A Folded Five Dollar Bill

It was 1953.  Frances and I purchased a little trailer house to live in while going to Southern California Bible College in Costa Mesa, (now Vanguard University).  We rented a space at Shady Lane Trailer Park in Anaheim only about a mile from where Disneyland is now.  Frances attended SCBC for one year then took a job as a sales girl at Kress “five and dime store” in Anaheim to help pay my school bill.  I think she earned about 45 cents per hour.  She had to quit when she was obviously pregnant.  Our beautiful little Ronny was born at the Orange County Hospital.  He was so cute! 

While we were living in Shady Lane Trailer Park Frances became friends with Nancy, a newly married young lady.  I remember that at a crucial moment in that girl’s life, Frances was there to love her, counsel and encourage her.  She is still serving the Lord today and writes me often in response to my blogs.

I was carrying a full load at SCBC in Costa Mesa, and working in the afternoons at an ARCO distributorship in Anaheim.  After class every day I would drive a gasoline tanker delivering fuel until 6 PM and then operate a service station each night alone, attending the pumps, doing oil changes and lube jobs, tire repairs and much more and closing at 10 PM.  The service station owner, Harold and his sweet little Christian wife, Rosie, also lived in our same trailer park.  Harold was a hard man to work for, very vocal and adept with an unholy vocabulary.  When he was upset, which seemed too often, he could turn the air green with his language.  He seldom said a sentence to his hired help without a string of curse words.  He hired and fired 16 men during the first year I worked with him!  Actually, some of them quit because they couldn’t stand him yelling and cursing at them. 

Early on, Harold made a lot of fun of me for turning in a five dollar bill that I found all folded up late one night out by the gas pumps.  I was earning $1.25 per hour then.  Later he gave me $50 extra to help pay the hospital bill for Frances when Ronny was born.  I think that was equivalent to $500 or more of today’s money and covered about one third of the whole maternity bill.  He was always polite and kind to Frances... and to me, too, off the job.  

After almost two years working for him, he fired me in a cursing rage for requesting and insisting on every other Saturday night off to go preach to the military men in Victory Servicemen’s Center at the New Pike in Longbeach. 

Three months later, when I was delivering gasoline to his station, he begged me to come back to work for him again… because he couldn’t trust anybody else with the cash-box to work alone at night.  He said something like, “You may be stupid, but you don’t steal from the cash box!”  I needed the work and agreed on the condition that he let me have every other Saturday night off to go preach.  It was a deal!

We kept in contact with Harold and Rosie after they moved and opened another station and car repair shop in Agua Dulce, north east of LA.  We even visited them at their new home.

After graduation, we left the area, towing our little trailer house 400 miles north to Carmichael, California where we would serve as assistant pastors.  Frances was pregnant with Tim, but back in those days you didn’t say the word "pregnant"… you were just “in a family way” and this was only discussed by women in private. 

Years later, as missionaries from Argentina now on deputation, I was driving my little VW bug up I-5 going north out of LA.  My son, Mike, was with me.  I felt such a burden for Harold’s lost soul that I decided to go visit him although it was 40 miles out of my way.  These were the days before cell phones so I could not call them.  I drove there, and was very disappointed to find no one at home.  I placed a note on the door and stood there and prayed for him asking God to save him.

I don’t remember how much time passed, but one day we received a letter from Rosie saying that Harold had been wonderfully saved while watching Jerry Falwell on TV!  They found out where I was preaching for a Missionary Banquet and drove all the way to Sacramento to hear me.  Harold pressed a $100 bill into my hand.  They invited us to dinner and months later we drove to Agua Dulce to eat with them.  There at the head of the table the new Harold was blessing the food… praying in the same name of the Jesus that he had formerly cursed!  It was so beautiful it brought me tears.

 

While sitting there at the table he reminded me about a five dollar bill that I had found out by the pumps and turned in.  Could it be that this five dollar bill had chased him for over seven years?  I am told that Harold became as vocal in his witness for Christ as he had been before with his unfit language.  He became a respected deacon in his Baptist church and served God until he passed away.  I still am in contact occasionally with his widow, Rosie.  Their son, Donny and all his family also follow the Lord!

Somebody lost 5 bucks out of their pocket, but it went to a great and eternal cause.

Ain’t God good?!!!

Ralph