HAPPY IS THE MAN WHO HAS HIS QUIVER FULL…  

      I am the sixth of 13 children.  Abigail, Rip, Dot, Tim, Liz, Becky, Jon, Nate, Shirley, Margie, Kathy, Mark, Fred.  I could spew the list out in less than two seconds.  Rip is Rachael (her initials spelled Rip), Dot is Dorotha.  Eight girls, five boys.  The difference in age from the oldest to the youngest is around 16 years.  If you add in the miscarriages, my mother was nearly always pregnant for some 16 years.  This was on purpose because my father took that Bible verse in Psalms literally, “...Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them…”  In the decision that he made to have so many children you will find the beginning of several themes that run throughout his life.  1) Unilateral decisions without any interest or concern for accountability to others (it doesn’t take a genius to recognize that if my mother had any input in this decision, she would have stopped well before 13), 2) Literal interpretation of the Bible in spite of centuries of studied interpretation to the contrary, and 3) extreme behavior.

     For years I couldn’t understand why folks would ask me if we were Catholic when they found out the size of our family.  I just knew Catholics were evil.  So were Jews, Lutherans, Methodists, Bob Schuller, Presbyterians.  In fact, everyone outside our wall is evil as I recall.  This knowledge didn’t just come to me one day.  When I was young I would play in the yard with my siblings.  We would get up early, dress quietly, have breakfast, and slip out an open window into the yard to play.  If we had to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, we’d come and knock on the window and Mom would roll it open to let us in.  I discovered later that the window route was necessary to eliminate any noise that might wake my father from his drug-induced stupor.

We lived in a large church building that took up a quarter of a square block in a residential area of Topeka.  Our property sat at the corner of 12th Street & Orleans. The areas of the building that were designed for offices and other uses were converted to living quarters.  An area was added upstairs for more sleeping quarters including my father’s room.  There was a huge yard, a large portion of which was fenced in.  This was our world as young children.  We spent hours swinging, sliding, running, & jumping.  I recall hiding behind the big oak that stood out near the busy street.  In my holster I carried the “most powerful gun ever made”, hewn from a fallen limb.  Holding my breath, I would listen carefully to the sound of the approaching tires then spring from my hiding place and blast the enemy full of holes, falling and rolling in the grass to avoid their counter attack.  It was heaven because the enemies never stopped coming and my “most powerful gun ever made” never ran out of bullets. 

Mrs. Allen lived in the house that backed up to our back yard.  She would occasionally come out her back door with a plate of homemade cookies, or bars of candy, and make the slow, arthritic trek across her back yard to the fence that divided our yards.  It was always such a treat and I remember how sweet and gentle this little old lady was.  We would all scurry to the fence, jockeying for position to get a cookie.  Her old, wrinkled hand would shake as she lifted a cookie over the fence into one of our grasping hands.  I remember the warm, papery texture of her fingers as I touched them reaching for a treat.  I remember the kindness in her eyes.  I remember my father finding out and telling us to stay away from her.

The Hinkles lived next to her so their side and back yard also abutted ours.  They had a son named Daniel who had childhood diabetes.  Mr. Hinkle worked a lot and Mrs. Hinkle yelled a lot.  Daniel would come to the fence and play with us sometimes, but one day he grabbed my hand and pulled it through the chain link fence and wouldn’t let go.  After that I wouldn’t play with him.  The Hinkles had a dog that barked a lot.  My father would yell down from his upstairs window to “shut that dam dog up”.  On more then one occasion he came outside and screamed at Mr. Hinkle or Mrs. Hinkle about their dog.  One day there was a huge uproar, Mr. Hinkle was screaming at my dad that he had poisoned his dog and he would get him for that.  I never knew if it was true, but the dog stopped barking and Mr. Hinkle never “got” my dad.

The Pfaninsteils lived across Orleans Street from us.  They also had a dog.  I think it was a German Shepard.  Their dog came into our yard one day and my father shot it dead.  There were angry threats of recrimination by the distraught family but nothing ever came of it. 

By the time I reached the age of awareness, I recognized that we had many enemies amongst our neighbors and other members of the community.  Of course I believed it was because they were all evil sinners and we were “surrounded by the enemy both within and without”.  Twice each Sunday we were washed, dressed, shoes shined and sitting in the church to hear our father explain life and God to us.  Services would begin with a few hymnals sung to the accompaniment of my two older brothers on the piano and organ.  As those two played the music, in constant fear of hitting a wrong key, the small congregation sang of the glory of the coming of the Lord and the destruction of our enemies.  Once we had cleared our pipes there was a prayer then we all settled in for an hour long sermon by our father.

An interesting aspect of his preaching was the parenting he did from behind the pulpit.  Any failures or missteps by one of the children was usually weaved into his sermon with a detour to speak directly to that child about his conduct and explanations (sometimes punctuated with corporal punishment meted out by another congregant at my father’s direction) of what consequences he could expect for future violations. 

While I can’t say exactly when, early on I gained the coveted pole position in the Fred Phelps Sunday Service Violence Derby.  Over the years I was regularly singled out for my misconduct (It was in part due to the fact that I fell asleep so often during his sermon).  Whatever the case, I had more then my share of bloodied noses and bruised cheeks delivered to me by an older sibling in front of the entire congregation and God.  In the early years the church seats were old blue gray theatre fold up seats.  These were connected in rows of seven or 8 seats each.  On more than one occasion, when the blow was delivered, the entire row would sway and threaten to fall over (they weren’t secured into the ground) causing the person sitting on the other end to lunge forward to help regain the balance of the row of seats. 

Those moments were almost comical if not for the almost gleeful look that would emerge on my father’s face at the sheer violence of it all.  Now I could be angry at my brother for doing it, but the truth was that on the few occasions when he would try to fudge the blow, my father would immediately dole out even tougher punishment on him for failing to act as he required. 

We all learned early to strive for extreme violence, both in word and deed, when called on to act on his behalf.  As the years progressed it became a part of the game by some of the other members of the church to seek out misconduct (nodding off) during the service, and deliver the blow unprompted as this would be rewarded by my father’s much desired approval.  By my mid teens, I had moved to the back row.