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Statement of Faith
41. Thanksgiving Day
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Thanksgiving Day is always a day someone in the family prepares a turkey and all the trimmings and we all gather together to eat it. But that’s not the way we spent Thanksgiving Day of 1974.
I was scheduled to begin my ministry as the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Oglesby, Illinois on Sunday, December 1, 1974. To do that, we had to move. One of the men of Emmanuel helped me get a truck and drive it up the front lawn of the parsonage, and a group of men from the church helped us load all our stuff into the truck. That was a big job. We had more stuff than we thought we did.
Linda’s parents arrived the day before Thanksgiving to give us a hand. Some of the more delicate things were placed in their van and in our 1972 Plymouth Valiant for the long drive to Oglesby.
The plan was to drive the truck, the van and the car to Oglesby on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. But there we were, Dad and Mom Hubble, Linda and me, and one dog and one cat in the huge four bedroom parsonage with no furniture in it. No food either. No way to prepare the food. No dishes to serve the food on. We went to an area restaurant which was serving Thanksgiving dinner.
We had left a couple of mattresses off the truck, so that night we placed one mattress in one room for dad and mom, the other mattress in another room for Linda and me. The dog and the cat slept wherever they wanted to. I doubt they slept in the same room, but you never know.
Friday, we loaded up the mattresses on the truck, had breakfast somewhere, took one last look at the house which had been our home for four years, and at the church next door which had been our church for four years. Then the truck, the van and the car were turned westward.
Dad drove his van. Nikki the cat rode in the dog’s cage in the back of the van.
Linda drove the car. Her mom and Laddie the dog rode with her.
I drove the truck. Alone.
We stopped for the usual reasons: rest areas, lunch, gas for one or more of the vehicles. The trip from Flint to Oglesby is 345 miles long. Without stops it takes about five and a half hours
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to make the journey. With stops, of course, it takes longer. The route took us across the lower tier
of counties in Michigan to I-94, and then west to Lake Michigan. There we followed I-94 around the southern end of Lake Michigan in Indiana, then into Illinois and the southern edge of the metropolitan Chicago area. From there it was a straight shot across northern Illinois on I-80 to the LaSalle-Peru area, then south a short distance to our new home.
When we arrived in Oglesby after that long day’s drive, a group of men from the church were there to help us unload the truck. “I hate helping pastors move,” said one of the men, half-jokingly as he lifted one of the several heavy boxes. “They always have so many heavy boxes of books to move.”
The truck was unloaded in the darkness of the November evening. One of the men who drove a truck for a living offered to take the truck to its proper destination so it could be turned in before more rent on it was due. The church picked up the tab for the truck.
There we were, two men, two women, a dog and a cat, in the parsonage of First Baptist Church, furniture sitting in awkward places where it had been placed by the men, and boxes occupying most of the spaces not occupied by furniture. The ladies of the church had given us some food, which we consumed heartily. Then we set up the beds so Dad and Mom and us could get a good night’s rest. The next day, Dad and Mom would head back to Indianapolis. We would try to make some sense of the placement of furniture. And I would prepare for my first Sunday as the pastor of the church. November came to an end on that Saturday after Thanksgiving in 1974.
The adventure the Lord had shown us the northern lights for was about to begin.
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Copyright © 2010, Thomas M. Parsons, All Rights Reserved. - 143
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