Crossing the 45th Parallel - Did You Feel That?

Kristie and I moved to Albany, Oregon in June 1978 to make our fortune with a car battery recycling franchise which we jointly purchased with Kristie's brother Erik.  During that summer we received the proceeds from my Idaho teacher retirement account that had accrued $2,200 during the five years I taught in Nampa, Idaho.  We determined the best use of this money was toward the purchase of a home, and so we spent all our free time between October and January looking at houses and considering purchase options.  It soon became apparent, however, that what we were able to afford was not very desirable.  The homes in our price range were in the worst part of town, needing major repairs, and were generally depressing.  We became anxious because home prices were going up and there was little hope of our increasing the amount we could make for a down payment.  Trying to find an affordable and suitable house was the focus of our prayers, conversation and most of our available time during that fall and winter.

On the third Saturday in January we drove to Portland to view a doll house exhibit at the World Forestry Center.  Kristie was expecting Bree and I remember thinking she needed a chance to get away and do something other than just get discouraged by looking at the available homes in our price range.   

Kristie and I were discussing our dilemma while driving up Interstate 5 toward Portland.  Just north of Salem as we were passing the sign designating the 45th parallel, Kristie made the comment, "Well, maybe we aren't supposed to buy a home now."  She no sooner made this statement then I felt an overwhelming sense of peace and an incredible reassurance of what she had said.  The feeling was so strong that I said, "Did you feel that?"; to which she replied, "Yes".

 

It is both remarkable and significant that Kristie and I jointly experienced this confirmation and overwhelming feeling of peace.  The immediate sense of calm, serenity, and reassurance was so different and completely opposite from the conundrum, apprehension and feeling of disequilibrium we had been experiencing for months.  In looking back, it seems that the reason we hadn't received an answer or reassurance to our prayers about purchasing a home was because we hadn't been asking the right question.  Or maybe it would be more appropriate to say that the uncertainty we had been feeling was the correct answer to the questions we had been asking. 

It is rather amazing that while it didn't make logical sense (after all housing costs would continue to increase while our financial resources decreased), Kristie and I never worried or spoke about trying to purchase a home for another six years; until it became apparent that her parents required assistance to deal with her father's Alzheimer's.  It is a credit to Kristie that she felt so responsible to help her parents in their time of need.  Our decision to jointly purchase a home to better assist them would change our family forever, and be harder than I ever imagined - but that is another story. 

Infusions of Faith

As a part of Alzheimer's research, I have spent many hours at the Oregon Health Science University Infusion Center observing my wife and many other research participants and cancer patients receiving assorted infusions in an attempt to eliminate various maladies and improve their health.  I think I have some concept of the infusion process from a medical perspective, but this anecdote is about the spiritual transfusions which my mother gave to me.

The prelude to this story is embarrassing because it shows how clueless I was at age 22.  It begins while I was at home from BYU during Thanksgiving vacation in 1969.  I was dating a remarkable young woman from Ontario, Oregon and Bert Reynolds (my good friend from Parma, Idaho, and not the famous actor) was dating her friend.  We decided to drive up to Dry Soda Lookout on the Malheur National Forest where I had worked the summer before to get Christmas trees.

Dry Soda Lookout

 All went well driving to the lookout and getting a couple of trees that we put in the trunk, but as we were driving down the gravel road below the lookout I drove over a boulder that seemed to tear out the bottom of the car.  When we checked,  we found gas leaking from a hole in the gas tank that was about a half inch in diameter.  Bert asked if I had any rags.  We found one in the trunk and he stuffed it in the hole.  This slowed the leak down, but the gas starting dripping again.  Bert then preformed a miracle, or at least it was to me considering we were about 20 miles from the nearest town on a Forest Service gravel road.  He asked if I had a bar of soap in the car; and amazingly - I did.  He ran down to the stream by the road two or three times and kept rubbing the soap over the rag to create a seal.  With the problem at least temporarily fixed (thanks to Bert's ingenuity), we drove on home and delivered the Christmas trees.

