RAINY-DAY CAR CHASE

WINSDAY WISDOM Session 206

“These are the times that try men’s souls.” That was definitely what I was feeling during this Flashback to the past. The late spring morning car chase was one of those times that shaped my life and the life of many others.

Thomas Paine, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, wrote in The American Crisis in 1776: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Our times were not about the Revolutionary War nor the signing of the Declaration of Independence. However, this incident did try our souls.

For me and my church staff associates, it was the initial episode of C.O.P.S. (CLERGY on PATROL).

Everyone loves a good car chase.

It was late spring in the year of 1900 something, following my family’s move to the city of Shreveport. I was the new pastor of a church with a leadership vacuum located in a transitional neighborhood. The Louisiana rains had been non-stop for days. The water drainage canals that ran through the neighborhood looked like a rushing river.

As the rain began to increase in intensity, our youngest staff member stepped to the window. Rusty paused and then said there were some kids out in the parking lot near Dave Foster’s pickup. Dave was an older man who was cleaning out the church bus. Suddenly, Rusty yelled, “They are stealing Dave’s truck!”

Three other staff members leaped to the window to witness the Grand Theft Auto scene. I arrived on crutches just a few seconds behind. I was recovering from knee surgery the previous week. By the time I arrived at the window, the guys were sprinting for the door and the parking lot. I was close behind, hobbling on crutches.

As we headed to the parking lot, three juveniles (ages 13-14) jumped into the pickup and headed for the far exit. Big John, Jeff, and Rusty looked like TV police detectives, Starsky and Hutch, as they leaped into John’s pickup and immediately began pursuit of the getaway car.

Our music leader, Steve, ran inside to call the police. As I crawled into the driver’s side of my van, Mr. Dave hopped in. We raced out of the parking lot as the second vehicle in pursuit of the stolen pickup.

The chase was on. Three vehicles traveled high-speed through the narrow streets. Dave’s stolen brown pickup and Big John’s blue pursuit pickup raced through the backside of the neighborhood. It was dangerous, and no thought was given to the stupidity of it all. It was eerily similar to the famous, ill-advised car chase in the movie, The French Connection.

The rain became an epic downpour. The streets were flooded in some spots. After two quick turns, both vehicles sped down the straightaway. The street would end at a dead-end T- intersection. A left or right turn were the only options.

The fleeing pickup was going too fast to negotiate a safe turn. As the under-aged driver tried to turn left, he lost control of the truck. It spun in a complete circle and then continued the hydroplane slide for another 180 degrees. It was now facing directly into the path of Big John’s speeding pickup. There was no time to stop.

The trucks hit head on, smashing the hoods and front glass of both vehicles. In something akin to a miracle, only Jeff was injured in the violent crash. His head slammed against the rear-view mirror, causing a huge knot on his forehead. (It would not be right if I did not mention that some thought the Wizard of Oz Scarecrow had finally received his brain.)

The Three Stooges juvenile thieves jumped from the wreckage. The Keystone C.O.P.S. exited just as quickly. The teenage boys raced down the street next to the flooded canal. The staff was in hot pursuit.

Jeff did not lack courage or speed. He quickly caught the driver of the stolen pickup. Jeff is very fast. He was also trained to be a Dallas police officer before this inaugural event of Clergy on Patrol. Jeff tackled the driver and pinned him in a mud puddle. Jeff mercifully complied with the kid’s pleas to roll out of the water hole.

(Big John noted that the escapee Jeff caught was the slow, chubby little teenager.)

The faster car thieves sprinted away with Rusty in hot pursuit. Big John can move very quickly for a large man, but he was losing ground. That did not deter him.

A passing pickup slowed to ask if anyone needed help. Big John jumped onto the back bumper and yelled for the driver to catch the runaway kids. Big John hanging on a back bumper is comedic enough, especially with his jeans slipping down his backside. “Sagging” was in fashion during that time. This might have been how Big John “cracked” the case.

The whole scene became wilder as the two hoodlums attempted to cross over into a schoolyard. A baseball coach reacted to hearing shouts to stop those boys. The coach had a baseball bat in his hand as he chased the kids back to the other side of the street.

Big John jumped from the back bumper to grab the collar of the second one. It looked like a scene right out of a cowboy western, as the sheriff leaps from his charging horse to wrestle the bad outlaw to the ground.

The frightened teenager pulled free from BJ’s grasp. Rusty arrived just as the escapee tried to jump over the canal. That was a huge mistake. The raging water could have drowned him as it swept him downstream. Rusty ran alongside yelling for the flailing criminal to grab a pipe that ran across the top of the canal. The kid frantically struggled to hold on as he screamed for help.

