June 1987
I was twenty-five years old, graduating from a small southern Californian institution of learning called Ambassador College; a jewel in the crown city of Pasadena in the heart of the Los
Angeles basin. It was the forty-year jubilee…a completion point for the fundamentalist institution…a step out of the wilderness. The humble beginning in 1947 of 4 students, with twice as many on faculty, made the success of the wealthy, self-proclaimed apostle named
Herbert W. Armstrong, a feat of Herculean will.
At the peak of the organization’s popularity in the middle of January 1986, the man who called himself the “one, true apostle of the end time” passed away with one last whirling gasp of breath like a tired tornado in his dead wife’s favourite chair. The numbers attending the congregational services of the worldwide organization numbered over 144,000 including 120,000 baptized members. In his wake Armstrong would leave anything but living waters and fertile fields of vibrant truths. The transition of leadership coupled with the loyal membership would shake the foundation of the fundamentalist sect members’ faith, doctrinal beliefs, and for many of the wavering souls, their very existence.
At the graduation ceremonies in June of 1987 we drank rich sangria in tall crystal glasses and danced to the college’s live orchestra. We were young, well indoctrinated to preach the truth of
1

the old and new covenants given and god-breathed by the entity that was the “One, Great God,”
2 according to Armstrong’s dogmatic doctrine and interpretation of the texts of ancient origin, and we went out into all the world to save it from its own wicked ways, and spread the good news of the wonderful World Tomorrow .
It was all a sham.
This is my memory starting at the age of six from my present mid-life vantage point of 43.
This strange journey captured the imagination and melted people into beings and destinies they may never have realized but for the influence of a short man who claimed providential revelations from an Almighty God.
Suicides, insanity, divorces and addictions became the end game fruits of Armstrong’s
Worldwide Church of God. The controlling leadership closed the stairway to heaven by building a wall of shame, a fence of legalism and a locked door to personal fulfillment, but as Armstrong loved to say, “In the end…we win.”
For those who won the battle against literal interpretations of the bible and those who are still mired in the confused musings of modern prophets…I hope this book will shed a little light about the importance of the democratic right to freedom of religion , make you laugh after a long time depression, or simply let you realize that the only law that exists in truth…is the natural law

that gives us the permission and freedoms to love one another and God; however, we define these concepts.
It would be nice to think that Armstrong was partially right… we all win in the end
…but I’m certain that too is a fantasy.
3
January 3, 1969
Roland, Manitoba, Canada
My father and a fellow labourer are working below ground, in a concrete grotto that will store water for a prairie farmer, on the steel that is the skeleton of any concrete creation in the centre of the Canadian prairies. The ceiling lights flicker and then go out leaving the workmen in complete darkness, but for the glow at the end of a single cigarette.
The lights are electric, but the work is being done during the dead of winter and the space is heated by propane gas. My father only notices after the lights suddenly blink out that the propane scent is stronger than it should be. Propane is leaking into the cistern.

My father tells his work mate to extinguish the cigarette dangling from his lips. It is a miracle
4 that they haven’t been blown to kingdom come, and the labourer hurriedly brushes out his lighted cigarette. The two are groping about the concrete tomb’s earthen floor seeking the extension cord in the dark, which was kicked loose, when my father thinks about the act of plugging two live electrical cords together and realizes a spark will occur, possibly igniting the cistern’s propane-soaked atmosphere.
“Got it!” The smoking labourer exclaims and he places the male end of the cord into the female receptor.
“Stop…Don’t…WAAAIIIIT!!” My father feels the last word being sucked out of his mouth and he watches the silhouette of his workmate turn into a burning human torch…air rushes about the enclosed cistern like a captured tornado and the orange wave swallows the two of them enveloping the pair in a sea of scathing flame.
The two run for the ladder leading up to the only exit from the water cavern that has turned into a fiery furnace with the simple spark of an electric cord and wandering propane gas…the smoking man reaches the ladder first, his clothes flickering with the remains of stubborn flames as the air is quickly eaten by the newborn dragon…he reaches the top.
My father rubs his eyebrows and rolls the remaining ashes between his pinched forefinger and thumb off on his burning sleeve…his pants are burned off…his right foot feels for the second

5 rung of the ladder, his left the third rung…he is near the top of the cavern and he can hear voices above telling him to hurry when suddenly the cavern explodes and he plummets back to the earthen floor of the water chamber.
The expanded gas has eaten all of the oxygen and now it must burst up, out or anywhere to find more to breathe…it must exhale.
The concrete ceiling moves skyward and my father looks up to see the ascending chunks of steel and hardened stonework rise…hesitate…and then return to earth.
He stumbles to stand two feet from the pit’s wall and the concrete and steel shards begin dropping all around him…small pieces rattle the patterned spider web of remaining rebar, and then a huge monolith crashes to the ground next to him. It stands rigid and stiff for an instant and then leans towards his trembling, seared body. His thighs feel the strength of steel pierce into muscle…his scrotum tightens and begins to burn, as a jagged piece of the biting steel scrapes past his genitals…the monolith comes to rest just as he is sure it is about to squeeze him into oblivion. He loses consciousness only to awaken a short time later hearing voices calling his name from above.
“Lawrence…Lawrence!” My father hears. “Are you alive, Lawrence?” The unknown voice asks.
“I’m here.” My father whispers realizing his vocal chords have been seared by the flames.

6
Two days later a picture of a wrapped body on a stretcher appears on the front page of the Altona
Echo …Local Man Survives Cistern Explosion…reads the headline. My father’s fiery trial has ended for this day, but another will soon follow. For now he must heal, his hair must grow back and his skin must return under threat of infection, a fire victim’s worst nemesis, from the searing scars that were instantly emblazoned upon him in the twinkling of a spark…the moments after ignition.
A quick history of Origins
David Lawrence Zacharias is my father’s name. He was born to Maria and Peter…a Mennonite housewife and preacher, who had been shunned by the Mennonite Praidige (Ministry) for consorting with fundamental circuit preachers and other unsavoury characters who threatened to undermine the staunch, simple rules of the Mennonite faith. My father was the sixteenth child in a family of nineteen siblings.
The travelling ministers that caused Peter’s demise from the work of a preacher were Russellites,
Jehovah Witnesses, and others from across the colourful rainbow of Christian thought. Peter’s centrist views were not condoned by the staunch, strict bishops that ruled over the Mennonite villagers of southern Manitoba during the central portion of the 20 th
century. The bishops demanded hellfire and brimstone to be thrown vocally from the pulpit. Peter wanted to speak of the generosity of the Lord as he read about it in the scriptures, through personal study and passionate dialogue gleaned from his wide spectrum of Christian thinkers.

My father was five years old when his parents were ostracized from the only faith he had known in 1947, and he never forgot the pain of holding his mother’s head in his lap as she wept realizing their family had been marked from the public circles of their Mennonite community.
7
Peter Zacharias was never forgiven by the Mennonite ministry and even to the day of his death.
He was 95 and half crazed by demons that no one else could see in his last days, but he had fought the good fight and maintained his loyalty to beliefs in generosity, gentleness, kindness, music and love.
My grandfather was shunned from the puritanical sect for not preaching about hell, hellfire, guilt, eternal punishment, brimstone or damnation. In his own memoirs he writes of the realization that no loving God would place such a burden on the creatures of His loving handiwork— guilting people into attending church and giving offerings were not the way it was meant to be.
Peter Zacharias preached and played in harmonies that, for the most part, were only appreciated by his wife and the very few that desired his quick mind and thorough meditations on words that have been twisted and entwined in mystery throughout the centuries since their initial writing.
When Peter’s time of speaking from simple wooden podiums ended, he sang and played the instruments of his pleasure…an ancient organ piano, or a harpsichord, and four harmonicas attached to a shoulder harness that could spin like a Ferris wheel when the spirit of music grabbed his heart and played him as hard as he played his one-man band apparatus.

Peter died after walking miles every day for over eight decades in 1988…outliving a man he considered his contemporary—that man’s name was Herbert W. Armstrong. My father was raised believing that Armstrong may have been the one person who seemed to be trying to obey the bible as it was written.
8
Many in the church of Armstrong’s making were to learn that “the greatest deception is the one that is closest to the truth.” Armstrong’s way held strictly to a first century Jewish lifestyle and we followed the path till a clearing came at the very end when grace was found and freedom became possible after decades of deceit.
After the Fire
Spring 1969
As Neil Armstrong…no relation to Herbert W. Armstrong as far as I am aware…trained to walk on the moon, my father learned how to walk with burns and gauze covering his body in an intensive care unit far from the moon.
I still remember walking into the small infection ward looking at a man swathed in huge white strips of gauze and tape. I was six years old.

9
It had been a week since the fire and my younger brothers, Roger and Robert, were two and three years younger than me. We inched into the room hiding behind the billowing skirt of our mother looking at this man who, we were told, was our father.
“How’s it going, Butch?” A voice oozed out from behind the bandaged head like air pushed through pursed lips. I couldn’t recognize the voice as belonging to my father, but he used my familiar nickname. The white astronaut must be my father, I acknowledged, but dared not go near, both for reasons of causing infection and the remaining residual fear of this swathed patient.
“Is that you, Dad?” I asked.
“Yep, what do you think of all this?” He answered.
“Looks weird…” I muttered. I didn’t like the smell of disinfectant and polish in the small ward so the only memory of that visit that I still hold is of the white wolf man astronaut proclaiming himself to be my dad.
He laughed and my mother and he spoke about a few things. I don’t remember my brothers saying anything at this first reunion, but the friendly manner of the spaceman, accompanied by the loving smile on my mother’s face, put me at ease. This was my father and he had survived his dance with devil fire.

Some time later another memory returns to me about a familiar-looking bearded man walking
10 with a small cane into the home my father had only recently moved from a relative’s farm to a concrete foundation he had built in our small town of Morris, Manitoba.
The man, who looked like someone I should know, told us how he had to let his beard grow and it would help the regeneration of the skin on his face. I remember peering into the bright blue eyes that were as crystal clear as my father’s. He was a lot hairier on the face, but not as hairy on the top of his head, and with slow rebuilding of my memory it wasn’t long before I realized this was the man who had so faithfully worked to create a home for his three sons and fair-skinned wife, Victoria. The bearded, nearly bald, man was my dad.
I returned to school that fall entering second grade. The small schoolhouse in Morris was an ancient stuccoed square block with tall wood and glass windows surrounding its perimeter allowing the bright sun of the eternal prairie to flood the classrooms with natural light and views of the playground and unpaved streets of gravel and sand.
We would only remain in the small town for one more year as my father and mother began taking frequent trips to the city of Winnipeg. It was a short thirty-minute ride but my parents visited the capital of the province more and more, while allowing visitors to come to the house and talk about things that a village family would not normally discuss.
I recall hushed discussions and affirmations coming from our small living room while my brothers and I ate snacks quietly at the kitchen table. My brothers and I were left to our own

childish play after the snacks, as it was important business that Dad was involved in, and Mom
11 had to make some major decisions regarding her husband’s new way of life. She had to decide if she wanted any part of it, because quickly she surmised that this way of thinking was only for the committed—it would be—all or nothing.
Then one bright Saturday, we were all dressed up in our best Sunday clothes to take a ride to a suburb of Winnipeg called Fort Garry. The banquet hall and dinner club had a sign at the head of the driveway that read Silver Slipper , I noticed from the backseat of the Ford Galaxy 500, as we idled into the dirt parking lot of the large hall. I shivered as a cold blast of prairie air rushed from behind us as we walked through the entrance doors of the multi-purpose auditorium. The air warmed as we entered the main hall and the doors slammed shut. We stood staring at the few hundred people that occupied the room when an usher walked up to us and asked, “Have you found your seats?”
“We just got here.” My father replied. “It’s our first time.”
“Well, here we go.” The gentleman pointed to a row of prime seats, right on the aisle.
Suddenly, a bell tinkled and a man walked up to a sturdy oak podium and asked, “Please be seated, services are about to begin.”
Services? Services?
I thought about the definition of this word. I had no idea what services were.

12
Again the man behind the podium spoke, “All rise and take your hymnals. Please turn to page…”
I remember the shuffle of bodies rising from steel seats that creaked and squeaked as the crowd obeyed the man behind the podium. I didn’t quite understand the terminology of “all rise” but the demonstration from the crowd revealed it, and I stood, but lost sight of the man on stage for a moment. I peered looking to see what he would do next through arms, legs and woollen and polyester-covered bodies and buttocks.
My brother Rob stood up on a chair to get a good glimpse of the show being played out from the stage. Our mother quickly forced him back to the blindness of the leg forest on the floor level.
My parents were placed in two aisle seats of the long row, my brothers occupied the seats next to my mother, and I filled the fifth seat in from my father’s aisle perch. Mom gestured at my brothers to stand and pick up one of the books that had been placed upon every other folding aluminium chair even though they weren’t old enough to read. The book was thin and grey, bound with what appeared to be a thick sort of duct tape. It read on the cover, Hymnal of the
Radio Church of God
…written and lyrics by a Dwight Armstrong…I learned much later it was a brother of the founder, Herbert.
I turned to the mentioned page number and began to sing the foreign, but somehow familiar, tune. The man on the stage waved his arms with passion in a patterned beat that I would become familiar with as time marched along. He sang with vigour, even though his voice carried no hint

of pitch or harmony, even my young ear could realize he sang out of key. I mouthed the words
13 for the first two verses until the music felt comfortable in my head and began to sing through the third and fourth verses with quiet restraint.
I glanced around to find other children of varying ages sitting throughout the room. My brothers fidgeted nervously as my mother gestured and fiddled with them to stop. They were not of school age and couldn’t know or read the words from the grey book. My siblings continued to peer around and listen with little interest, seeking out sizes of people that matched their own. I tried to match my mother’s worried frenzy by pointing to the front. It was obvious to me that we were supposed to be paying attention to the man waving his arms at the front of the room. We failed miserably at maintaining a focus during this first service we attended at the Silver Slipper
Supper Club. We, as fidgeting children, were more slippery than we were silvery.
The arm waver directed us to two more songs and than introduced a man who appeared to be very nervous. He was shaking a little and I recall seeing beads of sweat on his forehead as he took to the stage and grabbed a hold of the podium like it was going to shock him violently. He looked out at us and said, “Bow your heads.”
He proceeded to talk about an almighty Creator God who was our Father leading us to the truth of the real laws of the Old Testament. He ended his prayer in a manner I had never heard.
“In Jesus Christ’s great and glorious name we pray…Amen.”

As former Mennonites we had always mouthed familiar prayers and ended with a flat…Ahhhmen…only spoken by the person performing the public prayer. I would soon learn
14 that every prayer must be asked through written command in the name of the saviour, Jesus
Christ, or it was not going to be heard by the Mangod Jesus. So was it written and so it would be done for our family as we entered the realm of the Worldwide Church of God.
The entire room of bowed heads and closed eyes echoed the man’s final word.
“Aii-men!” The echo reverberated around my ears as I jumped at their loud, hard “a” response.
The low acoustic tile on the ceiling didn’t seem to soak up the bass echo but rather reverberated solid reply off the polished floor…aii-men… aii-men… aii-men.
I stood there for a moment as people around me returned to their seats and I mirrored them finding myself standing alone for but a moment…I felt my face flush, with the unwanted attention that I was sure would be drawn to me and retreated to my seat.
The song leader, as I would come to learn the proper term for the arm waver in future weeks, introduced another nervous man dressed in a dark suit and tie. He would be bringing us a thing called a sermonette .
I had never heard of anything about these things in the Mennonite Sunday School that I had attended for the few years we lived in the town of Morris. I knew of stories surrounding men named Jonah, David, Samson, Noah and Joseph, but of sermonettes , I had no conceptual

15 understanding. I wondered why the other kids and I weren’t in the basement learning how Jesus loved us in Sunday school.
The man began to speak. I had no idea what the man spoke of but turning to look at my parents I noticed their chins were raised and their eyes focussed, only turning to us if we caused the tiniest fuss, while their ears twitched at every word they weren’t familiar with. I knew this because their heads would drop to the notepads on their laps when the speaker said something they should study about in the various names the speaker was saying. He finished speaking after what seemed a long time, and the song leader came back to the stage to wave his arms and lead us in another song of worship.
I thought it was all over.
Another man came up and gave a thing called “Announcements.” He took ten or fifteen minutes to talk about things and events that were again alien to me. He then asked the song leader to
“lead us in another song.” The arm waver must have been getting tired, I thought, but he continued on with his patterned motions and crackling voice.
I hoped for a prayer to come following the song, but I was once more impatient and incorrect, as the song leader introduced another man to give us the main message of the morning. It was a thing called a “sermon.” I was unfamiliar with this term also, but my intuition began to realize that if a thing called a sermonette was a speech that lasted for ten to twelve minutes, a sermon might go at least twice the duration.

16
I tried to listen as intently as my parents but watched as my brothers began to curl up on the floor of the row on a blanket that my mother had brought into the strange auditorium. I envied them but realized, there would be no room for me on the floor so I curled up on the seats my brothers had vacated to occupy the floor and the speaker’s tone melted into the distance of sleep. I only stirred when a loud note would be struck by the enthusiastic speaker and roused me from my slumber.
“Wake up, Randy.”
I heard my mother whisper into my ear as the choral music returned and people stood all around me. I remember thinking this is what it must be like to lie in your coffin and look up at the people surrounding your final resting plot.
I shot up from my prone position only to step on one of my brothers and awaken him in a fit of tears. I rubbed my eyes hoping no one heard the wails from my sibling below. My mother tried to hush the loud yelps coming from the startled toddler. I looked around with an empty feeling in my stomach. I looked finally to the clock and an hour and a half had passed since the sermon had begun.
I realized that if we ever visited this meeting again I would have to bring some paper and pencils, or a book, or something to keep myself occupied. We had been in this row of chairs for two and a half hours. I don’t think there was ever a time in our lives that my brothers and I had been still

this long in the midst of strangers. I looked around not knowing what to do, and my brother’s
17 tears turned into calmer whimpers.
After the final echoes had quietened and services were concluded my father grabbed my hand and moved to the front of the low auditorium. I looked around at my first sight of a wet bar, acoustic tile, smooth but cracked floor tiles, and then a well-dressed man with a thick moustache greeted my father.
“Hello…hello…so what did you think of our service?” The jovial man queried.
I stood in front of my strong patriarch. His hands were about my shoulders and I had to strain, looking up at the bushy hair on the excited man’s lip. My father introduced me to the man as though he’d known this stranger all his life.
Owen Murphy was his name. His dark moustache moved up into a twisted crescent when he smiled revealing perfectly straight white teeth.
“Hello, Randy. Hope you didn’t mind sitting so long?” Mr. Murphy asked me.
“I fell asleep about half way, I think.” I mumbled.
.
“That’s what most kids do…but you’re a little too big for that. You’ll have to learn how to take notes and follow the speaker’s message. That will keep you up.” Murphy confided to me, but I thought he was talking more to my father. He wasn’t.

Mr. Murphy, as I would come to learn I must call him, began a discussion with my father. I
18 reached up with my arms as I spun, and my father lifted and perched me on his thick left forearm, while he listened to Mr. Murphy’s instructions.
I heard something about the blessing of the children and the importance of keeping the older ones like me awake during services. The little ones could lie on the floor, but a blanket was definitely in order, as the floors in the room were quite cool…especially during the wintry months of the Canadian prairie.
“Have you been invited for fellowship today?” I heard Mr. Murphy say.
“Why yes, we’re going over to the Hofers’ for fellowship
.” My father replied like he was familiar with the term. I didn’t know what it meant to be a fellowshipper . All of these strange words kept floating into conversations that my father had, or from fellows behind the narrow oak podium. I realized that Mr. Murphy was serious about taking notes. It would be the only way I could learn this strange church speak . I looked around for my mother but she seemed to be busy dealing with my youngest brother Robert who seemed to always have his thighs squeezed together. I was sure he had to go potty.
“Rand…Rand…pay attention. Mr. Murphy has a question for you.” My father spun me to face the minister.

19
“What do you call the thing in the centre of a peach?” Mr. Murphy asked.
“A booboo .” I declared boldly.
The moustache on the minister’s face seemed to meet the lobes of his ears as his loud laugh burst from athletic lungs. I had never heard anyone laugh so hard—and he was laughing at me. I didn’t know how much I liked that, but turned to my father for backing.
“It is a booboo, Dad. That’s what we call it when we bite into the peach too hard and our teeth get caught on the hard middle…it’s a booboo…isn’t it?” My father looked at me but didn’t say anything.
“It’s a pit, Randy. The stone at the centre of the peach is called a peach pit.” Mr. Murphy took over the lesson as my father nodded his head.
“A booboo…that’s funny.” Mr. Murphy continued to laugh at my humble definition of the peach’s core.
I felt like crawling into a pit, as I understood a pit to be. I wanted to crawl into a small hole and have Mr. Murphy’s laugh directed at someone else’s faux pas . I had never felt the red roses of blood bloom on my cheeks as rapidly as when Mr. Murphy laughed at me. I knew then I must listen so that I could understand the strange terms that these people were using when speaking
English in the future.

20
The adults, and some of the children to my surprise, sipped on coffee and squares of Rice Krispie cakes after the meeting. The women of the church were instructed when it was their turn to bring snacks by one of the deaconesses of the church. The people fellowshipped after the long meeting, in the hall, but even longer when they were invited to members’ homes for dinner or lunch, as this was a fundamental doctrine according to the leadership of the church organization.
I found it strange to step back and absorb the meanings of the words these people placed on one of my native land’s languages, English. French was the other official language, but my parents spoke German…both High and Low. The Low German was called
Plaute Deutsche in the language of my kith and kin.
I was used to listening to people talk in strange tongues, as my parents spoke Plaute Deutsche when they didn’t want my brothers and me to hear the focus of their conversations in the car while we were travelling or at home over a meal, but these new definitions to words I thought I knew would take some time for me to learn.
As I watched the people fellowshipping that afternoon I realized that the meaning of the fellowshipping was visiting, or maybe talking, or chewing the fat. Each of these would have defined my understanding of what was going on when people fellowshipped.
I was wrong about that also as I learned that fellowshipping required some sort of biblical topic in order to be properly done.

We were introduced and invited to the home of a family named Hofer. They had five children
21 and had just recently left the colony . I heard Mr. Hofer tell my father this; while eavesdropping on their conversation. I found out later that the phrase, “left the colony,” meant that the Hofers had been Hutterites. My father had been raised in the Mennonite faith, but the difference between the two sects of puritanical Christianity wasn’t a point of argument now that each of our families had joined the one true church of God.
Unity was the most important theme of the church…and we ex-Hutterites and ex-Mennonites would somehow learn to get along. Tomorrow’s world would be brighter, easier, purer, and godly in all aspects.
I don’t remember the chitchat on the drive home that evening, but I was happy to have made some new friends. Willie was the same age as me and he had brothers that were the same age as my siblings. It seemed a positive start in this new church.
As we walked into the back door of our home, my parents seemed quite excited about their new adventure. I ran to my room, threw open the door, and shed the white shirt that itched the back of my neck and the undersides of my smooth, hairless armpits. I itched at my scalp as the dried sweat from the hot day made my short hair bristle like an angry porcupine.
“What d’ya think, Butch?” My father asked as he leaned in the doorway of my bedroom.
“It was okay…I made some new friends…I like Willie.” I replied. Willie Hofer was the second born son of the Hofer clan.

22
“Lots of kids, weren’t there?” He said.
“Yeah, lots of kids…but are we gonna go back there?” I asked hoping that perhaps this was just a one-time meeting and there would be Saturdays where I could just go out and play.
“Oh yeah, every Sabbath, we’re going to church…and soon there will be the
Day of Atonement , the Feast of Tabernacles, Pentecost
…all kinds of holy days.” My father said.
“Holy days…are those like holidays?” I asked.
“Kinda…we go to church in the morning and the afternoon on holy days.” My father explained.
“ALL DAY?” I shouted struggling to put on my pyjamas. My legs got caught in the bound up cotton knees. I began to wonder how my father could enjoy sitting so much just to listen to some guys talk about stuff from an old book.
“The
Feast of Tabernacles is a holiday.” My father sounded very excited about this discovery.
“It’s seven days long, with one
Last Great Day to celebrate the coming World Tomorrow , and we get to go to a specially appointed place.”
“Really?” I raised my eyes to meet his with this apparent good news.
“Yep, and we go to services in the morning, afternoon, and sometimes, in the evening.” His eyes lit up as though this kind of information could result in any kind of real pleasure for any sevenyear-old boy.
I kicked at my pyjamas’ leggings and finally got one foot through to the bottom cuff of the night wear my mother had made for all three of her sons. My chin met my chest and I wondered how long my father could stay excited about going to services .

23
I slept fitfully that night dreaming of a car crash that had occurred two years earlier in Fort
Garry. My father had been driving and a hardtop had crushed our older robin egg blue Chevy.
The hardtop had little damage while dad had to go buy the Ford 500 that we now travelled in. I hadn’t liked the dream, but it seemed to haunt me for years until a new nightmare had come along… services .
In my dream the hardtop would hide behind the long line of a windbreak. The windbreak was comprised of trees planted along the side of our yard keeping snow from piling high near our old house in Rosenort, a small village just north of the town of Morris. The hardtop would look to see if anyone was around from behind the covering windbreak and then it would smash into the sky blue Chevy parked in the dirt driveway with no end. I would watch as it rammed the blue and chrome sedan into a small block and quietly drive away after it was finished…with no remorse and no damage to the hardtop .
I remember asking my father, “Why doesn’t everyone drive a hardtop
? If they’re indestructible there would be no more accidents, right?”
“It doesn’t work that way, Butch.” My father said, “Sometimes a car is untouched and sometimes it’s totalled.”
I hadn’t understood him, so the dream had returned, and I was never able to avoid the car wreck in those nightly visits. The hardtop was unstoppable…I would come to learn of a car like it in a movie called Christine
…I never saw the movie, but I read the book.

24
I wondered if joining this church might be a vehicle leading to a spiritual car wreck.
***
The night after my first service , I also dreamed about making new friends, because even though the Hofer boys were a little different from the friends I was used to, they seemed to enjoy having fun and playing.
The Sunday morning after the service , my father woke us up early. He told us to put on shorts and get ready for a trip to Winnipeg. We put our socks and shoes on and ate corn flakes with banana slices. We all got into the car and drove to the perimeter highway that acts as a detour through the maze of roadways in the big city with muddy rivers.
The Assiniboine and Red rivers were the ancient river forks that became the natural site of the settlement of Fort Garry during the middle of the 19 th
century. The confluence of the two flooding rivers created murky waters and the aboriginals traded furs during the early white settlement of… kanata .
The oral tradition of Jacques Cartier, an early French explorer, picking up the Huron word for village… kanata
…and using it to refer to his first settlement near present-day Quebec City persists as true. When the English took over New France in the 18 th century they called Cartier’s

25 village and surrounding region Quebec…and the rest of the expansive land, Canada…an Anglo derivation of the early kanata .
We drove around the city from the south and arrived on its western edge. My father navigated the broad concrete roadways to a large green space with the grandest baseball diamond I had ever seen. In retrospect, I remember deep ruts on either side of home plate, but the marked foul lines were freshly chalked and Mr. Murphy seemed to be in control of matters as people stumbled to the backstop waiting to be picked to play a game of fast pitch softball.
My father had raised me watching him play fastball from the time I was born. My mother had sewn a matching uniform to my father’s Winkler Royals ensemble—white with navy stripe down the length of the leggings.
I was too young to play that first Sunday in Winnipeg so I watched from the sturdy steel grandstands as my father demonstrated his ability to pitch in the windmill style of the time. The technique had flowed northerly from the United States with barnstorming teams when my father was young during the late 1940s and early 50s, and he spent hour upon hour learning to deliver the large softball to specific locations he painted on the side of his father’s barn. Lawrence, my father, became a star pitcher for the southern Manitoba Mennonite region by the time he was sixteen. Here on this city baseball square he was 28. A veteran of the diamond.

