My First Bible

In May of 1972, I dropped out of school. I was seventeen years old. My father and I were not big talkers by nature. The fact that we were polar opposites on most issues didn’t help stimulate conversation. It would take another year to realize how much we loved one another. One conversation we did have concerned the prospects for my future. Dad saw three choices. I could live with him and go to college. I could get a job around town and share expenses with him or I could join the military. I’d had enough of school and there were no jobs with a future. I enlisted in the Air Force. It was a preemptive strike of sorts. Uncle Sam was rounding up young men for a little thing he still had going in Viet Nam. I didn’t mind serving, but hoped to have a little say about how and where.

In September my Dad saw me off at the Greyhound station in Sacramento. I was eighteen by then and on my way to see the world. Of course, I found out later it was the Navy that saw the world; by then it was too late. I was deposited in beautiful at the bus station downtown Oakland. At that moment, Viet Nam wasn’t looking too bad. I walked the few blocks to the hotel across from the induction center.

The next day I stood in line after line to get to rooms where I was poked, prodded and questioned. Somewhere in the process the crowd was separated into groups belonging to each branch. My group of soon-to-be airmen raised our right hands and swore the oath. The military types overseeing the process got real snippy after that. It must have been something we said. We were lined up and marched out of the building.  

There was a slight pause in the march at the door. There a man from the Gideons thrust a New Testament my hands. I don’t know that I ever held a Bible before that day. I certainly had not read one. Suddenly, I owned one. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I mean, I knew I could read it. The problem was; I wasn’t sure there was a God. I was too afraid to throw it away. There may not be a God, but if there was, this was no time to make Him mad by throwing His word in the trash. I figured our escort might not take kindly to it either. I put the Bible in my pocket and hit the trail for San Antonio. 

Somewhere along the way we got sidetracked. The man in the Smokey bear hat who greeted the bus told us we’d just arrived in hell. It was after dark so it was hard to tell, but the temperature felt right. I had the good fortune to arrive on Friday night, so the next two days didn’t count towards my sentence. On Sunday we all got together and marched to church. I’d been in church twice before and was sure I could fake my way through it. I did alright until they asked us to split up into denominations. By that time there weren’t any atheists in the group and the agnostics were keeping quiet.

My best friends back home went to the Nazarene Church went they couldn’t get out of it. I decided I must be a Nazarene. Wouldn’t you know it that wasn’t one of the choices? I got herded in with a bunch of Pentecostals. I had no idea what that meant, nor did I understand anything they were talking about. Being saved, testimony, Holy Ghost…huh? It took a couple of year for me to find out and to discover I wasn’t just stumbling around that day.

This is supposed to be a short story so let’s just say those Gideon fellows knew what they were doing. That little New Testament with its section that said: Where to turn when you’re feeling_____ was tailor made for basic training. I consulted it frequently. Sunday mornings we had the option to go to church or clean the barracks. I became a regular churchgoer.

I’d like to say I became a Christian; but I didn’t. I graduated from basic and shipped off to Illinois to become an aircraft mechanic. While engrossed in my studies, and the Airman’s Club, I forgot about that New Testament and church. Nevertheless, it stayed in my possession for years. One day I gave it away to another young airman. He’d had the audacity to throw his away, but eventually discovered he’d made a mistake. By then, I had a Bible big enough to choke a horse. Not long afterwards I “chanced” upon another Gideon with a New Testament to spare. There’s one of those Testaments in by work bag to this day.