Chapter Five

It was the winter of 1968 when my family and I
arrived in St. Paul, Minnesota. My wife and I had
flown there a week or so earlier, courtesy of Clark
Equipment Company, and had rented a nice three
bedroom house located on Hurley Drive. We then
returned to Michigan and made arrangements with a
moving company to have our furniture and the rest
of our household effects shipped to our new home.
We were all very excited about the move -- an
opportunity to see new places and meet different
people and a promotion, making more money.

When we first arrived we liked St. Paul very much,
even though the weather there was much more
severe than what we had been used to anywhere else
we had ever lived. During the winter months in St.
Paul, which were basically September through May,
there was always lots of snow and the temperature
sometimes dipped down to seventy and eighty
degrees below zero. It was so cold, it was necessary
to purchase an electrically heated oil dip stick for our
automobile, which we parked in front of the house
overnight. We then ran an electric extension cord
from the car to an electrical outlet on the front porch.

If you forgot to hook up this device before retiring for
the night, you could rest assured that the oil in your
car would be so thick the next morning that your
engine wouldn't even turn over, much less start.
I learned about this situation "the hard way," the
same way that I learned about another problem,
which seemed to be peculiar to our new surround
ings: when they are forecasting a large snowfall at
night in St. Paul, it isn't advisable to park your car
on the street. Through my lack of experience I made
this fateful error, and a snow plow came down our
street before dawn the next morning and completely
buried our car in the snow. At first, I thought the
car had been stolen, and then I realized that it was
still in the same place I had parked it the night
before, only now it was buried under several tons of
snow. Needless to say, I was quite annoyed, and it
took me all of that day and part of the next to dig my
car out.

However, on the "up side" of life in our new
environment, it seemed as though the sun shone in
St. Paul every day. This was a refreshing change
from the usually cloudy and dreary winter days that
we had experienced while living in Michigan. Also,
the restaurants in St. Paul and Minneapolis served
the best food we had ever eaten. The seafood in
particular was especially prominent and plentiful in
that part of the country, and Linnie and I dined on
our favorites, lobster and shrimp, as often as
possible.

My new job as office manager involved a lot of
responsibility, which kept me occupied, working long
hours through the week and a lot of weekends.
Linnie and our sons attended the meetings at the
Kingdom Hall and went out in service, and things
went pretty much the way they had when we lived in
Michigan. I attended the meetings occasionally, and
there was a young couple that came to our house
once a week to study with us. However, I was
progressively becoming dissatisfied with my job, due
to the company's growing demands on my time and
energies. In addition, because of the tremendous
stress and pressure connected with my job, I was
beginning to develop stomach ulcers as well as other
physical ailments. I was twenty pounds overweight,
due to a lack of proper exercise and poor eating
habits, and I was drinking alcoholic beverages to
excess.

I had frequently imbibed, beginning some years
before, while in the Navy. However, after we became
associated with Jehovah's Witnesses, which resulted
in my untimely discharge from the Navy, as well as
many other problems, my drinking increased in both
quantity and frequency. Instead of going home after
work at night, tired as I was, I would make the
rounds of the bars and nightclubs, drinking and
dancing, looking for what I believed was a good time.

I wanted to experience all the fun that life had to
offer, before my annihilation with the rest of the
wicked at Armageddon. Moreover, this "fast lane"
lifestyle that I had adopted was beginning to take its
toll on my wife's patient and loving nature, and it put
further strain on our already deteriorating marriage.
Some time around March or April of 1970, my
mother wrote and informed us that my stepfather
was going to retire and they were planning to move to
a town near Dad's place of birth in Kentucky, called
Madisonville. Madisonville, my mother wrote, was a
nice place that had a small town atmosphere, yet
was large enough to contain sufficient stores,
restaurants, and gas stations, etc., for convenient
living. My mother lamented in her letter that she
missed us and the grandchildren very much and
wanted to know if we would consider moving to
Madisonville as well. Mom further related that Dad
had bought two Sinclair Service Stations and that he
would provide me with employment, assisting him in
managing them. My mother also wrote that my
sister Donna Cable and her family, who were
presently living in Tennessee, had already decide to
join them and move to Madisonville as well. Mom
thought it would be really great if we all lived in the
same location for a change, instead of being spread
out all over the country.

