I had volunteered for two years of service and was assigned to New York. I always thought New York was nothing but big cities. But I learned there were many beautiful countryside areas as well.
However, for most of my time there, I was assigned to work in the ghettos of the larger cities. That was a real eye-opener for a country boy with its buses, subways, and mass transit, and not a horse or cow in sight. I was used to wide-open rangeland, not skyscrapers.
Though I never felt totally comfortable living in a big city, I learned to love the people as I worked and served on different projects. Then, for my last few months, I was assigned to work in a small rural town near Lake Ontario. It was what some there called “hillbilly heaven.”
I learned that many of the people at the church I attended lived without electricity. They often had no running water or indoor plumbing. They had outhouses and hand pumps or got water from a nearby lake or stream.
But the people had big hearts. Jensen was the young man I worked with, and he and I were often invited to their homes for dinner. The people felt two young men, far from home, could use a good home-cooked meal, and they were right.
The first time we were asked over for dinner, the husband gave us the address and then said, “Come at three, and we will eat at five.”
In our work assignments, it was unusual to spend that much time at any one home, but Jensen said they might want some help. On the appointed afternoon, we went as directed and found where we were sure the address should be. There were no cell phones, but the map we had bought at the gas station showed we were in the right place.
We couldn’t see a house, but Jensen said it might be back in the trees. We pulled off and saw a car behind some bushes. Then we saw a mailbox that had the family’s name on it, so we were sure we were in the right place. I noticed a path by the mailbox, and we decided the house was probably just back in the woods a short distance.
We walked and walked. At times, we doubted if we were going the right way, but we always decided to go on a little further. After about a mile, someone yelled, “Who goes there?”
I called out our names, and the man laughed. “Come on in.”
We walked into a clearing and saw the father of the family we were seeking working at a still. “I hope I didn’t spook you,” he said. “A person can never be too careful.”
He told us the still was for making fuel for his car. “I don’t trust big oil companies farther than I can throw them.”
That was when we realized we were only about thirty yards from the beautiful shoreline of Lake Ontario. We still had some time before dinner, so he moved over to his pile of wood he was cutting and chopping. We jumped in and helped chop and stack it.
“I didn’t mean to get you here this long before dinner,” he said. “I just told you earlier in case you got lost.”
After we had worked for a while, his wife came out and said dinner was ready. She also said she could use some more water. Following his lead, we each grabbed a bucket and traipsed down to the lake to fill them. We hauled the water into the house, and the wife had us pour much of it into a big pot on the wood cookstove to boil it for safety.
As we ate, we learned that he was a schoolteacher and walked the path each day to his car to go to work. After the meal, we lingered for a while, but then we realized that, on that early spring evening, the sun was already approaching the horizon, and we had better be on our way.
The husband nodded. “You got a mile back to your car, and it’s treacherous in the dark.”
Darkness absolutely engulfed us in the deep woods before we made it to our car. We carefully continued our way along, and finally, after about twice as long as it took to walk in, it was with great relief that we came out into the clearing with the moonlight shining on our car.
Yes, it was good that we came early.