Here is the embarrassing part (not to mention proof that it is a miracle young men just 18 or 19 are sent throughout the world to preach the gospel without more mishaps or complete chaos), I drove the 440 miles back to BYU and around Provo for three weeks in slushy weather and returned to Parma with Bert's soap seal.  But that is not the story.  The real story was about my mother, that she was waiting for me to arrive, and what she did that night - just as she had done so many times before, and would afterwards.  

I pulled into Parma about 10:30 p.m. with a couple of students from Ontario.  Dad had gone to bed and mom said she would ride over with me.  As we were coming back from Ontario, mother began telling story after story about how things will work out when we are obedient or faithful.  It was like she could not help herself, and she had to convey how different things look when you view them through the lens of faith - it is almost like having night vision goggles in a darkening world.  As I was going to bed that night I reflected back on that experience and it seemed to me that mother was giving me a transfusion of faith and it could not have been more real than if we had been on two hospital gurneys and she had taken a needle and put it in her vein that was attached to a tube with a needle which she put in my vein.  As she had done so often in my life, Lucile Goates infused me with faith.  

When we arrived home from Ontario, mother did say that she smelled gas, but then quickly attributed this to the fact that father had recently put gas in their car.  The next morning it was evident that after driving more than a thousand miles Bert's soap seal had finally failed, and it would take a week to repair the hole in the gas tank; but I was home and my faith restored.

I realize that I have a proclivity for putting a positive spin on challenges, plus my patriarchal blessing  mentions having the gift of faith; but there is no question where all this originates.  I really don't know where my mother's faith ends and mine begins because of all the spiritual transfusions she gave me.

Go Back the Way You Came (as written by Lorin Goates)

By February (1936), realizing we needed more income for our two families, and knowing Warren could take care of the chickens alone, I decided to go to Los Angeles to seek employment. Orvin and Mette (Mette is Lucile's sister) told us I could stay with them while I looked for work. A Mr. Mert Norton, a friend of Lucile's parents, told them I could go with him in his truck to Los Angeles. He operated a small fleet of trucks. All went well until we got to Mesquite, Nevada. His truck broke down so I took the bus the rest of the way, leaving me with not too much money.  For the next ten days I walked the streets along with fifty to seventy-five other men, applying for work at the industrial plants in the Vernon district (more familiar now as the Watts area) of Los Angeles.  There were a few openings in the automotive industry, but only to those with special training. After a week of this I became a little discouraged and almost dreaded returning in the evenings to Orvin's and Mette's home--because Mette seemed to feel worse than I that I hadn't found employment.

One morning, after ten days seeking work and not finding any, I stopped by the roadside and took  inventory of my past life. I remember when just a young boy earning one hundred and twenty dollars one summer and how proud I was when I went down to the tithing office and paid twelve dollars. At that time there was one tithing office for all of Lehi. With this terrible depression I had stopped paying my tithing. I knew this was wrong and I wasn't happy with myself. I decided to go to the right source for help. I stood there with bowed head and pled with the Lord if He would help me find work I would from this time on pay a full tithe. After praying I was impressed to turn around and retrace my steps and to my delight the first place I asked for work I was employed. I worked one month for John Manville Company, then getting employment with the Bethlehem Steel Company at a higher rate, $0.67-1/2 per hour. I was grateful after telling Lucile my commitment to the Lord about tithing that she not only agreed with me, but encouraged me to see that we did it.

Asbestos snow in the Wizard of Oz

Fake asbestos snow

Additional notes from Wayne - For those not aware, the John Manville factory where father was employed manufactured fireproof asbestos products - like the asbestos snow that was used in the above Wizard of Oz movie.  Father said that even though it was the middle of summer in Los Angeles, when he would walk out of the plant it looked like it was snowing.  At that time they didn't know about the curse of asbestosis and Mesothelioma.

It is instructive to realize that what was viewed as a wonderful blessing was not without consequences which would affect and compromise Lorin's health, but just as Romans 8:28 suggests, even the adverse effects of asbestos would result in Lorin and Lucile recounting the following faith promoting story.

