I recently was privileged to play “Uncle Billy” in Richmond Civic Theatre’s production of It’s a Wonderful Life: the Musical. As with many productions, the cast and crew bonded as we worked together over three months. We hugged a lot. “Love ya” was often heard backstage and in the dressing and makeup rooms.

When the play ended and the set was dismantled (struck, for us theater geeks),  we disappeared from each other’s lives, at least until a future show. Since then, I’ve kept in touch with many of the cast, the crew, and the orchestra. I still tell them how honored I felt to work with them. I still love them all, and I’m not going to stop letting them know.

I tell or show a lot of people that I love them. Not enough, probably. Not often enough when it comes to family, but still a lot. My most feared nightmare is standing before God and having not told someone that they meant a lot to me.

This morning, I asked myself why I do that. Why, on social media, am I so quick with a ❤️ or a 💜 or a 💛? Why do I offer a ride, a few dollars, a hug to people, some of whom I barely know? Why am I driven to let people know I care? I blame one song I heard back in 1970.

Scott, an East 93rd Street neighbor and one of my best friends, burst into the living room with a record album in his hand.

“You gotta hear this,” he exclaimed.

“This” was the LP Second Thoughts by the band McKendree Spring.

The album consisted of covers and original songs with pure, clean vocals by Fran McKendree and background music featuring electric violin and viola, theremin, and the newly introduced Moog synthesizer. I’d never heard anything like it. I quickly memorized the lyrics of For What Was Gained, the almost-eight-minute song that became my anti-war anthem. The haunting strings and synthesizer of Oh Now My Friend drove me to the encyclopedia to find out why Duluth is described as “walls and iron seashore.”

And then there was Cairo Hotel. The song existed before McKendree Spring recorded their version. Adam Mitchell wrote it with The Paupers in 1968, but few people knew about that.

Of course, only slightly more people ever knew McKendree Spring’s version. While musically influential, they were never a “popular” band.

Cairo Hotel is the story of the death of a lonely man and the life of a lonely woman. They know each other, but the man feels unloved, and the woman doesn’t know how to confess her love for him. It’s a song about thoughts unexpressed and words never said.

Though she never really told him
Now she wishes that she had
For she loved him in her own peculiar way
In her hand there is a photograph
A scarf upon her knee
She was knitting it to give him Christmas day
And she wishes she had spoken to him
Long before she did
Then perhaps he might have been with her today
 
Something about that song touched me. I’d been raised to believe that as a Christian I should love everyone, like Jesus did. But loving everyone can equate to loving no one if you don’t tell or show them. A tiny spark was lit that day. It grew after I purchased Second Thoughts for myself and played Cairo Hotel over and over on my little stereo. It flamed as I turned an on-the-job prescription drug delivery into an after-work housecleaning adventure for an elderly woman who couldn’t do that for herself. It flamed higher as I started mowing lawns for people unable to operate their own mowers. It became a conflagration as I began to really listen to friends and strangers. I believed I had to do those things not so much because Jesus would have but because I may never get the chance to love those people otherwise.

In the years before his death from cancer in 2021, I got to be friends with Fran McKendree. We jammed together at Earlham School of Religion. He stayed in  my home. I attended his memorial service in North Carolina and visited with bandmates Marty Slutsky and Chris Bishop. But I never told Fran how much that cover of Cairo Hotel meant to me.

I wonder with how many other people I missed the chance to say thank you, to say goodbye, to say I love you.

Today, I’m going to read this little memoir episode to a church member who is unable to get out on Sunday mornings. She lives in a beautiful care facility with great food and great neighbors. But she lives primarily alone. I know she hears almost every day that she is loved by her children and grandchildren. I know sometimes even the nursing assistants and other staff tell and show her how much they care. It’s not enough. I need to tell her myself. (Note: I did.)

We’re all living in the lonely, rundown Cairo Hotel. We love each other ”in our own peculiar ways.” But we need to say so and do so.

Fran McKendree, I love you for your song Cairo Hotel and for your friendship. I’m sorry I never told you that. I won’t let it happen again.