My wife Linnie was thrilled at the prospect of
moving back to her home state of Kentucky. She had
been homesick for some time, missing her parents
and her six brothers and two sisters, and
Madisonville was only about two hundred miles from
McCreary County, where the majority of Linnie's
family still resided. I thought it would be interesting
to be in business with family members, and even
though I knew I would be making considerably less
money, the small town life sounded appealing as I
conjured up mental pictures from the old television
show "Andy of Mayberry." After living in the "rat
race" of big cities all my life, with the accompanying
traffic jams, crowded stores and rampant crime, I
decided this would be a good move and an ideal place
for us to settle down and raise our family.

It was May 3, 1970, when we arrived in Madison
ville, Kentucky. The exact date is very clear in my
mind, because, coincidentally, it was also our tenth
wedding anniversary. My mother had already rented
us a small three bedroom house, located on Loven
Lane. The house wasn't as nice or as large as the
house we had left behind in St. Paul. However, it
seemed adequate for our immediate needs and we
were very happy to be there. It took us several days
to get settled and I immediately started to work at
the service stations with my step father and my
brother-in-law Jerry Cable. I worked with Dad and
Jerry, running the two service stations for over a
year. However, as things progressed, it became
apparent that Dad was quite set in his ways and we
didn't seem to get along any better when it came to
business matters than we did concerning religion.
That being the case, I decided that If I wanted to
keep peace in the family, it would probably be in
everyone's best interest if I were to seek employment
elsewhere.

It was August of 1971, when I read in the local
newspaper that the Madisonville Police Department
was hiring patrol officers. I had thought about a
career as a policeman with the Detroit Police Depart
ment when we moved to Michigan from Florida.
However, my wife and mother talked me out of the
notion due to the high mortality rate of Detroit police
at the time. Back in the sixties, law enforcement
officers in large cities all over the country were being
ambushed and killed at the alarming rate of
approximately one per month. However, that was
some years ago, and since Madisonville was a com
paratively small town with a population of around
20,000 residents, I felt it couldn't be as dangerous or
difficult to police as a large city such as Detroit.
After further consideration I decided that this would
be a good opportunity to begin a career in law
enforcement, so I applied for the job and was
selected.

During this time, Linnie had become pregnant
with our third son, and he was born, Andrew
Christopher, on December 17, 1971. Again coinci
dentally, Chris was born the same day that I
graduated from the Police Academy.

Linnie and I both had started back to the Kingdom
Hall shortly after we moved to Madisonville, and I
regretted that I hadn't been living in accordance with
Bible principles and the Society's high standards,
and I made a commitment to do better in the future.
I was determined to take a more active and
aggressive role in the "preaching work," perhaps even
becoming a "servant" or an "elder" in the congrega
tion. I rededicated myself, "turning over a new leaf,"
resolving to work hard in an effort to win the
approval of Jehovah and the organization, so that I
might survive Armageddon and live on into the "New
System" with my beloved wife and children. The
Watchtower was continuing to predict that Arma
geddon was just a scant few years away now and
would likely occur in the Autumn of 1975.

I began attending the meetings regularly and going
out in service as much as time permitted. I was even
conducting a Bible study with a troubled young teen,
whose mother was a Witness and thought that her
son might be impressed and favorably respond to a
policeman teaching him the Scriptures. However, it
didn't work out, and I had to discontinue the study
when the young man was arrested in a stolen auto
mobile several months later.

Some time after that study abruptly terminated, I
was brought into contact with another disturbed
seventeen-year-old boy, who lived with his mother in
the Madisonville government housing projects. One
of the elders in the congregation, whose wife was
studying the Bible with the boy's mother, came by
my house one evening and asked me to accompany
him to the woman's home. The elder explained that
the woman had evicted her son from the residence
earlier in the day, due to some type of misconduct,
and was refusing to allow him to come back into the
house. The now homeless lad had no other family in
the area and no one he could turn to. The boy had
contacted the elder's wife in desperation, hoping that
she could talk his mother into letting him back into
the house. The elder wanted me to talk to the
woman in my official capacity as a police officer,
thinking it might shake her to her senses.