Following Wayne and Kristie's marriage in June 1973, Lorin and Lucile submitted their papers to serve a full-time church mission. It turned out that Lorin's twin brother and his wife Georgida had also submitted papers for a mission and received their call to the Hawaiian Islands where Lorin and Warren had served 50 year before.  When their mission call came to serve in Arizona, father was a bit flummoxed.  It was not like him to complain, particularly regarding church calls, but he really wondered why Warren got the privilege to return and serve in heavenly Hawaii while he was being sent to arid Arizona.  As it turned out, Lorin's TB test result for his mission physical was positive, but not from tuberculosis - rather from asbestosis which he had contracted while working at John Manville and around so many asbestos related projects during his 40 years working in sugar beet factories.  Regardless of any disappointment in not being called to lovely Hawaii, Lorin and Lucille reported for their mission and served faithfully in Arizona. 

Serving in Arizona, however, turned out to be an incredible blessing.  The dry climate and excellent medical care for those with respiratory problems who retire in Arizona was just what the doctor ordered for Lorin.  He came home from his mission feeling better and healthier than he had been in years.  Not only that, but Lorin and Lucile were instrumental in seeing 60 people change their lives and join the church; while Warren and Georgida spent most of their time serving in a visitor's center and had less opportunity to actually teach and see individuals accept the gospel.  It was just another manifestation of Ether 12:6 from their point of view.

Mercur and the Word of Wisdom (as written by Lorin Goates in 1973)

 Mercur in 1903 with the Mercur Mine in the backgroung

(This occurred in 1907, less than a year after Joseph Goates, husband to Clara and father to Lorin, had passed away with typhoid.)  After we had lived in Lehi but a short time Aunt Blanche and Aunt Mable, younger sisters of my father, wanted to go out to the mining town of Mercur to visit with friends and relative and go to a dance while there. In talking to Aunt Blanche not too many years ago when she was in a rest home in Salt Lake City, shortly before she passed away, she told us she felt it would be good for Mother to go with them. I learned she invited Mother and took care of all the expenses, so Mother and we four children went along. My memory doesn't seem to be as sharp as my twin’s. Warren remembers much of the trip, I very little. I realize now why, I was severely injured and in the hospital. We went by train as far as we could go. Then it was necessary to go the rest of the way in a horse-drawn carriage. It was quite a distance uphill to the town of Mercur.  As we were riding along some felt the driver was making the horses travel too fast for the condition of the winding road. He could even have been drinking. Nevertheless, he did lose control and we all rolled down a dugway landing in a heap. I must have landed at the bottom of the pile. I was crushed severely and had two bad head gashes. We who were seriously hurt were taken to the hospital. Three doctors said I could not live. Mother, with all she had been through must have been frantic. Someone thinking it would help to quiet her nerves offered her a cup of tea. She got the cup to her lips. At that moment she heard a voice say to her, "If you will not drink this tea your son shall live." She immediately refused to drink it. 

I was a long time getting over this accident, but my life was spared.  I remember so vividly when I was well enough to be outside playing with a sturdy iron toy, a team of horses and a wagon. Later I learned this toy was given to me by Uncle Will and Aunt Rachel Wing. They had given this toy to their son Eldon. He had died. How kind of them to let me have it. Later when Mother told me about hearing this voice it made a lasting impression on me. Oh, how thankful I am that Mother was obedient in keeping the Word of Wisdom. All my life I've tried to keep the Lord's law of health. Today, enjoying good health, I am living proof the Lord keeps His promises. (I will soon be seventy and have lived my life with my heart more in the center of my body because of that accident.)

The Stories We Tell

You can discern a great deal about families and individuals from the stories they tell.  It seems that the perceptions or interpretations we put on the events which occur in our lives really have more influence in determining who we are and will be than the actual events themselves.  Case in point - consider Laman's and Lemuel's versions or accounts of events as opposed to Nephi's in the very beginning of the Book of Mormon.  Together they left Jerusalem, went to get the brass plates, walked across the Rub' al Khali in the Arabian Peninsula, and constructed the ship that eventually brought them to America; but the narratives they told regarding these shared experiences were remarkably dissimilar.  Their stories or personal narratives were the primary influence upon their descendents; shaping how their posterity would perceive life and, in turn, the stories they would tell.

This posting is about the stories told by Lorin and Lucile Goates, and their family.  It is part of the legacy - the birthright that they bequeath to their descendants.  Two of the most repeated and influential stories from Lorin were regarding the Word of Wisdom and the principle of tithing.