Lori and I decided to head back to Missouri to look for jobs and find a university we would like to attend. Katie was now almost four years old and her sister Kelly almost two. Lori was also pregnant with our third. We went to Columbia, Missouri for a few months but didn’t really feel at home there.
We went and looked at the University of Kansas (KU) in Lawrence, Kansas and decided we would rather live there. I took Lori and the kids to stay at her parents’ house and she had our new baby boy while there. After Danny was born, I took off for Lawrence to look for work and a place to live. I lived at the local lake park till I got a job working as the head baker in the Student Union at KU. A dream job for me.
I rented a room in a large boarding house, close to the University, for a couple of months and started house hunting. While looking over the classified ads in the local newspaper, an ad popped out to me that described a ten-acre piece of land with an eight-acre lake on it. The ad had a “light on it”
The owner wanted ten percent down and offered the balance on a twenty-year note for a total price of $15,000. I went out to look at it and felt that I should purchase the property right away but decided to think it over for a few days. I just didn’t know if I wanted to go back into real estate investment so soon.
My first paycheck from baking would be enough to make the down payment but it would have delayed me being able to get Lori and the kids to Lawrence for another month. I decided to think about it over the weekend and call on Monday to make the purchase, even though I just knew I should go purchase it right away.
Instead of calling on Monday I decided to wait another day. I called the next morning, and the owner informed me that the property had sold the previous day. He was disappointed, stating that he really thought I was going to be the one to buy it.
A couple of months later I went by the property and saw where they had drained the lake, were getting ready to backfill it to offer lots for sale. Years later, I went by the property and the owner had just sold the last lot for $45,000 and the last house of the subdivision was being built. I drove up to the house and talked to the construction worker who told me the story of the property and its developments.
Obviously, I had missed acting when inspired to do so and had missed God’s provision.
Our first experiences with the Lawrence Assemblies of God church did not go well, so we ended up attending an independent church called “The Mustard Seed.” This was my first experience of regularly attending a different church other than the Assemblies of God and we very much enjoyed our time there.
Lawrence was a beautiful town which had been founded by anti-slavery migrants from the East coast. Fond of their roots, they named key streets after the original thirteen colonies.
Being an anti-slave-state city, Lawrence fell victim to one of Quantrill’s most horrendous raids; burning most of the town to the ground and killing over one hundred of its citizens in cold blood.
The city was rebuilt and became the home of the University of Kansas, Go Jay Hawks! It was like the whole town had grown around the University.
We lived in a small two-bedroom apartment for a year on the Northern edge of the University before we bought a small ten-foot-wide mobile home. It was small but we paid cash for it. It was one of the most peaceful times of my life.
My job at the Student Union Bakery came to an end when I walked out. I had been working seventy to eighty hours per week on a salary with a forty-five-hour week guarantee. They had gone back on their word as I had asked over and over again for additional help, which I had been promised, to no avail, and I finally just hit the wall, quitting a job I had truly loved.
Duncan Donuts offered me a baking job and I worked there for a year until I just got bored and tired of working nights. Looking through the help-wanted ads of the newspaper, interested in finding something new with daytime hours, I came across an ad for a car salesperson.
I applied at Smith Motors and was hired. He had a fenced in car lot with entrance gates he had bought off the movie set, “The Day After”.
There were over three hundred cars of which less than half of them would even start. I spent a lot of time going from car to car airing up tires, charging batteries, and getting them running. Many I had to get their VIN numbers, submit them to the office manager who then went through all the files in search of their titles.
One day I was nearing the back row of cars when I came across an older car that looked just like the car that I had backed into when I had dislodged the gear shift when I was in foster care as a little boy. It had the exact dent by the headlight. I had no way of knowing for sure, but I believed this was in fact the car.
It wasn’t long before I realized this job wasn’t for me. I worked there thirty-five days and sold twenty-two cars but some of the business dealings of the owner were just too shady for me.
Lori decided to go back to school, and I took a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken doing delivery. This was unique as no one else besides pizza places were doing home delivery. It was an experimental plan KFC had come up with to test the viability of doing home delivery. There were only five KFC locations in the U.S. that were part of the program.
I would pick up the food order from KFC with the address of the delivery. At first, I just didn’t know the town that well and had to rely on a map and intuition to find my way.
Many times, I would just pray for guidance and the Holy Spirit would indeed guide me to the home. Even to the point that I would turn into a neighborhood, not even look at the address, and just go to the house with a “light on it”. Sure enough, time after time, I would be led to the right location, only knowing I was there upon arrival and double checking my order receipt against the address.
I did this for months till I got to know the town, but every now and then, I would still just ask the Lord to guide me.
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