Mr. Murphy’s jaw dropped as my father threw the ball faster than anyone the minister had ever
26 seen. My father became an instant favourite to the assistant leader of my father’s new church group in Winnipeg.
I became bored with the running in and out of either un-uniformed team and noticed two girls that were a little older than me playing on a rusty array of tiered pipe monkey bars. They were playing a game of tag between the two of them and I stood up to go watch.
The small marbles of pea rock crackled as I walked toward the huge apparatus. The girls didn’t notice until I had stood and watched them chase each other from top to bottom not allowing their feet to rumble on the marbled gravel.
“Wanna play?” One of the girls turned to me with a smile.
“Sure.”
“I’m Edna and this is my cousin, Lena.” The blond hair girl introduced herself and the brunette she was playing with.
“I’m Randy.” I answered feeling the blood rush to my cheeks.
“You’re it.” Edna shouted as she tapped my elbow with her right index finger.
The girls scurried to the very top of the strange new bars. I hadn’t climbed on a set of monkey bars this big before and I worked my way through the outside of the large red pipes hoping to touch a toe or errant wrist belonging to my two new playmates.

The girls maintained their distance until finally a white sneaker slipped and I tagged one of the
27 agile feet and moved down to the base of the metal play equipment.
We continued playing on the bars, moving to huge swinging tire swings that dangled at the end of black chains, a slender steel slide that seemed to stand two stories tall and made me nervous as
I climbed into the sunny blue sky, and a hand-driven whirly gig that could seat several spinning riders.
“Rand…Rand…Butch, come on…it’s time to go!” I heard my father yell from behind the metallic backstop of the ball diamond I had abandoned. I ran to him.
“Bye Edna…Bye Lena…I gotta go.”
“Bye! See ya later.” The two sang in unison.
“Did you make some new friends?” My father asked.
“Naaa…just played with some girls.” I answered.
I didn’t think anything would become of the introduction, but the two girls would later prove to be another branch of the Hutterite tree named Hofer. The family had left the colony en masse a year earlier and I discovered later that the monkey bars were as new to the two girls as they had been to me.

Later in life, the two girls would grow to marry other men, but Edna would remain a friend and
28 experience the difficulties of multi-cultural assimilation in a different way than I, but she would remain beautiful and agile for the duration. Her trial of faith would involve removing makeup from her life, because the Bible, according to Armstrong’s understanding, showed only examples of whores and wicked monarchs wearing the mask of a model. Edna was a model and try as she might; her photographers and clients would not have a model that could not wear makeup.
***
The summer played out and we attended Sabbath Services faithfully every Saturday. It didn’t seem so hard after a while, but on Sunday morning when we drove off to go play softball, watching the townspeople of Morris going to church made me feel like we were doing something daring.
Autumn eventually came and my father informed my brothers and I that we would have to try something different.
“Do you know what the
Day of Atonement is?” My father asked.
The three of us shook our heads as we sat on the itchy green couch that resembled a forest floor of synthetic fern and moss beneath the oaken brown panel walls of our humble living room.

29
“We’re going to go into the city and go to two services, one in the morning and one in the afternoon…but…we’re not going to eat or drink anything all day.” My father introduced me to the practice of the Jews called Yom Kippur, but I wouldn’t be aware of the Jewish origins of the
Day of Atonement for many years. I grabbed my stomach thinking what it must be like to go without food and water for an entire day. I didn’t know how much I was going to like the
Day of
Atonement’s
demands, but I promised my father I would try to not to eat or drink the whole day.
“Why would we do anything like that, Dad?” I asked.
“It’s commanded by God. He demanded it of His chosen Israel way back in ancient days of the
Old Testament.” My father explained and used words that I had never heard.
“What’s an
Israel
…what’s a chosen
…why?” I asked.
“You’ll learn…we just got these books called the bible story from the church and we’ll read them every night…you’ll see…God wants us to be ‘called out’ and we’re going to listen and learn all about Him and His people.” My father had received the plan from a man who claimed he was
God’s man, Herbert W. Armstrong
.
I had been reading the stories that the Mennonite Sunday school had perched on shelves in the basement of the town chapel. I knew about Jonah and the whale, Noah and the animals, even
King David and his monster fight with the giant Goliath. I believed all that stuff already, but I had never cracked into a bible and read it. I had a bookmarker that had John 3:16 printed on the front. That much of the bible I knew as the golden rule, but Armstrong’s doctrine had placed the scripture in the background.

“The rest of the world didn’t get what God was telling His people,” my father informed my
30 brothers and me.
That night my father began reading us some of the most exciting stories I had ever heard. I learned of the beginning of the universe according to the interpretation of Herbert W. Armstrong.
I learned what “null and void” meant and how God had created the earth for the angels originally but a nasty bright spirit named Lucifer had spoiled it for everyone by rising up to heaven and telling God that he wanted to be God the way that God was God. A simpleton’s rendition of
Paradise Lost
…Milton may have laughed.
I wondered about all of this.
If Lucifer became so vain about his looks and strengths why would he have to rise up to heaven to take over God’s spot, unless it is the natural way of children and fathers? Why didn’t Lucifer just put things together on earth in such a manner that he could rule over this earthen rock, unless God’s thumb was pressed too stiffly into the mighty archangel’s back?
I had lots of questions after my father opened the story of the bible, but he took the time to answer as many of them as he could.
If he couldn’t find an answer he told us he would find out from the ministers. We had a support system to find all the answers, and my brothers and I trusted that our loving father would do his best.

31
I learned years later that Lucifer was a Latin term and should never have been in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to begin with. Another lesson brought to my attention that the idea of a satanic entity didn’t even enter the Jewish Mysticism. The term
Lucifer meant morning star or light bringer and related to the morning rise and fall of the planet Venus.
The very same term is used to talk about Jesus as light bringer . The importance of any of this is questionable because it’s all speculation. The literal translation of the Bible gives no indication of a burning hell for evil human beings to be tortured forever in the afterlife. The concept of a devil only developed over the centuries from the intellectual studies of scholars and theologians who wish to scare people into church attendance. It is an effort to create fear and worry…two human traits that are condemned by all of the New Testament authors. My grandfather had fought and lost against these fiery, brimstone breathers, too.
Armstrong’s own brilliance was ever at the forefront of his dogma. The name Herbert also means bright warrior
. I think the comparison of Armstrong’s own attempt at rising to the heavens and becoming god are in evidence in his literature and the comparison of the bright warrior Herbert and the light bringer Lucifer shouldn’t be lost on anyone. Armstrong also wished to rise to spiritual planes of existence and become “God as God is God.” In these early days of my father’s loyalty to the church, we never heard this blasphemy…it was some years before this sort of rise in status for mere mortals would be proclaimed. We were only to become pillars and leaders in the wonderful kingdom of God, as his very elect …elitist, yes, but not as blasphemous as becoming one with the godhead.

32
It is blasphemous and should be made clear that much as Hitler said he’d fallen from heaven just as Lucifer was legendarily cast to earth, Armstrong’s brilliance was no less deceitful than any other maniacal tyrant. In my own opinion, it would seem that the Lucifer mentioned in the ancient text is likely not the devil that is discussed in the New Testament. Scholars actually show the correct Hebrew text to be using the term Hillel, an ancient leader king, where Lucifer has been placed likely in the early Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible.
It becomes a very tedious job to sift through the various translations and mistranslations, but as scholars continue to attempt more purity in the text of the ancient book…much can never be reclaimed. So much of the Hebraic language uses symbols in the written language that have two and three and four meanings all at once. When one translates the Hebrew text to English much of the rich alliteration and poetic duality and multiple meanings are lost…it can’t be helped…but, sadly in retrospect, it may be concluded that Armstrong knew little of this…or didn’t wish to talk about these matters with his loyal flock of sheep.
***
I started third grade in the small town of Morris with a very dark-haired teacher whose name I can’t recollect. She was not beautiful like Miss Friesen from first grade…that much I remember.

33
Miss Friesen’s golden locks and pastel skirts amplified by silken blouses and creamy fresh skin could not be compared to the broken Old maid with the dark hair.
I got caught kneeling in the aisle making my friends Jeff and Mitchell laugh one day just before recess by the older tarnished teacher during the second week of third grade.
“Randy! Stand up!” Old Mrs. Darkhair yelled.
I stood up sheepishly as the class twittered like the sparrows on the lone oak tree that stood just outside of the windowed wall of our classroom. We filed out for recess and played soccer without further incident. Old Mrs. Darkhair didn’t punish me for my impish act and I walked home the block and a half in the bright sun watching maple leaves, the colour of ichors and bloods, drift to the lazy green lawns of the tiny homes that stood like sentinels of white, beige and pastel green.
I reached the home where my father had returned to us from the laboratory he had suffered the healing of burn and stab wounds and grandpa Wiebe had planted a lone oak in the front drive near the driveway. I could easily jump over the stripling, and did, as I ran to the back door with a three-step wooden stairway. My mother kissed me at the door and we settled in for the evening.
Supper came as my father arrived home from a trip to Winnipeg. I could still make out the faint pink hues where his burns had been most severe and he announced he had come to a decision.

34
He would be selling this home we had only lived in for a year or two. We were moving to
Winnipeg.
I didn’t have to deal with Old Mrs. Darkhair…and I would be leaving my best friends…Jeff and
Mitchell…I never met them again. I remember one was French and the other was of English descent whose ancestors had settled in the Red River Valley with the benefit of Lord Selkirk’s earlier immigration efforts. I wonder how they’re doing and whether they ever made it into the
NHL. I didn’t, but there were reasons for that. I had other sheets of ice to glide on and melt away, but it has taken decades and the surface is still a slippery environ and likely always will be.
***
I remember my first day at Westgrove Elementary School. There was a feeling of energy and possibility, but fear of the new learning environment and new people was at the front of my mind. This coupled with the excitement my father had for his new religion may not be so bad, I thought, but the reality of leaving everything from the first seven years of my life behind did raise a dissonant clang in the back of my head.
I was a shy child, but with time I hoped to reach a calm comfort level that was so much a part of my early Mennonite boyhood.

I remember how subtle the indoctrination to the church my father’s journey had been. He had
35 seen a television program with a startling persona named Garner Ted Armstrong preaching about the coming destruction of this society’s governments and institutions. Garner Ted looked like
Clark Gable and my father was intrigued with this man of opinion and strength. He was
Herbert’s youngest son.
The first time I saw Garner Ted on the television there was one peculiarity that stood out for me.
He couldn’t say the word dinosaur without placing a strange emphasis on the last syllable. I couldn’t figure out if he was doing it on purpose or if his southern upbringing had taught him to say it that way.
“When God created the dino-sours…” He would say it every time. Dino…sour. Dino…sour
I had just become familiar with dinosaurs and my teachers and fellow pupils always pronounced the final syllable as… soar . I liked the idea of dinosaurs soaring. One of my favoured species was the flying Pterodactyls.
The sour note that Garner Ted hit began my first real misgiving about this new faith, but my father was adamant with all of us that we would move to Winnipeg and join the Worldwide
Church of God. My parents were baptized by immersing themselves completely in a large trough that looked like it had just come off the set of a John Wayne movie. I wasn’t there, but I took my father’s word for it…because the trough had come from an old rancher’s pasture…I would learn at my own baptism 15 years later…when I was dipped into the very same trough.

36
The first day of school, my mother dropped me off at the front of the grand entrance. The small expansion suburb of Westdale had just been added to the older region of Charleswood. We lived south of the Assiniboine River and clustered together with the other tract houses…it was a nice neighbourhood.
I stood in line, that sunny morning, and a young girl standing next to me told me a joke about an elderly woman naming her pets and house the first words that the elder heard during the course of her day. The woman named her house, Hairy Ass. She named her dog, Crack. She named her cat, Pussy . Of course, the cat and dog soon were lost and the dear lady had to go into the police station and tell the officer at the front desk.
“Officer, Officer have you seen my
Pussy or my Crack
…I can’t find them and I’ve looked all over my Hairy Ass
.”
It was the first dirty joke I ever heard. I had never laughed so hard in all of my life, unless it was under the pressure of tickling, so of course, the vulgarity in the humour was not lost on me and I would have to retell the joke. Everyone in third grade had already heard it so I would have to pass it on some other way.
I have always been interested in the perpetuity of humour. Does this joke linger in third grade forever…does it travel the world in third grade. Two years ago, my daughter sent me an email

37 from Minnesota. It was a perfect copy of the joke I had heard on my first day of school in third
Grade thirty years ago.
The joke lives in third grade thirty years later.
My day had only begun, however, as I filed through the strong brick pillars of Westgrove
Elementary I was directed to the office where I was told to sit in a warm plastic chair. I kept looking around at the clean painted block walls and the warm polished floors. This reminded me nothing of the small four-roomed schoolhouse in my old home of Morris.
“Miss Rowse…Miss Rowse…to the office please.” I heard the woman behind the tall counter say into a tiny microphone at her desk. I looked around to see where the overhead sound system was located. I learned the unique system was an intercom . A contraction of intercommunication, I was astounded at the modernity of my new school and looked forward to learning all that I could. I loved the thought of intercommunication.
A tall woman in black heels entered the room. I watched her as she moved to the front of the counter.
“Yes, dear…you called for me?” The black-heeled woman asked the secretary.
“This is Randy Zacharias…he’ll be joining your class.” The round desk clerk pointed in my direction.

“Hello, Randy…would you follow me?” Miss Rowse knelt as she greeted me.
“Hu-u-llo.” I mumbled.
I had seen puritan beauty in the form of Miss Friesen two years before, but I had never seen
38 anything like this woman kneeling before me now.
Miss Rowse returned skyward standing tall above me. I got to my feet and floated behind her as
I watched the reflection of her dark stems of high-heeled leather gently touch and click against the ceramic red tiles of the school’s hallways. The severe heel meandered gently up from the floor flowing against the current until subsiding beneath each round ball of her ankles. There began a pattern of crossed stockings that rose like petit-point vines to the short strip of black leather skirt. A thick black belt with round washers surrounded her slender waist and turned into a bouquet of silk flowers silhouetted by dark shimmering shadows and topped by a red palm frond that shaded the straight shoulders of my beautiful teacher. I suddenly understood what style was and I followed her to my future homeroom class.
Her stiletto heels clicked until we worked our way past a vast area I would come to learn was the library and study area. We turned a corner and she opened the door for me to walk into a smaller area but still open with shelves, books and posters teetering slanted in the manner of a French café house.
Children sat in the four corners of the room each being instructed by three other teachers. The tightly woven carpet beneath my feet felt warm even through my sneakers.

“Turn to the right, Randy.” Miss Rowse instructed me touching my shoulder. She cleared her
39 throat with a gentle purr.
“Boys and girls…boys and girls…this is Randy…he’s joining our class.” Miss Rowse pointed to a spot at an octagonal table that was made of four separate tables shaped like triangles with their tops cut off. The seats were carved out of stylized plastic and round tubes of metal that were smooth and ergonomic.
“Put your shoes in that cubby hole, Randy.” Miss Rowse directed me to a shelf with shoes and nametags labelling each nook with a student. I placed my black sneakers in an unlabelled cranny and instantly my feet were warmed by the sandy carpet in a similar fashion that my eyes had been filled with primary hues upon entering the classroom. I dragged my feet moving towards my place at a table…three others sat around the octagon and Miss Rowse began our lesson. A spark shocked me as I grabbed the back of my blue chair.
“Ouch.” I shouted.
“It’s static electricity, Randy…from dragging your feet through the carpet.” Miss Rowse indicated as the rest of the students chuckled. I would learn the prank of shocking people as they sat busy at their desks by dragging my feet and moving a light finger to graze an earlobe and make the studious innocent jump in shocked dispair.

40
Recess came upon us quickly and I caught my first glimpse of Green Eggs and Ham sitting on a bookshelf as I made my way to the outside world. I had never heard of such a thing, or of a man named Dr. Seuss .
The end of the day came quickly and Miss Rowse proved to be a strict, though tender, Aphrodite of education. I have little recollection of the rest of that school year, but I remembered the beauty of my first urban elementary teacher. She was marvellous…I came, in later years, to call my beautiful third grade teacher, Miss Arouse . She caught the mind and swayed the heart of a seven-year-old during the coolness of a prairie autumn, after the summer of love, in 1969.
All was right in my public education, but all would not be right with the funnelling of information from the Worldwide Church of God…at least not in my mind. Armstrong liked to use an old political cartoon he had seen during his youth. Each student in the frame had a funnel sticking out of his or her head and the teacher was pouring an ingredient with the word
“propaganda” labelling the flask being poured. “This is what the world does to our children!”
Armstrong ranted. I believe he was doing it to every member of his church…right before their eyes and into their hearts and minds.
One last recollection of that first day of school in the big city was my walk home. We had moved to a tiny bungalow on a minor thoroughfare in this growing development of Westdale.
Many of the homes were only two or three years old and even my new school had only recently been completed. Another school would be in the works before I entered fourth grade, and by fifth grade I would be attending it.

41
The city of Winnipeg was experiencing a population boom as never before as people swarmed to the city and mile blocks of the surrounding edges were being bought up and built upon by contractors of both grand and minimal means meeting the demands of the incoming rural populations.
The developing suburb of Westdale proved to be a microcosm of the multi-cultural experience that Winnipeg would become famous for as the years progressed.
My mother had dropped me off at school that morning with no instruction or description of how to make my way home. She had two other young boys to worry about who weren’t of school age so when the final bell rang and I reached the last door leading to the front façade of my new school I had no idea which way I was headed to find a little brown bungalow on Beaumont
Boulevard. I only had a feeling.
I stood looking at the sun and watching the flow of the majority of my classmates and decided that following the steady stream would at least get me going in the right direction. Walking around to the back of the school a walkway appeared between two homes and worked it’s way to the main street of the neighbourhood.
I recognized a street name and decided to follow it. Hammond Crescent rang in my brain as being the street a block away from Beaumont so I followed the few remaining children that seemed to know where they were going. The masses headed down a strip that would come to be

famous in my travels to and from school as The Green Strip , and would have been the correct
42 route had I followed the larger flock, but I felt sure that Hammond Crescent would bring me close to my new home.
I developed a tendency to drag my feet from practice on the school’s carpet and I wore out shoes quickly at the heels of my soles. I walked unsure of my trip down the long crescent street scuffing the bottom of my shoes, determined to stick to my decision when the street veered sharply to the right. I had no idea what a crescent was but felt that the route was taking me in the right direction.
I looked down the long portion of the bottom heavy crescent street and kept going. As I got to the end of the long underside side of the street and it turned sharply, a colour caught my eyes. A deep hue of magenta dazzled in the distance right at the ninety-degree crotch of what I would come to learn was a two-ended crescent drive.
I had seen the colour before from my backyard. It was the mysterious neighbour’s home behind our tall white fence. We’d heard growling sounds coming from the backside of the horizontal fence that a child could climb, but we hadn’t dared to make the ascent with such ferocious rumblings coming from beyond our white protector.
The street turned to the right again, but I was sure the glimpse of brown eaves beneath the grey asphalt shingles was my new home. I stood in front of the mysterious magenta home until the

43 courage to make a move rose into my heart and I ran the length of the strange drive past the tiny garage hoping to remain unseen by the unknown neighbour.
I lifted one foot then the other scrambling over the familiar fence hurling my right leg over the top first I stretched hoping my feet would touch on some ground when clunk…I let go and my feet landed on a hard concrete curb and I dropped into the dark soil of a garden. I rolled over onto my belly to see a stuccoed white bungalow with dark brown gutters, downspouts and a thick wooden door. I was home. I had navigated the full length of the Westdale development without any instruction or guidance only to find my way back home. My lungs filled my chest cavity and I smiled with the knowledge of my navigational gifts.
Since that time I have found that some have the ability to find the pathway out of almost any predicament with the use of an internal compass that guides to home. When I’ve failed it’s largely been due to a failure to plan the final goal. Many people in my past Christian era would have called it an act of faith .
Blanche DuBois would simply depend on the kindness of strangers . I like to think of it as something Toucan Sam would do… just follow your nose.
I ran into the backdoor of the house dusting off the loose black earth from my dungarees.
“I’m home, Mom…Mom…I’m HOME!” I informed the tiny house as I ran through the back door.

44
No one was around but an engine chuckled from the driveway and soon my mother walked into the living room from the front entry.
“Where were you?” My mother asked.
“Well, I wasn’t sure where you were…so I walked home.” I replied.
“You didn’t know the way home…how could you know?”
“I just knew…I guess…well, I just followed the kids hoping I knew.” I looked at her and turned to the living room to watch television.
My mother shook her head and grabbed the paper bags full of groceries she had brought in from the car. She didn’t speak of the incident to my father and likely has little recollection of that day, but I felt the surge of confidence that comes when a child finds his first solution to a difficult situation.
We continued attending services on the weekend and my father’s burned skin grew thicker and whiter as the months passed. I came to learn how the church worked for children and though I was older and couldn’t sleep on the floor during the lengthy meetings I came to realize the importance of entertaining the time with a pen and paper. I created drawings…wrote down numbers starting at 1 and moving to the 1000s depending how long the church meeting would continue. Anything mindless that could somehow allow the time to pass quickly.
Eventually, my father would demand a bible to be in my hand and notes recording the speeches on paper. I couldn’t understand most of the concepts that required in depth spiritual knowledge

of the various tribes of Israel, a comprehensive listing of patriarchs from an ancient scroll I had
45 never known…and most do not.
I started adding to my list of friends. The Dyck boys never intrigued me. We had spent a hot summer afternoon at their home and I could hardly wait to leave the small duplex they lived in on the south side of the city.
“Why are they so quiet?” I remember asking my father.
“That’s just how some people are, Rand.” My father answered.
Later, I would come to learn of a conversation my father had with Mr. Murphy about the Dyck siblings.
“Lawrence, I’d rather have a team of horses I had to rein in than a team I had to light a fire under every time I wanted to get something done.” Mr. Murphy told my father.
My father had related the story and I realized that my brothers and I were unctuous horses and
Mr. Murphy didn’t mind having a few stallions in his corral. I accepted this, but never spoke of it further. The mystery of the Winnipeg ministry was veiled for purposes of order and power and my parents would become a part of the inner circle of Mr. Glen White and his greying wife,
Donna. When I first met the native of Idaho her bright smile reminded one of an American beauty queen, though her hair was a sturdy grey, the wrinkled lines of her face glowed with the confidence of a fading beauty pageant contestant. Donna White was the first lady of the
Worldwide Church of God in Winnipeg. Of that there was no doubt.

46
Mr. White was Mr. Murphy’s superior in the growing circle of membership and ministry. They would be a part of the church’s local hierarchy for some time until Donna, his wife, who considered my mother a confidant was plagued by health issues. Glen and Donna never had children but they were my parents’ educators in the art of corporal punishment, spiritual guidance and etiquette.
As time marched ahead our weekly church services climaxed at home with weekly sessions of bare bottom whacks from a stiff oaken board. My brothers and I would slouch our shoulders as we sat between two twin beds. Our father sat on one bed informing us of what we had done during the service to deserve ten stiff swats and a lesson from the “board of education.”
“This will hurt me more than you…I hate doing this, but the father that spares the rod will spoil the child.” My father quoted often.
We were forced to hug him after accepting the ten or twenty swings of thick wood…depending on the penalty…stiff spanks across white, then pink, then red buttocks. I hated my father after each session and vowed I would never hit my children. I couldn’t understand why anyone would hit another human being. I never have. My father has regrets now, I know, and what is past should be forgiven, and it is. I’ve only on the most onerous of occasions ever swatted any of my children, but always over a pair of pants, and only one swift hand…no wood; no spoon, no belt.
Even the rare instances of adult frustration when I’ve swatted at one of my children I have been left feeling foolish for not being able to manage an overly enthusiastic child or my own anger.

***
As television stations became more and more accessible for the Worldwide Church of God the
47 importance of the membership to what would become known, as the broadcast became the number one priority in preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“Sit down, kids… the broadcast is on.” Mr. Hofer informed us one day when we were visiting.
It was the Sabbath
, and the television would be allowed on for one show…
The World Tomorrow
Broadcast.
We saddled up in nooks along faded couches and sheet-rocked walls trying to find some way to get a game of tic-tac-toe or hangman going while Garner Ted Armstrong gave his
30-minute tirade against the world and revealing future prophecy straight from the ancient text.
“This is The World Tomorrow with Garner Ted Armstrong revealing the happenings from the bible’s point view…Here now is Garner Ted Armstrong.” A voice I recognized from Walt
Disney productions boomed.
I discovered later in my early teens that this most recognizable of voices belonged to Art
Gilmore from early full-length movie features to projects produced as recently as 2001. His voice warmly rumbled like friendly thunder in a familiar southern drawl that captured attention immediately when introducing the good-looking Garner Ted. Gilmore’s voice is the eternal narrator captured for all time on reruns of Dragnet, The Red Skelton Show and Highway Patrol.

48
As I watch my first broadcast in 1970, I am drawn in by the familiarity of Gilmore’s voice from recognizing it from Disney documentaries, but Garner Ted’s voice is only interesting when he speaks of “dino-sours,” as I’ve mentioned
.
I lose interest and want to play with my friends during the course of the show…we are directed by Willie’s dad to pay attention so we remain silent for the half hour telecast. I rarely return to their home to watch the program and my own father is less insistent about the program and more insistent about the way of life. We adhere strictly to the maze of rules that seem like a puzzle that needs to be completed, but will take a lifetime to understand where all the pieces fit, in
Armstrong’s jigsaw.
Herbert W. Armstrong’s repeated diatribe, “the bible is like a puzzle…you have to take a piece here and a piece there…a jot and a tittle” makes perfect sense to the called out ones
. The bible’s own warning that an interpreter of the ancient writings shouldn’t take “a little here and a little there” goes unheeded for decades and by 1970 the patriarch has created a system of telecommunications, congregations, and formulaic structure to take 20-30 percent of those chosen by God to loyally vow their allegiance through prayer and offerings to support the “bright warrior” with a “strong arm.”
It is a maze of hoops, ladders with glass ceilings, and rules that are inhuman to live by. One can only fail in accomplishing Armstrong’s perfect plan. Praying and paying tithes become the sole means of income for the retired advertising man. Armstrong had spent most of his years as a

49 poor “idea man” in the advertising industry, by his own admission in his large two-volume autobiography.
His skills were honed by some of the pioneering giants of the 1920s in creating advertising campaigns that would draw in the masses. Armstrong realizes after one of his many failures that there is a method to duping a few people to send him ten percent of their income. The plan is a work of greedy genius. He has discovered a way to make incredible wealth and sustain his hope in uncovering a path to travel, notorious fame and fortune.
As 1970 moves ahead I learn more and more about the plan God has laid out for the special people God has chosen through Herbert W. Armstrong’s gospel. We are to survive through the end times by going to a place of safety called Petra.
Armstrong has discovered this place of safety is a rift in the country of Jordan that becomes famous in 1981 in the final climactic scene of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark . The culmination of end time events is all coming together for the prophetic preacher.
He establishes lines of communication during the early 70s with Hylie Selassie of Ethiopia, a man who claims he is a descendant of King Solomon, the wise king of the Old Testament.
Armstrong’s mission to uncover the whereabouts of the lost twelve tribes of Israel is blatantly flaunted and his own greed continues to grow. His son, Garner Ted, is discovered to be a womanizing hedonist who can’t stop himself from enjoying the immeasurable wealth that buys jet boats, Gulfstream airplanes, and precious items of inestimable value. His own father flings

50
Garner Ted out of the church in 1973 after rumours begin scandal with whispers of Garner Ted’s wandering desires.
Herbert Armstrong moves ahead without the charismatic son and creates ties with leaders around the globe preaching the way of his God. Everywhere he travels leaders seem to fall from power shortly after Armstrong’s visits. He becomes a talisman of doom for world leaders as Phillipine ruler Ferdinand Marcos is deposed after extensive visits from Armstrong. Other leaders are assassinated or flee their homelands after Armstrong’s crusades. Armstrong takes it to mean that he is bearing witness for God. The heads of countries that fall from power after his visits and don’t heed the warning Armstrong claims he has witnessed to them becomes a continuing theme in monthly newsletters to members and co-workers in Christ .
Give and Get are the two conflicting ways of life that Armstrong preaches about in his loud speeches. His own admission of humble beginnings and incomparable growth from 1947 to the present is proof of his Great Mission. The church has grown annually in increments of thirty percent…a number unparalleled in business. Armstrong’s grandeur and bold message increase as his church’s size doubles every three years.
This is Armstrong’s message. It is simplistic and practiced. Armstrong has learned how to get by giving his followers guilt and fear for the future. His way is the only way to save oneself from Armageddon . He is the great white hope…he is the last apostle…it takes him until the early 1980s to completely realize his own magnificence.

