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24. Grand Rapids? Or Bangladesh?
I needed a car. My 1963 Plymouth Valiant had been valiant enough to survive that accident I told you about a while back. But it was now four years old. That’s not so bad, but it had over 100,000 miles on it. That was not good for a car made in 1963. And though it had survived the accident, it did have some problems. So I decided to buy a new car.
There were lots of new cars around the city. I looked for several days. Perhaps even for a week or two. Then I found it. It was a 1967 Plymouth Valiant, blue and shiny and new. And the price was reasonable, so I thought. And working for a bank, as I did, ought to make financing this car easy. Since I was now 26 years old, I could not imagine any problems. I didn’t even need my dad to sign for it.
But Del, who at the time was just reentering my life as my new roommate, did not think it was wise to purchase a car without my father’s involvement. “I would not want to make such a major purchase without my dad’s okay on it,” he said. I said that was fine. I had no problem with that. But my dad was 150 miles away, and the car was a mile or two away.
This may be a good time to mention that Del was not a new arrival in my life. I had first met him when Beth and I were doing our brother and sister act. Del was also from Lincoln Park, and had graduated from Lincoln Park High, and had also graduated from Wayne State University. And he also dated Beth from time to time. She was not interested in him, though. She told me so. More than once.
Anyway, with or without Del’s, or Dad’s blessing, I was going to get a new car. I talked to my boss at work about financing, and he said it shouldn’t be a problem, and he sent me to one of the loan officers in the auto loan department. I showed him the figures on the blue Valiant.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. He seemed hesitant to loan me the money. “Couldn’t you put a little more down?”
“I don’t have any more to put down,” I said. “I have to pay tuition in the fall.”
“Maybe you could borrow some from your parents,” he said.
“No, my parents don’t have the money to lend me. Besides, I’m on my own now. I am 26 years old.”
“Yes, so I see.” There was no let up in his seeming hesitancy.
“Let me talk to my boss,” he said. Come back in a couple of hours and I’ll have an answer for you.”
Imagine the hands of the clock moving really fast and that it is now two hours advanced. Of course, in real life, it took two hours for this to happen. Only it seemed like four. No, five.
“I’m sorry,” he said, now seeming less hesitant and more decisive. “If you could put down another $100 or so, maybe we could do something. But we just don’t think this will work.”
Turned down by my own bank. Well, I suppose that does make sense when you think about it. After all, they knew what they were paying me.
I decided to do what any loyal employee would do in the circumstance. I went across the street to the bank’s biggest competitor.
“No problem,” said the loan officer. Sign here, and here, and here, and go get your car.”
I don’t really know what the difference was. I don’t know why my bank said no and the competitor said yes. But it may have something to do with the fact that forty years later, my bank is no longer in business, bought out years ago by a big bank in Detroit. The competitor that gave me the loan is still there, headquartered in Grand Rapids now as it was then, still loaning money to people who really need it, still operating in the same building under the same name. In fact, it is one of the oldest banks in Kent County, and it would seem to be an old bank in Kent County that one can trust. But that is just my opinion.
Soon I was driving my new car. It smelled new. It looked new. Hey, it was new. Tim, who was still driving his used Ford LTD, which he claimed stood for “Long Term Debt,” said, “You beat me. You got a new car before I did.” I also got my first monthly payments. Seventy-four dollars each and every month. I delighted in paying it in person, too. Each month I would take the money I earned at my bank and march across the street and give it to the competitor.
So, when I drove Del and Cora and Linda to the Pizza Hut on that snowy December night, it was in my blue Valiant that was just four months old. I had only made $294 in payments. I still had a ways to go.
Was it my car that made Linda think she was going to marry me? I doubt it. Was it my charm? My ability to entertain? Come on. Get real. I know why Linda said that.
You see, all those years when I prayed “Lord give me ------” and I filled in the blank myself — Sarah, Janet, Beth, Lunch-Line Girl — God gave me no one. But when I prayed “Lord give me the girl you want me to have, or give me no one at all if that is your will,” and I did not fill in the blank, God gave me — well, see for yourself.
Our first date with just the two of us came a short time later. We went to church together at my church, Calvary Baptist Church, and then to Granny’s Kitchen restaurant afterward.
We began to date regularly after Christmas break. We held hands for the first time after church on January 14. We went to the circus on January 27. That was in celebration of her 20th birthday two days before.
The seminary often sent seminarians out to small churches as pulpit supply, and on February 4, I was assigned to preach at a little church called Oakley Protestant Bible Church. Linda went with me, and it was after the service there that we kissed for the first time. For Valentine’s Day, I sent Linda a dozen red roses. That weekend I drove Linda to her home in Indianapolis, Indiana and met her family.
Soon we were an “item” on campus. Being an item was new to me. I had never been an item before. Actually, I didn’t care whether we were an item or not. I was enjoying being with Linda. It was on February 21 that something significant happened. It did not happen in the library. It happened in my little blue Valiant as I drove Linda home from work.
[1] I took this picture of Linda at her desk in the Administration Building at Grand Rapids Baptist College and Seminary in 1968. [2] Linda and I standing in front of my 1967 Plymouth Valiant. Linda's mother took the picture in the driveway of the Hubble home in rural Indianapolis.