It was after dark when we drove up in front of the
woman's apartment, and I told the boy to wait for us
in the car. The woman immediately responded to our
knock on the door and, recognizing the elder with
me, invited us in. The woman appeared to be around
forty years of age, with long brown hair, combed
straight back. She was neatly dressed and well
groomed, and she smiled at us as we entered the
living room. I was pleasantly surprised as my eyes
scanned the nicely decorated apartment with its
freshly painted walls and new looking modern
furniture positioned around the room. I was
impressed. Most of the project apartments I had
been in weren't nearly as nice or as clean as this one.
I showed the lady my badge and identification and
watched the pleasant smile on her face turn into a
frown, as I explained to her that I was a police officer
as well as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I further
explained to her that I was there at the request of the
elder with me, to talk to her about her son. The
woman's face was now turning beet red with anger,
as I tried to make her understand that she couldn't
legally throw her under-age son out of the house with
no way to care for himself. I further informed her
that, as far as the law was concerned, the lad was
her responsibility to care for until he was eighteen
years of age. The elder then pointed out that the
woman also had a moral obligation to care for her
son, as well as a legal one.

At this point, the woman began to expound in a
very loud voice how her son wouldn't "mind" her and
how the boy's father had deserted them. The woman
also complained that, because of the boy's size, she
could no longer physically control him. This brought
us to another problem that I needed to discuss with
the lady. On the way from my house to the woman's
apartment the lad had made allegations that his
mother and father used to punish him by tying him
face down to the bed and beating him across the
back with a belt. When I confronted the woman with
this accusation, she readily admitted it. She acted
as if there was nothing wrong with punishing a child
in that manner, and I was appalled at her callous
attitude. After questioning the boy's mother further,
it became quite apparent that she had no affection
for her son and she obviously didn't want him
around anymore. Suddenly, I found myself dis-
gusted by this woman who, just moments earlier, I
was beginning to feel sorry for. I was extremely
saddened that the boy had to return to this unloving
and uncaring environment. However, I reasoned that
it was better than living on the street, and at least
the boy was big enough now to physically protect
himself from his mother. All the boy had to contend
with now was his mother's verbal and mental abuse.

While the elder went to the car to retrieve the boy,
I informed the woman that I would be checking back
periodically, to see how she and the lad were getting
along. I knew that I should probably make a report
to Child Welfare and let them follow up. However,
since the woman was studying with the Witnesses, I
thought that perhaps her learning and applying Bible
principles in her life might eventually straighten
things out between the woman and her estranged
son. Before departing, I gave the boy my telephone
number and my address and told him to contact me
if he had any further problems. As it turned out, the
boy had quit school when he was sixteen years of age
and he didn't have a job or anything else to occupy
his time or energies, so he ended up spending a great
deal of time at my house. I thought this would be a
great opportunity to "save" the wayward young man.

I resolved to start a Bible study with him, teach him
"the Truth" and bring him into the safety of the
Watchtower organization.

We began our Bible study on a weekly basis at my
house, with the rest of my family in attendance. The
boy's mother had discontinued her study with the
elder's wife, and I was very disappointed to hear that
she later joined a Pentecostal church. After the
young man became eighteen years of age, legally an
adult, I was able to get him a job with the city Street
and Sanitation Department, and he eventually was
able to rent himself an apartment not too far from
where my family and I resided.

Some time later, as I was working the midnight
shift, I heard over the police radio that one of the
other patrolling units had found a young man
prowling around behind one of the businesses in the
downtown area. The suspect told the officer that he
was just looking for a Coke machine to buy himself a
cold drink from. The suspect also informed the
investigating officer that he was a personal friend of
mine and that I could vouch for him. When I was
given this information over the police radio, along
with the suspect's description and name, I signaled
the officer back that the boy was "all right" and that
he could release him. After all, I reasoned, the young
man wouldn't steal anything; I was studying the
Bible with him. Due to my vouching for him, the lad
was released from custody.

The following day it was determined that the
business my young friend was found behind had
been burglarized. When police questioned the boy
several days later, he confessed that he had broken
into the building, and upon conducting a search of
the boy's apartment, the officers found the items that
had been taken in the burglary. Needless to say, this
was very embarrassing for me, and I was angry that
my young friend would use me the way he had, after
all the kindness my family and I had shown him.
Inasmuch as this was the boy's first offense, he was
given probation instead of time in jail. The young
man didn't come to our house anymore for our Bible
study, and I didn't seek him out after that. The next
time I saw him was six or seven years later. He was
married and had two children of his own.