My dad & me

 It was 1965, and our Dad had just purchased the first VW camper sold in the Harrisburg, Pa, area. The concept was so new that VW had not started to build dedicated campers yet.  Dad bought a new panel truck, and a camper kit from a custom build company in Texas and the local VW dealer cut out the windows and installed the kit for us.

Oh... the tall handsome guy in the Edison Junior High Color Guard uniform is me.  The young and distinguished gentleman to my right is my brother Jim, and the pup is our family canine protector and lord of our castle, Wags.

But it's the nose of the vehicle I'd like you to notice.  The original 10" VW emblem is still there, but under our dad's hand painted circle insignia for an organization he dearly loved, and the whole family participated in.  It is the official seal of the North South Skirmish Association. In the 1960's, the time of the American Civil War Centennial, this national collection of over 100 Civil War competitive shooting clubs met several times a year in serious individual and team sport with rifles, pistols and fully served artillery of the Civil War period.

Each unit represented an original unit from their geographic area. Ours was Knap's Battery E, Pennsylvania Light Artillery.  We had one cannon and about 16 members.  The original Battery E had about one hundred men and four field guns and limbers, each with at least 4-6 horses.

Knaps in 1862 on the field of Antietam, Md.
I am NOT in this picture.

Knap's at Boalsburg, Pa, 28th Division Shrine.
That's me with the field drum in 1973.

I told you all of that to tell you this: One of the last things I've kept that my dad ever made with his own hands is this 1965 aluminum pizza pie pan.  Every time we went anywhere as the battery, to competitions (called skirmishes), reenactments, and parades dad would mount the insignia over the VW emblem and proudly drive his unique blue and gray (did you notice those significant colors?) VW camper into the fray (campground).

So where's the spiritual connection in all of this?

This afternoon I took down this same NSSA insignia from a wall in our home basement workshop and mounted it on a side wall of one of the large basement storage compartments on our Alpine Coach. It still looks pretty good, too.

A remembrance of years with Battery E and my dad is now visible every time I go into the coach basement for a tool or a new book. Mona's and my backup library are neatly stored in clear plastic bins in that room's slide-out shelf.  What's amazing, especially to me, is that it wasn't all that long ago that the last thing I could imagine myself placing on board our retirement coach would have been something my dad had made.

Some of you have had tough relationships with your parents, and as a pastor I have heard about relationships that were far worse than 'tough'.  Mine, as I have learned, was far from anyone's worst.  But even so, because of some similar personality traits, and behaviors that at first scared us and then just made us angry, a time came in my twenties when I actually could say to my wife Mona that I hated my father. We were civil, and maybe I hid my feelings pretty well because we still did some things together and socialized about once a month but it was hard.  Very hard.  Sometimes on our kids as well.

But in my late 30's I had a really tough time at work and was advised to seek some solid professional counsel.  The man I went to spent 14 sessions with me and about half way through them he identified my anger at my father as a primary cause of my trouble and a festering danger to me.  I was chewing myself and some around me to pieces with my buried hatred. He said if I didn't take his advice my stress would continue to grow till I would begin self destructing.

 He told me a time would come when my dad would die, leaving all of my issues unspoken and I would have to live with time alone for the rest of my life. and he said, 'Life is just too short for that." And his recommendation?  You'll never guess.  A brand new, super duper suggestion I was sure no one had ever heard before!

Matthew 18: 15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.

And if your father is the one you feel has hurt you you are allowed by God to go talk things out with him to.

So I did. I would never say this was easy, but I, WE, did it. I told my dad on the phone that I needed to see him; that I had been seeing a counselor and he recommended we get some things off each other's chests. I had feared such behavior would open Pandora's box instead of take a weight off my heart but instead both of us, sitting in his living room in the house at 740 south 29th St where I had grown up came to a first time ever, man to man, understanding.  We were both broken and needed help getting fixed. And now we both knew it.

I won't say the years between that meeting and the stroke that almost fully incapacitated my dad were all rosy.  We met together once a month at a restaurant he would choose and we'd eat and talk for about an hour.  By the end of 60 minutes he would be saying something to me, or demanding something of me that I could not deal with and we both knew that was time to swallow our last bites and say goodbye till next month.  But we were talking.  And here's the stuff that I KNOW wouldn't have happened if I had not learned the value of Christ's instruction from that good counselor so long ago.

-I would not have been drawn to help others like myself with parental issues.
-I wouldn't have sought out the United Methodist Licensed Pastor program.
-I wouldn't have become a full time pastor
-I would never have learned to lose most of my judgmentalism and dad's own brand of stubbornness (I said most of it, not all).
-I would never have been able to mount that old pizza plate on the wall of our new home's basement.

Somebody has to ask... why not mount it on a wall up in the living quarters?  Well, there aren't many wall spaces in any 'land yacht' and the few we have are for pics of our kids and us.  And truthfully, the basement of his home, where I grew up, was ground zero for all of our really great times together.

 It was where he built the American Flyer year round train set for Jim and I and my kids and grand kids to enjoy. It was where his library, photo lab, bullet making and reloading center and blacksmith shop were (yes, I said blacksmith shop). And it was where he kept the plate hung, right on a wall covered with his best 50 and 100 yard targets.

I've kept in in our basements in to excavated homes, and I think it's right at home in the basement of our new home on wheels.

So who is the person in your family, maybe even a parent, who you need to pray hard about and have a sit down with?  I may not know you, or who that might be, but I'll bet you can think of them right now.  Why don't you pray for God's strength to give you the strength and He did me, to make that call?

-Ken

I told you he had a blacksmith shop down there (1975)!