NEXT CHAPTER
We did spend a lot of time in that library. And occasionally we studied. Mostly we communicated, as discreetly as possible, because the librarian had this thing about quietness in his beloved library. A time or two he had to warn us about giggling in his library. So we giggled more quietly. He seemed not to notice. We talked. We talked about lots of things, but one of them was not West Virginia, at least not then. And we laughed. And sometimes when the school cafeteria was serving chili for the seventh time in five days, we went out in my little blue Valiant to McDonald’s. Linda’s parents were paying for her to eat chili, but we went out and ate Big Macs. Sometimes I paid for them. Sometimes she did. Linda was working for the school. She was one of the student night phone operators. She sat at a desk in the administration building after supper a few nights a week and answered the phone until ten or eleven o’clock. Did the phone ring that late? Yes, frequently. After all, there were several hundred students living on the campus. Automated phone systems were still just a gleam in some phone company researcher’s eye. A real live person was needed to answer the phones, and Linda was paid minimum wage to do it. It was a long walk from the ad building back to the apartments, especially on those cold Grand Rapids winter nights. I would drive my new blue Valiant on which I had now made six payments (that would be a sum total of $444 of my bank’s dollars that rested in the competitor’s vault) from the apartments all the way around to the Ad Building and wait for Linda to get off work. She would lock the building and get in the car and we would drive back to the apartments. The preceding summer I had kissed Angie with her apartment door wide open. I could not kiss Linda at her apartment. It was not summer. There were people everywhere. Linda shared her apartment with three other girls. They were always around. Hundreds of other students were everywhere on the campus. PDAs were discouraged on campus. But they were not discouraged in my blue Valiant of which I now owned $444 worth. So Linda and I, although we drove straight back to the apartment complex from the ad building, did manage to turn a five minute drive into ten or fifteen minutes. How and why I will leave to the reader’s imagination.
After Wednesday prayer meeting, February 21, 1968 when snow was everywhere and we were returning to the apartments we began talking about whatever future we might have together. But a few weeks before that, another conversation had taken place between us.
One night after enjoying a wonderful chili supper in the campus dining complex, I walked Linda to the ad building. Instead of leaving her there, I went in with her. I sat in one of the lounge chairs in the little lobby where Linda’s desk and phone were located. And we talked. Between phone calls, that is.
We ended that conversation that night when Linda had answered the phone for the last time and it was time to drive her back to the apartments. We made an agreement. We would both pray about it and ask the Lord to guide us.
Linda told me that she had felt that God might be leading her to the mission field. There was a missionary that her church in Indianapolis supported, Dr. Quentin Kenoyer who ministered in India. He had spoken at the church from time to time as she was growing up, and she appreciated the ministry he had there, and felt that God might be calling her to serve, perhaps not in India, but in the neighboring country of Bangladesh. That was one of the reasons she had gone steady with Randy, because he also felt directed to the mission field. After telling me these things, there was a pause. It was my turn.
I had never felt God’s leading to the mission field. I had felt very strongly His call into the ministry, but it was ministry here in the States, not in a far-off land, and certainly not in Bangladesh. As carefully as I could, I explained this to Linda, knowing full well it could mean the end of our growing relationship.
Back to February, and the snowy night I drove her to her apartment after work. I don’t remember the conversation. But I do remember us both agreeing that, although we did not understand fully where the Lord would lead us in service for Him, we were both convinced He was leading us together. Permanently. No matter where He would lead us.
Wow! No obstacle is really an obstacle when the Lord is in a situation. What could be a bigger obstacle for a man and a woman than to be in different countries on different continents.
“Hello, wife, I can hardly hear you, there is so much static on the line. Oh, that’s better. Well, dear, how did your day go there in Bangladesh?”
“Oh, fine. I got to witness to a lady who brought her baby into the clinic today. She didn’t get saved yet, but she is coming back for further treatments for her baby. How was your day in Grand Rapids?”
“Fine. Fine. We had a deacon’s meeting at the church and we are going to present some plans to the congregation to enlarge the sanctuary. Attendance has been growing, and we are getting really crowded.”
“Oh, sorry, honey, I have to go. That lady just came back with her baby. His fever is up again. I’ll talk to you when you call me next month.”
“Okay. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
Somehow, I do not think it would be a good idea for a husband and a wife to try to build a married life together with one in Bangladesh and the other in the United States.
With both of us headed for a future together, and confident it was the Lord leading us, we began to plan. In a few conversations we had decided that we would marry on Friday, June 7, 1969. That was a year and a half in the future, but it was the earliest we thought we could marry.
I had seminary to finish. Because of working to pay the bills, I did not take as full a load of classes as I could have, so I had to stretch the three year Masters program into four years. I would graduate in May, 1969.
Linda had college to finish. In February of 1968 she was half way through her sophomore year. She would graduate in May of 1970. In our conversations we were not certain about what we would do for her senior year of college. But we felt certain we should marry as soon as possible. And June 7, 1969 seemed to be the soonest possible date. By then, I would have made twenty-one payments on my car, and would have paid a total of $1,554 on it. I would have fifteen payments remaining, and would owe $1,110.
But I would have a wife.
Copyright © 2011, Thomas M. Parsons, All Rights Reserved. - 114