In 1970, I am making friends in the new church and in the new urbane public school. In third
51 grade I become familiar with intramural sports and realize the athletic ability my father’s genetic makeup has passed to me. My popularity grows in school as my familiarity with city life suits me more and more as time passes.
A young girl named Petra is in my class. I don’t become her friend but through simple association I consider the duality that Armstrong discusses existing in scriptural texts and imagine a feminine symbol for the place of safety . The rest of the class has other designs for
Petra, and turn her into a pariah. She is shunned and teased during each recess period. Perhaps it’s her German surname or her thick, dark hair and eyes, but the girl cannot avoid the persecution set upon her our classmates.
As the weeks continue I feel sorry for the small third-grader but I make no move to befriend her but to work on cooperative school projects that require partners in the classroom. I have a dream about Petra…it is pornographic…but I can do nothing as a young boy. The dream disturbs me as
I am picking up her excrement and disposing of it. I don’t understand the dream and it goes away after a month.
Petra leaves school as her parents are moving from Winnipeg to greener opportunities. I wonder if the place of safety is a pile of shit. Petra’s last name rhymes with shit, so I conclude…it’s the influence of my classmates. I forget about Petra, the little girl, and continue learning about the plan of God from the Worldwide Church of God.

52
The Day of Atonement comes and I watch as my younger brothers sit in the green sedan my father has just purchased. The car is a month old and smells new. Neither of my parents are smokers, and the pride my father has in his clean four-door sedan will soon be ended.
“Randy, do you want a banana?” My mother asks.
“No, I can make it.” I answer, but my stomach is growling. I don’t want to let my father down, and this show of bravery will only make him proud, I think.
The scent of the favourite fruit is excruciating, but I sit and watch as my brothers consume their fruit and have a small sandwich. They smile as they ingest their meal. They are proud of the half-day of fasting. It was enough for the four and five-year-old.
At my feet are two white buckets filled with fresh farm honey. The church not only has rules about worship, it also teaches of health laws, Armstrong’s seven laws of success and the mortality of the soul.
Free literature is readily offered and my parents, I learn, must read every pamphlet to come to the plain truth of the word of God. Armstrong’s magazine is now a worldwide offering called The
Plain Truth. I would come to learn it was anything but plain, and it has little to do with truth.

Armstrong strengthens his position of power by offering solutions to missing dimensions of
53 knowledge, sex and success with a serial of booklets starting with this trio of words at the beginning of each title— The Missing Dimension in
….
The honey buckets at my feet are huge. I place my left foot at the hump in the centre of the backseat’s floor and it sticks to the new carpet.
“What’s sticky?” I ask and my mother turns to look down from the front passenger side. She feels the floor with her right hand and she realizes that the captured honey has expanded through the top of the lid and dripped into the carpet of the backseat.
“Lawrence…the honey…it’s leaking.” My mother turns her face to look into my father’s eyes.
“Oh no, that’s not going to come out…my new car…well, so much for that.” My father gets out of the car and moves the honey to the trunk. He places newspaper under the two buckets and opens them so the expanding honey will cease to drip. The honey on the floor never does come out of the carpet. We place a floor mat over the sweet spot. No one speaks of catching more flies with honey than vinegar…ex-Mennonites don’t have that kind of sense of humour.
The sun is shining brilliantly on the parking lot and we must return for the afternoon service. A golf course neighbours the immense recreational building and I wish we could have the freedom to play on the vast green field. My belly rumbles as we walk into the auditorium that is the St.
James Civic Centre. I try to pay attention to the excited speaker as he jokes about reaching for a glass of water that is normally perched beneath the podium of the shelf. He looks down and

54 finds that the glass is there. Everyone assumes that one of the usher’s had made a simple blunder and the minister goes to take a sip…the entire room utters a simultaneous gasp.
“Just kidding.” The minister teases. “I put it there myself to show you a lesson in temptation.”
He goes on to talk about the “at one meant” we are to have with God. It is a simplistic interpretation of the atoning for sins that this specific day of holiness is suppose to represent. I learn many years later of the ridiculousness of taking an English word translated from the ancient
Hebrew text and teaching a spiritual lesson from it. It is the simple trick of any slick salesmen.
I look around the room at the sallow faces of the children. You can tell which ones haven’t eaten and which ones had a full meal at the break. I grow weary of the speaker and ask if I can lie on the floor. My mother sees the weakness in my eyes and allows me to curl up on the warm blanket on the floor of the aisle.
The drive home is long. We get to the house and I am excited to eat. I dash to the fridge.
“What are you doing?” My father asks from the front door.
“Getting some bread, Dad. I’m starving.” I answer.
“Hold on, hold on…you can’t eat yet.” My father informs me.
I have assumed that we can end our fast with the arrival home.

55
“We have to wait…if you can…the sun has to set before we can eat.” My father says.
“What? Dad, I’m starving…why do we have to wait?”
“Let’s pull out the bible…I’ll show you.” My father places the briefcase that is still in his hand and pulls out his King James Version of the bible. I notice pen marks on the margins of many pages. My father has been writing in the book. I’d never seen it done…why would anyone wreck a perfectly good book with pen and pencil, I think.
My father turns to a few passages. I can’t believe the blunder I have made in asking the question, “Why?” The seeds of hatred for the book and my father continue to sprout, and I’m almost glad the honey has spilled in my father’s new car—my stomach rumbles and I taste vinegar at the back of my tongue.
A vigil begins for me as I sit on the couch in the living room. My father has given me passages to read, but I perch myself in the seat nearest the picture window in the hardwood-floored living room. A stare down contest begins between the setting sun and me. I will in my mind for the orange ball to sink. It must go down, as I grow weary and hungrier. I think about the pain of starvation…I can’t imagine starving to death in Ethiopea…this day has been an eternity.
The sun’s bottom perimeter touches the horizon and I dash to the fridge once more.
“What are you doing, Randy?” My father yells from his bedroom. My parents are resting as they wait themselves for the setting of the sun.

56
“Eating…the sun has set.” I holler back, my throat is straining.
“NO…it hasn’t. Close the fridge. The sun sets at 7:27 this evening.” My father enters the kitchen.
“How do you know?” I ask. “The sun is down…it’s touching the ground.”
“Grab the paper.” My father instructs.
He unfolds the front page and there at the top of the page just below the banner of the Winnipeg
Free Press it reads: Sunrise 6:25 am Sunset 7:27 pm
My jaw drops.
“Is that why they put it there? To let us know when the sun goes down?” I ask.
“I don’t think so, but they put it in there and that’s when we are going to begin supper. The sun must be fully down before the Sabbath is over.” My father explains.
I slump my shoulders and realize that there will be no food until the sun has disappeared. I flop myself onto the scratchy fabric of our forest green Chesterfield . I casually watch as the sun and my heart’s hopes sink in a twisted inharmonious duet.
The lesson is not wasted on me. I learn the definition of sunset to sunset, and that even the free press is working against me.

57
The month of July, a few months previous to the Day of Atonement , my father took the family to a church outing westward to a huge park near a small town called Moosomin in the province of
Saskatchewan. The church has huge offerings of sporting contests and lawn games for all ages during these Sunday Sports Days.
People come from the province of Saskatchewan to fellowship with other called out ones from
Manitoba. We are not of this world and must come out from the ways of the world . This is the instruction that is handed down from the church’s leadership in Pasadena to the field ministry finally delivered to the worldwide membership.
The day is sunny with a light breeze. My father introduces me to a young minister named
Jonathan Buck. He has a strange accent and I learn he is from a distant land. As I recollect he was from Madagascar or South Africa, but his accent sounded more English than Afrikaner .
“Well, hullo, Randy!” He says reaching out his strong right hand waiting for me to shake it. I oblige and he shakes my arm vigorously. I see he is fit, though a tad pale, but his manner is friendly and easy going. He is the first minister I meet from a different continent than my own
Canadian roots.
Mr. Buck is a recent graduate of another branch of Ambassador College in Bricketwood,
England. He is in charge of the sporting and recreational activities for the day. I have never experienced the competitive games including sack races, a three-legged dash, and various other summer games. I have more fun playing with these strange activities than I ever did playing on

grandpa’s farm or watching a simple softball game. This bold experience of running against
58 others and winning prizes is exhilarating.
“You’re young son runs like a deer.” Mr. Buck informs my father.
My father pats me on the back and the encouraging remark is one of the first I will hear and becomes an impetus for my continued interest in sport. The conundrum of it all won’t become apparent to me until I become a teen. The church will not allow me to play sport on any of
God’s holy days including the weekly Sabbaths—a sports career will not be in my future.
After the Day of Atonement I have much to weigh in my mind, between the adrenaline rush of the sporting day in Moosomin compared to the pain of a 24-hour fast. I managed to eat too quickly after the sun finally went down and my evening meal is tossed to the bottom of our toilet bowl.
“In a couple of days we leave for the feast .” My father says one evening at the supper table.
“What’s the feast
?” I ask having heard mention of it during the course of the last few months.
“
The Feast of Tabernacles is the convention that was held by ancient Israel.” My father begins.
“We’re going to go to Penticton, British Columbia and meet more of God’s people. You guys will love it.”

I am a little wary of the event, but it is an opportunity to miss a couple of weeks of school and
59
Miss Rowse informs my parents that travel is far more important than a few days missed in class.
My father has managed to save $300 and we trek across the western half of Canada to attend “the largest convention on earth,” according to Armstrong’s calculations.
I had been to the most western province in Canada when I was a toddler but have little recollection, but of my father water-skiing in the city of Kelowna. The water surrounding the small city is cool and clear in the 90-mile long Lake Okanagan. The city boasts one of the only floating bridges in the world and is in the centre of western Canada’s fruit belt.
For most of the trip my brothers and I are busy trying to get comfortable in the backseat. I’m working on homework that Miss Rowse has given me to keep up with the rest of my class, but I don’t complete it until the final night of our trip.
My first glimpse of the mighty Rocky Mountains snow-capped and surging from the floor of the endless prairie to kiss the clouds and sky makes my brothers and I sit up. We drive into the thread of highway to see aquamarine streams flowing alongside of the roadway. The craggy faces of each peak results in a story from my father’s perch behind the steering wheel.
“Do you see how the mountains look like they were pushed up from underneath.” My father begins. “This is from the time of Noah when the earth was in great chaos.”
“Really, Dad?”

60
“Well, maybe we’re not completely sure.” My father answers, “It could also have been from the time that Lucifer was thrown down from heaven and his name was changed to Satan…it was his fall from grace.”
My brothers and I listen to the stories from the Old Testament as my father paraphrases
Armstrong’s revisionist tales. We continue to meander down the grey highway mimicking the streams alongside the Trans-Canada Highway until finally arriving in Penticton.
The small city is receiving the Worldwide Church of God for the first time in 1969.
As we pull into Penticton a huge sprawling tent appears in the same shade of canvas brown as a pair of Carhardt overalls. The ground seems to swell pregnant with the large church tent…I think about three ring circuses…and wonder what could be inside such a huge canvas structure.
We walk in to see people finishing setting up a huge stage and thousands of folding, interlocking steel chairs. There are no elephants or clowns inside the huge tent…only a sea of brown folding metal placed on the bare grass field. I have never seen anything so extravagant and huge. It is an impressive sight of organization. Beneath this huge canvas we will spend 5-6 hours per diem for the next eight days.
With the $300 my father has managed to save we arrived the afternoon of the evening service.
My father knew he would have to stretch the dollars and had discovered an inexpensive motel called the Sundial, a broken down complex I would visit twenty-five years later realizing the

significance of Vaseaux Lake. It becomes a preservation reserve. The Sundial rests looking
61 painfully tired in 2004 when I next visit the tiny lake in the historic Okanagan Valley. The sign is long gone, but the building sits lazily at the southern tip of the small conservation lake.
I learn that the days of the Feast of Tabernacles are revealed through the study of new moons ; what we would call a full moon. The large bright saucer moon would indicate the first Sabbath of what was called the feast of booths in the Old Testament. Over time and various scandals
Armstrong’s critics describe the eight-day spending spree of 10 percent of the memberships’ income as a difficult pill to swallow and call the festival “the feast of booze”.
Armstrong has decided that a true Christian must follow the ancient Jewish calendar based on a nineteen-year time cycle. Numerology plays a huge part in the prophetic flights of Armstrong’s journey. Important numbers like 3, 4, 7, 10, 12, 19, 40 and 144,000, not to mention 666 demand much attention including difficult studies of the web of structure that show God’s handiwork in the weave of all things.
The theory of Evolution is completely discarded while the majority of the world’s organized
Christians are labelled as deceived by that old serpent called the Devil.
My family and I peer at the full circle moon as we hold each other’s hands walking into the huge tent. We have never been a part of such a large gathering of people, and as children we are told to keep our eyes on our parents as they have been warned that every day someone’s child seems to go missing and an announcement has to be made for a child seeking his or her lost parent .

62
I never do lose myself…inner navigation skills keep me in sight of my parents. I do grab the wrong adult’s hand a time or two and turn red with embarrassment when it happens…usually my father is in spitting distance and I can forget about the awkward clutching of a stranger’s paw.
We learn that the Feast is a similar celebration to the world’s celebration of Christmas. The explanation of the historic evil of Christmas is reached by the pagan legend of tree worship and
Nebuchadnezzar’s legend. Quite simply explained, Armstrong condemned birthdays, Christmas,
Easter, Halloween, Valentine’s Day and all other pagan celebrations. Thanksgiving, Mother’s
Day and Father’s Day were the only ritual celebrations that weren’t severely avoided by
Worldwide Church of God members. The days of organized Christianity were considered pagan and have satanic origin with no good possibly emanating from them. They are organized religions’ greatest deception conceived of by the Devil, Lucifer, himself.
That first night of the feast , rain falls upon the huge tent and winds whip the electric lights that hang from poles and lines illuminating notebooks, bibles and pens that fly like the flagging lamps above as focussed participants record the words of celebrated speakers. I enjoy the show, but find the hard steel seats difficult to sit in for too long and try changing positions regularly in the straight seats. I sit back with legs outstretched until my back aches. Then I lean on knees at the front edge of my seat, and finally attempt to hit the blanket lying on the soft grass that is specifically for my younger brothers.

63
The meeting goes on for an hour and a half and the tent begins to leak as children cry and lights swing to and fro with the whim of each concussive breeze. The speaker raises and lowers the volume of his voice depending on the strength of each wayward gust.
At the end of the meeting my father wishes to speak to a few familiar faces, but then we pack our belongings together and trudge off into the dark to find our car. My father sticks a small square orange sticker on the front of the Ford Galaxie indicating we are conventioneers.
The Sundial proves to be cramped for three small boys and a young couple. The heaters don’t work and my parents are forced to heat the place with the oven open and my youngest brother as close to the yawning oven door as safety would allow. He is susceptible to colds and coughs, and eventually succumbs to a runny nose and fever making my mother’s time at the church services a steady stream of trips to the lady’s restroom to halt a coughing spell, or cool a rising fever.
The next morning my father notices a tiny rowboat belonging to the motel and bundles each of us up to go out and experience the lake. It is 6:30 in the morning and my tired mother remains in bed, forgoing the ferry ride upon the placid lake.
My brothers and I shiver on the calm lake, but my father is fascinated by the rocky terrain and mountain sculptures carved by wind and rain from centuries past. He is filled with energy and pulls on the oars rhythmically enjoying the exercise. He is breaking a rule about keeping the
Sabbath work free, but his excitement for adventure and his new faith exonerate the sweat

64 glistening on his brow as oars tickle the mirror surface and ripples race to the leaf-covered shorelines.
The morning service starts at ten and runs till noon. We have an hour and a half interlude between services to eat a meal. After the two or three hour service we go out and celebrate the shadow of the World Tomorrow to come. This is what the Feast of Tabernacles symbolizes. A one-week tour of the incredible kingdom of God that would return to earth after Christ’s own
Second Coming .
A time when the wolf shall dwell with a lamb…and a little child shall lead them
, a portion of
Isaiah 11: 6 prophesies. Even this scripture Armstrong had to manipulate for his church’s logo by replacing the wolf with a lion mentioned later in the verse. The wolf was not as empirical symbolically as a lion and so Armstrong’s logo still emblazoned on the doorknobs of his greatest monument, the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, California, reveals a small child leading a lion and a lamb. The talisman still reads today with a misquoting of Isaiah 11:6 and reads, “A lion shall dwell with the lamb and a little child shall lead them in the World Tomorrow.”
It is a bastardized scripture that was emblazoned on the minds, and funnelled into the members’ consciousnesses as the cartoon Armstrong liked to use to criticize academics of accredited colleges and institutions, that brings to my mind the warning in the last four verses of the book of
Revelations. “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book.
If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.”

65
Armstrong took great liberties in interpreting and adding to the scriptures of this book , and I fear for his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things, which are written in this book.
Armstrong’s paraphrasing of scripture may seem trivial, but the warning of dealing with prophecy with an amateur’s grace on purpose or through sincere error should not go unnoticed.
Even the second epistle of Peter warns that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. The very next chapter begins speaking of false prophets and damnable heresies, that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
It still bothers me as I write that this scripture was emblazoned in my mind when in reality…it never existed in the manner that Armstrong funnelled it into our minds by placing it on the entire organization’s seal.
The first day of this tabernacle celebration was a high holy day, so there could be no sporting activities between the morning and afternoon services. The second day allowed for baseball at noon, hockey in the mornings and evenings, and any number of pursuits that your heart desired and your pocket could afford. This was a celebration of the coming utopian world of the
Almighty Eternal Creator, as revealed to Herbert W. Armstrong.
During the course of this week Garner Ted Armstrong visits the site of Penticton. There are several different feast sites around the world, and Garner Ted is slotted to visit the new Canadian

66 festival site for a couple of days. Armstrong’s blitzkrieg on the Canadian landscape is as rapid as
Hitler’s run on Poland. His church grows at an alarming rate during the decade of the 70s.
Armstrong marches onward like a Christian soldier with no tanks and many thanks.
My father and I meet Garner Ted serendipitously at a family skating party. I learned to skate years before and my father is an avid hockey player even from his youth. The younger
Armstrong takes to the ice after we have rounded the rink several times. He has a strange pair of skates on his feet but the glide he establishes with every stride indicates that he has some sort of professional training. One member whispers to my father, “GTA tried for the Olympic skate team in the 1960 Olympics…he didn’t make the team.”
Armstrong’s steady glide and confident proficiency are not lost on my father.
I feel very special being given a chance to meet the television spokesman, but can’t work up much to say when my father introduces us after the lengthy skate. GTA speaks warmly with a grin from ear to ear and dimpled spears that point staunchly at his bright eyes. My father is once again impressed by the charisma of the televangelist.
I remember very little about that first feast, but for the last day. The Last Great Day is not the same festival happening as the first seven days. This final day is the climax of biblical festivals.
This one-day feast symbolizes the finale of human time…the last hurrah and God’s final judgment upon humanity.

67
This is the day that recognizes Christ’s return and stands as a memorial to the final reckoning of mankind… Armageddon’s completion
.
This was a celebration of the arrival of the kingdom of heaven when Christ would be given a new name and rule for 1000 years. After this millennium there would come “a new heaven and a new earth.” This talk scared the shit out of people…and brought them to the euphoric sublime of eternal peace. I often think about Hitler’s third Reich and the thousand years that his empire was supposed to rule the earth.
I never made it to the Last Great Day services in 1969.
Amidst all of the activity of the festival I had contracted chicken pox for the second time in my life. I was banished from the tent and would spend the day sitting inside the family Ford. I can’t imagine anyone leaving a seven-year-old in a vast parking lot amidst hundreds of cars in a strange city these days, but my parents had little choice. They knew I was an obedient child and warned me not to talk to strangers…get lots of sleep…and be comforted that they would be checking on me every hour.
And so I sat in the backseat and played, then the front seat fidgeting with the dashboard controls and items in the glove box, and then I got thirsty.

68
My parents were in their late twenties and alcohol had not been a part of daily or weekend life.
Mennonites don’t drink and only the most lecherous among them would bow to take a swig during the winter holiday season…or so my parents had informed me.
However, when my parents joined the WCG, they learned how wine and strong drink were not banished by God. The very idea of prohibition was not a scriptural truth. My parents learned through their friends that social drinking was fun and beneficial. Even the apostle Paul had admonished Timothy, his disciple, to “drink a little wine for his stomach’s sake.”
As the afternoon wore on during that Last Great Day , I became thirstier and thirstier. My parents had fed me and visited during the noon break, but by mid afternoon I could no longer bear the growing dustbowl working its way into my throat. I couldn’t swallow and the fever from the chicken pox was causing me to sweat and my body to dehydrate.
My parents had a cooler in the trunk and had given me the keys so that I could listen to the radio during the afternoon. My father realized I couldn’t kill the battery in a period of 2 or 3 hours but had warned me not to start the ignition.
I snuck out of the front driver’s side and worked my way to the trunk, with my head down. I worked the large key into the trunk’s silver ring and turned to find the cooler. I was sure my mother had some root beer or Seven Up on ice, as our dollars were few and we were living on peanut butter and jam sandwiches until our return to Winnipeg.

The large white lid on the blue Coleman cooler creaked open loudly. I looked around to see if
69 anyone had heard my noisy entrance to the oasis of the cooler. My throat itched and my tongue felt like a leaden weight.
There before me sat cans grouped in a rectangle of six. It was beer.
I searched beneath the Tupperware™ and loaves of bread, the fruits we had picked ourselves from the orchards and vineyards of the bountiful valley, but the only liquid in the dry cooler was a six-pack of Labatt’s Blue™.
I stood there looking at the cans, trying to remember where a water fountain might be, but knew I could not leave the sea of cars in the parking lot for fear of getting lost. I grabbed a can and moved swiftly to the backseat of the lime-green Galaxie 500.
I cracked the can with a loud pop and foam moved out from around the crescent moon of the pop-top opening. I inhaled the foam that looked like cotton candy, but tasted like sour potatoes.
I couldn’t stand the taste of the white, bubbling froth, but my need outweighed the importance of taste.
I swigged a sip and continued sipping until my thirst slowly ebbed and I was once again able to swallow. As I worked my way to the bottom of the can, I read some of my homework and slowly finished my first can of beer.

I sat there wondering if I dare try a little more as soon my throat began to itch once again. I knew that my parents would be returning soon, and that I shouldn’t be drinking beer, but what
70 could I do. I was thirsty and my instruction had been made very clear.
“Do NOT leave the car.”
I snuck back to the trunk with keys jingling and re-opened the latch of the packed rear luggage compartment. The stacking of suitcases and colouring books, hockey gear and cooler were efficient and completely swelled to the lid of the trunk. I placed my empty can of beer in the cooler and grabbed a second.
I tiptoed to the rear seat once again and the pop-top snickered with a tinny crackle. It hurt my index finger, but the desert sand had returned to my tongue and I sipped slowly again. My parents must return soon, so I drank until the top half of the can was gone. I returned the half full can to the cooler.
I lay in the back seat realizing that something was happening to my eyes, but there was little fear left in me as my father tapped on the window and my family urged me to unlock the doors.
I slowly reached to the latch located at the right bottom corner of the backseat’s window and pulled the locking pin skyward. I slumped back into a foetal curve and my family took their familiar places about the car preparing to leave Penticton and drive all night for our home in

Winnipeg. It would be a long night and a hard day’s drive, but my father had little money remaining and it was time for him to get back to work.
As we drove away from Penticton I saw the sunset blossom into pastels of magenta, lavender,
71 sunflower and marigold shadowed by dark navy blue and midnight black as the stars began to wink and blink above me. They seemed twice as bright and double the number as I lay back looking skyward realizing I was just a tad delirious…I assumed it was the beer’s effect taking hold of my chicken pox pocked body.
“What smells like beer?” My father asks.
“It’sh me.” I answer with a slur.
“What? You were drinking beer?” My father’s eyes open wide and his eyebrows race up his receding forehead. “Why were you drinking beer?”
“I was thirshty.”
“Thirsty…hmmm.” He mumbles.
My mother sits looking at me as she reaches for my forehead and checks my temperature with the back of her hand. Her eyes squint but she says nothing.
“That’sh all there wash to drink.” I continue.
“But how did you get into the trunk?” My father asks.
“I ushed the keys…opened the cooler and all there wash to drink wash beer.” .

72
My father coughed trying to hide the snicker under his words. “How much beer did you drink?”
“A can and a half.” I answer.
My father continues to chuckle and my mother takes her hand from my forehead and swats my father’s shoulder in one swift action.
“Lawrence, that’s nothing to laugh about…he’s tipsy.” She scolds.
“He’s tipsy maybe, but he’s okay…Well, Rand what does it feel like?” My father turns his eyes from the road to look at me.
“Well, I don’t know…I don’t like the tashte, but the starsh look great.” I explain.
My father bursts out laughing again and the car swerves to the right. My mother can’t see the humour in it, but my father can’t stop himself and pulls over to the shoulder of the two-lane road.
“Honey, he’s okay. I can’t imagine he liked the taste of beer, but I give him credit for being resourceful enough to find something to drink. We did tell him to stay with the car.” My father looks over to my mother with caution and signals to move back into the flow of traffic.
“I guess, but honestly Lawrence…we should have left him something to drink…that was just stupid.” My mother declares. I smile and think proudly that my father has complimented my ability to find water…even if it came in a beer can.
I nod off to sleep, curling into a ball, and the rest of the trip home is not in my memory.

73
My walks to school become routine, but for a diving sparrow that soars next to my ear one day. I think of humming birds and dive-bombing pigeons, along my stroll of the green strip looking at the wide sky and marauding vultures.
My parents become acquainted with more and more of the membership and ways of the church.
Some of their friends have children my age, some had many children younger, and some were elderly folk that spoke Low German like my parents and had also left the world of puritan
Mennonites to become Armstrong’s followers.
Ken Heide is the same age as me…born in the same month with three older brothers. Ken was strong from working and growing up on the farm until he, too, was pulled from the rural life and his parents moved to the city of Winnipeg.

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The first time Ken and I met his parents still owned the family farm in the southwest quadrant of
Manitoba and we spent a night on the farm. It was my first night away from my parents and I lay in the thick woollen blankets sobbing and hoping no one would hear me.
“Are you okay, Randy?” Ken asked from the bunk bed beneath me.
“I just miss my folks.” I replied, the excitement of travel and learning about quartz rocks, semitransparent agates, and small fossil remains along the creek bed that circled a hill Ken called
Pike’s Peak that day had kept my mind busy through the day, but now at night my mind wandered to home.
Lying in the strange bed in unfamiliar surroundings had quickly brought to mind the love I had for my family.
“We’ll see them tomorrow, Rand. Should I get my mom?” Ken asked.
“No, I’ll be okay.” I shuddered while saying it. I whimpered to sleep and dreamed of agates and tiny fossils.
The next day Ken grabs the biggest bowl I have ever seen and pours it full of Corn Flakes . He clasps the adult spoon as I only use teaspoons for cereal with all four fingers of his right hand encompassing the cutlery and locking his digits in place with his thumb across the top. I gawk in disbelief as he lifts the spoon to his mouth like a forklift operator and tumbles the soggy flakes into his mouth. He slurps and chews until the bowl is empty.

