Man, it was beautiful today. Low 20s, sun, clouds that were purely decorative. It reminded me of the summer days a couple of years ago when B. and Z. and I were just starting to try to wrap our well-intentioned brains around where to start at the Motel.
We knew that there were 80 - 100 people living there who we wanted to get to know, but how?
Our first step was to get together every Wednesday morning to talk and pray. We had some really engrossing discussions that ate up the 'praying' time, but we figured that God was in on the conversation, so it was OK.
After we'd talked ourselves out, we'd drive down to the Motel and go for "walkabouts". It seems almost funny now, but none of us would ever go alone because the place still made us nervous. So the three of us would wander around and see who was there. If somebody was sitting in the shade with a beer, we'd pull up a chair, say no thanks to the offer of a bottle, and just chat.
Around the back of the main building, there was a construction project underway. H. was building a container garden. The man is a scrounger extraordinaire and had built a deck with seats out of scrap lumber. It was peppered with black plastic pots filled with soil and some hopeful looking tomato plants. He'd decorated it with the funniest assortment of odds and ends arranged as only an artist can. Half a birdhouse here, most of a wagon wheel there, something that might have been an oxen yoke. It's one of those things that I wish I'd taken pictures of.
It was quite a conversation piece, and we started getting to know H. a bit. He asked B., who is a particularly warm and likeable woman, what she does. She told him that she and her husband run a chicken farm. They raise them for a month or two until they're just the right size and then sell them on to restaurants and wholesalers. His eyes lit up and he dropped the broadest of hints that he'd love to have a chicken.
She said sure. Their current crop were almost ready to ship, so she'd bring him one.
The next week when we parked in the front parking lot, B. opened her trunk and took out a box and a bag. We walked back to the garden and found H. there. He saw us coming, saw the box and the bag and said, "Did you bring me a chicken?"
B. said, "Sure did. It's right here."
She took the cover off the box and there was the chicken. And the other chicken. Looking back.
H.'s jaw dropped and he looked from the box back up to B. and said, "What the hell is that?"
She laughed and said, "I promised you a chicken. Here it is."
He guffawed and slapped his thigh and said, "I thought it would be dead! It was supposed to be DEAD! What in THE HELL am I going to do with THAT?"
So she told him. Handed him the bag of feed, explained how much to give and to make sure they always had water. Told him to provide them with shade, grass and gravel and to protect them from coyotes.
He laughed again and went off to find an abandoned shopping cart to use as a cage.
For the next several weeks, he looked after those chickens and kept them healthy and happy. 'Til one day N. told him she had no food for dinner for her 3 young kids and herself. So H. gave her the chickens. She wrung their necks, plucked them, gutted them and cooked them in the stove in the church (Sherwood Room) and they all had a really nice dinner.
Too bad the tomatoes weren't ready yet. That would have been a feast.
r
We knew that there were 80 - 100 people living there who we wanted to get to know, but how?
Our first step was to get together every Wednesday morning to talk and pray. We had some really engrossing discussions that ate up the 'praying' time, but we figured that God was in on the conversation, so it was OK.
After we'd talked ourselves out, we'd drive down to the Motel and go for "walkabouts". It seems almost funny now, but none of us would ever go alone because the place still made us nervous. So the three of us would wander around and see who was there. If somebody was sitting in the shade with a beer, we'd pull up a chair, say no thanks to the offer of a bottle, and just chat.
Around the back of the main building, there was a construction project underway. H. was building a container garden. The man is a scrounger extraordinaire and had built a deck with seats out of scrap lumber. It was peppered with black plastic pots filled with soil and some hopeful looking tomato plants. He'd decorated it with the funniest assortment of odds and ends arranged as only an artist can. Half a birdhouse here, most of a wagon wheel there, something that might have been an oxen yoke. It's one of those things that I wish I'd taken pictures of.
It was quite a conversation piece, and we started getting to know H. a bit. He asked B., who is a particularly warm and likeable woman, what she does. She told him that she and her husband run a chicken farm. They raise them for a month or two until they're just the right size and then sell them on to restaurants and wholesalers. His eyes lit up and he dropped the broadest of hints that he'd love to have a chicken.
She said sure. Their current crop were almost ready to ship, so she'd bring him one.
The next week when we parked in the front parking lot, B. opened her trunk and took out a box and a bag. We walked back to the garden and found H. there. He saw us coming, saw the box and the bag and said, "Did you bring me a chicken?"
B. said, "Sure did. It's right here."
She took the cover off the box and there was the chicken. And the other chicken. Looking back.
H.'s jaw dropped and he looked from the box back up to B. and said, "What the hell is that?"
She laughed and said, "I promised you a chicken. Here it is."
He guffawed and slapped his thigh and said, "I thought it would be dead! It was supposed to be DEAD! What in THE HELL am I going to do with THAT?"
So she told him. Handed him the bag of feed, explained how much to give and to make sure they always had water. Told him to provide them with shade, grass and gravel and to protect them from coyotes.
He laughed again and went off to find an abandoned shopping cart to use as a cage.
For the next several weeks, he looked after those chickens and kept them healthy and happy. 'Til one day N. told him she had no food for dinner for her 3 young kids and herself. So H. gave her the chickens. She wrung their necks, plucked them, gutted them and cooked them in the stove in the church (Sherwood Room) and they all had a really nice dinner.
Too bad the tomatoes weren't ready yet. That would have been a feast.
r
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