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I do hope you’re enjoying Tales of a Canarsie Boy. I expect to add new episodes in the months to come. By the way, if you’re from Canarsie and have a story to share, please contact me via this blog or email (pbaisley@gmail.com). I’d love to include you as a guest blogger.

The oldest person I recall having known in the Canarsie of my youth was Mrs. White. She was old when I was in the Grace Church Sunday School; maybe ninety when I entered high school. By the time I left for college she was positively ancient. But age is relative.

Those of us who entered college in the late sixties and early seventies knew enough not to trust anyone over thirty. We couldn’t imagine being in our forties like—ugh—our parents. Living beyond that was completely beyond our fathoming. Singer-songwriter Paul Simon may have summed it up best in his song Old Friends, “How terribly strange to be seventy.” Of course, Paul Simon turned eighty just last week. Art Garfunkel will reach the same milestone next month. I wonder if the duo saw that coming. How terribly strange.

Mrs. White seemed strange to us Grace Church kids. She was most noted for her cowbell.

Grace Church observed an old American Protestant New Year's Eve tradition, the Watch Night Service. As a sober alternative to other New Year’s celebrations, Watch Night began at the church around 9:00 p.m., with food and board games and other fundamentalist frivolity. Then, at 11:00, things quieted down as we moved from the fellowship hall to the sanctuary. What happened next was a pretty much standard church service: hymns, prayers, testimonies, and a short sermon from the pastor.

I recently turned sixty-nine, not seventy but terribly strange anyway. I truly never saw this coming. Inside I still feel like a teenager. I suck up the pains in my feet, knees, shoulders, everywhere, because one as young as I should not have those pains. But who am I kidding? I’m old. Been that way a while and getting more so every day.

Recently someone asked about the signs of aging, and what your personal experience would lead you to title a book about the subject. If I were to write such a book, the title would be “I’m All Right,” based on an incident from a few days ago.

I had dropped my car off to have a leaky tire checked. I didn’t have an appointment, and the shop said it would be at least an hour and a half until they could get to it. That was no problem—I could walk to a nearby coffee shop and get some work done while I waited.

I tossed my backpack, with a load of books and a laptop, over one shoulder and headed into town. To get to the coffee shop I needed to cross a six-lane divided highway. There was a light but no crosswalk. Piece of cake, right? I was a Canarsie boy. I’d run across Linden Boulevard and Kings Highway even without the benefit of a light.

I had the light. I waited for it to turn green, made sure no one was turning into the intersection, and started walking briskly toward the median. I figured if I made it that far and the light turned yellow I’d just wait there until traffic died down or the light changed again.

As I crossed the median the light stayed green. I hesitated, giving it time to change. It didn’t. I decided to cross the remaining three lanes at a trot. High school and college athlete me would have had no problem. Heck, even the me who rode in a 56-mile bike event just two years ago could’ve taken three lanes in stride.

Newly-minted sixty-nine-year-old me began that trot and quickly noticed that my upper body was moving faster than my feet. Don’t get me wrong, my feet tried to keep up, but they kept lagging farther and farther behind. This was due to something called “neuropathy,” which I’ve had for a few years. Finally they stopped altogether and my head and chest sailed forward, then downward onto the pavement.

Somehow I managed to save my body, except my big toe, which was bruised quite badly. I saved my good black jeans without so much as a scuff mark. Even my hands, which seemed to take the brunt of the fall, came out with no more than a grease mark. My dignity, however, didn’t remain intact.

By the time I stood up to retrieve my backpack and the reading glasses that had slipped out of my shirt pocket, the light had changed. No one in the southbound lanes could move because there was an old guy tottering around in them. People started lowering their windows.

“Are you hurt?”

“You okay?”

One fellow opened his car door. “Do you need any help?”

I glanced at my unscathed jeans, tossed the laptop bag back over my left shoulder, held up my right hand for the stopped traffic to see, and announced with a smile, “I’m all right.”

And I was. I knew it right then.

Sure, my big toenail was blue when I got home that afternoon. I might still lose it. A lot of my peers lost more than a toenail in Vietnam. I bet if I’d known anyone in the cars I’d delayed I’d have been embarrassed. But I’ve been embarrassed before. You don’t have to be old to be embarrassed. I thought I might be hurting the next morning, but I wasn’t, at least not from falling into traffic. I’m all right.