I place my own civil spoon handle on top of my middle finger and with my index finger above
75 balance the whole exercise with my thumb realizing that my mother has taught me the manners of a civilized etiquette, lost on my new friend…he would learn over time.
Ken takes no notice as I chew my corn flakes quietly. We play most of the day on his new chessboard. I had never learned chess and Ken teaches me the rules of movement for the welldesigned chess pieces. Over time Ken and I go head-to-head enjoying the strategies of board play.
I realize that his table manners were of little import. He may have been the youngest of his family, and I may have been the oldest of mine, but my friendship with Ken would prove to be influential as time continued on and we each learned the arts of war and education.
I soon discover that many of the church members live in Westdale. Ken lives on Cullen Drive just a few blocks from our home on Beaumont. He introduces me to Kurt Richtik who lives on
Hammond Crescent…the very street that had brought me home on my first day of school.
The Hofers live in a section of the city called North Kildonan, so we wouldn’t be seeing much of
Willie, but Kurt, Ken and I would create an adolescent trio that would grow once Ben moved into the suburban sprawl, soon to be joined by Willie. Ben was Willie’s cousin and shared the same last name of Hofer.

The five of us would stand by each other and find our way to adulthood. Each would discover
76 that the world was a bright and shiny penny at first glance, but all of us would find our paths in our own time. I’d give them each days in the present time for their thoughts and memories over the past thirty years.
The First Friend
The first kid I met when my father joined the Worldwide Church of God was Elliot Peters.
Elliott’s father, Bill was an adult student at Red River College. My father and he became quick friends when my father learned that Bill was affiliated with the charismatic televangelist.
Elliott came out to our small town with his father. It had been planned that he and I would travel the protective embankment that the town’s folk had erected to protect the residents in spring when the Red River would swell and swallow homes and barns because of the melting snow that would rise after it’s dormant winter rest on the prairie.
My mother packed a lunch and Elliott and I set off to circumnavigate the small town of Morris.
Elliott was three or four years my senior and took the lead.
We crossed railway tracks and saw in the distance the treed line of the Red River. Furrow after furrow of black topsoil, the richest in the world, stretched beyond the horizon from one side of the dike to the other. The monotony of the plains was not lost on me and I grew hungry and thirsty.

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“Elliott…Elliot…are you hungry?”
“Yeah, a little bit…why don’t we stop and eat our lunch.” He turned to me. Elliott was tall. He seemed twice my size, but his friendly manner and lean frame kept him watchful of me, his tiny companion. I must have looked like a hobbit following the mighty Gandolf
, though I didn’t learn of Orcs or Smaug for another ten years.
“Cheese…oh, no…my mother gave us cheese sandwiches.” I moaned.
“I like cheese…try it, Rand…there’s nothing wrong with cheese.” Elliot returned.
I chewed into the thick wheat bread slashed with a heavy coating of mayonnaise and healthy slices of Canadian cheddar.
It’s good!
The thought raced through my brain, and I was astounded to realize that the sweet mayonnaise cut the bitter orange cheese slices.
“These aren’t bad at all.” I mumbled through the homemade crumbs as they fell out of my mouth.
“They are good…your mother’s a fine cook.” Elliott agreed.

We slugged back the tea hot from the Thermos
, my father’s sturdy steel flask for a cribber’s
78 coffee. The warming container had the scent of coffee from years of use, but the lingering odour of stale coffee did not mingle with the tea, which was warm and sweet.
I had never sipped tea till this time and felt the maturity of my experience slip into the deep photographic crevice of my heart’s memory.
We marched along the dike after our early lunch and realized that the malaise of the trek would not take us completely around the town. The journey would be endless and the spanning prairies were growing old.
“Elliott, are you tired of this dike?” I asked.
“I’m tired, and I don’t know, this is getting boring. Why?” Elliot turned to face me.
“You see that train track ahead?” I replied.
“Yep, what about it?” Elliot raised his arm to extend his vision as the sun began blurring distant buildings into wavering sights of hot instability.
“I think it runs behind my home…we could shortcut it to home, if this dike hike seems to be too long.” I suggested, sitting down on my hobo bag, after relinquishing it from my shoulder. My father’s lunch bucket could support my weight and the wrapped towel created a comfortable covering.
“You want to hike it that way…save some time, eh?” Elliot offered. “I think it’s a good idea, but the field we have to cross looks a little muddy.” He warned.

“I don’t care…let’s get home…we can’t make it around the whole town without getting bored
79 anyway.” I rose from my seated position and began down the inside bank of the man-made dike.
“Alright, but I warned ya.” Elliot followed me, moved beside and then ahead to once again take the point.
Our feet slowly began to pick up clots of black, thick mud. Each step grew heavier and heavier as the mud stuck and we moved ahead more slowly stride after stride. It was only a few hundred yards to the elevated train tracks, and as we neared the quick rise, gravel stones mortared to the thick soles of Manitoba mud that clung to our oversized soles.
“Climb, Rand…c’mon, you can do it.” Elliot urged as he acquired the parallel rails.
“I’ll get…there…don’t worry…I can make it.” I huffed finally dragging myself to the safety of the gravelled iron and wooden creosote soaked ties.
We scraped our boots, which had tripled in size after crossing the moist black fallow field, on the two rails wondering if mud and stone could derail a train. We continued to drip sweat as the mud remaining on our shoes fought to stay clustered between treads and string laces.
“Let’s just keep walking.” Elliott said after five minutes of battle with the sticky rock and clay.
“Okay.” I replied, throwing a small stick into the field realizing the mud wouldn’t come off easily.
“The mud will fall off as we walk along the tracks.” Elliott explained.
“Alright.” I huffed, still out of breath from having to walk in giant’s shoes.

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As we picked ourselves up and began to trudge upon tie after endless tie, a rock would fall from a strong footfall, and then another rock until the mud began to release itself from the seams and laces of our hiking shoes as the mud loosened it’s tight grip.
“It’s working, Elliot…you were right. The mud is falling off.”
“I thought it might.” He smiled as his head turned with a positive nod.
Our pace quickened as each clot of mud abandoned our boots and rocks flew from our toes and heels. In short order we returned to my home, sweating and smiling, we entered the backyard where my father sat sipping on a beer and talking with Elliott’s father about things that he found to be of growing importance…questions of the World Tomorrow .
“We’re back!” I proudly proclaimed having succeeded in conquering the mud, the circle dike and the endless rails without losing direction.
“A little early.” My father looked at his watch.
“What do ya mean…we were out there a long time,” I answered.
“It’s 11:30…you were only gone four hours.” My father began to chuckle and turned to smile at
Bill, Elliott’s dad.
“We got tired of the dike,” Elliott offered.
“You got tired of the mud, looks like to me.” Elliott’s dad suggested.

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Elliot and I took a closer look at our clothing and we realized the mud and sweat coated us from shoulders to heels. We smirked at each other and realized how ridiculous we looked with my hobo pack and shards of muddy armour.
“Maybe crossing that field wasn’t the smartest thing to do.” I suggested.
“Maybe not.” Elliott smiled.
“Go clean up boys…there’s water in that trough next to the garage and then you can take a bath inside. Your mother won’t let you boys in looking like that.” My father laughed and reached for the brown bottle in front of him. Bill picked up his own bottle and the two clinked the necks celebrating the quick return of their travelling sons.
Elliott and I washed off and shed our shoes on the thick green lawn that had only grown in for the first time since my father had moved the house from 65 miles away.
“MOM…Mom…I like cheese.” I hollered entering the rear foyer that seemed broad and wide at the time, but when I think back now, it couldn’t have been more than four feet wide and eight feet long; a mudroom for my father after a hard day finishing concrete.
“Good…I thought you might.” She offered.
The family and Bill and Elliott all sat down much later for an early evening meal and we laughed about our adventure.
“There will be many more,” my father said, “when we move to Winnipeg.”

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I waved goodbye to Elliott after his visit was over, and thanked my Dad for letting me go on an adventure. He smiled and roughed up my bristly hair.
I never did much with Elliott after that hike. We moved to Winnipeg and friendships changed for me as they do with all children because of familiarity and similarity. Elliott had two older sisters. One of them was named Sharon…sharin’ peters. Her sister, Naomi would commit suicide after attending Ambassador College, a dysfunctional marriage and childbirth, in
Nevada…alone and forgotten. It would be the first of many self-destructive acts created by the mythology of Herbert W. Armstrong.
I’ve been lucky to shed mud from my shoes when the trek grows too long and wearying…for many of the former members of the church…it’s been a long hard tramp.
***
Elliott disappeared from my world, but Ken introduced me to Curt Richtik. He lived a block from my home and had a bumper pool table in the basement. I was introduced to the wonderful skill of billiards over time, but never mastered the art of the pool hall. I was more of an athletic jester who liked to thrive on luck when it came to the pool hall.
Curt was thin and lanky, much like Elliott. He was a year older than Ken and I so he automatically took a leadership role when we all got together. Ben Hofer was six months

younger than Curt and older than Ken and I, so he tended to take a back seat, until Curt’s ideas
83 would grow far-fetched. This would happen often during the course of our adolescence…Curt had a scheme for everything…most of the schemes never saw the light of success…but Curt was cool and that was enough for our simple clique.
Ben, Willie’s cousin, moved into Westdale with his family and our quintet became routine. We would allow friends and relatives into our posse, but only on a temporary basis.
Ben’s parents were much older than mine, but they were nice people.
Good stock was a term used for many of the Germanic folken that were being called into God’s church.
One day, Ken and I, rode our bicycles over to Ben’s new home. They had moved from a plot of land near Bird’s Hill Park, north of the city of Winnipeg. Ben’s house was a duplex, and he lived in the basement with several brothers…the girls lived in the bedrooms upstairs. The communal structure of these ex-Hutterite colonists was similar to my parents experience in the
Mennonite culture. We were all earthy stock and people of the land, who liked to take care of summer gardens and canning vegetables and fruit to put up for the long hard winter months.
“What should we do this weekend?” Ken asked one day before a summer long weekend. I knew something was on his mind because whenever Ken had something he wanted to talk about, something specific, he got a glint in his eyes. He asked a question that made you think and would allow him to pose his theory or idea in quick order.

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“I don’t know…what do you want to do?” I responded.
“Well, something different.” Ken replied.
“A trip…something with all five of us…maybe more.” Ben joined in the discussion. His head at the floor and feet flung over the perimeter of a round chair with a bright orange cover.
“How about a bike ride?” Ken filled in the void he had created in forethought.
“Yeah, a bike ride. That would be fun.” I added my vote.
“We’ll get everybody.” Said Ben.
“Yep, but only good bike riders…no trouble on this trip.” Ken added.
The next Sunday we all met up at the 7-Eleven. We numbered eight and stocked up our sacks with candy bars and pop at the convenience store. We headed out on the wide sidewalk east along Roblin Avenue and rode to our destination…Assiniboine Park.
The park was a main attraction for the whole city and boasted trails throughout its heavily wooded boundaries. The Winnipeg Zoo was located inside the park and we would be able to view some of the captured wildlife if we took the time. I’d been to the zoo with my parents before on a hot day looking at sleeping camels and uninspired monkeys…
Dhaktari was a television series that filmed the African savannahs and revealed stories of handicapped animals and dishonest poachers…the animal world wasn’t a focus for me. I think it has something to do with receiving 33 stitches when I was 2 years old from my grandfather’s German shepherd.

85
I’ve always credited my healthy respect and disassociation with the animal kingdom to the incident. I almost lost an eye, while the German shepherd that attacked me received a bullet. All of it had come about because I tried to take the animal’s lunch from his bowl. What could I have known? I was two-years-old. In those days, people were more important than farm animals.
Our line of cyclists grunted and groaned but smiles flickered and flashed. The day was perfect in the middle of August. I had my new bike, a dark green three speed that kept up with the pieced together machines of most of my friends. Curt had a ten-speed bicycle; because he’d recently learned of the Tour de France
, with ram’s horn handle bars. Curt couldn’t do without the best.
Willie had a banana bike with tall looping handlebars that looked difficult to steer, but impressive from a distance…good from far, far from good.
I had no idea what was in store for us on our adventure, but the paved stretch to the park was quick as we turned onto Tuxedo Boulevard and made our way into the park. This new adventure took us through the untended fringes of oak and maple, birch and pine, berried bushes and wild roses.
Our pace picked up as we left the roadway and entered the network of dirt trails that seemed carved by ancient natives to negotiate the wilderness of the river valley. I had never experienced the thrill of whirling through brambles on such an established dirt path. We took to the pathways like pilots take to the skies, manoeuvring our two-wheeled linear chariots with turns, twists and sudden stops.

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Entering the park we entered the maze as the paths quickly separated into hundreds of loops and crossings, detours and downhill drops, until we came to a huge separation in the heart of the park. We all stopped atop the monstrous gulch and watched as other cyclists negotiated the steep drop, rumbled through the rounded bottom, and then sped up the stiff incline to jump skyward or simply stop and admire the personal bravery of conquering this thing called “Suicide Gulch.”
“This is it.” Willie informed us.
“Yeah, I love it, what a rush.” Curt added.
“It’s huge…who’s going to go first?” I asked.
No one answered but Willie went straight into a middle run, the belly of the gully. Stopped at the other side of the ditch and returned without incident. He handled the banana bike like he was riding a chopper.
“No sweat, gents.” He yelled as he brought his bike in low and braked kernels of hard black dirt into our spokes and exposed ankles.
The gully grew wider as it left the banks of Assiniboine River. I realized that if I started further up the bank the gap was shallow and I could gain some confidence as I worked my way to the
Gulch’s final stretch right at the river’s edge. If a rider didn’t stay in the narrow groove he could launch into the bottomless drop tumbling with bruises and bone breaks into the muddy
Assiniboine River.

87
Suicide Gulch got its name because of this very dip at the river’s edge. The rains had created the large gully. Bike tires of warrior cyclists had eroded the narrow groove of the gully’s famous run. Older riders were coming through the paths and hitting the gulch’s edge stopping before they dove into the shadowed floor and rising again in a shower of sun on the other side…masters of Suicide Gulch.
We sat on the edge, trying to work up the courage to slide into the shadow valley’s namesake run, by meandering the gentler, shallower depths of the gully for an hour and finally deciding to sit down and eat our packed lunches.
“Well, someone’s gotta do the big run,” Willie said the words we all feared around his first bite of a bologna sandwich. He guzzled down a swig of Coca-cola and smiled.
We all nodded our heads in agreement. The gully had to be mastered in order for us to make our way home as conquering cyclists.
“Who’s gonna be the first victim?” Ben asked. He smirked with bright eyes. It wouldn’t be him. Ben liked to plan his attacks with precision and forethought.
“I’ll go.” Willie quickly responded. Willie had little fear of moving into the unknown. He realized that his skills were far above the rest and he enjoyed showing off his expertise on the long seat and chromed handles of his daring chopper bicycle.
We quickly ate and screwed our guts into tight balls readying for the ride that we knew must be.
Suicide Gulch’s biggest run was calling our names and we had to answer.

Willie dove in to the dark ditch, stopped on the far side with a huge grin and a piece of advice.
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“Just let it take you and then pedal up the far side…it’s easy.”
I couldn’t wait any longer and listened to Willie’s calm elation. I perched my bike on the edge, closed my eyes for a second and dove into Suicide Gulch. My arms stiffened as I cruised quickly to the bottom and my feet came alive as I struggled for the far side’s top edge. I swerved my bike into a braking stop and spat dust and dirt into Willie’s spokes, coming to rest inches from his right pedal.
He smiled with surprise and I crossed my arms when I brought the sturdy bike upright leaning back.
“Piece of cake.” I mouthed. Inside my heart was pounding, after conquering the unconquerable
Suicide Gulch.
The rest of the pack followed in close pursuit as the gauntlet had been thrown down.
After everyone had tried it except Ike, Willie’s younger brother, we decided to explore more of the park’s bike paths. We flew through the brush like swallows through grain fields. Our speed increased as we became more familiar with the gentle hills and valleys that were worn with time, weather and use.

A few of us nearly collided as we meandered in and out of the spider web of trails but near misses were the order of the day, until we returned to Suicide Gulch for one more run and then the sedate ride to our homes.
89
We all charged the shadows of the little valley and came to a stop to watch those behind finish our daring day, until Ike sat perched at the far edge. Ike was two years younger than Willie and hadn’t reached the same athletic skill level of his older brother yet. He knew there would be no silencing the troupe on the ride home if he didn’t at least try to survive the chasm.
We lined the top of the gully waiting…
“C’mon, Ike…it’s easy…just do it.” One of the spectators yelled.
“I know…I know…I’m thinking.” Ike replied. “Don’t rush me.”
He waited another eternity and just as we were going to leave him and turn for home, Ike’s front tire eked over the rim and he began to wobble. His legs flew open as his front tire rattled between one edge and the other.
Ike got to the bottom of the gully his front tire jumped the left edge and found a rivulet next to the worn thread of Suicide Gulch.

Ike’s head launched toward the side of the gully we were perched upon like vultures and his
90 body twirled in the air and landed with the sickening thud of a batch of mashed potatoes against a tiled kitchen wall.
“Ow…OWCH…OWWWWWWW!” I heard the loud scream reverberate in my head, as if Ike had known all along he would fall victim to the deep gap.
I dropped my bike and ran down to his side along with the rest of our gang.
“Ike…Ike…are you okay?” Willie was the first to his brother’s side.
“Oh, my leg…unh…I must have hit it on the handlebars or something.” Ike moaned as he clutched his groin.
“Can you stand?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know…I think so.” Ike reached to Willie’s shoulder and Ben grabbed his hand. Some of the others grabbed the bike to see if it was damaged.
“You’re handlebars are a little bent but I think they can be fixed.” Ken gasped.
“Can you ride?” Willie asked his brother. A spot of blood appeared on his right elbow and left knee…it oozed out of the knee in a thick red crescent.
“I don’t know,” Ike winced as he put some weight on the damaged leg, still clutching his bruised crotch.
“Well, you’re going to have to…no one’s coming to pick us up.” Willie informed his wounded sibling.
“Yeah, I know…but, ugh…it hurts.” Ike grimaced as he slowly caught his breath.

“Well, what are we going to do?” I asked.
“Gotta ride, Ike.” Willie looked at his brother with no mercy. “What the heck were you trying
91 to do with that bike anyway? You were outa control from the top down.”
“I don’t know…I lost it.” Ike dropped his head.
The ride home took forever. Ike stopped every two minutes to flop to the curbside and moan.
“My leg…my leg…is killing me.” He groaned.
“Can’t help ya, Ike.” His brother repeated at each stop. “Gotta get home.”
We arrived at Willie’s house first. It was the closest and Ike limped into the front entry.
“What da hell happened here?” A voice boomed from the kitchen. Ike’s mother had the thick, flat accent of the Hutterite colony. She was apt to use the word “hell” if something wasn’t as it should be.
We snickered at the strong woman’s surly mouth and said our goodbyes to Willie.
We headed to the 7-Eleven™ and ordered Slurpees™ all around. The crushed ice was cooling and smooth drenched in syrupy soda pop flavours. It was the end to a perfect day for most of us; the ride of life ahead would prove to be much like the spider web pathways of the shady park called Assiniboine.

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An explanation of an ancient spring festival
Life continued on in a journey of discovery. In the spring of 1970 we learned of the life of a spiritual Jew . This was the term the ministers used in order to explain our belief in a Christian saviour (the Jewish faith does not recognize Jesus Christ as saviour, god and man, or the existence of a devil).
Like the Israelites of the ancient tribes, the Old Testament statutes of ancient times dictated what we could eat. I learned to keep an open eye for unclean seafood, lard, any meats that came from an animal with a split hoof or less than four stomachs, pork, gelatine…anything that could be called unclean by the ancient text.
Grasshoppers we could eat, after pulling their internal organs out with just the right jerk of its hindquarters. Pork, the other white meat , was not to be digested. The smell of crisp bacon became taboo for my family, but the discovery of beef bacon saved in memory the delicacy of

93 our Mennonite tradition. The animal fat simply had to come from a fatted calf, cow or bull. The most difficult time of dietary awareness would come each spring as the rest of the Christian world celebrated Easter…a pagan fertility celebration that we could have no part in.
This most difficult holy season was The Days of Unleavened Bread . Much like the coupling of festivals in the fall, Unleavened Bread festival was opened with the first spring tradition of
Passover . Passover dates occurred the eve before the eight Days of Unleavened Bread , and like the Feast of Tabernacles, they were forecast by means of the Jewish calendar, and like Christ washing the feet of His disciples, the membership of the Worldwide Church of God came together in solemnity and deep self-analysis to wash another’s feet.
Women were brought to a separate room to wash their sisters’ feet, while men were ushered to another area to wash a pair of their spiritual brothers’ feet. The humble act of an ancient servant was relived to create the necessary emotion of submission that Armstrong had discovered during the middle portion of the 20 th
century.
“A contrite spirit” was ever a goal to attain, and this season made the goal seem possible. The impurity of our lives during the year could be washed away with the simple act of contrition. No one would speak in fellowship during the sacred ritual. The foot washing ceremony was a silent, solemn event.
The pastor leading the service would read, with a tone of sincere humility, featured texts laid down by the dictation of HWA. There would be quiet throughout the auditorium, while

94 members followed the prescribed passages in the bibles perched on laps beginning with the symbolic ritual of drinking the blood and eating the flesh of Christ.
The broken body of Christ symbolized by a small broken piece of the Jewish matzoh that
Hebraic Rabbis had blessed suitable for the Jewish celebration of Passover . The large thin rectangles that looked like thin slabs of hard tack from pioneer days of the Old West were crunched at the microphone sounding like bones snapping creating the broken shards that symbolized Christ’s broken body on the cross.
Armstrong did not believe or preach that Christ died on the cross, but rather that he died on a single stake that had no cross member. For him the symbol of the cross was a graven image that organized religions had adopted from the early beginnings of the Christian era.
When I went to my first celebration of Passover many years later, the crunching matzohs reminded me of sacrificing Jesus all over again. It was unsettling.
Small trays with thimbles of red wine were passed from member to member as a symbol of the blood of Christ…and the Worldwide Church of God would complete the spiritual ritual of
Passover
, after each washed another’s feet. As is recorded in the New Testament from Jesus
Christ at the last supper, “this do in remembrance of me.”
During the course of years many men and women would not wash the feet of another, because of personal feelings, which required some of the deacons and deaconesses to wash two or three

pairs of feet. The action of dissent was an instant revelation of one’s unconverted spirit…one
95 could not be offended by a fellow brother or sister. There was no need for the person who reneged on washing someone’s feet to take part in the ceremony…they had annulled themselves by declining a brother or sister in Christ .
It never failed to amaze me that the offended member never comprehended the importance of the ceremony. The hypocrisy of it all was never lost on the gentle souls who sincerely wished to love one another and celebrate one of the last acts of their messiah.
April 1970
When I went to school after the first unleavened holy day I opened my lunch kit to find a thin rectangle of a large dimpled cracker sandwich. The transparent plastic revealed patterned pimples of ketchup squeezing out from the soft egg cracker that my parents had described as a matzoh . My brothers and I had favoured the salty egg matzoh when compared with the standard bland plank of an unsalted white flour matzoh .
I looked around the lunch area hoping no one would notice my strange sandwich. I unwrapped the cracker, softened by ketchup and mayonnaise, and took a bite of bologna and cheese.
“What’s that?” Victor, a friend asked from across the lunch table.

“Uh, uh…it’s good.” I stuttered.
“Yeah, maybe, but what is it?” Victor asked again.
“A matzoh sandwich…my mom likes to try new things.” I explained without telling the whole truth of my secret life as a spiritual Jew’s
firstborn son.
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The Hebraic flatbread became a favoured delicacy with bologna, cheddar cheese, mayonnaise and ketchup. The dry starchy cracker would adhere to the sandwich innards and make for a moist filling meal that was perfectly suited to a glass of milk.
I faked my way through the Days of Unleavened Bread with the false excitement of the celebrated Jewish matzohs . Shame became a part of life and hiding the sunset-to-sunset worship of Sabbath days would become a constant ritual.
As my church friends and school friends became two worlds that would eventually meet I moved into the teen years.
The 70’s Show
The gas crisis and All in the Family would become symbolic points in the memory of the 70s decade. The worries that Armstrong’s monthly newsletter promoted for church members became more emphatic and pointed to greater strife in the world and “the soon-coming return of
Jesus Christ.”

My relationships with cousins and friends continued being awkward and difficult to explain as
97 my own belief structure was developing with the discovery of the theories of evolution, thermonuclear dynamics, archaeology, ghetto writers and J. R. R. Tolkien.
“A cigarette has never touched these lips!” I announced whenever friends wished to gather behind schools, barns, or open fields to share in the experience of smoking.
After five years in a circle of church friends the temptation to experience alcohol, drugs and smoking became a constant pressure from my peers…peers in the church. My school friends were focussed on sports…hockey, basketball, gymnastics and volleyball.
The pressure to understand myself grew starting at the age of thirteen, but more and more pressure would demand continued determination to find real truth in life…to learn to love the chances life offered and to learn of deception and greed.
My parents introduced me to the accordion, against my will, and lessons continued till I could no longer deal with the stigma of a squeeze box on my chest . I kept the lessons going as long as my parents continued in authoritative commands that the instruction of music was a well-rounded skill that created a complete human being, but times were moving quickly, and soon I would stop the weekly lessons.

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My father continued in Spokesman Club, developed a hockey program for church members and young people in the Winnipeg congregation, and attended faithfully to the demands from the headquarters of the church in Pasadena, California.
On January 30, 1972, during the height of the oil shortage crisis, Garner Ted Armstrong was relieved of his ministerial duties and removed from his father’s organization. Much of the son’s indiscretions were unmentioned in the circles of the membership, but key leaders became aware of an insidious personality trait in the youngest son and chief spokesperson. In short order, the churches finances faltered and father asked son to return as spokesman. Garner Ted returned to speak and deliver his message from God. The return didn’t last long.
The Ambassador Report , an online website with much of the church’s disreputable history open to public consumption today, gives a full analysis of Garner Ted’s life and his adulterous and bisexual nature. The rumours were whispered as time continued and by 1978 Garner Ted was ousted once more from the church. The wayward televangelist who had always wanted to be an actor decided to start his own organization. Many from his father’s faction who had fallen for
Garner Ted’s good looks and baritone voice followed the charismatic personality into the wilds of Texas where the besmirched televangelist continued until 1998…where he was again removed from his own fellowship. He was forced to start another organization called the Intercontinental
Church of God.

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His final act of sexual predation occurred in January of 1995 when he was videotaped masturbating and assaulting a professional masseuse. His infamy continued and the sad sociopath died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 75 on September 15, 2003.
My father listened to the facts as they were disclosed in 1978 regarding Garner Ted and decided to stay with the elder Armstrong, as the elder Armstrong fought to put the church “back on the right track.” Armstrong wanted his followers to give liberally, but avoid liberalism.
My father was a conservative and we marched on into the future with Herbert W. Armstrong shining his light before us to guide the way.
I was reading tales of ghetto gangsters growing up in New York during my first years of puberty.
The authors’ lives from the decadent lifestyles of the poor, black self-described hoods that had to peddle women as pimps and protectors while dealing with addictions and disease. This gritty reading brought me the reality of a life without hope or opportunity in the ghetto regions of poverty-stricken sectors of many of the greatest cities in America.
I learned the puritan ideal from the church’s ministry, my Mennonite relatives (some of whom we remained in contact with) and the example of my parents. It was a complete contrast to the sad life of a New York pimp trying to dodge the Man , police raids and knife fights. It was a calm existence with homemade bread, fresh baked pie and routine family life. A chaste and

100 sacrificial life was the only clear choice for those who wished to become the children of God in
Armstrong’s utopian dream. My parents had set the structure of the family ideal to match the comfortable perfection of the American dream in Canada.
June 1974
My parents had shuttled young people to Orr, Minnesota for the opportunity of a month at the church’s exclusive summer camp…SEP…the acronym was the logo for Summer Educational
Programs.
Armstrong had grandchildren and the summer camp was purchased in northern Minnesota for the benefit of a summer retreat for members of Armstrong’s flock and family.
This summer of 1974 I was old enough to attend the wilderness camp with several cabins and rudimentary facilities. I was twelve.
The camp had six cabins for each gender that could accommodate 20-30 campers. It would be my first opportunity to stay away from home for more than a week. My parents dropped several of my friends, and me, off at the camp on a warm, shining Sunday morning. The trip took six hours, so goodbyes were completed quickly over a luncheon meal in the large pine A-frame of the rustic dining hall. The family’s green Galaxie drove back to Canada with my parents smiling and waving inside.

