun fighter. The “Sword” has been used to mean the Bible. As for the SS it meant Sacred Service. The AAA meant I was only “Available after Armageddon” for marriage. I was so full of myself!