And I am. I’m just older than I’ve ever been, and I’m damn glad of it. I may or may not do a 56-mile bike ride again. Who knows? But I’m all right. My body is slowing down and getting crankier. It should. It’s been around quite a few blocks in Canarsie and Lancaster and Pittsburgh and Portland and Richmond. I’m all right.
 
Don’t pity me because I’m old. You should live so long. Maybe you already have, so you know.

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I do hope you’re enjoying Tales of a Canarsie Boy. I’ll be adding new episodes in the months to come. By the way, if you’re from Canarsie and have a story to share, please contact me via this blog or email (pbaisley@gmail.com). I’d love to include you as a guest blogger.

I was doing a writing exercise the other day; one where you list the loves you are “running after” in your current project, and how your writing might nurture that love. That made me smile. How many writers have just one project in the works? I had to choose between my first novel, its two sequels, and a musical based on the life of Jacob Riis. I picked the novel.

Imposter is set in 1904 Manhattan and Brooklyn. The majority of the action takes place in the neighborhood just south of Bellevue Hospital, on the streets around the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and in Canarsie.

One of the loves that guides my project, I think, is my boyhood home, maybe your home too: Canarsie. When I thought about how to nurture my Canarsie love I listed the obvious: describe it accurately, bring it to life for my readers, and...and then I stopped. An image formed in my brain, but how could I convey it? I wrote, “give it a wink.”

Canarsie is, and probably was in 1904, a winky town. It’s been the butt of a thousand jokes. It’s a place every New Yorker knows about—they see it at the far southeast end of the maps on the walls of subway cars, and as an exit on the Belt Parkway—but not many have actually been to.
 
When Hollywood needs a symbol of a backward, backwater community, Canarsie is right there in the back of their minds. I remember as a kid on East 93rd Street watching an episode of I Spy called “Casanova from Canarsie.”
 
Why Canarsie? Good question. The community is never mentioned in the show. But they needed a title to convey a sense of lightheartedness. The episode was strictly tongue-in-cheek. It even featured Wally Cox, a character actor known for bringing TV shows comic relief. If you wanted to make people laugh in the 1960s, just throw in the name Canarsie. It even sounds funny.

Canarsians are actually proud of things like that. They are, like I said, “winky.” They know the rest of New York, Hollywood, and maybe the world see them as northern hillbillies and they don’t mind. They just look back with a slightly twisted grin and wink. As if to say, “We’ll accept your derision while we enjoy our semi-suburban lifestyle and maybe even take your cash while you’re not looking.” After all, it was the Canarsie clan of the Lenape who sold Manhattan—which they didn’t own—to the Dutch, and then took their $24 in trade goods back to Brooklyn with a wink.

Just north of the Canarsie Cemetery, the place where so many Baisleys are buried, lies Church Lane. It’s little more than an alley, and it drops from Remsen Avenue down into what in most parts of America would’ve called a “hollow,” a low lying area off the beaten track.

When I was growing up, Church Lane was a dirt path that ran from the north side of Grace Protestant Church west to East 86th Street. It rose and fell with the contours of what used to be farmland, creating two “suicide” hills for daredevil bikers.
 
Within the four-block area between 86th and Remsen, a half-dozen shanties used to sit. The families who lived there were old Canarsie stock. Although the little homes had all the amenities of city life—running water, indoor toilets, electricity—they looked like places you’d see in a movie set deep in the hills of southeastern Kentucky. The faces of the people who lived there were lined and hardened, probably inherited from their oysterman ancestors, but their lips easily bent to a smile.

I remember many a cold Christmas Eve venturing down to that hollow with the Grace Church carolers. One of our church families lived there. It seemed like we were walking into another world. Our voices echoed off the surrounding high ground. But the folks we visited made us feel welcome.
 
I miss that little hollow. While working on my first novel I tried to imagine what it was like in 1904. I described it as, “a few shanties that seemed to have been planted randomly by a drunken farmer.” I added, “The hollow at the bottom of Church Lane was a page from a history book. Even in the summer heat the air smelled of wood burning in ancient stoves. Neither the Brooklyn Union Gas Company nor the Kings Country Electric Light and Power Company had discovered this relic of old Brooklyn.”

