Our new home in Eagleville, Missouri, moving day August 30th 1980. The camera was not unpacked, so I walked across the street to do a quick ink sketch of the house, moving van, and our car. My son sent it to me after the divorce. He said that his mother told him I just walked outside, and ten to fifteen minutes later returned with this sketch. Ballpoint pen on paper, size 6.5 inches by 9.25 inches. 

Photo of Tassel for three degrees.

Here we go again, I was bending to make the woman in my life happy. She was not happy with me working at manual labor, and I wasn't either. I kept my circuit of churches going for a year and then some, running myself ragged from one small rural area to another, but I enjoyed it. In the midst I worked at a factory, and soon after my marriage to Beth I became violently ill. One thing I could say about Beth was she was extremely supportive of my painting and poetry, a great boost to my selfworth, but another thing was our bickering. You'll say, all people bicker. Not like this. Anyway, I digress. I suddenly got ill, with a high temperature, 103 f. My mother-in-law came to care for me. Beth was a full time teacher, and a good one. She is trained in music and guidance counseling. Mary stayed with me until we decided to send me to the emergency room in a neighboring small town. They admit me. The fever stays high, and they run every test under the sun to see what was wrong with me, including a Mono test, but everything comes back negative. The doctor said, "Go home and rest for a week, and then go back to work, and I did. It was the wrong order, but they didn't know that. I did as they said. The fever returns; I go back, same order, go home and rest. At work I lose my cushy job, and am sent to the foundry to work night shift, grinding spurs off of fresh parts.

My fever returns, and I'm told to take off a week to rest, the same directions as before, but this fourth time the doctor said, "I'm going to refer you to a specialist, in Columbia. He is some sort of diagnostician, and if anyone can figure out what is wrong with you, he will figure it out." My fever maxes out at 105 f, but this time I'm in the hospital; suddenly I'm in isolation, and no one was allowed to see me without having to gown up first, and putting on face shields. I'm given Tylenol with codeine to help me feel more comfortable, and one time the nurse who came to care for me said, "You must have something exotic wrong with you, because I've never seen so many specialists from around the US in this hospital, and they are all treating you." I'm not happy to hear the news, but I'm tired, and I fell asleep. None of them can figure it out, not one. I'm a mystery to be solved. My liver was swollen twice it's normal size, and my white blood cell count was very high. I have hepatitis, but not the disease, my liver was swollen from yet some unknown cause. As the days pass my fever comes down and I am sent home. When I get home I'm informed I've lost too much work and I am let go by the factory. Not even the foundry wants me, but I'm still preaching when I can. I'm sent to an oncologist and he thinks I have Hodgkin's Lymphoma; the symptoms fit perfectly, but he said, "This is only a guess, I'll need to do more blood work on you. I want to tell you this is not a sure thing, you may not have it at all." All the specialists were gone, and I'm returning home with this sort of diagnosis ringing in my ear.

I returned home alone in my car to Beth. I weep all the way. When I get there I tell her what the oncologist said, and she replied, "We're barely married, and I'm going to lose you. I find out later in the month that I didn't have Hodgkin's and the fever went away but I'm unemployed. A week later, guess what, the damn fever returns! Another 103 f temperature. I go back to the diagnostician, in Columbia. He examined me and said, "You have Mono. I can't prove it, the test doesn't always come back positive for it, but you have Mono. We've been giving you the wrong advice. Go home and don't go back to work. I want you to stay in bed for six months, and then you should be fine." My mother-in-law cared for me off and on. Six months later I'm fine. I returned to the diagnostician and he cleared me for work. He then said, I was the second worst case of Mono he'd ever treated; "Mono never kills, but you came close." He added a warning, "Stay away from doctors, we're not good for your health!"

I continue to preach, and I have a baby on the way, so I need another factory job. I applied for one in a Missouri River town that is at least sixty miles from my churches, but it will have to do. It is summer and Beth was on summer break from her school and very pregnant. I work nights running quilting machines and making sleeping bags. I am underutilized. My son was born on June 26th 1980, and our birthdays are four days apart, so I've no excuse to forget it, but a month prior to Mt. St. Helen erupts, and we clean a thin layer of ash from the eruption that happened 2000 miles away off our cars, but now my son has an event to remember his birth year. It was the hottest summer since 1953 and 54, the first year of my life.

April of 1980 the temperature reached 90 f, and the next week we had six inches of snow on the ground. It was unusually cool the day my son was born, but the next day it was in the 90's and it didn't let up until deep into September. Temperatures reach 113 degree f, and when I come home at midnight, to the brick house we were renting, the temp inside was 90. We had a single window air-conditioner, and it was in the bedroom; we all live there, our wife, son, mother-in-law, and me. We only venture out to grab a bite in the kitchen, and to use the facilities. We had over three months of temperatures near or over 100 degrees. I go to work each night, and it was even hotter in the factory, because we were running batting ovens to stuff the quilts we're making. The heat didn't stop and it won't rain, we were scorched, and another summer like this it will be another dust bowl. It was one of the great natural disasters to hit the US, killing 1,700 people and destroying every farm crop in the Midwest, known as the breadbasket of the world. Farmers went out of business left and right and farmers were in crisis mode.

As the summer retreated, Beth said to me, "Let's make a teacher out of you, we'll get summers off." This was exactly the wrong reason to go into a field of study. I never wanted to be a teacher, though Little Grandma was, I didn't want to teach kids, and the gods forbid I settle for a teaching career, but it was this or work in factories the rest of my life, while Beth switched schools often. Beth was very good at applying for the next job, even if she might still have a teaching job where she was. It was extremely hard for a new teacher to get tenure, so you could expect a couple of years of employment and then you were let go. In Missouri, you had what was called "open season on teachers," that meant during that period of time any schools' untenured teachers could be fired without cause. She sent out dozens of resumes to schools looking for teaching jobs, and now she focused on a school to hire her near Northwest Missouri State University where she would teach while I went to college. We ended up in a town near the Iowa border, and just seventy miles one way to the University, it'll have to do. We were caring with us everything we own and an infant son. I go to the orientation at the University. My intentions were to pick up another bachelor's degree, but this time in elementary education. I gave them my transcripts. However, they'd never heard of NCC. The dean sent an aid to find out if it's accredited. He came back, about thirty minutes later, and I hear him say to the dean, "It's highly accredited," the dean smiled, and we began our bartering. I tell him what I want and he returned the offer and said, "You will have to pick up a lot of required undergraduate classes, some you can't pick up in one year, so why not a master's in education at the same time. We have just the program for you, but it'll take two years, instead of one." I enrolled. The dean was happy and my wife was happy, and it was only 130 miles round trip, but of course Beth and I would soon have a shared ministry thirty miles to the south of us, so add on another thirty miles once or twice a week. Thankfully, in this school I didn't have to study, it was all multiple choice questions, all I had to do was listen and occasionally hit a study group or two, write a thesis paper, student teach, and take the written at the end of the second year, then I'd add another tassel to the two I already had.