Chapter 41

     The fall semester I enrolled in college at Montana State University.  I had found an apartment close to the University and began to take classes.  It wasn’t long before I was conflicted again within the classes I was taking, and my growing understanding of the values of the Christian faith.

     Maranatha was great though.  Dick and Rod were good at helping us all walk through the various issues.  In the Springfield Chi Alpha, we had excellent teachings on doctrine by Mike.  However, in Maranatha, the focus was more on issues of the heart.  This helped me to work through the issues from my youth.  It was exactly what I needed at the time.

     Come September though, Lori and I got quite a surprise.  She was two months pregnant, and her family talked her into moving home to Iowa to have the baby there.  I was going to school and had a job I didn’t want to give up.  But one day, Lori and I were talking, and we decided to get married, and decided to get married as soon as possible.

     On Valentine’s Day 1983, we got married at a wonderful wedding hosted by Lori’s family in Osage, Iowa.  I went back to Bozeman afterwards to try to figure out a place to live, and Lori stayed in Iowa till the baby was born. 

     We were offered a six-month house-sitting job in Bozeman that would have helped us save up.  I also found a mobile home to buy, move, and set up in Bozeman.  Lori had a small family inheritance, but her father would not approve of the purchase. 

     Considering all, we decided we wanted to live closer to our families and we set our eyes on moving to Springfield after the baby was born.  This being where my family was and only a few hours from Lori’s. 

     Our baby girl was born on April 29th.  Little Katie was amazingly beautiful and by her great-grandmother’s standards, looked a bit like Princess Grace. 

     I moved back to Springfield, to Shirley’s house, and took a job with the Git ‘n Go convenience store chain.  I went through training and was given a position as a night clerk at a store where they had just fired the manager and assistant manager for stealing.  The audit had shown $6,000 of merchandise was missing. 

     A week or so went by and they came in to do another audit.  They discovered that they had not counted the stock that was being stored above the coolers, about $6,000 worth.  They brought in vans, packed up the stock, and dispersed it out to the other stores to cover up their error.

     The whole thing left me in shock to see such a blatant deception.  I thought about calling the police, but it was quite evident that management would retaliate.  I ended up quitting and when I went to pick up my paycheck, the district manager stalled giving it to me finally doing so in a threatening manner.  Demanding me to tell him why I was quitting knowing very much what I had seen.  I finally got my check and just left.

     Lori and Katie came down and we stayed at Shirley’s house until we found a rental house.  It was close to the Southwest Missouri State University campus where I had gone to school, and where we were considering going as soon as we could. 

     A vending machine company posted a job position for a route driver.  I went in to apply and while waiting for an interview,  I had a vision.  I looked through a window into the back office-warehouse area and saw myself being thrown up against a wall.  It was shocking but I didn’t know what to think; I needed a job. 

     Cautiously, I took the job, a bit worried for sure.  However, I enjoyed the job.  The son of the owner trained me on my route which had been his route, and he instructed me that it was expected that I keep about $5.00 per hour in change from the vending machines

 as kind of an under-the-table income payment. There was no way I was going to do that. 

     One morning, I came into work and saw him taking merchandise out of my inventory cage area where I was accountable for my inventory stock. 

     A day or so later,  I was called in to see the owner who asked me why my inventory was so short.  I asked him if he had deducted the merchandise his son had removed from my cage area.  This totally shocked him.  

     Just a few minutes after that, his son called me out into the hall, grabbed me, and threw me up against the wall while drawing back his fist as if to hit me; all my co-workers were looking on.  He demanded to know why I had told his dad about what he had done. 

     I informed him that his dad had asked me why my inventory was so short, and I told him that it might have been because they forgot to count the merchandise he had removed from my caged area.  He withdrew his fist, but he fired me on the spot.  I still suffer today for the injury he caused to my upper back.

     The landlord of our rental house came to us one day and asked if we would like to buy the house.  She was asking for ten percent down and she would carry the note. 

     Lori’s dad agreed to allow her to use her inheritance funds for the down payment, but right as we were about to make the purchase, Shirley came to us asking if we would like to purchase Greg’s house instead.  He had just found another house and needed to make a quick sale to cash out to be able to make his new house purchase. 

     The house was a bit out in the country, on an acre, with enough room for a nice-sized garden.  Shirley purchased the house with her funds, agreeing to let us purchase it from her on payments stating she would make more on interest she charged us than she would get at the bank. 

     We moved in and after about a month with no paperwork forthcoming, we began to worry if she intended to honor her agreement to us.  We inquired and she confirmed to us that she had decided she would only be renting the house to us and maybe in a couple of years she might sell it to us.  This popped our bubble for the house, as had she told us that to begin with, we would have purchased the rental house we had been living in.  This house did become the start of her rental house investments, which she did well with over the coming years.

     However, this really burned us out on Springfield.  We missed Bozeman, the mountains, and our friends there.  I bought a wooden utility trailer, rebuilt it, painted it red, and soon we were on our way back to Bozeman where we hoped to finish school and live forever.

     Even though I was glad Lori got a glimpse of my world in Springfield, it was such a relief to be heading back to Bozeman.  After all, the map vision I had when first coming to Bozeman was still on our minds, and we really wanted to be there when it happened.

     We had decided to stop by Lori’s parents’ house on our way back to Montana, as they lived in northern Iowa, not too far off our path. 

     The car we were driving was a Buick Oldsmobile 225.  It had been a one-owner car and was in excellent condition.  It pulled my little red wagon just fine.  Lori’s dad had bought it for us using some of Lori’s inheritance funds while we had been living in Springfield.  I had sold my Dodge Dart before we left Springfield so this was our only car.  Gary had still not sent us the title, but we were told we would be able to pick it up while we were coming through Iowa.

     Upon arriving, Gary took our little red wagon to his storage building down the road from their house, but in the process lost our spare tire.  He informed me so and I went off looking for it, found the tire, and brought it back to the house. 

     Turns out, Shirley had been so angered that we had rejected her house rental plan for us and were heading back to Bozeman, that she had called Gary to complain.  Gary had decided to try to block our return to Bozeman. 

     This was to be my first opportunity to see this side of Gary and how severe his control and mental issues were.  He informed us we could not have the car, and the trailer would stay locked away.  

     Keeping us at his house with no way out, he had effectively kidnapped us.  We were a bit freaked out at first but after a bit, we packed up what we could, and started walking to town to look for another way out of there.

     Gary saw our determination to leave, relented, and told us we could have the car with the title.  He also went and got the trailer. We hooked it up, put our stuff in the car, and took off again for Bozeman.  A very weird encounter indeed.

     Lori and I were so glad to be heading back to Bozeman.  When we arrived, a couple of our friends from the Maranatha group, Eric and Zudi, provided us with a place to land and let us stay while we looked for a place to live.  It didn’t take long before we found an apartment just a block away from the University.  We moved in and got settled. 

     Lori and I decided with Katie being so young,  I would go back to school first.  So, I registered for the fall semester, was offered a work study grant, and accepted a job in the cafeteria that I could work between classes.  I knew we would need more income, but it was a start.  We finally felt like we were home.