Church Lane is fully paved now. The shanties are gone. The only house that remains from the 50s and 60s is a two-story dwelling on the edge of the hollow. Only the youngest bike riders get a thrill careering down a much tamer Suicide Hill. Grace Church is now the Church on the Rock. Everything changes. But you talk to a Canarsian, old or new, about their home, and they say how much they love it; what a special place Canarsie is. And they’ll say it with a wink.

_________________________

I do hope you’re enjoying Tales of a Canarsie Boy. I’ll be adding new episodes in the months to come. By the way, if you’re from Canarsie and have a story to share, please contact me via this blog or email (pbaisley@gmail.com). I’d love to include you as a guest blogger.

These days, almost everyone’s body sports a tattoo somewhere. My son has an angry Sun covering his back. His wife has tattoos on her legs. It wasn’t always so.

In the 50s and 60s, tattoos signified two things. The first was service in the United States Navy.

The first tattoo I recall seeing graced the arm of Judy’s dad. I don’t remember what it was, but I’d hazard a guess it was an anchor. Navy men prided themselves on their tattoos. 

Grace Church members frowned at tattoos. They knew the book of Leviticus had something to say against them. I noticed that Mr. Phillips and his son, also a Navy vet, always kept their arms covered in church. I suspect the Church on the Rock, which is what Grace became in the 2000s, is more tolerant of body art. Pretty little crosses, fish symbols, and tough guy Jesus faces are all the rage among twenty-first century evangelicals.

The other kind of tattoos I grew up with were not pretty, were not obtained voluntarily, and conveyed a message not of pride but of humiliation and degradation.

About half the residents of the part of Canarsie in which I lived were Jewish, mostly of Eastern European descent. By the time they arrived in America, they’d shorn the spellings that reminded them of the “old country.” Rabinowitz became Robins; Nahinsky turned to Nahins. But some things you can’t change.

I remember the first time I met one friend’s grandfather. He reached out to shake my hand and say, “pleased to meet you” in Yiddish-accented English. I saw a faint number tattooed on his forearm. Grandfather noticed my eyes drawn to that spot.

“From the camp,” he said, a tear moistening his eye.

That was all I needed to know.

Those were the years I was heavily into World War II, as my stepson is now. I watched TV shows like Combat and The Gallant Men, and wished I’d been allowed to see The Longest Day at the movies. I was ecstatic when Uncle Freddie gave me the German helmet and belt buckle he’d brought back from the war. But he never talked about the war. I only knew he’d landed in France just after D-Day and fought his way across Europe and into Germany. That’s where he got his nickname: Fritz.

Maybe Uncle Freddie met some of my friends’ grandparents back then. He’d have remembered. Oh, not the names but the looks. That’s something American soldiers had no words for. How do you describe walking skeletons? What do you call the level of hell below horror?

Holocaust they named it. A word with origins in burning and sacrificial offerings.

The grandparents with tattooed arms survived that indescribable hellfire. Many of their parents and siblings did not. They came to an America that refused to welcome them in the 1930s but suddenly opened its borders to them after the war. Too late for most.

They found work here, and they built for their children the kind of lives they’d had taken away in Poland and Hungary and Germany. And when those children became successful and bought homes in Canarsie, they moved downstairs and lived quietly into an old age their parents never reached.

Uncle Freddie, the liberator, had no words to describe the things he saw during the war, but the grandparents with tattooed arms did. Just two words: never again.
_______________________________________________

I do hope you’re enjoying Tales of a Canarsie Boy. I’ll be adding new episodes in the months to come. By the way, if you’re from Canarsie and have a story to share, please contact me via this blog or email (pbaisley@gmail.com). I’d love to include you as a guest blogger.

Canarsie High School held an annual event that was more popular, at least among my loose band of associates, than sports teams, clubs, and maybe even Prom. It was known by the simple, almost self-deprecating name of Sing.