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The dormitories for the campers were numbered from one to six and designated with the capital letter of their gender. Willie was assigned to 6B, Ben was assigned to 2B, and I was assigned to dormitory 4B. I would not have my friends with me during the month, but we would be able to discuss the various situations we would find ourselves in as we got to know the American fundamentalist, nature-loving experience at chance meetings in church, during free time or at the dining hall.
“Greetings…I’m Mr. Timmins.” A tall man boomed as I entered the screen door of my assigned dorm. A red scrub brush cut accompanied his freckled complexion, and he shook my hand with a strong grip.
“My name is Randy…Randy Zacharias.” I squeaked. My voice hadn’t changed yet.
”Nice to meet you, Randy…straighten those shoulders…we’re men here in 4B.” He instructed in a 101midwestern dialect I had rarely heard. “Zacharias, hmmm, that’s quite a name you have there, Randy…lots of history from ancient times.”
“Yes, I know…thanks.” I wasn’t sure of the reason the counsellor would focus on my surname, but there were things to come that wouldn’t be as reverential as the ancient name.
“We’ll get to know each other tonight at icebreaker,” Mr. Timmins informed, “Now go and stow your gear in an open cubby hole and bunk.”

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“Thank you, sir.” I replied shuffling my sneakers along the broad pine floor. The dorm swirled with the scent of pine scent, cedar and smoke. I reached the threshold of my side of the dormitory and the floor turned to a crossword of rough chipboard.
Inside were several other young men of my size making beds and stowing water shoes, socks, underwear. They all wore the shirts we each had received from the welcoming committee in the dining hall. The shirts were comfortable cotton with the SEP logo, an eagle in flight, glued just over the right breast pocket. The blue torso and white short sleeves were comfortable, and I thought all might not be as difficult as camping can sometimes be.
That night Bill Timmins gave us an opening icebreaker to show the quality of the Ambassador student’s speaking skills. His introduction was short but focussed.
“You will address me as Mr. Timmins, or sir, but you will not address me by my first name.” He began. I don’t recall his place of birth, but he was a product of Ambassador College and had run amok in his youth. He had done drugs and found wickedness and had only in the past year shaved his red mop of long hair and been baptized into the membership of the church.
“Here are your prayer closets.” He pointed out four empty closets with a tiny four-legged pine stool as the sole occupant. “Here you will conduct your conversations with the Almighty.”
My fellow campers and I looked around at each other. We were all very young and most had never been to the summer camp. The idea of a prayer closet seemed foreign and unnecessary,

103 but as time progressed we would learn of the convenience of an empty closet…at least for some…it would be a place to hide.
We all gave a short speech about origin and experience, but I can’t remember a single introduction. Over time I came to know my fellow campers, but we quickly learned that we were a dorm of very little possibility.
The structure of our group was young, even though the camp accepted teenagers to the age of 19.
The authority of Mr. Timmins would only inspire our small group to few accomplishments by the end of the session.
Mr. Timmins, we came to learn, had been given the challenge of harnessing the youngest dorm that SEP had ever known. We had one sixteen-year-old named Leonard who was scrawny for his age not much taller then the remaining 12-15-year-olds in our tiny troupe. Leonard was from
Saskatchewan and his wiry frame, but quick mind, would allow us some retribution when our overpowering opponents would dominate us for the duration.
Contests in a variety of sports, activities and projects would pit each dorm against one another over the course of the month.
My best friend in the dorm was a young football player named Alvin from Alabama. His slow, easy drawl became my own mimicked tone, and Alvin and I became inseparable. We wrote a few letters to one another after camp and Alvin disappeared into the misty swamps of the Deep

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South. I never heard from my southern friend again…I imagine he quit the church and started playing football. He was built for it…and the church wouldn’t let young people participate in sporting activities on a Friday night. I hope Alvin did right in life because he proved to be a good friend with a kind heart.
Mr. Timmins kept questioning me over the course of the month about my namesake.
“So Zack…where’d ya get that name…Sack-arias?” He started one day as we waited on the decked and covered porch of the rustic dining hall.
“It’s Zacharias.” I corrected his pronunciation of my last name.
“No…it’s Sack…Sad Sack…like the comic strip.” He laughed at his quick originality. “From now on your nickname is Sad Sack.”
I rolled my eyes at Alvin, and the beginning of the torment of the campers of 4B had arrived.
With every activity Mr. Timmins became the frustrated pilot in our young wingless machine.
“C’mon you Sad Sacks…work for it…get the ball!” He would yell during water polo matches.
“Tea cozy…move it! He would scream at scrawny Leonard.
We succumbed to loss after loss only winning on rare outings when our opponents underestimated our dorm as Mr. Timmins started substituting the tinier occupants of our thin

105 troop. Eventually, I got my chance and performed well in the water polo, softball and volleyball games. Slowly the sad sack nickname was uttered only when Mr. Timmins needed a quick bolstering of his ego…usually while we were in line for a church service.
“Gotta keep you humble.” Mr.Timmins would instruct. “Pride comes before a fall.”
I was twelve and humility had never been a problem. I was small for my age but my father’s instruction in baseball and hockey along with the wide variety of instruction in Winnipeg’s visionary public school system had helped bring a confidence that all athletes must possess to have any kind of success.
By the middle of the session Mr. Timmins knew that he had a lame duck dorm. We went on a canoe trip and enjoyed the antics of false bear attacks in the middle of the night. Mr. Timmins had shown his true colours and the dorm fellows had bound together realizing we could not defeat the tiny dictator…but we could take a battle or two.
During the course of the month, we were directed through courses of canoeing, archery, water polo, rock climbing, water-skiing and camp improvement.
“Rise and shine, my angels.” Mr. Timmins would begin chilly mornings and weary boys would tumble out of bed for quick inspection. We quickly straightened twin white sheets and the course woollen blankets I was sure were used in WWII. Mr. Timmins pulled a quarter out of his ironed and pleated denims to drop on questionable beds of an unacceptable standard.

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“Gentlemen, I want this quarter to bounce twice on those beds.” Mr. Timmins bellowed.
“Sir…Yes, Sir.” We answered staunchly facing each other at the foot of our steel bunks at the centre aisle as Mr. Timmins paced the rough floor. We learned quickly that the conservative disciplinarian was not to be disobeyed. This was Christian boot camp.
The practice of the entire camp after a quick breakfast in the dining hall was inspection from the
Camp’s Director. The internal short wave radio station that was the camp’s communication system had the call letters, KSEP.
Each morning after our first session of class, we would receive a quick report of inspection results. Dorms were judged and given a score on a scale of 100. Each morning we waited listening through the tinny speaker system located in the central lodge room of our dorms for the results from the rigorous inspection carried out by the leadership of the camp.
Our dorm was never in the running. The more we cleaned, the greater the gap between our grade and the leader of the pack…1B’s grade. It seemed we could not reach the cleanliness or expertise of the older members of dorm 1B. Our entire dorm quickly learned we would not be gaining ground on the crack troops that occupied the number one dorm.
Our time at the camp became a search for some kind of moral victory over any dorm that allowed us an opening. It became our quest.

Eventually a small buck-toothed camper pulled in a four-pound walleye from the shoreline
107 below our dorm. Billy, from Utah, won the certificate for largest fish caught during the course of the third session of Camp SEP in 1973. It was the only award our dorm would win. I met Billy years later in a small congregation in Utah…he was still buck-toothed but to help further humiliate the hapless fisherman…all his hair had fallen out. Billy, too, disappeared into anonymity.
During the course of the session we watched a young camper nicknamed Fatty Arbuckle throw the foulest temper tantrum I have ever seen.
“Fuck…fuck…fuckity…fuck fuck!” Arbuckle had screamed endlessly until his counsellor grappled him to the ground and calmed the chubby teen. He had endured two weeks of the nickname “Fatty” during his stay in 2B and finally lost his composure altogether. The camp director had thought it best to send him home.
My friend Willie found trouble of a different kind. He grabbed the leaf of a bright green plant between his thumbs and blew the call of a loon one night. He’d taught as many people as he could the slick trick with blades of grass on the Camp’s grounds, but one night on Lovers’ Island he hadn’t been able to find any grass.
Willie took a green shard of poison ivy and his cheeks quickly turned into puffy billowing clouds. He spent a week in the camp’s tiny infirmary with calamine lotion and ice cream.

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“It’th not tho bad.” Willie slurred when we visited him just before a Saturday service.
The rest of the camp survived with little event but for the corporal punishment that Mr. Timmins deemed necessary. One night a pillow fight was announced and one of my fellow inmates struck me before Mr. Timmins whistled permission to toss the feathery missives.
“Four swats!” Mr. Timmins announced.
“What?”
“Four swats…for each of you.” His finger pointed swaying sternly between my cohort and I.
“It’s a pillow fight.” I protested.
“You want more?” Mr. Timmins asked.
My head bowed as my eyes opened to become round huge saucers. I wondered how a pillow fight could turn into a public execution from the man who was our leader. We took our four swats as the entire membership of the dorm circled marking the importance of complete obedience to Mr. Timmins’ instruction.
My parents have a picture of me running toward them suspended in air, smiling from ear to ear when they came to pick me up two weeks later. I remember seven girls surrounding me that day in a circle of goodbyes. It was nice to be popular with the girls, but I was still too young to have any real interest. This circle was far more enjoyable than the circle of dorm mates watching me take the corporal punishment that lead me to hate Mr. Timmins more than any man I had ever known during the course of an arranged pillow fight.

I still carried the southern drawl I’d learned from Alvin after a month of camp life…I also carried an ear infection that lingered for an entire year.
I had had my first taste of American life. The food wasn’t too bad, but the people were very different and depending on their age and experience I either hated them or loved them. Mr.
Timmins I hated…Alvin was a great guy…American women; I couldn’t stay away.
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In the fall my ear became so infected I could hardly move my jaw. I continued with the prescribed treatment to killing the spore that had worked its way into my ear canal. I couldn’t swim or even shower without getting water inside the ear. The pain became a raging fire that ultimately had to be starved. I quit swimming and continued dropping the alcohol into the bad ear. The fire in my ear became a raging maelstrom anytime someone touched my right ear lobe.
The flames that raged in the pain centre of my brain reminded me of the story my father told during his time of trial in the water cistern. It only made me angry that I had ever gone to the summer camp. Something changed in me that year…I wasn’t so sure about my father’s religion and I wished to be a normal kid more than ever before.
I tried harder and harder to fit in with my school friends. My church friends became burdens and during that school year Ken Heide was in my class. I don’t know why one of our school mates

110 decided to pick on Ken that year but the results of the bullying were difficult for Ken, Dale the bully, and a small group of classmates that included me.
“FIGHT! FIGHT!” Rang the cry one afternoon.
“Dale and Ken are fighting!” One of the members of the mob shrieked.
I ran to the circle but couldn’t see what was going on. I ran to Ken’s home and knocked on the door. Craig, Ken’s youngest brother was nine years older and answered the door.
“Ken’s…in…a…fight.” I huffed.
“Where…c’mon, where…let’s go.” Craig ran to his car and I hopped in from the passenger’s side.
We rounded the corner where I knew the fight was occurring to see the crowd dispersing. Ken shuffled out from the middle of the fleeing mob and hopped quickly in to our trolling car.
“Thanks guys…” He mumbled.
“What happened? Ken…what happened?” Craig shouted.
“I had to fight.”
“Alright, alright…are you okay?” Craig’s voice was concerned but steady.
“I’m fine…the other guy isn’t.” Ken smiled but it was the grin of a sheep.

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The next day, my mother told me that Ken might be going to juvenile detention. During the past two months Dale had persecuted Ken and I had helped as a clique was slowly formed with little regard for Ken’s feelings.
“Heide is a fag!”
“Heide is gay!”
Ken had undergone the season of the pariah. For some reason one of my jock friends hadn’t liked Ken’s sneakers and the cry of ostracism had stormed into the air and quickly picked up by my small gang of four.
The day of the fight Ken had lost control. The three other members of the gang against Ken had been Terry, Murray, and Dale. Dale wasn’t an athlete and was the weakest link by strength standards in the braided band of four. Dale needed to do something to prove himself and Ken was the target.
Ken’s days on the farm had given him thick thighs and sturdy fists, but nothing had prepared any of us for the beating that Dale suffered through that afternoon.
While I had been running for help, Dale had quickly succumbed to the fury that had been rising in Ken during the course of his public persecution. Dale fell to the ground against a concrete curb and Ken was blind with rage. Ken kicked at Dale’s face with full, strong kicks aimed at the fallen bully’s head.

Ken’s loss of control resulted in Dale becoming unconscious and someone pulling Ken away
112 from his vanquished opponent before he killed the weak nemesis.
We didn’t see Dale in school for several days. He was reported to be okay but spending two days in the hospital. When he did come back it wasn’t Dale that walked into the room. A hideous purple head floated into the room and took a seat at Dale’s desk. I sat next to Dale and gaped in horror.
“Hey, Rand…how’s it going?” The purple bruise asked me.
“Dale, is that you?” I asked with a hesitant whisper. I couldn’t believe he was the aggressor in the fight against Ken.
“Of course, its me…I know…I took a beating.” Dale looked at me and flashed some teeth, but I watched him flinch as even the simple action of grinning caused him pain.
“I shouldn’t have been bugging, Ken…y’know?” Dale confessed without my prodding.
“Well, you shouldn’t have fought him…what were you thinking?” I wanted to know.
“I just wanted to prove my stuff to the guys…y’know.” Dale bowed his head to look into the bin beneath his desk.
“Well, we’ll see…I hear Ken’s been expelled and he’s probably going to juvenile hall.” I whispered as class began.
“I hope not…I kinda deserved it.” Dale whispered back.

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We didn’t speak about the beating after that. We got use to Dale’s face slowly healing and Ken never returned to class. His parents decided that it would be best if he got a fresh start at another school. The judge in juvenile court handed Ken over to his parents’ custody and he was given a period of probation. Ken’s folks moved to Fort Garry and Ken and I became friends on a weekend basis after a year or two.
I started thinking about girls and the dogwater a ghetto writer had discussed coming out of a young penis before a young man reached puberty. The dogwater was defined as the sticky clear liquid that ejected from pre-pubescent testicles. I grabbed my own member during a hot bath on a cold winter day and felt the fire of ecstasy that comes from the release of virgin sperm. I was past the age of dogwater , I learned.
I promised myself I would never to do it again…it was sin, according to our doctrinal teachings…and certain schools of thought prophesied that taking part in self love would make you go blind. God killed an early descendant of Adam named Onan when he “spilled his seed upon the ground.” I really did try to keep the rush of teenage hormones from releasing the forbidden juices of my seed by my own hand. I learned of wet dreams, cold showers and the difficult path of premarital celibacy.
It worked sometimes, but not necessarily through the use of cold showers. Sometimes those would make the arousal even harder and so the advice of a common wives’ tale didn’t seem to bear any relevance. I learned many years later that scrub nurses giving sponge bathes would

flick the head of a rising patient’s penis if the recipient of the wet rubdown became aroused.
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This I tried and found quite effective. Hurts like hell, but the advancing appendage did retreat.
Icy waters can make for a hard cock, and tales of common sense don’t always carry enough weight to halt the engorged member of a healthy male.
When my friends from the church went out on a riding tour on abandoned railway lines we’d stop and enjoy the pleasure of smoking after I got back from the church’s summer camp. If any of my school friends accompanied us there would loud “boos” uttered for bowing to the call of the nicotine darts they called coffin nails .
My friend, Ben and the family, moved from Westdale to the rural setting of Headingley, but it didn’t stop our families from being friendly.
One night Ben’s family was invited over. I had purchased a new stereo system and was stowing a pair of Labatt’s Blue bottles of beer in its centre console closet; stolen from the fridge in the basement mudroom.

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“Wanna beer?” I asked Ben.
“What…you got beer?”
Ben took the warm beer and we enjoyed the pleasure of my stolen booty.
“Got any more?” Ben asked after swallowing the last dregs of the warm sludge.
“Hmm, maybe,” I answered having to think quickly. Ben was the second youngest brother of his large family and I wanted to impress him with my ability to be cool. Ben’s brothers were all motorheads and owned muscle cars. This was a friendship I could receive benefits from and Ben was a blonde square jaw that could help me learn a few things about the ladies, besides that, he had some very cute cousins.
I snuck out of my room and black light seeped out of the single bulb planted into the ceramic fixture at the centre of acoustic tile ceiling. I could throw pencils and let them stick in the cardboard squares if I threw them just right.
“What are you guys doing?” My brother asked as he and Martin, Ben’s youngest brother, played on the Pong game.
“None of your business,” I squawked.
“Tell me, or I’ll tell Dad.” Roger insisted.
“Listening to music, you ass.” I told him, my eyebrows rose and teeth gritted.
“It’s none of your business.” I repeated.
“Whatever…” Roger returned to the blinking black and white tennis match with Martin.

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I snuck around the corner and slowly opened the door to the mudroom. The fridge was old and loud. The Kelvinator had been given to my mother from her mother. I reached up to slowly pull back on the snap latch that opened loudly. I knew if I pulled back just right and held the door firmly nothing would be heard by my parents who seemed to be doing a great deal of laughing upstairs.
My mother’s ears were very sharp and whenever we snuck into the loud refrigerator she would holler, “Who’s in the fridge? You’ll ruin your appetite!”
The laughter from upstairs thundered louder and I quickly pulled the fridge door open gently holding my shoulder to stop the latch from squealing. I grabbed two more beers and gently shut the door because the telling latch was just as loud closing as it was opening.
I pulled the leaf of the handle to an opening position and guided the white door to close. Then with focussed resolve I moved the handle into its upright home. No noise.
I shucked the cold beers under my sweatshirt and walked across the basement living space in front of my brother and Martin.
“Get outa the way.” Roger yelled.

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I scurried past the game players and opened my bedroom door. The bulb sang with purple haze across my bright sweatshirt and I glowed with cold sweat that the cold bottles had shed on my thin belly. The two beers I pulled out from under my white covering shone in the dark light and
Ben and I enjoyed a second round of libations.
“Do you like these guys?” I asked Ben.
“ Creedence Clearwater …isn’t it?” Ben asked.
“Yep.” I smiled at Ben’s correct response.
“A little dated…but they’re okay.” Ben wasn’t too impressed, I could tell, but I hadn’t had time to come up with some great stash of appropriate LPs.
I had never taken music seriously. My Uncle Ed introduced me to Johnny Cash and A boy named Sue on his loop-to-loop tape machine, but that had been half a decade earlier. My brother
Roger had taken an interest in top forty hits, and I realized it was time to learn about the music.
It had been two months since I decided to save $200 to buy the stereo system that took up half my tiny bedroom. Ben was impressed with the eight-track and ability to record straight from radio stations. I wouldn’t have to spend a fortune on albums, but the system also had a cassette tape deck. The smaller tape cartridges were easier to handle and work with than the bulky eighttrack bricks.
Ben and I finished our second round of beers.

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“Want some thing else?” I asked Ben.
“Sure, but won’t your folks count how many beers are missing?” Ben was cautious.
“Wait here.” I motioned for him to keep track of the stereo recording from the radio.
I was growing bold with the second beer in my blood system. I knew where my parents kept the hard liquor in the kitchen and everyone was kept busy so Ben and I could enjoy our drinking secretly. I hadn’t even attempted to drink much more than a sip of beer since the first Feast I’d attended, but I wanted to impress my friend.
I tiptoed up the stairs of the basement recreation room and opened the kitchen door. No one was around so moving quietly I flowed around the fridge to the liquor cabinet in the corner. Quickly grabbing two clear beer mugs I poured vodka and orange juice into the large glasses, with no ice for fear of causing a distraction for my parents visiting in the living room next to the small kitchen.
I slipped the door open with my toe and sneaked by down the steps to my room. Martin and
Roger had grown more curious with each passing game and were on their bellies…I stepped over them with the frosted mugs of orange fire…unnoticed.
“There ya go, Ben.” I served him the first screwdriver of his life minus the Galiano liquer.
“What have we here?” Ben took a sip. “Ahh, vodka and O.J.…gotta love it.”

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We sipped till the concoction was gone and I ran to the kitchen twice more before each of us felt little more than numb.
“Time to go!” Ben’s dad hollered. “Caamohn kids…eet’s time to leave.”
“Oh shit, Ben…you gotta go.” I whispered.
For some reason I remember the whole incident purely, even though’ I was drunk. I know that
Ben and I were both drunk, but I cautioned him to keep quiet and get home and crawl into bed.
“Don’t talk…just fall ashleep in tha car.” I recall slurring.
“Yep…that’s just what I’m gonna do.” Ben agreed.
I helped him up the stairs through the back door to his car hoping no one would notice the pair of us. We were stumbling a little and weaving like wind blown leaves, but under the cover of the passenger side and dark of the night I managed to get Ben into the backseat.
That night I tossed and turned in the lower bunk of the iron bunk bed I had been given by a church member who no longer needed the ancient, creaking stacked hammocks. During the course of the evening my mother had offered blueberry pie for dessert.
I loved blueberry pie and had two pieces before hosting the booze binge with Ben. That night I awoke to find myself covered in thick black circles soaked in whiskey, lemon gin, vodka and

120 beer. My enthusiasm to show how bad I could be had resulted in mixing as many different kinds of alcoholic concoctions for my guest as we could stand…we didn’t stand for long.
It was 3 o’clock in the morning when I folded my stained sheets together and brought the blueberry stew into the laundry room. The excuse would be a quick attack of the stomach flu, I reasoned.
I managed to beg off of the hockey outing that Sunday morning two hours later because of the night of barfing. When my father came home and I’d slept off the remaining alcoholic poisoning the phone rang. It was Ben’s dad at the other end of the line.
My father asked me to come upstairs and go into his office. Up until this appointment a round in dad’s office meant I was in trouble and would be taking a series of swats, but something strange happened that day and my father began to speak.
“So you didn’t really have the flu last night did you?” My father queried as he looked out of the office’s window at our neighbour’s aluminium shed.
“Well, kinda…” I replied.
“Ben’s Dad just told me what happened when they got home last night.” My father said it like a knowing detective solving a case.
“Well, I did give Ben a couple of beers.” I tried to hold out on giving a full explanation.
“You gave him more than that, Rand.” My father pried at my hesitant mouth.
“Yeah, I guess we did get into some booze.”

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“Well, when Ben got home last night everyone went to bed.” My father continued.
I nodded my head not knowing that more was coming.
“His father heard a noise in the living room and found Ben on his hands and knees looking for something.” My father was smiling.
“Well, what was he looking for?” I asked as he piqued my curiosity.
“His father tapped his shoulder and asked him, ‘what are you doing, Ben?’”
“I lost fifty cents, Dad. Ben told his father.” My father was enjoying the full-length revelation of the night before.
“Dad, I’m drunk. Ben admitted to his Dad.” My father finally explained bursting into a fit of laughter. “You guys were drinking last night. Why? What were you thinking, Rand?”
“Well, I just wanted to try it.” I replied.
“Did you like it?” My father bent forward from the tall leather office chair and a wheel squeaked.
“It was fun…well, up until I woke up in all those smashed blueberries and the stench of lemon gin.” I explained.
“Yeah, that must have been fun.” My father agreed with my conclusions. “But what were you thinking?”
“I just wanted to know what it was like.” I explained. “It looked like fun. But I’m not going to be doing that ever again.”
“Well, I hope not.” My father looked at me with straight eyes. “I’m not going to spank you,
Rand. You’ve obviously outgrown that method of punishment.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My father was letting me off the hook, even though he’d caught me in a lie.

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“You’ve suffered enough.” He continued explaining. “I just want you to know that alcohol is a very dangerous thing.”
“I know, Dad.” I quickly agreed. “I just wanted to try it but I promise never to do that again without you knowing about it.”
“Promise?” My father raised his eyebrows.
“I promise,” I looked straight at him, “it’s just not worth it.”
“Alright,” My father rolled his chair back to the black desk that occupied a full third of the square office. “You go think about this…you go think about what you want to do with your life.”
“Okay, Dad.” I rose and gave him a hug, smiling.
I walked out of the office into the kitchen where the theft of whiskey, lemon gin and vodka had occurred. My mother sat at the table sipping on a cup of coffee, she looked at me and smiled.
I said nothing and waddled through the kitchen to the stairs to the basement. I smiled as I moved into the basement and watched my brothers gawking at the television. I couldn’t believe my luck. I had managed to grow up, I thought.
I lay down on my lower bunk staring at the stereo. I promised myself that alcohol would remain a mystery for some time to come. It would be two years before the temptation of poisoning my body with booze would return. I was sure a lesson had been learned. My bed still wreaked of lemon gin and I went to the bathroom to grab an air freshening spray. It didn’t smell much better

after a good spraying but the scent of potpourri when compared to regurgitated lemon gin and
123 blueberries seemed a trade for the better.
Ben and I ran into each other the following week at church with a smile.
“You got caught, eh?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, Rand.” Ben apologized. “I don’t know what happened…but my dad was cool about it.”
I smiled and smacked his shoulder. “Well, thanks to your dad, I didn’t get any major smacks myself.”
With that we laughed about Ben looking for change while bombed out of his gourd. Willie, Ken and Curt were all impressed by my ability to find booze and get a friend drunk, but I informed them I’d had enough after my first hangover.
“I’d rather play a little hockey on Sunday morning than throw up great balls of blueberry wads.”
I explained with wide eyes brushing the back of my hand across my forehead. The quartet chuckled and we went around to the back of the school while church services were being held in the theatre. Curt and Willie had begun smoking and we all liked the company of our peers in the schoolyard. Adults just weren’t cool—except when they forgave you for a sin or two.

124
Fall 1974
Mr. Norberg substituted for Ms. M’lot during a study hall in seventh grade. We called the feminist
Ms. M’wholelot
because her round body spilled over the small chair behind her desk.
Mr. Norberg was a legend and students always appreciated his sudden appearance. He had thick brown locks tied into a ponytail. His calm voice and logical manner held all at attention like a flock of astonished groupies. We knew how cool Mr. Norberg was and in this one session of study hall in the middle of silence he revealed his philosophy on women to us.
Nira was a dark Trinidadian immigrant who always complained about the school system’s educational requirements. She complained because she was smart…not because they were difficult.
“I don’t understand this, Mr. Norberg.” Nira asked, as she pointed to an exercise in her textbook.
Mr. Norberg rose from
Ms. M’wholelot’s
domain of plastic and aluminium to see what Nira was studying. She was an advanced student and would move into med school or a hospital’s psyche ward as chief resident I was sure. She ultimately taught English as a second language to incoming immigrants.
Mr. Norberg stared at Nira’s textbook then turned to the blackboard and began scratching out a diagram.

