The Promise Of Paradise & A Shovel

My folks got that knock at the door and received a married couple that were preaching about a coming paradise. They promised them fellowship with a brotherhood of true Christians who worshiped God with Spirit and Truth. What they got was something different. But more on that later.

The first thing that happened was my dad lost his job and we lost our home, because my dad's boss was diametrically opposed to the Jehovah's witnesses and he called them Watchtowerites and Russellites. Past experience is my best guess as to why he called them that. Either way my dad and the rest of us were out on our collective ass.

The couple just happened to have a vacant apartment with a store-front that they could rent to us. (Turns out everyone that lived at the old boss's place got a visit from this couple and they were all streeted and wound up renting an apartment from the JWs.) So we moved in and my dad opened up a electronics and communications repair shop in the store-front and we lived in back.

The next door neighbors were also JWs and were very nice people. We became friends with the kids and my folks became friends with the sister who was divorced and raising her kids alone. I also began my first year of school in a town that hated the JWs. My teacher was the Devil in Drag and made no bones about wanting to kick my ass every time I didn't salute the flag or draw a jack o' lantern or whatever else my folks forbade me to do.

Of course I puked every single morning before I got to school (Until 11th grade) and I cried for my little brother at lunch for a week, because he and I always had lunch together. I was not allowed any friends except JW's and we were a definite minority in that podunk little town. So I spent my time doing homework, fretting over the next day of abuse at school, and going to meetings at the kingdom hall three days a week.

One fun thing that we did do was follow the brother/landlord around as he did chores on the property. We learned a lot about fishing too from him and gardening. Once my brother saw him covering up a water meter cover by kicking dirt onto it. (That is a good story)! My folks were studying the truth book with the landlord and his wife, going to all the JW meetings and planning on getting baptized. My dad also worked in his shop and got a good paying job out of town and my mom worked herself to death caring for us.

Several months later dad was paying bills and noticed that the water bill was FIVE TIMES higher than the month before. He was looking around to see if there was a leak or something and could not find the meter to trace back where the line was under the ground. He was looking and my brother asked him what he was looking for. He told him what it looked like and he said that So-and So had covered it up with dirt. He showed him where it was.

When he opened the cover my dad saw that all of the apartments and the landlord's house had their water lines going thru our meter. My folks were now supposed to foot the bill for everyone's water I guess. No way! LOL My dad went to talk with the landlord but he was not around, so my mom said that when dad was at work, if she saw him she would ask him to talk with dad about the water meter.

She got up Monday and saw the man walking the property. She confronted him with me in tow. It got ugly right away. He said it was not her place as a woman in God's arrangement to question him. She still demanded an answer and he got really upset and hit my mom across her hip with his shovel. She screamed in pain and told me to go get help. So I ran out to the highway and as luck would have it a State Trooper was driving by, so I flagged him down. My mom didn't press the charge but we did move. So much for the paradise and fellowship with a brotherhood of true Christians. That was when I had doubts about this group called Jehovah's Witnesses. But my folks stuck with it....