It’s been a long time since I saw a Canarsie High Sing. Actually, I only went once. That was during my sophomore year, the one year when almost all the 93rd Street Gang was in the same school building. Being younger than other gang members by one to two years, the only time we saw each other in school was when I was in 7th grade at Bildersee and Billy Knudsen and Eddie Gentile were in 9th, and that one year in high school when both Billys, Eddie, Judy, the Watts brothers, and anyone else who didn’t go to Catholic or specialized high schools were at Canarsie High.

I was so excited to be in school with the gang again. Summers were great, and evenings after school were okay, especially on late spring or early fall nights when it was still warm enough to play hide-and-go-seek after dark. But I missed being in school with the gang. As a lowly sophomore (junior high kids entered high school as sophomores back then), I exulted in walking the halls of Canarsie High and having my existence validated by a nod from a senior.

So, of course when I heard about Sing, I wanted to see my friends perform. I could have performed myself. No, back then I couldn’t have—too shy—and that’s what makes Sing all the more special today.

Having never performed in Sing, I asked Eddie to describe it:

“Sing was a high school original musical competition between freshman /sophomore, junior, and senior classes. Students picked a theme, wrote the script, and re-wrote show tune lyrics all under the supervision of a faculty advisor. Faculty members judged each class' shows on the basis of originality, costumes, scenery, etc. Usually, at the end of the final night's performances, votes were tallied and a winner declared.”

Sing was amazing, according to anyone I knew who was ever involved in it. Imagine being able to write, produce, and perform your work before hundreds of people.

Terrifying.

I loved to write. I wrote poetry. I wrote book reports so well that I once got a 90 for a report on a book I’d never read. I loved to sing: at Grandma's, in church, driving 60mph on the Southern State Parkway with the radio blasting. But not in public. Not on a stage.

I knew I wasn’t that good a singer. My dad sang in a well-known gospel quartet for thirty years, but I was no Pop. I was a very good clarinet and sax player; got a lot of solos, and I was scared half out of my mind every time I took my place in band or orchestra and had to play one.

By my own choice, there was never a place for me at Sing. Except in the audience. Once. It might have stayed that way, me watching others perform, were it not for a gift from my father when I was ten.

Tom was part of the local theater community. I learned this secret when I went to see a friend perform as Jesus in Superstar. In one scene, on a platform high above the stage, loomed Tom, singing and dancing as a Jerusalem priest. Tom? My golf buddy? An actor?

I questioned Tom about it. He told me he started a couple of years earlier. Said it was fun and I ought to try it. But that meant auditions; singing in front of a critical music director. It meant standing in front of strangers. It meant emoting, something I hadn’t done since I was a kid. Still, if Tom could do it, maybe I could too.

I did. I started in the chorus of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, then moved into drama playing Mr. Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank. My Anne Frank director pushed me hard to let out my emotions. She kept making us repeat a scene where the Van Daans are arguing.

“Do it again. C’mon Van Daan, you’re angry. Angry!”

Over and over we ran that scene until, finally, thirty years of suppressed emotions poured out of me.

Something else poured out as well. I started writing song parodies and singing them to the cast during tech week. Every night I’d walk into the dressing rooms singing some new lyrics I’d written to a pop tune or show tune; lyrics about our cast or the characters in the play.

It didn’t end there. I wrote a totally original song for my daughter about our strained relationship. When I sang it for her we both cried. I wrote a song called When I’m With You that I didn’t even know was foretelling the collapse of my marriage.

A friend said I should sing my songs in public. Public? By myself?

I wrote my songs note by note on the keyboard in the chapel at Earlham. I added chords so I could accompany myself. Never had a piano lesson in my life. If I’d been sixteen—and yes, I wrote songs back then—and at Canarsie High School, I’d have kept everything inside, being too timid to let it out.
 
Some things get better with age, and some don’t. Grapes don’t, but wine does. Milk doesn’t, but cheese does. Fifty-three-year-old kids sometimes lose their shyness and let out the feelings their teenage selves could not.

In 2009, after performing solo at open mics and the rare paying gig, I teamed up with Brian Rodgers,  an amazing tenor I’d met in the cast of My Fair Lady. He could harmonize my original songs before he even knew the words. Our voices blended like we were brothers. We even started singing Everly Brothers songs a cappella. Somebody’s Brothers was born.

