As I mention before I was going to move to California when I left Bethel, to get way from Debbie's parents. So I thought the best thing to do was to go to the Service Department and ask them were they "Needed Help" in the Bay area of Northern California. This shows you how totally delusional I really was at the time. I thought I could still "Help" others, by moving to area that needed help. Yeah right! Just what a congregation needed another "Burned out" exbethelite. So I went to Merton Campbell. He was in the Service Department. He said. "Well they don't really need people in that area.....but were we could really use you is in Kansas! Hays, Kansas!” Many say that life is one big circle. I pioneered in Salina Kansas before I went to Bethel, which is about 70 miles from Hays Kansas. It was way too soon to make that circle back to Kansas. Then I remembered the movie Doctor Zivago. Where he said in the in the movie. "Happy men never really volunteer for anything.”
Merton Campbell was a nice guy. He was one of the heavies in the Service Department. He saved our asses with the "poker table incident."
We were board so we started playing cards on Saturday afternoons. So we bought this poker table and put a bed spread over it. So one Saturday we invited a couple of guys over to pay poker. We are talking a real penny ante game. We invited Ron Tellson over to pay. So after a couple of hours of paying, he gets up to leave. We count up his chips and tell him he owes us $1.34........He said. "Are you guys kidding right?"...."No" we said......."We were paying for real money." He said "We can't be playing for real money"......."We can't?" we said......."No.....GOD hates gambling, of any kind!" He said......I looked over at Jack and said "O.K. let’s forget the whole thing. We’ll never do it again and keep your $1.38 too." He said "No way, you guys need to turn yourself in to the brothers and if you don't, I will!"
The brothers always looking out for God and the organization.........It reminded me of the "secret police" in Nazis Germany......We must keep the "Zee" Organization clean of the penny ante poker players! So you guess it, we turn ourselves in......The Key to turning yourself in, is......You can choose WHO you go to confess your sins to. Usually the choices fall somewhere in between, Self-righteous, tight ass and someone who might believe in a little bit of mercy? We choose the latter, Brother Campbell. He thought it was kind of humorous and told us NEVER do it again........and yes we needed to get rid of the poker table too. We sold the table to Dave Borga the G-Job king. Next week Ron asked us "Did we turn ourselves in?" "Yes Sir!"
So anyway, we didn't move to California. We moved to Narragansett, Rhode Island. Southern R.I with all the swamp Yankees. It was about 10 miles away from Newport. There was a toll bridge in Jamestown for 2 bucks......I thought that would help keep her parents away. Funny thing is, after we got married her mother never gave us any flack. It seemed her big fear was of Debbie getting pregnant out of wedlock the whole time.
We were in the Wakefield Rhode Island congregation, cold as ice. The Swamp Yankees would laugh and say if you move here "NOT your children but their children......will be thought of as TRUE New Englanders." Little did I know that was really true? This one brother move in there, in 1947 from Alabama after WWII they never did warm up to him after 30 years. It was one of those Kingdom Halls were three families ran the whole show. It was the Conns, Burgesses and the Brayton’s (one of the oldest JW families in R.I) I never cared much for John Brayton the youngest of the boys. I thought he was a Jerk with small man syndrome.
It was August of 1972, John and his gang came down to bethel. His on again, off again girlfriend Linda Antonelli, was trying to make him jealous by throwing herself at a friend of mine Dave. There was a big party in our room, I told Linda and her cousin Patty I wanted to talk to them about the games she was playing. So we went to "The Towers" library and talked for about 45 minutes. When we got back to the room, John had left to go back to R.I, leaving the girls high and dry, they had a car but no money, it was dark and there was no way they could have found their way out of Brooklyn on their own. There was no money for a hotel. So we kicked everyone out of our room and told the girls they could spend the night there. As I was leaving the room I noticed a guy sticking his head around the corner. So I went back to the room and told the girls to lock the door and open it to NO one. Jack and I spent the night in Pipkorns room on the third floor.........next morning they were gone.
Two months later, Jack and I get this letter from Linda A. In it says, her conscious was been bothering her and Patty, about being in the in our room that night after everyone left. They knew it was against Bethel policy for girls to be in a Bethelites room all night. They had sent one letter to us and another one to Bethel. So next thing we knew, we were in George Couch's (Home Servant) office. As we were sitting there, sweating bullets. George says "So Brothers just what do you think those two sisters were DOING all night in your room with those two Brothers.........anyway?” “WHAT?" we said together........"What do you thing they were doing?"..........."What?" again we said. We found out two bethelites went back to our room after we left. It looks like...... we all got screwed that night but we never got a kiss, they could have kicked us both out for that but for some reason they didn't.
Well my friends, it is March 4, 2007 at 11:11 in the morning (this is when this was posted) I just got a call from my son and daughter.........It seems their mother, Debbie my ex-wife of 27 years just got engaged to Jay Miller from Tigard Oregon.
I wish her and her soon to be JW husband the best...Wow! Isn't life strange?
New Boy