In the centre of the black sheet he etched a large block wall. At one side of the board a small
125 male stick figure stood with large bulging eyes. On the other side of the board behind the wall he scratched out a bosomy woman with curly hair.
“When I was little…I could only see the female as a servant to my needs…my mother.” Mr.
Norberg began. He erased the small stick figure with big eyes and drew a line pointing at the buxom stick figure’s head. He replaced the stick figure with a fuller chest and sprouts of cacti points about the chin. “As I reached puberty Mr. Hefner gave me a picture of women…many pictures really.”
The class laughed nervously, especially the boys and Mr. Norberg smiled knowingly as we had all taken a chance to ogle Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine somewhere along our teenage paths.
He drew a line from the pubescent etching that focussed on the dusty chalk breasts. “Mr. Hefner gave me the idea that women were meant to be seen and adored as objects of lust and desire.”
The boys squirmed as the girls of the class listened with eyes narrowed at the explanation and the diagram of our enlightened instructor.
“Mr. Hefner didn’t give me the full picture and I had to learn a few lessons about real women…I had to grow into adulthood.” Mr. Norberg explained, as he washed away the scrubby teen and drew a full figure of a man with broad shoulders and bulging thighs and arms.

“As I reached maturity and learned from dating and talking to women I began to see the full
126 picture of womanhood. I understood the focus and fears, the concept of childbirth, and the most important lesson of all. I learned what it meant to love someone.”
He stroked away the wall that was blocking the growing male’s view of the female. He stroked several arrows that pointed at the female stick figure’s head, shoulders, breasts, knees and toes.
“I understood the full concept of adult love. I could compare feelings of lust or love. I began to realize that mature love revolved not just upon the size of a woman’s breasts, the colour of her hair and eyes, but much more what was inside her mind…and what I allowed in my mind.”
The class remained silent as Mr. Norberg erased his quickly scrawled symbols of male and female. We didn’t know what to say…we were in puberty and lust and love were raging in our heads, and the adult seminar of mature love was foreign, but I vowed to try and remember.
Nira piped up, “That’s not what I was asking?”
“You’re sure,” Mr. Norberg answered, “because it seems to me that the question you asked really isn’t in that textbook…it’s in your head, Nira.”
Nira blushed as much as the dark-skinned genius could. She smiled awkwardly. She had been exposed in her attempt to upstage the school’s legendary hippie, and her teeth grew out like fangs from under her upper lip. I knew she was mad, but there was nothing she could do to reduce the size of the lesson we had just received from the guru of Oak Park.

I looked at women the same as I ever had after that, even fantasizing about them during guilty
127 minutes of self-love. Mr. Norberg had revealed a strange world of possibility, actual understanding between male and female, and the opportunity for true equality. I hoped to learn the mature love that he described to us that day.
Mr. Bilan was a short, white English teacher with thick mushroom clouds of black hair on top of his head and under his lip. He had introduced our class Dostoyevsky’s “extraordinary man” with a book report lesson and his views of masturbation were as clear as Mr. Norberg’s.
“Isn’t masturbation the most selfish love of all?” Mr. Bilan asked a surly red head one morning.
“UH..uh..no.” The blushing rose managed.
“Sure it is…you’re not sharing love with anyone…that’s selfishness.” Mr. Bilan answered.
The combined lessons of Norberg and Bilan began pitting me against the selfish love of the
Worldwide Church of God and the idea of equity in human male/female relationships. Somehow there was a problem with the ideal of saving one’s own skin to be a pillar in the World of God in another realm. I had stuff to think about…and so I did.
Sport and Sweet
My father was the coach for many of the church’s recreational activities. His athletic prowess noticed on the ball diamond originally and then Mr. Murphy discovered my father’s talent for

128 playing hockey and early Sunday morning program was started for all the men who were interested.
My father knew that the church’s strict compliance to
Sabbath-keeping would keep us from playing community hockey so a program for kids’ hockey was started at the Charleswood
Recreation Centre also. It was an outdoor skating rink facility just like any northern town it had a warming shack, change rooms and three outdoor ice surfaces with boards that surrounded the slippery sheets. A fourth sheet of ice lay on the snow-covered baseball diamond for figure skaters.
The community club wreaked of old sweat like every hockey player’s equipment bag. The strange pungent potato sack scent is a hallmark to every hockey arena and hockey player that has ever existed or played the game. The measure of sweat wrung out from uniforms and hockey gloves could fill oil tankers if anyone ever took the time to collect the unctuous liquid.
This facility on Culpepper Road would become the learning ground for my church friends and me. We would become skilled skaters and puck handlers during frosty mornings while everyone else was going to church on those frozen Sunday mornings.
Everyone liked my father because of his expertise on ice. I wished he would have gone to the
NHL and began a real career in the arena of our life, but his new religion had taken that possibility away from him. His own father had taken that possibility away when my dad was sent to work for his half-brother at the age of thirteen. My father would become a concrete

contractor while other uncles were sent to teachers’ colleges, electrician trade schools and bus
129 lines to create an income for the family that had barely eked its way through the Depression and war years.
When we joined the church my father separated himself from his brother’s business and decided to strike out on his own. In the growing city of Winnipeg he was able to find work as a basement contractor and my father slowly expanded his business to hire different people from the church.
As time went on and I reached my middle teens more and more school friends took an interest in our Sunday morning hockey scrimmages. Randy Hepner, Dennis Brears and others realized the casual camaraderie of the spiritual Jews was quite refreshing. Mr. Murphy emphasized good hitting and general Christian attitudes that must be practiced when playing hockey. Eventually hitting would be taken out of the game and gentlemanly cordiality would rule the day in the
WCG’s hockey programs. Over time we would start playing on Saturday nights after the sun had set and church tournaments would grow into opportunities to meet God’s people from other provinces.
In 1976 when I was fifteen my father allowed me to finally join the Mens’ league and during the first game of the tournament we played Mr. Murphy’s team from Alberta…two provinces west of Manitoba. He had been transferred two or three years earlier to his home province.
The church transferred ministers over the course of time. Mr. Murphy had received an ordination and moved into the realm of Pastor.

I got on the ice for my first shift against the Irish Canadian at centre. We faced off when the
130 referee dropped the puck and my winger took the puck and carried it into our opponent’s end of the ice. I drifted right of the goalmouth and found the small piece of round hard rubber on the end of my stick. I flicked my wrists quickly and watched as the red light went on behind the steel mesh of the indoor arena. I had scored my first official tournament goal.
My eyes lit up to match the bright alarm behind the goaltender and I threw my arms skyward in celebration. I rushed to the bench and sat down to hands slapping my back, helmeted head and shoulders.
“Way to go, Rand.”
“Like father, like son.”
“Atta boy!”
The entire team had no intention of losing to Mr. Murphy’s team. I thought about peach pits.
My second shift found me facing Mr. Murphy again and the hard frozen puck bounced on the blue bull’s eye of the face off circle. I shifted the puck back to the defenseman and skated on toward the open centre of the rink. Again my winger, who had the deft skills of a ninja as he stick handled with the puck, worked his way up ice with the large black coin through the ranks of our opposition.

We crossed the blue line and I drifted like a slow moving iceberg to me right. Once more I
131 found my stick bouncing the puck right to left as I stick handled after a swift pass and I lifted the puck up over the goalie’s extended right arm with a quick flick of my wrists.
The light rose to life like the globe atop a police cruiser and the building’s fans erupted, as I skated behind the net pumping my legs as though I were running wildly with delight. Again I returned to the bench while sticks slapped against the solid white boards in celebration. We were ahead by two goals and my debut on ice with the mature skaters became a dream. I wheezed out the cold air in my lungs and smiled uncontrollably.
Quickly a third shift came up and once more we moved into the far end of the arena and I shifted left this time to tuck the puck between the goalie’s sprawling pads. I watched as the puck hit the steel and leather behind the retreating tender, raising my stick like a victory flag claiming my own personal climb to the mountain.
The team surrounded me in celebration. The natural hat trick of three straight goals was mine after just one outing with the skilled skaters of the Mens’ league. My face was as red as the goal judge’s beacon and I was on top of the world.
“How long you gonna keep this up, Rand?” A sweating bench mate bellowed.
“As long as I can.” I smirked and spat onto the icy playing surface.

Mr. Murphy’s team scored a quick goal and we were ahead…3-1. Once more I moved to the
132 centre of the rink to win the puck. A loose drop brought the puck back to their left defence but quickly we fore-checked and stole the small black circle to once again gain the offensive and move into the opposing end of the cold rink.
I picked up an errant pass and swivelled my hips to the right one more time. Using the large rightwinger in front of me as a screen to block the goalie’s view, I leaned on my stick with all my strength. I tried to keep the puck just off the surface of the brittle ice and watched as it sailed by the right ankle of my opponent. The goaltender butterflied his legs and reached for the round bullet with his left hand.
I stared as the mesh netting flared and once more a light appeared behind the red steel horizon of our opposing goalmouth.
I shook my head and skated back to the bench to hoots and hollers of disbelief.
“Well, are you glad to be skating with the big boys?” Another smiling teammate queried…and I shook my head.
“I can’t believe this.” I smiled and smacked my stick against the interior of the sturdy pine boards of the rink. “C’mon guys lets keep it up!”
I could never have dreamed the opportunity of skating with experienced players would result in such an introduction. I was skating on a cloud.

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The first period ended and we marched off to the dressing room. I shed my helmet and sat down first while the rest of the team brushed my auburn scrub cut with sweaty hands and cheers of victory.
“We’re number one…we’re number one!”
“Settle down, guys.” My father calmed the cheering team. “Nice work, Rand. I never would have imagined…”
“Yeah…way to go, Rand…just like your Dad…BETTER EVEN.” An overly enthusiastic goalie hollered.
“Yep, a chip off the old block.” Another senior player added.
I looked at my father and he just shook his head with a smile. “Proud of you son…keep it up.”
My father changed the focus of the intermission’s euphoria and we discussed further strategies because Mr. Murphy’s team would not lay back and let a young rookie take over the game. The chalk at the end of my father’s index finger chiselled itself away as Xs and Os were drawn with arrows to show each player how to get out of our own end of the ice quickly and with little possibility of our opponent scoring against us.

The buzzer squawked and we placed sweat-soaked gloves back on pulsing fingers. Helmets
134 were strapped back onto glistening bald scalps, and wet strands of thick and thin hair, depending on the experience and hairline of each team member. We stomped onto the thick black mats that protected our skates’ blades from the concrete floor beneath.
During the first shift of the second period I scored again and the game became irrelevant for me.
I had scored five times in five shifts and a golden moment of sweet victory could be no greater than that for a rookie player in his first game with the men who had been my mentors. We finished the game winning 6-1 and Mr. Murphy shook my hand as we lined up to face each other for the gentle tradition of greeting, congratulation and condolence.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, Rand.” Mr. Murphy shook my sweaty palm and slapped my padded pants with his stick.
Not long after a young player by the name of Wayne Gretzky would rise to fame in fortune in the
World Hockey League and make mince meat of the record books for years to come. My small victory was quickly forgotten.
The years spent in the church hockey league would string out into sessions of mid-morning partying and I rarely experienced the euphoria of five goals but for pick up scrimmages again.
The game of hockey helped me through some very difficult times and troubling bouts in future life. Both existences have similar parameters; each has blue lines, red lines and goals to score.

135
After that first game my life changed, but the confidence of a young man is in his strength not his wisdom.
At the top of Manitoba’s legislation building there stands a huge statue that looks like the image of the god Mercury called the golden boy overlooking the city from a height of 25 stories. He faces the north and symbolizes the future and past for a province with a little known history but a horizontal line of flowing grain, eternal winter and wind.
The golden boy stands seventeen feet high and his time atop the government building started in
1919. He was initially bronze, but grew to shine in a 24 carat golden hue in the 1950s. He finally illuminated the top of the capitol dome on the eve of Canada’s Centennial in 1967 with a brilliant electric torch. The torch he bears is a call to prairie youth to join in his eternal pursuit of a prosperous future.
I have never been fond of any sort of golden boy mystique, but Armstrong’s church clung to the philosophies of fate and destiny as though God were guiding every step of each converted member while committed to carrying the torch of a 1 st Century Christian. The myth continues in many of the splinter churches that eventually sprung from Armstrong’s golden promise.
September 1977

In school I entered the tenth grade and Oak Park High School. It would be the year I would
136 discover what a stalking bully could do to a human being. Dean seemed to have been born with steel toes and an open eye for conquest. I was in Shop class when Dean decided I would be at the end of his vicious iron tongue and the prescribed target of steely toes.
“Zachass…hey, Zachass!” Dean called during the first class of shop.
I turned to look at the muscled plaid shirt and shrugged, “It’s Zacharias.”
“Zachass…that’s what it is now.” Dean sneered at me and wiped his beard with the middle section of his thick plaid-covered forearm.
My girlfriend lived in Steinbach; a small town just south east of Winnipeg, and for the next eight months the stories of fright and folly I would endure in high school shop class was her burden to bear.
“C’mon…Zach…ASS. Hit me right here on the chin…you first. I dare you.” Dean threatened during each class.
“No thanks…you’d kill me.” I mouthed calmly pointing at his steel-toed boots with shivering eyes.

The florescent lights brightly displayed the polished tan colouring of Dean’s boots. How a
137 motorhead like Dean would have the cleanest boots in class amazed me, but the thought of his armoured toes removing my teeth with repeated blows was a picture I feared in my mind weekend after weekend for the majority of that school year.
I often thought of Dale’s purple bruises after a week of healing from Ken’s uncontrollable fury.
Kirsten listened patiently during the times we reclined on the faux leather couch. One day after the endless verbal abuse and frozen pictures of my face looking like Dale’s…Dean suddenly stopped his harangue.
He stopped bullying me and started talking like I was his best friend. It was the second time I learned about the turnarounds that life offers at the most unexpected times. I had a cousin named
Johnny who was a friend of Dean’s and to this day I believe that Johnny was approached to find me one night and kick my ass. I asked Johnny about it twenty years later and he had no recollection of my imaginative scenario…he did remember Dean.
I think Johnny saved me from the persecution of the steel-toed bully…he just didn’t remember. I always will.
The months of torment left me to understand the brutality forced upon the weak. I couldn’t stand seeing kids get bullied. I took it upon myself to help whenever a situation arose that needed some vigilante justice, and I had the power to do something about the perceived injustice. It

138 made my brothers’ lives easier…and gave me the opportunity to dole out righteous indignation upon a cruel, heartless world when I felt courageous and justified. It made me feel better to stand up for the little guy every now and then.
It’s also one of the reasons that this story is being written.
Dawn of the 80s
After Ken moved to Fort Garry, I started hanging with him and Craig on the weekends about a year later. It was a way to get away from home life and have a party life on the weekends.
Ken’s parents were less strict and when we were under Craig’s care…we were as golden as the capitol dome’s golden resident. After my debut on the ice rink we all became fast friends and with the age of majority set at eighteen…Winnipeg bars were known to be delinquent when checking teens for identification.
It helped to have facial hair when feigning the age of consent and I worked up the best moustache I could. Ken was blond and had very fine hair. He didn’t need the beard because his virulent build worked to his advantage and it was rare that we were asked for identification.
On these roving Saturday night flights we drove around in Craig’s black van. Ben’s brother Sam had a Chevy van of the same obsidian shade and we cruised the nightlife of the urban sprawl.
The evening ritual of cruising Portage Avenue, Winnipeg’s western tributary of traffic, was the thing to do on the weekends. Portage is a four-lane touring road that could erupt into a racing strip at any stoplight and complete visibility of all the touring groups of vanners, camaro-lovers and bikers.

I saw my first stripper just outside of the town of Stony Mountain as the 70s drew to a close.
139
The provincial penitentiary perched atop a modest hill and looked like the house of Usher waiting to fall.
The nude performer was tall and dark. She resembled an artist’s rendition of Cleopatra I had seen in an elementary textbook years before. The sultry princess had a large white bathtub to slip in and out of with bubbles and a large feathery fan that revealed and concealed the parts of her body she used to tantalize and tease the brusque male crowd.
Someone whistled from the back of the bar and I watched in silence as the bare ballerina of the bathtub slithered and shimmered in graceful revelations of nipple and hip. Her dark eyes flickered like the flames of a September bonfire and as quickly as she had shed her sequins and satin the show was over.
“What next?” Ken queried as he took in the last slug of foam from his glass mug.
“Where do you guys want to go?” Craig echoed.
“A lounge.” I replied. I always held a fascination for the lounges of the city and found them to be much more civil than the blue-collar roundups found in the smoky bars and pubs. The Stony
Mountain Inn was perched on the edge of barbarian life, and any distance I could put between the jailhouse pub and us was a welcome event in my mind.
“Grant Motor Inn.” Craig suggested.
“That’ll work,” I answered getting up from the black plastic seat. “Should work just fine…we don’t need ID…and its sort of like a lounge.”

140
“Sure…works for me.” Ken peeled himself free from the duct tape holding his bar stool together like two pieces of Velcro and we filed out to the gravel parking lot. Tufts of crabgrass revealed the border of the busy parking lot and shivered with the light breeze of the crisp September air.
“No mosquitoes tonight.” Craig cheered as he hopped into the driver’s captain chair. The heavy prairie nights usually involved rounds of swatting arms, legs and exposed flesh when we exited drinking establishments to return to the vans.
The first five minutes in any vehicle could be spent mashing mosquitoes into windshields and side windows eliminating the pesky bloodsuckers. Once the van would get moving the tiny vampires would flit around ankles and an unknowing victim could find the swollen pockmarks of a hundred mosquito bites within minutes.
During the trip over to the Grant Inn, we listened to Supertramp asking us to take a look at my girlfriend. The Canadian rock system was still worshiping Bachman Turner Overdrive, Neil
Young , and Paul Anka but we were moving into realms of German and English underground bands.
We like to listen Germany’s Kraftwerk play autobahn music with semi truck horns rushing through our heads, Manfred Mann , Peter Gabriel and Pink Floyd became standard listening material as time marched on. Craig’s stereo system blared with deep bass and thin treble pleasing us with the falsetto notes of Queen and Journey . The rainbow of music was complete whenever we managed to pick up a few girls to create the mystique of a magical road cruise.

On these Saturday nights I recall rarely meeting any women. I’d end up sleeping on Ken’s
141 parents’ couch and Sarge; his spayed Cocker Spaniel, would lick my salty heels and toes until I’d whirl to sleep. I hated the bed spins.
That summer I got invited to a Van In . The year before Ken had tagged along with Craig to the rally of Van owners who enjoyed a weekend of competition and wet t-shirt contests. The park north of the city was reserved for a complete schedule of best van contests; van pulls and wet tshirt contests.
“RAZZLE DAZZLE FRAZZLE FRITZ…WE WANT TO SEE SOME FUCKIN’ TITS!”
The man wolves howled in unison as the opening night titty contest began. The year before Ken had shown me pictures of two beautiful women stripped to nothing competing for the winning spot.
“It was glorious, Rand.” Ken told me, and after seeing the pictures my mind was set to attend.
The evening turned into a poor sequel compared to the orgy of pleasure that Ken’s picture had promised. A thick brunette with a butterfly tattoo above her left breast won the contest by default when she became the sole competitor to doff her wet cotton covering. The hapless hopes of more than a hundred hungry teen wolves picturing the round puppy noses hidden beneath the wet coverings of the shy princesses were quickly dashed.
The field of wet females turned into flighty hens and flew from the howling wolves wishing to be razzled and dazzled by bare nipples in bright spotlights.

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I ran into the winner later in the evening draped around her straggly boyfriend. His tattered jeans and spidery hair revealed the biker mama to be inebriated beyond her own control. Her right eye drifted in a circle like a fly caught in a whirlpool and she fell to sleep in a plaid chez lounge of plastic near an open fire when her body finally succumbed to the alcoholic flood put upon her system.
Ken and I walked around for a little while looking for some excitement, but the vanners were tired and hope for any kind of midnight entertainment vanished so we crawled into our sprawling tent and fell asleep.
The next day I won a jousting contest atop a sturdy beam that reeked of creosote and diesel oil.
It was an old railroad tie. Opponents were pitted against one another on either end of the thick beam and given thickly packed burlap sacks of straw as weapons.
The whistle blowing at the beginning of each bout gave notice to knock one’s antagonist off balance only to the earthly realm of the screaming spectators.
It was a Saturday morning and my first attempt at breaking the law of the sun that so dominated my parents’ beliefs. I took my first win as a sign of contempt for the strict sun worship existence that my parents had placed on our family over the past eight years. It was a good day and even though the breast contest had been a disappointment the case of beer awarded me after winning the jousting matches was more than enough to make up for the lack of female exposure.
We drove home the next day early when a thick cloud lingered over the rally.

“No sense in getting all wet on the last day.” Craig said. He had the ability to see through the
143 glory of a party with the swift logic of a Vulcan . The Heide boys liked Star Trek and anything that commanded the use of logic was a welcome addition to any of our conversations.
We went home.
My father continued setting up basement foundations with crews of 10-30 men depending on the industry’s demand. His business grew and prospered. I started working on Sunday mornings for extra money and the physical strengthening that can only come from concrete labour. His professional advice was sought by many of the tradesmen in the growing church.
Single-handedly my father convinced many of the drywallers, carpenters, insulators and electricians that owning a business was the only way to get ahead in the Worldwide Church of
God.
The holy days of the churches doctrinal understanding made many professions unattainable to the loyal flock. We couldn’t work on Saturdays, and with the strict instruction of non-violence and stiff adherence to the statues and laws of the Old Testament the idea of running one’s own business became a better, and easier, career path.
This allowed a person to make more money and work on Sundays when many residents of the busy prairie city would not work on the more recognized and established
Lord’s Day
.
The idea of going to post-secondary schools became less and less important as Armstrong condemned evolution and higher education, but still I chose as many university level courses that would allow me entry into a university. Ambassador College lay in the back of my mind, but it

144 was quickly closed during the receivership put on the church from the state of California.
Contradictions in the church’s belief system seemed to arise but time marched on and I was only a young man trying to find his way in the grand scheme of things, with a monkey on my back the size of King Kong.
Armstrong just wouldn’t go away.
One of the most lethal guilt trips he put upon his followers regarded the responsibility of those
“who knew that they knew the truth and knowledge of the word of God.” It was done in the classic fashion of doublespeak almost plagiarized from
George Orwell’s
novel, 1984 .
By 1977, things were proceeding in a difficult manner for the church. I remember recruiting by going door-to-door with pamphlets advertising Garner Ted’s speaking campaign at the Winnipeg
Concert Hall. The huge concert venue was grand and expensive. My parents had taken our entire family to see different musicals and concerts at the spectacular facility. To Ted Armstrong it was little more than a small stop on his worldwide tour.
The public were invited to here the words of the popular televangelist. It was during this tour that my ex-girlfriend’s father, Earl became wary of Armstrong’s sincerity. During the two-day visit Kirsten’s father had seen Garner Ted in a small Chinese restaurant enjoying a large Cuban

cigar (legal in Canada), drinking and acting like a sailor. The Mennonite father who had abandoned his own puritan faith for this true church couldn’t take the hypocrisy and departed
145 from the final end time work of Christ .
The era of 1972-75 were extremely difficult on the church membership as Armstrong and
Armstrong seemed to be at odds. The elder patriarch had left the airwaves to his son, but with the discovery of adultery, even the charisma and charm of the Cary Grant look-alike couldn’t be saved from rumours that became unsettling for the entire membership.
I was sixteen when my heart could no longer take the quiet sacrifice and almost certain deception of the Worldwide Church of God. The shame of Sabbath-keeping, living by the dietary laws of the old covenant and holy day worship from the age of eight were building in my mind with each passing day.
When Kirsten’s father left the church and we no longer associated with their family I spent little time healing from the loss of first love. Cherylyn filled the gap quickly being a classmate, a local girl and an athlete with a grin that shined like the sun. It was one of those turnaround times in life and I became more popular with school acquaintances.
The one problem that would soon lead to a doomed matching with Cherylyn was the fact that her parents weren’t members of the church. Armstrong had strong opinions of unconverted mates .
This meant that if I had any intentions of carrying on a serious relationship with this schoolgirl something would have to happen…she would have to join our church…or I would have to leave it.

146
***
By the start of my junior year in high school the pairing with Cherylyn ended. During a summer excursion to a friend’s cabin I forced to make a decision between eating the offered pork chops and standing for the laws of the ancient writ. I declined the pork chops and Cherylyn took issue with my strict background…life moved ahead…and I lost my second girlfriend to the other white meat.
I worried about this second romantic loss for a little while but with time all wounds were healed and Cherylyn and I moved on to being friends as we always had been. Mr. K was the coach of
Oak Park’s men’s athletic teams and asked me to play on the freshman basketball team. A new school district rule allowed for varsity players to play on freshman teams and Mr. K liked my enthusiastic manner.
“You’ll be good for the team, Rand.” Mr. K announced after pulling me into his office and Kent, a classmate stood next to me.
“Kent, I like the way you play and even though you’re a little short…it won’t be a problem on the frosh team…you’re a playmaker.” Mr. K smiled with diplomacy.
I walked home from school on cloud nine. I hadn’t been asked, and I never offered, to play on any of the school’s teams. My father’s strict adherence to the statues of ancient Israelites had kept my participation in school sports restricted to intramural play during lunch hours and after school.

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Mr. K knew some of the skills I possessed from scrimmages in gym class and his invitation to play on the frosh team was more than I could deny.
“DAD…Dad…I’m supposed to play on the freshman team for basketball.” I informed my father as he sat bent over a set of blueprints from an upcoming project.
“So…how’s that going to work for Saturdays?” He asked.
“C’mon Dad…I’ll just play after sunset on Sabbaths…or before if the game is on Fridays?” I asked.
“Well, if it works for your coach…but you’re not breaking the Sabbath.” My father announced.
I hung my head, but a smile still flashed from my lowered chin. I was going to play some ball, and I could make it work. The rest of the team liked me because I was a varsity player and we had a fun season even though I couldn’t go on overnight out of town tournaments. I didn’t care…something of a normal high school experience was enough for the time being.
As time passed Armstrong’s declining membership and loss of his son to the thralls of Satan left the older evangelist in a period of thought. He had remarried and his young bride quickly begged for a divorce…Armstrong granted her the divorce and a substantial alimony package while claiming in letter after letter to his membership that “God HATES DIVORCE!” A moratorium of the membership and statistics of youth in the church staying with their parents chosen faith soon followed the embattled churches leadership.

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“9 out of every 10 young people are leaving God’s Church!” Armstrong preached to avoid his own personal tragedies…and the church had a new focus…the problem of lost youth became paramount. My life once again drew into a slide like it was under a microscope.
The result of Garner Ted being shunned a second time in 1978 from his father’s empire brought a change of direction to the worldwide network of the church. Armstrong went through a heart attack and was told that he’d died. The feisty elder soon proclaimed that God had brought him back from the brink of death, amazingly with the help of good medical assistance.
Another taboo of the church had been medical care. The laying on of hands was all that was required for a true Christian , according to the fiery leader of
God’s church
.
This was the belief and doctrine that was held for the general membership a declared abstinence from any sort of medical help. If the hands of God’s ministry couldn’t heal a person than God’s decision regarding life and death were clear.
The laying on of hands doctrine was one of the most crucial teachings in Armstrong’s doctrinal structure. This was a test of faith and if a person submitted to the brutality of modern medicine his or her faith had to come into question.
My family went through the life and death trauma soon after Armstrong returned from the dead.
As God’s church focussed on youth and Armstrong’s ministry created Youth Opportunities
United (YOU) my brother Roger suffered a severe pain in the right side of his abdomen. My parents looked for guidance from Roy Page, the new pastor who replaced David Fraser, who had

149 replaced Glen White. The church cycled ministers as necessary every 2-3 years. Mr. Page laid hands upon my brother and sent him home with my parents.
Roger lay in the backseat buckling over his seatbelt and finally flopping to a prostate position when the pain became too great for him to sit. A final burst of pain shot him upright.
“Dad, take me to a doctor.” My brother begged.
“Alright, Rog,” My father stepped on the accelerator and moved the muscular Impala to the
Charleswood Walk-in Clinic.
“Hmm, this is a little tender.” The attending surgeon informed my parents. “Take him home, but if he feels a quick release from the pain take him to Grace Hospital…ASAP!”
“What…doctor…what does he have?” My mother asked not knowing the pain her second son was suffering from.
“I think it’s his appendix,” The surgeon informed, “and if it goes he’s going to need to go in quick.”
“Why?” My mother asked unaware of the dangerous situation her son was in.
“If his digestive tract clears and all this inflammation removes itself naturally he’ll be fine.” The doctor instructed. “But…and I mean a big but…if he feels complete comfort all of a sudden it means his appendix has burst…and the poison will seep through him in three hours and he’ll die.”