For eleven years, Brian and I performed in coffee houses and bars, in churches and at outdoor festivals. We sang a blend of original songs, oldies, standards, and gospel. I’d chuckle every time we sang gospel in a bar. I remembered how Pop’s quartet sang at the Bowery Mission. He tried to reach people one way; Brian and I tried to reach them in another. Same gospel, similar audience, different venue. I never sang for my father, or so the Broadway play says, but sometimes I’d feel like I was singing with him.

One year ago today, Brian left Somebody’s Brothers to join the Heavenly Choir. Sometimes, on quiet Indiana evenings, I can hear him on the breeze.

I do hope you’re enjoying Tales of a Canarsie Boy. I’ll be adding new episodes in the months to come. By the way, if you’re from Canarsie and have a story to share, please contact me via this blog or email (pbaisley@gmail.com). I’d love to include you as a guest blogger.

Well, it’s that time again; time when “that damn George Michael song” stealthily glides from store to store like a sleazy private eye following a cheating spouse. Nat King Cole croons about chestnuts and fires while Johnny Mathis hears the bells on Christmas Day. And Baby, It’s Cold Outside gives us our annual glimpse into the predatory male psyche.

While the song is questionable (and that's a discussion for another day), it's not wrong in its titular claim of being cold outside. As with many places, Canarsie Christmases were cold.

When I was very young, I remember Mom dressing me to go outside. Yes, I looked almost exactly like the little brother in
A Christmas Story. Since I was two years younger than my closest friends, I was still wearing woolen mittens while they had advanced to leather gloves. You can make a decent snowball with gloves even when the snow is less than packing-perfect. With mittens? Not a chance. On snow days it was like I had a target on my chest and no way to fight back.

Eventually I was able to dress myself for winter. I didn’t do badly most of the time. I could walk to and from P.S.114 and Bildersee Junior High without freezing to death. Can’t recall ever complaining about the temperature. Except on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve was Grace Church’s annual night of caroling and cocoa. About twenty of us—adults and teenagers—would pile into Pop’s station wagon and a few other vehicles, all lined up on East 92nd Street, and we’d drive to the homes of various shut-ins and other older folks.

I never really knew cold until those nights. It would start okay. We’d sing a half-dozen carols to Mrs. Barnett. In junior high I didn’t know all the words, so I’d take off my gloves to flip the pages of the mimeographed song sheets. I don’t know why the colors red and green are so closely associated with Christmas. Mimeograph purple certainly deserves a place in the holiday spectrum.
 
After the third song my fingertips would be stinging. By Silent Night they’d be blue. As the last notes of We Wish You a Merry Christmas wafted into the night sky I’d be struggling to make my fingers work well enough to reattach my gloves.
 
Toes were worse. I didn’t take my shoes off to sing, so they couldn’t be rewarmed after each house. They just got colder and colder. With so many stops, the cars never got warm enough to provide real heat. Three or four homes in, I’d be swearing (well, good little Fundamentalist boys never swore, but you know) I’d never go Christmas caroling again. By the time we got to the church parsonage for Mrs. Watt’s cookies and cocoa, all I wanted was to stand barefoot over the heat register.

Something changed when I was in high school. I really don’t know what caused it or exactly what year it first happened, but I remember the first caroling night I didn’t feel I was on the verge of frostbite.

We’d just finished singing to Helen Van Houten. Her neighbors, including a girl named Claudia I knew from school, leaned out their upstairs window to enjoy the music. I don’t know in whose car I was riding, but I got into the back seat and pondered my toes. Please understand that I was not caving in to a teenage foot fetish; I was just noticing that my feet weren’t cold even though the temperature was about the same as every Christmas Eve.
 
When my Jewish friends reached age thirteen, the boys got to say, “today I am a man” at their bar mitzvah. I must have matured later because I think it was that night of Christmas caroling, maybe age fifteen, when I first felt like I was no longer a little boy. My brain was man enough to have memorized all the verses of every carol in the song sheets. My hands were man enough to remain gloved. And my feet—my manly feet—had finally managed to remain comfortably temperate during an entire night of singing on snowy sidewalks.