My pursuit van passed the two wrecked vehicles. We sped around the corner and quickly spotted the car thieves. One on the ground. One in the canal. One still racing to escape.

I put the pedal to the metal with no thought of the dire consequences as I sped past the third runaway. I swerved in front of him, blocking his route of escape. He stopped and surrendered. He placed his hands on his head as if he had done this arrest thing before. He kept yelling, “I give up! I give up!”

Dave and Big John escorted the dejected rain-soaked teenager back to his drenched friend lying near the feet of Jeff’s oversight. Neither was as wet as their third companion flailing about in the canal’s rushing river.

Two down and one drowning. The baseball coach did a courageous highwire act as he crossed the pipe over the canal. He leaned over to offer his bat to the endangered youth. As the kid reached for the Louisville Slugger, the coach lost his balance and now both were headed downstream. The teenager did not let go of the bat, and neither did the coach who bravely pulled both to safety. Rusty used a fallen tree branch to help them to solid ground.

Somewhere amidst the chaos, Steve arrived in his green minivan right before the police. Jeff yelled for him to get a rope or something to save the drowning kid.

Of all the memorable sights, Steve’s appearance remains the most vivid in the minds of all the rain-soaked participants.

There were two wrecked pickups. Pieces of metal and glass along the wet street. Jeff tackling a chubby youngster. Big John riding the back bumper of a passing pickup, with too much showing. A frightened youth jumping into the raging waters of a canal. The heroic attempt of the baseball coach and Rusty’s tree branch. Old Dave walking next to the fourteen-year-old who stole and wrecked Dave’s favorite pickup. I hobbled to help while on crutches.

Everyone was rain-soaked to the max. Criminals and clergy.

All these strange sights paled in comparison to the vision of Steve on a fast-paced stroll to help save the drowning criminal. He carried a green garden hose in his outstretched arm, while fully protected from the pouring rain by his open umbrella.

Who thinks of grabbing an umbrella in times like these that try men’s souls? That’s right, kids! Who shows up with an umbrella in the most trying times to teach lessons about life to dysfunctional young people?

MARY POPPINS! Can you say Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?

Steve was unafraid in his pursuit. He was just more prepared than the rest of us. Steve would be dry for the interview by the local television news crew. He just needed a London Fog trench coat to add to his Parisian street-style elegance.

Steve was the only one of us who thought to share the love of Christ with the juveniles in the back seat of the police car. Perhaps he was offering them a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. It would not have surprised me to see these young, converted choir members singing the Mary Poppin’s classic, Let’s Go Fly a Kite.

This incident began the answer which we were seeking in our staff meeting. How can we show love first and love most to the people, and especially the youth, of this neighborhood?

It would not come as Clergy on Patrol or Freedom Fighters or even Mary Poppins armed with umbrellas. Reflections on the event set in motion opportunities to change the neighborhood and the racial tensions. We developed a plan to change things as they were. Our plans had to be changed several times and then defended more than once.

Most importantly, the rainy-day car chase ignited the beginning of Monday Night Club, an open gym and game room to kids who felt they were not welcomed in our church and never suspected the persons inside really loved them. Monday Night Club has continued for thirty-two years as a divine instrument to love literally thousands of young people.

Yes, these were the times that tried our souls. We chose to storm the gates of Hell. This was not for the weak or faint of heart.

The conflict was hard, much harder than we anticipated. It involved more than a stolen pickup. There were rival gangs, shootouts, and staff staring down the barrel of a gun. The story also includes glorious triumphs where Love First and Love Most conquered forces from Hell. (See next week’s Winsday WIsdom.)

The ultimate triumph of love will surely come in your life as well. It will not and cannot fail, but the victory is never easy…and never without conflict.

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated” (Thomas Paine).

The FREEDOM to LOVE FIRST and LOVE MOST has a proper price beyond measure in Heaven’s richest of riches.

How valuable is it to you? What hard conflict are you willing to endure and overcome to prove the celestial worth of real love?

Whatever the relationship, or lack thereof, charge into the fray with a heart unwilling to stop short of victory. That individual is of great value to you and Heaven.

Whatever the cost, walk in love, just as God in Christ has loved us and gave Himself for us (from the #1 Textbook). That life purpose is highly rated in Heaven.

SPEAKING OF HEAVEN AND DAVE FOSTER, please check out the next MONDAY MOANING for a very special death bed story.

Until then, place a heavenly value on that hard to love person in your life and make a positive difference in his/her life this week.

Oh, oh, oh!
Let’s go fly a kite
Up to the highest height!
Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let’s go fly a kite!

—Let’s Go Fly a Kite (from Mary Poppins, song written by Richard and Robert Sherman)