My parents were both shocked by the seriousness of Roger’s plight. Our family hadn’t been
150 faced with mortality since my father’s accident with the propane blast many winters before. My parents drove back to our minister’s home and Roger received a second anointing to alleviate the very real pain that the sudden attack of appendicitis created.
My brother returned home to lie on my parents’ soft double bed under the watchful eyes of our mother and father.
“Ahhhh…that’s better.” My brother stopped shuddering from the constant pain of the inflamed organ.
“Let’s go!” My father exclaimed after a short conversation with my brother. Roger had informed him that he had no desire to die. My mother weeping had Roger’s left arm atop her shoulder with my father on the other arm as they placed him quickly onto the rear seat of the family sedan.
“Rand…watch out for Robert!” My father demanded as he climbed into the car with a solemn grimace. I had seen my father’s serious side many times when discussing church beliefs, but this was a definite break from the church’s credo…my brother had asked for salvation from a surgeon…not the mighty cloth of God.
Roger spent a week in the Grace Hospital and we visited him on several occasions. His face looked like a grapefruit with thin varicose lines across yellowed cheeks—a zombie reborn—the first time I caught a glimpse of his visage.
“How you doing?” I asked.
“I’ll make it…they tell me it was close.” He whispered.

“Naw…you just like all the attention.” I attempted humour.
“No, Rand…it was close. If I’d a gone in an hour later…I’d be done…done like dinner.”
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Roger arrived home a week later, bent at the waist; he shuffled into our home to lie in front of a television for two more weeks. He lost a lot of weight eating chicken soup and ice cream…easy to digest foods for his poisoned system. Roger had always been made to buy husky jeans…he got skinny with the appendicitis and became a jock after healing from the brush with his own existence.
After Roger returned from the hospital I could no longer conceal my doubt in the belief structure of the church. With the demands of YOU and the aggressive recruitment of young people my father forced things to a head one Saturday morning.
“What do you believe Rand?” He demanded from his black leather recliner, his fingers tapped through an open Bible as he asked me the open-ended question.
“I don’t know, Dad.” I replied with some hesitance. “I just don’t believe that a bunch of old guys from 7,000…2,000…or however many years ago have as much relevance as the church says they do.”
My father looked into his open Bible. “How can you say that?”
“I don’t see this church as being the one and only, Dad.” I replied. “This doesn’t add up. At least not in my mind.”
“You don’t study your bible enough!” My father accused.

152
“No, I guess I don’t,” I agreed.
“Well, why do you go to church then?” He asked me a specific question for the second round of the debate.
“Well, I get to see my friends.” I offered.
“That’s no reason to go to church!” My father grew angry at my simple admission of being a socialite.
“The Bible commands us to keep the Sabbath day holy, honour your father and mother and love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul.” My father replied paraphrasing a few important scriptures he had lived by during the course of his lifetime—not just the life with the
Worldwide Church of God—but also in his previous life as the son of a Mennonite preacher.
“Well, I don’t think everything those guys are saying from the stage is the God’s honest truth.” I answered with my eyes looking at the toes of his dark dress socks. He was getting ready to go to morning services.
“You’re not going to church today.” My father decided. “If the only reason you’re going to church is for friendship…you’re not going. You need to think about the reason you go to church.”
I got up from the short pine bench at his feet and moved through the door of the tiny office. I slid my feet along the hard oak flooring in my white socks and looked at my parents’ closed bedroom door. The hallway was dark with the doors closed. I heard water splashing from the

153 bathroom next to my parents’ room and realized my mother must be readying herself in the bath to go to church. She must have heard the entire conversation, I thought.
I moved through the kitchen and glanced at my brothers who were eating Captain Crunch cereal…a Sabbath day treat for quick breakfasts. My mother still offered us some sweets even though the health conscious women of the church’s membership would not have approved and I smiled at my brothers.
“Well, guess who’s not going to church today?” I asked with a calm stare.
“You’re not?” Robert piped up from behind golden kernels of sugar. “You’re lucky.”
I went down the long steps and hit the plastic covering that protected the bluish green indoor and outdoor carpet that covered our concrete basement floor. My brothers and I had been playing the prank of turning the transparent carpet covering over. The underside had half-inch plastic spear points placed in a diagonal pattern every two inches. I stepped from the smooth plastic covered steps to the overturned carpet covering spikes on the basement floor.
“OWCH! You bastards!” I yelled and both of my brothers laughed loudly knowing I had just skewered the pads of my feet on the spiked sea of overturned barbs. I had learned to step to the side avoiding the dangerous clear protector all together just in case someone had been there before me, but I was preoccupied with the interview with my father, and my brothers had caught me in a delirium of thought over my church-going future.
“That’s enough out of you, Randy!” My father yelled from his office.

154
“They turned the carpet thing over, Dad!” I yelled back up the cavern of stairs. “I’m not yelling at you!”
My father knew of the prank my brothers and I had been playing on each other and didn’t say anything else once he realized the reason for my outburst. He’d succumbed to the sea of spikes himself and warned us about playing tricks on people. We listened to his warning and tried not to let him know when one of us was caught off guard and walked upon the fiery daggers of biting plastic, by gritting our teeth and bearing the pain of our misplaced foot steps.
I went to my room and turned my stereo on. I placed the large black foam headphones on my ears and listened to some of my favourite rock songs through the thick black ringlet wire plugged into the stereo’s console. Burton Cummings was blaring out Stand Tall…don’t you fall. A long cool woman in a black dress was doing something I couldn’t make out because the lyrics were unclear.
I looked around my room at the posters on the wall. Most of them were black light posters that shone in neon hues of a psychedelic rainbow when I inserted the small wattage purple bulb into the tiny ceramic fixture on my ceiling. I loved the way faded jeans and white shirts glowed with a brilliant halo making skin fade to black and a white toothy smile glow with a fluorescent shine.
One of the posters had a box van bouncing up and down and two sets of feet sticking out from the driver’s side door. The cartoon script of the font style read, “If this van’s a rockin’…don’t come a knockin’!”
Another was in simple black and white and required the viewer to read three or four paragraphs…it was my proudest purchase.

155
The white shone when sheathed in black light. Its dagger punch line was aimed at all who bore authority in the real world.
I can’t remember the rebellious limerick by heart, but it went something like this.
One day the body parts got into an argument.
The eyes claimed that they were the boss of the body because they guided the body everywhere it went because of their ability to see. Therefore they were the leaders. The brain argued that it was the boss because it ran all the parts of the body. It was the main operator of all the muscles, and made every one move into action.
A few other parts claimed the position of authority when finally the asshole piped up and claimed ultimate authority. The other parts of the body all began to laugh uproariously until the asshole got so mad it puckered up and stopped working.
A day later the eyes couldn’t see, the brain couldn’t think and all of the other parts of the body went into paralysis. They quickly decided to make the asshole boss.
The morale of the story?
If you are the boss you must be an asshole.
I don’t know why my father never took the poster down then, but it was my quintessential core.
I figured that anyone who wanted that much control over other people had to be an asshole. I realized that my poster was right, but decided after my parents came home with the rest of the family that I would try to make an effort to at least appear interested in going to church.

Perhaps I was being an asshole.
***
The next week on Saturday when I went to church Roy Page the pastor asked if I would meet with him after services.
156
“Rand, I want you to be the president of the new Youth Opportunities United corps of the South church.” Mr. Page began. The Winnipeg membership had grown to such immense size that eventually three separate congregations formed.
“Well, I don’t know what to say.” I answered.
“Mr. Armstrong has shown us that the youth of our church need attention and activity. Will you take the position?” Mr. Page asked me again.
During the course of the last two years most of my friends had indeed left the teachings of the church. I knew that Mr. Page wasn’t aware of my own misgivings regarding the life of a sabbatarian. I just wanted to be normal, but with the admonition of Mr. Page and the persistence of my father I knew they would corral me into accepting the opportunity hesitantly having few skills in leadership, and less motivation to be a true servant of God .
Mr. Page clapped me on the back and said, “You think about it and call me during the week.”
I went home that day with much to think about. Ken wasn’t in the same third of the Winnipeg church that I was. He wouldn’t join the
YOU youth group, unless he could be a part of our

division. Everyone else…Ben, Curt, Willie…were on the verge of abandoning the entire program.
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Linda, Curt’s older sister, was asked to be the treasurer of the new youth group and she accepted the position. Willie at the realization that track meets and opportunities in sport would be offered also joined.
I called Mr. Page and accepted the position of president. I had never organized meetings and given very few speeches, but with a little help from a few of my church friends, I became the first president of the Winnipeg South church’s YOU youth group.
***
Linda Richtik was a year older than Curt, her brother. I hadn’t dealt with Linda much during the course of our growing up years, but with time and private meetings at Mr. Page’s house we coordinated some ideas and activities that would allow young people to help the members of the church, community and develop athletic skills outside of the arena of public school.
It was all so very exciting.
Our first directive was to serve the elderly members of the church as a form of public service.
We planned a barbeque where senior citizens would be served by the young leaders of tomorrow.
Linda and I were the lead agents in arranging the event. With the help of deacons and deaconesses we set out a menu, serving arrangements and special needs people to help the more handicapped of the attendees.

158
The event would occur after church services on a warm afternoon and all went as planned. The grills smouldered with pre-formed patties of beef, potatoes baked perfectly and vegetables steamed with clouds of white sifting from pots of silvery stainless steel.
“Have you seen what’s opening at the tonight?” Linda asked me.
“Yeah, I know, Battlestar Galactica .” I whispered.
“It’s out tonight…we can go you know?” Linda whispered back.
“Yeah, but we’re going to catch some shit if we leave this thing early.” I warned.
“It’ll work…Craig will be here to pick us up at 8 o’clock.” Linda informed me of the plan.
“Okay, we’ll work it out.”
We had taken care of everyone’s meal, served coffee and cake, while chatting to the various shut-ins, octogenarians and seniors. We had done everything right and now at 8 o’clock the van pulled up as pre-arranged at the curb of the minister’s home.
I knew it was trouble, right from the first mention of it, but my love for science fiction wouldn’t allow me to miss out. Linda and I did our best to explain the situation. We couldn’t deliver the seniors home as we were duly committed to another occasion.
The sun still shone and we raced to the safety of Craig’s van. Craig raced the engine and we roared down the wide boulevard to get downtown as quickly as possible.
“You know we’re dead, Linda.” I said.

“Yeah—maybe—but we did our work.” She replied.
“We’re dead.” I smiled, but the urgency of science fiction was upon me. I forgot all about it until the following day.
159
My parents were informed of my disgrace and once again I had shown ill-advised judgment while performing a service for my elders that required due diligence and commitment to the end.
I promised my parents I would try to do better.
***
We apologized to the deacons, deaconesses and the Page family for abandoning our community service event. Linda and I were forgiven our faux pas and began planning for the first track and field extravaganza the Worldwide Church of God sponsored.
I ended the day with five gold medals that were completely unexpected. Once again success was mine, but the double cramp in my thighs as I sat on a wooden picnic table’s bench at the end of the day left me lying on my back screaming with paralysed legs and clenched toes. It was all worth it, but my success was short lived. I wasn’t able to attend the international competition in
Pasadena because my times, heights and distances were below the required minimums.
Even in the course of complete victory I was able to sniff out defeat.

160
During the turbulent finale of the decade, life became increasingly contradictory. I had little respect for church administration and less possibility for advancement in the world because of weekly direction from God’s podium.
Thou shalt come out of the world.
Life was a juggling act. I was playing hockey with the church league every week and even in the summer we would join an indoor artificial ice rink league. Hockey was important, but the party afterward became equally as important.
Craig, Ken and I had discovered two girls who lived in the back of a pizza parlour and worked for the owner. They were generous hostesses for a Saturday night of videos, beer and pizza.
Life was a party.
To complicate matters, we would wake up on a Sunday morning at 4:30 after drinking till 3 am to go play another hour and a half of hockey. The very idea of drinking all night and playing a full on game of hockey the next morning was ridiculous but over the course of time, I would be forced to grow up and stop living on the edge.
Those cold prairie nights smelling warming pizza and drinking cold beer after a sweaty game of
Saturday night hockey were marvellous. Sharon and Dot never became love interests, but years later their friendship is not forgotten. They were fun and we were boymen playing the national game because that’s what you do during cold Canadian winters.

161
It was a euphoric existence, but it’s hard to dive into the deep end on a thick pool of ice. There was lots of time to think about options I had before me as time moved forward.
***
The fall of 1979 brought the true meaning of being big man on campus to my life. Our senior class came together for a forum in the multi-purpose theatre and we voted for the year’s grad council. Names were tossed into the ring and suddenly I heard a familiar name.
“I nominate Randy Zacharias for council.” Yelled an ambitious friend.
“I second.” Another echoed to confirm the nomination.
Several more names were shouted, seconded and those nominated were asked to leave the room.
The senior class voted their choices of the names nominated to become the small cabinet of eight as grad council. We stood chatting out in the hallway. I was fairly certain there would be little work for me to do, as I had never run for office before. I would not find myself on Grad
Council, I was sure.
We were called back into the room for me to discover that through my anonymity and low-key attitude I was given third spot on the list of elected councillors—it was a vote of confidence that
I could hardly believe. I knew then that the senior year of high school would be a very different experience.

162
Ms. Kaplan was the Grad Committee Organizing Faculty member…and had been performing the role for some time. Oak Park High School was erected in 1975 and 1980 marked its fifth year in existence.
The druggies liked to paint a black “T” in front of the
Oak of the signage above the high school’s front door. Some of our culture was aimed more at the high, and less at the school, in Toak Park .
I hadn’t taken any French instruction since the 7 th
grade. Ms. Kaplan was an unknown entity to me, but over the course of the year she would teach me many things. The cultured wife of a prominent lawyer became a fascination to the entire grad council. I became more torn and perplexed by the ancient laws my father wished to live by and the modern living that was available to a hard-working student.
Renee Kaplan would help me through a great deal of the battle…simply through conversations and drawn out discussions with the grad committee…she was the best instructor I ever had in secondary school, even though I never studied a single class period with her at the front of the classroom.
***
I was seventeen years old and fighting for social status and life as a normal human being, juxtaposed with the dream of a place in Armstrong’s World Tomorrow utopia. Once again we went to the feast of tabernacles and celebrated the huge convention in Tucson, Arizona.
The fall conventions had taken my family to Tampa, Niagara Falls, Penticton, Wisconsin Dells— all with the blessing of teachers each year. The love of travel grew endless and each year I

missed two full weeks of instruction in English, Math and the Sciences, but the resulting education from the journeys was invaluable.
163
Travelling with friends and getting to meet new people from around the world, left me with a strong worldview and dreams of greater causes and higher planes. The natural mix into a broad world with an elitist mindset was heady wine seemed to flow into forever.
The seductive nature of the speakers’ messages and dreams of another world were treacherous waters that could drown the captured audiences in fantasy. I tried to step away from the dream of eternity by focussing on girlfriends, entertainment and sport.
By 1979, Herbert Armstrong had reclaimed his empire from his own son and a doctrinal committee that leaned toward a relaxed look at scriptural interpretation. He will have to fight for it again as the state of California is making plans. He suffers a heart attack in which he actually dies, but “God brought me back because I still have work to do,” claims Armstrong.
Armstrong has a knack from years in the advertising industry and manages to say the right things at just the right time and with the right timbre in his voice and volume. Catch phrases last for years and ultimately seduce many of the churches young into attending Ambassador College.
I would be one of them.
***
Dennis Brears was unknown to me until the summer ‘78. Dennis’ mom made uniforms for the school teams. Oak Park’s colours were black, orange and white. Mrs. Brears’ ability as a

164 seamstress held her in great respect and as I got to know the Brears’ family, Dennis and I became inseparable.
Dennis had been diagnosed with a life threatening illness and was forced into a hospital where surgery was performed and he became a poster boy for a very serious cause. He was given the opportunity to travel and see the various parts of North America because of his ability to cope with a dreaded disease and succeed athletically, academically, artistically and intelligently.
Dennis and I became close friends because of my difficult religion and his fight for normal life.
It made both of us serious thinkers and while getting to know one another our discussions would move through existential realms and theological philosophy.
Dennis’ illness had brought on the realization of mortality and Armstrong’s theological paradigm didn’t sit well with my atheist friend.
“Could God make a rock he couldn’t lift?” Dennis asked as an introduction to every argument we ever had with other theology students.
“If God can do anything why couldn’t He do that?” Dennis queried every bible thumper we ever encountered.
I wouldn’t answer him, as the question has no answer, but I was amazed to see many of the
Baptists, Lutherans, Mennonites and Catholics reason with Dennis for hours at a time. It gave me a great deal of respect for Dennis’ debating skills. Eventually Dennis woke up to find himself a better agnostic than atheist. Even he admitted, “How can one really know?”

165
I came around to thinking much more like Dennis by the mid-90s—but I would go through 12 more years of trying to discover the mystery of the ages .
***
As Dennis and I spent more time together he joined my family on a trip to Grand Forks, ND. My parents had always been campers and we took our tent trailer to North Dakota to do some shopping.
My brother Roger and Dennis became friends and one evening after absconding a six pack of beer to our small tent we needed to break the seal that comes after a couple of beers. We stood out looking at the full moon on the endless plateau of the Dakota countryside.
I finished releasing my urine and Roger came over to stand before Dennis and me. Dennis had an incredibly large bladder and while Roger stood before him, Dennis continued pissing.
After a few seconds Roger realized something was amiss. His pant leg was soaking wet.
“What the hell?” Roger yelled.
Dennis and I both started to laugh.
“He’s still pissing, you know?” I stared at Roger.
“Better to be pissed off than pissed on.” Added Dennis as he zipped his penis back into his jeans.
“You bastard…you pissed all over my leg.” Roger yelled while running into the field to wipe the warm urine from his soaked calf on the waving prairie tallgrass.

Dennis and I fell to the ground laughing as my brother decided to strip to his underwear and
166 forget about trying to wipe fresh urine from his dungarees.
“How could you walk in front of him while he was pissing?” I asked my pissed on and then pissed off brother.
“I could have sworn he was done.” Roger shook his head. “I can’t believe you pissed all over my leg!”
“I wasn’t done,” Dennis smiled, “so why should I tell you?”
The full moon shone brighter and brighter as my brother stood beside us in his jockey underwear. He still couldn’t believe that he had walked into a flowing stream of piss.
“Well, so much for drinking beer with you two.” Roger said as he walked over to the tent to grab another pair of pants. It wouldn’t be the last time Roger would be pissed off…he took the joke well and slipped into a pair of Adidas sweatpants.
From that time forward Dennis and I were best friends. His family had an outdoor pool and I would walk in the door of their family home without knocking, thinking I belonged there, it made Dennis’ mother chuckle the first time I strayed in like the family cat.
I had never had a friend as close, who challenged my religious outlook, and made me think.
Dennis fit in well as I introduced him to Ken, Craig and Ben and all was right with the world for a time.
***

167
January 3, 1979
Times and days were always important for Armstrong. I have never particularly liked January 3.
Now ten years after my own father’s brush with death…the WCG comes under fire of
Californian democracy.
The state of California moves into the offices of the headquarters in Pasadena. Armstrong’s organization has come under siege by the strongest state of the union other than Washington DC.
The accusation of illegal use of funds and the attack by Attorney General George Deukmejian becomes a landmark case that ends in complete exoneration of the WCG and its leadership with the Senate Bill 1493 signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown.
The case protects the division of church and state and saves the existence of churches throughout the United States. A lawyer by the name of Stanley Rader becomes a prominent fixture in the church after saving Armstrong’s organization and the onslaught that may have been brought upon Armstrong’s self-made church by ex-members, ministers and his own son. Information is hard to come by, but the battle of David versus Goliath is monumental in Armstrong’s mind and galvanizes many loyal followers to action. One of the most visible stages surrounds a sit-in at the Administrative offices of the Worldwide Church of God led by a man named Joseph Tkach.
He rallies the widows and marches into the Administration building to show his loyalty to
Herbert W. Armstrong.
***

168
I could care less about the takeover bid from California State. I’m learning how to ski. I hadn’t put a pair of downhill skis on until I was seventeen years old. I love to play hockey and after a quick opportunity to ski at a small Manitoba Valley resort have discovered the joy of skiing.
The natural transference of balance from ice skates to ski boots gives me the ability to swoosh down mountainsides in three quick attempts down a very gentle bunny hill. By noon of that day, on a church-sponsored activity I am skiing with all my friends and jumping over every bump I can find. I’m learning how to fly on snow.
I return to school the next day with rosy cheeks and sign up to go on the annual schoolsanctioned ski trip to Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
Dennis has informed me of the sheer pleasure of mountain skiing. The endless glide…the feelings of freedom, the fresh air, the cheap beer and beautiful women. I sign up with no hesitation…it will be my first foray into the real world with school friends, girls, teachers and
America’s slopes.
Armstrong’s troubles are the furthest thing from my mind as I am staging my own exit from the called out ones.
My continued popularity in school allows me to enjoy Saturday night parties weekly as we are reaching our final year in high school. I’m still playing church hockey, but skiing is becoming a new love. In Manitoba, the legal drinking age is eighteen and every weekend some one in our class is reaching the age of consent.

Socials, home parties and bar bands are at the top of our lists of things to do as we think about
169 university and future careers while enjoying our final year as young adults with little responsibility and bright lights on the pathways of our lives ahead.
Dennis and I prefer discussions in philosophy, theology and sports. We extend our group to include the beautiful woman in our class. We are lounge lizards and coffee klatschers who discuss the mature boyfriends of our bevy of beautiful female friends.
Dennis has much work to do in travel…I must go to a controversial Feast of Tabernacles in
Tucson…but upon my return I am completely caught up in the importance of planning a grad ceremony, celebration and dinner.
Dennis and I are doing more and more planning and organizing. Fundraisers are organized, decorations are ordered and created, more and more business must be taken care of while classes are skipped and grades begin to slip.
Work is not important, especially in math class, and my grade begins to slide. I could very easily flunk out of high school by missing one credit that should be easily earned in the work I should be doing under the tutelage of my math instructor.
“You’re all my geniuses,” the bent instructor hisses at the onset of each class. His greasy hair sticks to his thin cranium, and rumours circulate that he lives with his mom and likes boys.
Our genius is realized and I pass a third quarter test with an “A.” It is enough to allow me to slip by and finish my schooling with the friends I have made during this pinnacle year of selfrealization.

170
The disaster of missing graduation is averted.
***
The future is bright and still I am pitted against the humility my father wishes exhibited by his offspring and the… flaunt it if you got it
…mentality of my classmates and progressive instructors.
I am a liberal trapped in a conservative family. The battle rages through my senior year in high school.
Humility is a huge fundamental point of the WCGs doctrinal viewpoint. It is the keystone for acquiring converts to Armstrong’s flock. The one flaw in the diamond of this truth goes unseen when Armstrong begins preaching a new understanding of biblical truth.
One of the key historical figures in Armstrong’s own genesis is the wise Benjamin Franklin.
Armstrong planned his life as Franklin, but the resulting wave of Armstrong’s discoveries was not scientific and based on personal interpretation of the ancient writings of the book. Unlike
Franklin’s discoveries of electricity or the Franklin stove, Armstrong’s discoveries did not illuminate or warm human beings—his discoveries darkened the minds of his followers with dreams of grandeur and flights of utopian rule.
“We will be gods as God is God.” Armstrong roars in sermons and television broadcasts as he recuperates from a heart attack, the removal of the receivership by the Californian Attorney
General and a quick divorce from his young second wife. She is 39 when they marry…Armstrong is well into his 80s. He claims his life has been retrieved from the dead to get the church “back on the right track.”

171
Armstrong looks better after nearly succumbing to heart failure. His son is gone, the government of California has been chased from God’s campus and headquarters…it is a new era for the
Worldwide Church of God.
***
“I bet Zack has a big cock,” a drunken friend with huge breasts bleats from behind a round black table. She is guzzles from a glass of beer and her lamb eyes are red.
“I guess there’s only one way to know,” I spit foam from my own frothing glass unsure of how to respond. The small girl I have a sheepish crush on giggles.
She never does find out…I never tell.
It is another night out with the senior class and hormones rage throughout the year. A fellow classmate reaches the age of adulthood nearly every weekend and we cart everyone home as safely as we can with little worry of being pulled over my the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the Winnipeg Police force. We are invincible.
I enjoy my growing popularity in high school as teachers prepare us for higher education. I don’t even set up an interview with the school counsellor. I won’t be going to any worldly university, even though my grades are passable and my Scholastic Aptitude Test score is high. I keep my options open by taking university entrance courses while continuing the Saturday night blowouts at beer gardens, Folklorama (an annual Winnipeg ethnic festival with huge attendance), bars and lounges.

172
At graduation all has been planned. We will have an octet, singing You Are a Child of the
Universe , and I will sing the bass line along with a new addition to our quorum from the fall…a kid named Derek.
He is ambitious and during this first year in Toak Park he has shown drive for his new school during his last year of high school. I don’t mind his enthusiasm, but find his
Mickey Mouse enthusiasm almost unbelievable.
I prefer being a rebel with a clue than a Mouseketeer.
The graduation ceremony arrives after a year of preparation. Dennis and I have run the gauntlet in Steamboat Springs skiing and snuggling with ski bunnies. We have survived. He has hosted numerous pool parties with hungry girls and thirsty boys. We have tied everything together in a beautiful bow, and his mother has sewn a huge black screen with a bright orange ball rising from a thin white horizon.
At the top of the huge screen curtain in brilliants hues of orange, white and shadowed black it reads, DAWN OF THE 80s .
We are excited. We are invigorated with power and purpose with the dawning of a new decade.
Our valedictorians rise to the podium as we are seated in heavy rows of steel folding chairs in the vast gymnasium.
One of the numbers falls from the screen as a valedictorian gives her speech. The number 8 drifts like a swift leaf to the polished gym floor and in an instant we are no longer dawning into

the decade of A Flock of Seagulls, David Bowie and Pink Floyd . We have become an anonymous group of nothing— comfortably numb .
The yearbook picture of the gathering will read as we look up with naïve hope…DAWN OF
THE—0s…I drop my head snickering at the poetic irony. We have become nihilists with the swift fall of the glued number “8.”
I tug at Dennis’ robe, “Dawn of the zeros, man.”
“I see that.” Dennis nods his head. “Appropriate enough, I guess.”
173
Pictures are taken of Dennis in an olive green three-piece suit. He picks it up for a good price at the fashion show. His mother thought it would help him move along in life. I have curly locks that have been toxically created with the work of a strong hair treatment…a perm.
It lasts three months.
My baby blue tuxedo with tight palates of blue stretching across my thighs, no pleats and broad swatches of bell bottoms make me look like a cut out caricature from Saturday Night Fever .
Disco is not the biggest thing to hit Winnipeg, but the fashionable dress of vest and bell-ringing pantaloons are not lost on the city’s styling crowd. I would rather listen to Rush or Bob Seger than swallow one minute of Earth, Wind and Fire or the BEE GEES , but the girls like it and night fever is still a firm desire for a willing man.

Dennis and I miss most of the speeches at graduation dinner as we drive to the liquor store to
174 make sure we have our stash of libation for the apre -party. We will be partying all night at a friend’s house with the rest of our successful graduating class.
As many as possible will show…the jocks…drama queens…stoners…and dweebs. We have worked hard to create some sort of link between each of the high school categories and with a class of twelve dozen we have achieved the goal of unity.
The Dawn of the 0s will not be forgotten.
Ms. K calls us the best graduating class she has ever taught or worked with. It never occurs to me that she says it every year. How could a teacher pick out a favourite graduating class? The thought doesn’t occur to me till years later.
During the tryout period for the fashion show, Mrs. K holds my name from the ring of ballots for the hopeful beautiful people from our graduating class. She names nine successful model applicants, including Dennis, skipping the third name on her list of ten—five males—five females.
Nira Dookeran asks, “Who’s the third model?”
“Yeah, who’s the third?” A chorus of wannabe models sings realizing that Nira is right. Ms. K has only called out nine names—and only four males.
“Who’s the guy?” Nira demands, her quick mind has counted the chosen and she realizes it won’t be her. “It’s got to be a guy.”

“Why Randy Zacharias, of course.” Renee smiles at me with piercing brown eyes and sunset
175 apples on budding cheeks. I stare back at her after my head has dropped in flat failure to mimic the dull floor after not making it as a runway model. She has deceived me without a smirk…I hadn’t had a clue that she was setting me up. She has become a queen in the art of deception.
I give her a hug and warn her, “There will be pay back.”
At the fashion show my parents sit on the long wooden bleachers. A recording of Kenny
Loggins’ hit belts out, “This is it!”
Dennis’ artistic hands design the show’s brochures, and we are showing the edgiest wear for the fashionistas of Charleswood. My father is not impressed by the display and prepares himself for another speech that must be delivered to his firstborn son.
“This is it, baby…this is what you have to wear.” The show screams as we dazzle and frazzle the fashion cultured of Winnipeg’s west side. The bright yellow dinner jackets accompanied by royal blue plastic pants and white shirts with rainbow brush strokes of a neon rainbow make each of us look like the lollypop guild from the Wizard of Oz.
Kent and I stroll on to the stage with bath robes loosely draped across thin teenage shoulders with bony knobs and muscled thighs and biceps. We time the dropping of the robes as we untie the waste bands…boom…terry cloth hits the runway floor.
Whistles and screams burst from gasping hoards of young co-eds.
Kent and I look at each other…we are the
Beatles
…or as close as we will ever be to being teenage heart throbs. The crowd just likes seeing flesh.

My father’s head turns to the exit and he leaves the dark auditorium.
“THIS IS IT!” Screams Kenny Loggins on the taped sound system over and over again.
176
Spotlights reel from floor to wall to ceiling to models and the show is over. The jewel ball stops spinning and we are in darkness. The show is over and we have done it.
The fundraiser brings in money to subsidize a class trip and Ms. Kaplan kisses the cheeks of musicians, dressers, ushers, models and makeup artists.
“HUGE!” She screams. “You guys were huge…I am SOOOO proud of each and every one of you.” We sip on apple cider and cheer our victory.
We arrange for an after show pool party at Dennis’ and toast our success with champagne bubbles of Extra Old Stock beer. It has the highest alcohol content of any Canadian beer at the time and we get more buzz for the buck.
We swim into the early morning and party to the dawn.
***
I go home early the next morning exhausted and elated.
“I’m going to go through modelling school.” I tell Dennis just before I leave his front door.
Dennis smiles. “Whatever…it just a show, Rand.” I expect his opinion to be the same as mine.
“I’m going to keep drawing.”

“Well, you are good, Dennis.” I retreat. “But wouldn’t it be fun to get out and travel, see the
177 world, get photographed and famous?”
“Nope.” Dennis returns. “I don’t want any part of it.”
“C’mon…it’s like Renee says, ‘If you got it flaunt it.’”
“It’s not like that, Rand.” Dennis concludes. “It just isn’t worth it…g’night.”
I stroll to the driver’s side of my green sedan. My father has given me his old car and it burns blue and hot, but after getting my driver’s license he can’t withhold the old family sedan.
I walk into the back door of our stuccoed bungalow and my father asks me into his office. I can’t imagine what I’ve done now, but I will soon learn.
“Rand,” my father starts, “did you have fun last night?”
“Sure, I did.”
“But what did you think of that whole production? Wasn’t it a little too much?”
I realize my father is about to give me another lecture on humility. My shoulders slump, as once again the realization that I hadn’t lived up to the image of a firstborn is once more centre stage.
“You are my firstborn son.” My father goes into the routine. “Your brothers and sisters look up to you to set the example.”
“Yes, Dad.” I notice my toes are still prunes from too much time in Dennis’ pool the night before.

178
“You understand the concept of vanity, don’t you?” My father looks to the pages opened on his desk.
I know immediately that he has studied the concept of love.
“Wise King Solomon says that ‘all is vanity’ and last night your show was nothing short of a shining example of vanity.” My father instructs. “I think you should do a word study on vanity
.”
“But, Dad.”
“No buts…just find out what is truth…vanity, just isn’t the way to go.” My father sweeps his chair to slide into the twin pillars of his steel black desk.
The conversation is over and I am resigned to study the definition of vanity. I look up the term through the concordance of an old King James Bible I have had since the age of eight.
I learn that a young man’s strength is in his beauty. I realize that there will be no wisdom in me until I have experienced life.
I want to scream at my father. “Let me grow up…for Christ’s sake.”
I couldn’t do that because it would be taking the Lord’s name in vain. I am tired and roll into my metal bunk bed. The springs screech in protest matching my frame of mind and I fall off to sleep.
***

179
The crises of fashion shows, math tests and grad ceremonies are over and the family has planned a trip to British Columbia after I get home from partying all night with around the flickering ashes of my senior class’ last bonfire.
My date is one my best friends. She is not a love interest and Karen and I have one of the best graduation evenings that any one has ever had. We won’t be losing virginity, we won’t be drunk, we’re just going to remember all the good times and reminisce, sip on fine liquor and liqueurs and talk and dance.
As the sun rises our grad party comes to a close and I ask Dennis to drop me off at my home. I shake his hand and realize that high school is over. I shuffle my feet kicking at the small pebbles of lime that cover our broad driveway.
My father has worked so hard to make our home comfortable and warm. I am far from comfortable or warm. My days of childhood schooling are over and I don’t know what to do next. I’ve planned to go to work for a year or two to figure out what to do with my life, but that is eons in the future.
School is over.
“Hey Rand.” My father greets me with a warm grin and a hug. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yeah,” I mumble. “I’m ready.”
I climb into the back of a huge camper that sits upon the ¾ ton truck that my father has been driving for some five years and fall asleep on the upper double bed. I look at the rising sun through a small portal window at the headboard side of the expansive bed.

180
I’m not looking forward to the trip, the future, or what will come next for me in this difficult life of teenage decisions.
***
My family loads up into the huge camper. I fall asleep and awake only to sip on water and take a leak. After twenty hours on the road I hear my father bellow.
“Wake him up!”
I look at the oval alarm clock and realize that my dreams have been real. I have slept for most of a day. I drag myself up out of the sea of wool blankets and down comforts and feathered pillows. I have never slept as fitfully or dejectedly.
I strap on my blue jeans and roll them up to just below my knee. I have purchased a straw cowboy hat a week earlier and I stay bare back and bare foot. The outfit makes me look like a rendition of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn . I feel like life has just set me adrift and I’m floating down a wide river with no paddle…no
Nigger Jim for a willing companion…and little steam.
My family has invited my grandmother and a couple of aunts and uncles. We are a caravan of blood relatives going to see more blood relatives in the thickets of brush and thin valleys of
British Columbia.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“Revelstoke.” My father answers shaking his head as he fills the thirsty truck’s gas tank.
“What? We’re in B.C. already?”

181
“That’s why I wanted your mother to wake you…you’re missing all the sights.” My father taps the gas handle as the bubbling fuel spits at his right wrist.
“I’m glad you woke me.” I lie, but realize that the mountains are my friends.
I go to the gas station’s restroom and expel a dark golden stream. The rain season is still on
Revelstoke as it sticks like gum beneath a desktop to the green tableau of the Rocky Mountain slope.
I can’t imagine living in a city that reeks of wood smoke and clings to clouds of rain or snow for most of the year. I am glad the rain is here today because I am rainy and with much thought comes the swirling fog of decisions, dire straits and dreams.
After a short trip we are in the heart of the Okanagan Valley and cherry blossoms cling to bosomy trees like snow on the rooftop of a round ski chalet. The valley is beautiful and the water of the large lakes is translucent green and invitingly warm.
We set up camp in a thicket near a huge mountain of rock whose base disappears into a sandy bank no more than a few hundred feet from the barrel of our cozy camping circle of tourists.
I wonder how simple it would be for the huge cliff to just collapse and fall on me. Well, I wouldn’t have to think about the future,
I ponder with the nihilism of Pink Floyd .
Ten years have got behind you…you better run.

182
The Dark side of the Moon sounds like a great place to be when options are few and education is condemned. I think about the last few years and the curses and blessings of Herbert W.
Armstrong’s church.
Armstrong’s rhetoric has taken on the desperation of a marathon runner’s last lap. He has reopened Ambassador College solely as a theological school and I still have dreams of visiting
Europe and Jerusalem…Israel and Egypt.
The mythology of history is not lost on my heritage. With a name like Zacharias I must follow spiritual studies. My great grandfather, my grandfather and my father have been spiritual students and guides who have studied to follow God and reach the top of the mountain.
Where must I go? What must I do to find the conclusion to spiritual revelation?
Shall I just run away and live life like a normal human being with a job, a wife, a family and cable television?
As the oldest son of a spiritual Jew, it is my destiny to find the answers to questions of truth…plain truth.
Yet, I am not convinced of Armstrong’s apostleship…his dream…his construct.
I will go to work for my father and build.
We enjoy the remainder of our trip and I start working for my father in the residential tract housing that makes up the suburban maze of Winnipeg’s growing population.

Weekends roll out with Ken and Craig. Sunday mornings are spent stripping panels of heavy
183 concrete form materials and lifting them to freedom from their basement prison. I learn to drive the ton truck with a hydraulic arm mounted at the rear of the frame. It reminds me of the space shuttle robotic Canadarm that manipulates the heavy objects through space and places the necessary satellites in their prescribed orbits.
The days roll out and time spent with Dennis and Ken and more and more satellite groups leads me further and further away from the chosen group of Armstrong’s self-proclaimed
Philadelphian brotherhood.
I smoke on weekends and throw away half used packages of Dumaurier, Players and Export A cigarettes vowing to quit with each tossing, loyal to no one particular brand. I shouldn’t smoke, I know. I am an athlete, but an athlete with little but bar baseball and church hockey leagues to train my muscles and exercise my mind.
I have stopped any study of the bible and any pursuit of a secondary education as I’ve spoken to a multitude of counsellors who tell me…take a year off…see the world…find out what you wish to do with your life.
I think of my cousin, Mike who wandered to Winnipeg to find another life other than his hometown routine.
***
Dennis and I decide that a trip to the south will be the best adventure for the best price. Dennis has been waitering and bartending for years and with the daily construction job in my father’s

184 concrete company I am saving on a weekly basis, while growing stronger and wilder with each passing week while living at home.
My father and I have grown closer, but I still can’t relent to the spiritual myopia of Herbert
Armstrong’s vision. My uncle has left the fold. My friends are leaving the church in droves and moving on to careers.
Six of us decide to travel to southern California. By October only three of us have remained committed to take the journey. Dennis, Ken and I will travel to Los Angeles and visit the great valley of stars, jet propulsion laboratories and silver screens.
Dennis has been buying vehicles and trading up and down on a monthly basis. One night we are driving in a rumbling Oldsmobile, a month later blue smoke smoulders from the tailpipe of a huge Lincoln Continental and finally a week before our proposed departure date Dennis buys a
Pontiac Monza.
With only three of us going on the trip the hatchback will suit our trio and save us money on gas.
My own VW Rabbit isn’t comfortable enough and the robin egg blue paint job doesn’t impress my friends.
I am the last to be picked up for the journey. Dennis backs out of our bungalow and hits the neighbour’s car parked on the street. He breaks the headlight on the parked vehicle and Kenny
Loggins sings I love a rainy night . The sky is bleak and the rain is slapping on our windshield while the wipers slap out a beat in perfect synchronization with the top forty hit.
“This trip could be doomed.” Ken whispers.

185
“Its not doomed,” I flick a middle finger at Ken, “It’s just a headlight…give him $20, Dennis.”
“Yeah…yeah.” Dennis shakes his head as he checks his rear bumper after driving back into my driveway.
The neighbour is relaxed about the incident and Dennis gets back in the car.
“We’re off.” Dennis smiles happy that his car is unscratched.
We head on down the highway.
***
Six months earlier four of us had feigned bible belters and driven to Grand Forks for a weekend cruise. This had been the genesis for our trip further south, as Grand Forks, North Dakota had been uninviting and uneventful.
Danny, the Baptist, had spent the weekend chasing corn fed pussy and smoking weed. The weekend lacked any lustre and Dennis and I initiate the idea for travelling south. We are both bored with prairie eternities and need to see the ocean and mountains…anything but the table top of flat rolling grain fields, yellow seas of mustard plants and the endless sky.
***
Our trip south takes us to Utah and Dennis turns the vehicle to straddle a median in Salt Lake
City. He is unfamiliar with American road systems and we find ourselves high-centred on the thick concrete island. The car remains undamaged, so we hop out and push it off the man-made plateau, laughing at Dennis’ navigational skills. We ski at Alta Snow Resort for half a day and

186 still the three of us are bored and yearn for the warm California Dream . We leave to move after a single day in Salt Lake City for the south.
Once we arrive in southern California we stay at a Comfort Inn across from Disneyland. We are eighteen and horny. Dennis and I find a pair of cousins. Dennis is drawn to the thin brunette and
I cozy up to the bosomy blonde. We have a romantic interlude of couples on beds while Ken watches television sitting on the floor.
I cream my jeans. The girls are leaving for home the next day and we never see them again.
Months later I get a letter in the mail inviting me to the radiant blonde girl's graduation in
Nebraska. I reply in a letter with remorse.
We go to the premiere of Raging Bull enthralled by the weight gain of Robert Deniro during the course of the movie. Deniro’s commitment to his trade is not lost on our young minds.
Jake Lemotta becomes a black and white hero, and Dennis hits an uninsured Mexican on a beer run. The Mexican is uninsured, but the car again remains undamaged except for the new kink in the front hood. We drive home all through two days and two nights.
We are irritable and vow never to travel together again.
Ken moves to Alberta and life in construction becomes a chore for me.
***

187
My brother Roger goes to summer camp while I slave away stacking concrete form onto the flat platform of my father’s delivery truck. I swear at God for the misery of Manitoba clay, prairie rains and the constant swarm of buzzing mosquitoes.
Roger leaves for school in Pasadena a week before Labour Day and I work throughout the winter cursing the day I ever decided to go into construction. I still have no options and life becomes a drudgery of hammering rusty nails into oily construction forms and tearing apart the stinking hulls of hardened basement walls.
I’m growing fat and tired of smoking and drinking and chasing after women with little to be interested in and less to be remembered.
***
I decide it is time go west. Ken has been in Edmonton for over a year and he seems to like the opportunities the western province has to offer. I pack up my VW Rabbit with my family in the lead we leave for Cold Lake, Alberta.
Mike is getting married…I haven’t seen him since his month long stay working for my dad.
***
More and more my life is becoming a drudgery. Opportunities for the son of a sabbatarian are minimal. The restrictive life is undesired, but the appeal for the wild life is taking me nowhere.
I dream of the high life in Alberta, and one more time my family journeys westward, and I try to find my future.

188
Mike is marrying the youngest daughter of a family of sisters. She is quiet and shy, but the two of them seem comfortably matched.
The priest rises from an unseen vestibule in a white robe with a dark five-day growth of beard.
His stubble reminds me more of a homeless bum living on Portage and Main than the shepherd of a flock of Albertan Catholics.
The priest reeks of booze and old sweat. His message is nothing less than painful to listen to and more painful for Mike and Diane who have to stay on bent knees for most of the ceremony to show how painful marriage and life can be.
The unshaven priest is showing us the pain that God has demanded to be put upon shameful man—I am not impressed by the priest’s painful demonstration.
I congratulate Mike and Diane hoping their life together will be all that they hope for. I give my parents each a hug and drive to Edmonton to live with a group of bachelors and find my fortune.
I have $2,000 and high hopes for a bright future in the wild, Wild West.
I go to church services one time over the course of two weeks in Edmonton. I am not impressed by the cold reception by the congregation and colder temperatures of the northern city. The search for important work and impressive career moves proves even more challenging than I had ever experienced in Winnipeg.
The days turn into drinking binges, listening to Marianne Faithful scream about her snatch being just another bad patch and endless nights of card playing.

189
After a short month, I miss my mother’s cooking, I weary of buying groceries for unkempt single men, I have no love life and my journey west reminds me of Mike’s journey east only three years earlier. I have $1000 left and my prodigal ways have left my spirit dulled, broken and listless.
I say goodbye to Ken and Ben. It is time for me to decide what kind of man I want to be. I pack my turquoise hatchback full of blankets and cassette tapes alone. I drive home with a heavy heart and an uneasy mind. My car rolls swiftly over hills and into small valleys like the final migration of a sea turtle delivering her eggs to a distant shoreline. I am completely beaten by the lack of success, the guilt of failure in finding a career, the unconcerned lifestyle of my fellow bachelors…nothing seems to make sense…what will I do now.
What am I going to do with my life? Armstrong’s doom and gloom just doesn’t make any sense in the right side of my brain. Could he be right? What if he’s right?
I can’t seem to find work…the guilt of setting a poor example for my brothers and sister should be gone now that I am no longer in Winnipeg, but it isn’t.
Why am I crawling back like a poor prodigal son whose spent his inheritance even though I wish no part to understand the meaning of spirit, truth and conversion…Armstrong style.
As I hug the road and let the cigarettes smoulder from my lips in tired wisps of disappointment. I race for Winnipeg and the shelter of my family home. I must think of another way to find the success I so desire. I will be like cousin Mike and return to my family home to face the music of my family.
What will become of me?

190
As the rolling hills of Alberta turn into the tableau of Saskatchewan my mind is racing as fast as the four cylinders beneath my car’s sky blue hood. I only stop for gas and drive through food as
I race for home.
The sky is the limit, I know, but rules and regulations, laws and statutes, the light and the dark limit me. The worlds of light sabres and hobbits are only dreams and I must find my chosen path…my destiny.
***
I pull into the family drive and my parents run out the front door with surprise in their eyes.
“What are you doing here?” My mother squeezes me with her canning hands and tender arms.
She is strong for her small frame.
“Rand, you came home.” My father hugs me over my mom’s shoulders.
“Yep…it just didn’t work out.” I answer trying not to make eye contact.
My parents can feel the dejection in my heart.
“Mr. Armstrong is going to be in town this week. This will be exciting!” My father informs me.
I am not excited but listening to the apostle in person may create the necessary spark I need in order to come to an answer to my dilemma.

191
“That’s cool…it will be nice to see everybody.” I bend to my parents’ dream of having children baptized into the worldwide work. I have not the slightest desire to bow to this request, but time will allow me to think and decide.
I go to work once more for my father and for the first time in years I sit down on my knees next to my captain’s bed which has replaced the rickety steel bunk beds and I ask for guidance from a god I have only yelled at for the last two years. He hasn’t done anything for me of late, and I’ve done little for him since resigning from his church’s youth program in protest.
I ask for belief and faith…direction in my life. It comes in a way I could have predicted. I am dressed in full regalia. The striped grey business suit of the 80s is all the rage and a bright power tie leashing my neck hangs straight and true pointing at the slick black leather belt wrapping my waist.
Our pastor introduces Armstrong, and the standing ovation begins. The room is filled to standing room only and over 2,000 people eye the 89-year-old apostle as he idles slowly to the podium. He is still able to stand but will soon succumb to sitting behind a desk during speaking engagements.
He is blind in one eye and needs a magnifying glass to read from passages of his hand held cue cards and his large print King James Bible.
Most of his speech is extemporized as he believes that Christ and God speak through him and after decades of public oration Armstrong is a master speaker giving the crowd what they need as he perceives his message to be delivered from heaven above.

192
As solitary as I feel there is nothing memorable about the speech in my mind, but Armstrong’s focus has taken a new turn.
When I read over his final years in his autobiography I see how important it must have been for a man who realized his own mortality was coming to an end so the focus of a worldwide youth program, an international youth magazine and the formation of a restructured, disciplined
Ambassador College is a must.
Armstrong announces the reopening of a campus in Big Sandy, Texas near Houston. He proclaims the importance for God’s young people to receive an education void of evolutionary agnosticism and condemns the rest of the world’s junior colleges and learning institutions.
I have been painted into a corner with little room to move into a normal life and I sit down with the pastor of our church to discuss my future.
Mr. Page informs me that as the offspring of a member of the church I should be well versed in the teachings of the church and that my baptism could occur within the week.
“I can’t. I need more time to acquaint myself with true conversion
.” I answer. “Give me a month to think about my decision.”
I talk to Ken who is attending the University of Manitoba. He believes that if he continues with his worldly education he will leave the church and is considering quitting his education at spring.
The pressure placed on us by the leadership of the church is growing immense and I have lost touch with my instructors from high school.

193
My own level of confidence in rebelling against the one true apostle of the end time has reached an end. I read his autobiography and value his commitment to ambition and mighty deeds. I learn of his slow development in coming to the truth as he has seen it revealed to him by God in the years in business.
Armstrong’s own failures in business stand out as he has travelled from Des Moines, Iowa, the place of his birth, to Oregon and finally resting and creating a headquarters to his organization in the old rundown mansion row of Pasadena, California as God has revealed his own providential destiny to the rising star of media televangelism.
I join the Winnipeg South
Spokemen’s Club
and give an icebreaker speech. The poor use of
“Spokesmen’s” doesn’t draw my attention to Armstrong’s penchant for using words that don’t exist and defining them with a dictionary of his own making. The icebreaker speech is designed to let the speaker give account of his own life by talking about himself. Dale Carnegie’s handbook has been used to develop the speakers’ Club so that men can develop their ability to speak in public ultimately becoming church speakers for the growing organization.
I talk about my love of hockey and skiing. My search for truth and my final decision to stay a part of the Worldwide Church of God even when most young people are leaving the church because of its doctrines, rules and strict judgments.
I win a trophy after giving the speech with the inscription Most Effective Speaker . The men of the club are conversational and friendly. The welcoming atmosphere gives me more impetus to join the church, and the added pressure from local members and Armstrong’s own letters to

194 members have finally brought me to my knees and in December of 1982 I ask Mr. Page to set up my baptism.
January 3, 1983
Arrangements are made and as my parents have previously committed to a trip and I wish to commit my mind, body, heart and soul to the one true God. I drive to the event with a pair of swim shorts and a clean shirt in a small carrying case.
Mr. Page asks me the proper questions as I sit in the very same tub that my parents had been dipped in during the summer of 1969. I answer positively to each question and suddenly I am pushed back beneath the water line and completely immersed rising from my watery grave I am now a member of the Worldwide Church of God.
In 2003 my mother and I are conversing about the past.
“Did you know I had a meeting with my ex-wife 21 years to the day of my baptism on this trip?”
I ask her. “Isn’t that funny?”
“What day?” My mother asks.
“January third.” I repeat.

195
“Do you know the day your father almost died in that cistern fire?” My mother asks me intently.
“No.”
“It was January 3, 1969…I’ll never forget it.” She tells me 34 years after my father’s explosive introduction to the Worldwide Church of God discovering it to be the same day as the beginning of my own entrance into the path of fire.
“Well, maybe Dad and I aren’t so different after all,” I add, “my fiery trial started years later, but it seems to have left a few scars on me as well.”
“Yeah, that church has left a few scars on all of us.” My mother adds as she sips from her coffee and we watch the white cherry blossoms explode like white fountains across the sunny side of the Okanagan valley.
I am no longer a member of the dwindling membership of the new Worldwide Church of God.
The new pastor general has changed every doctrine that Herbert W. Armstrong ever discovered through fervent study and prayer by his scholars and theologians. The new WCG is a part of mainstream evangelical Christianity and I have decided to take up studies to becoming a literary writer and instructor. It’s less of a strain on the heart, mind and soul.
The deception of Herbert W. Armstrong has run its course.
I committed all of my energies to graduating from Ambassador College in the fall of 1983, but that’s another story. For those who are entering into an organization that wishes ten to twenty percent of your income…your heart, mind, body and soul committed and dedicated to a

cause…and a fantasy of becoming a god like god is god, or a pillar in God’s kingdom I give a
196 warning.
From the fall of 1983 to the winter of 1994 (I quit the church eight years after Armstrong’s death) I tried my best to understand and hope for the coming of Jesus Christ as Herbert W.
Armstrong preached claiming revelations from God. I even wished in 1996 that Christ might return, but it was a final ash in a fire of prophetic bullshit, but by then a band called REM was singing a song about “losing my religion.” I have since lost all interest in the organizations of man-made religion.
I didn’t consider it a bad thing because I was learning that a simple act of kindness is more than enough to witness for the goodness of humanity. That is how the law of the man Jesus Christ was simplified, when He removed the covenant of the Ten Commandments . It is enough to help one live a full and mortal life in health, hope and generosity.
I had always been a god follower, or at least one who could grow angry with a god I didn’t know, so at least a god believer. And to a certain degree each of us is a god maker if we want to be, but none is or ever will be a god—that is fantasy.
In the fall of 1983 I was accepted into the fold of Ambassador College to witness the endgame of
Herbert W. Armstrong’s empire. It was a period of travel and discovery that I will never forget, but that is another story.
I learned a great deal in travelling the world. Armstrong’s College even gave me the ability to continue being a rebel with a clue , but the providential existence of humans no matter what our lineage is perhaps best left unspoken and out of our thoughts. In my experience these fantastic

dreams will bring the world and the fantasizing dreamer nothing but misery. By example, my
197 last name means God has remembered . I like that meaning, and I hope God does remember me for trying to live a life with love and generosity and frivolity. That’s what I would like.
My adventures during my exploits at Ambassador were enjoyable at times, but the history that I was forced to witness does bring me some remorse, but we don’t have to listen to the silver tongues of false prophets. I often wish the fundamental conservatism that Armstrong foisted on his followers hadn’t been so myopic, but hindsight is perfect and few can say they have never had regrets for some portion of life. I’m terribly concerned that much of evangelistic teachings are only now catching up with Armstrong’s early blasphemy—George W. Bush being a follower of this line of thought.
I like to think the world is a beautiful place, but we humans keep messing it up, presidents and prime ministers included. The World Tomorrow , that Armstrong created on his own, could be here today if we humans weren’t trying to kill each other every day and used more co-operative and efficient means of creating a big blue marble of discovery.
It took me a long time to realize that my faith was misplaced, but the surety of Armstrong’s dogma deceived so many people over the decades that I don’t feel bad for trying to follow my father’s chosen path. I was trying to honour him. The sad fate of many of Armstrong’s followers continues to bother me from time to time, but each of us must come to a point of peace eventually…or die…or go insane.
The planet we live on is not a comfortable womb. It can be filled with destruction and complete devastation, as we’ve seen with floods, hurricanes and tidal waves, but to think that a God would

198 come down and destroy all that He had created simply because of disobedience is a sad conclusion to mankind’s difficult trek.
Fundamentalism in any faith is doomed by its own burden of proof. Faith is the belief in things unseen a scripture in the new testament of the King James Bible reads. Faith is a trusting sentiment that can’t be proven, but I think hope may be the best sentiment, and I hope the future will be brighter for those looking to follow a life of cooperation.
I hope that this planet succeeds in creating a greater sense of concern for fellow human beings.
It may be that God created human beings, or it may be an evolutionary development, or it may be both. I don’t know, but dogmatic theological despotism, like Armstrong’s, and militaristic conquest, like Adolph Hitler’s or fanatic militaristic cults, are two sides of the same coin and definitely not the answers to reaching human enlightenment.
That I know from thirty years of living under the unstable leadership of a cult. I wish a similar fate would never happen again, but I know it is. Does it have to continue?