Baby, it was cold outside, but when we got to the parsonage for snacks I was ready. I even passed on the cocoa in favor of a steaming cup of coffee. Cream and sugar, please.

I’ll be continuing these Tales of a Canarsie Boy throughout the coming year. I hope you’ll enjoy the journey with me. Happy holidays!

My first couple of decades held a lot of judgment. I grew up in a religion that preached the claim of its founder: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Yet every move we made in church or, were we well known enough in the Christian community, on the street was weighed in tightly regulated balances and often, if not usually, found wanting.

At church, I lived in a fishbowl almost as clear and prominent as that of the pastor’s family. I had to be more than nice, more than good; I had to be perfect. I wasn’t.

Bible college made it worse. There I encountered judgment based on a set of rules the likes of which made growing up in Grace Church a free-for-all of sin. We were judged based on our wardrobe: flared-leg jeans and bell bottoms were okay for meals but not for class, and never for church, and straight-leg jeans were okay for off-campus work but never for meals or anything else on campus. We were judged on the sexuality implicit in actions like holding hands (only for officially engaged couples), kissing (only for married couples), and all other physical displays of affection (never, except what you could do on a back road amid the Amish farms).

During my junior year, newly accredited Lancaster Bible College (LBC) took in a host of transfer students from an unaccredited fundamentalist institution. They, in humble Christian fashion, prided themselves on their superior spirituality. They frequently spoke words of rebuke—literally; they’d walk across campus and say, “I rebuke you for thus and so”—to students who kept LBC’s laws but not the higher standards of the transfer students’ alma mater. Never before, and only rarely since, have I felt so inadequate as a human being and a Christian. The thing is, through it all I remained true to the way I was brought up.

I was raised in an alcohol-free home. Before I was even close to drinking age, Pop took me aside one day and told me his thoughts on alcohol. He said that God created the ingredients, and so they were good. And there’s nothing sinful in having a beer or a glass of wine. “Just don’t get carried away and lose your good judgment.” Pop also reminded me that alcoholic beverages would never be welcome in his house. Mom’s father had had a drinking problem, so out of respect for her, no alcohol at home ever.

Those words became part of my life. Even when I was old enough to drink, I didn’t.

The legal drinking age in New York, prior to the establishment of national drinking standards, was eighteen. So, the summer after my freshman year at college, I returned to Brooklyn of legal age. But I didn’t drink.

One day that summer, my good buddy, Scott, told me that a favorite band of ours, the Modern Jazz Quartet, was playing at the legendary SoHo venue, the Half Note Club. Being nineteen and eighteen respectively, Scott and I were old enough to go.

Of course I told Mom and Pop about it. After all, we were going to a bar. Pop told me to be safe and not to be stupid, and to have a good time.

We did.

We took the Subway to the Half Note and entered the place with due reverence. Being early, we got a table next to the bar and only one row of tables from the stage. Purchasing alcohol was required for admission, so Scott and I each bought a beer. Scott ordered; I knew nothing about beer. Scott nursed his beer and mine—I never touched a drop—through the entire set by the MJQ.

Man, they were awesome. This was John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, and Connie Kay in their prime. Smooth. Melodic. Improvisation with just the right amount of restraint.
 
The music wasn’t even the best part of the night. Our seats were amazing. I mentioned we were next to the bar. On the last stool, the one closest to us, sat comedian Nipsey Russell, whom we’d seen on TV a hundred times. Right in front of me, at the table nearest the stage, sat legendary jazz saxophonist Stan Getz. We were in heaven.

As much as Bible college may have tried to convince me otherwise, admission to heaven is not about alcohol or bars or jazz. Under the threat of judging stares, had the college administration heard about my evening at the Club, I felt free to follow my conscience with the blessing of my dad, whose righteousness surpassed most Christians I knew.

That’s the way I was raised. Although he never wrote them on paper for me to tuck into my Scofield Reference Bible, Pop’s three guiding principles etched themselves into my heart:

• We have absolute freedom in Christ.
• We have a Spirit-guided conscience to help us use that freedom wisely.
• Fun is good.

Somehow, in spite of that freedom, judgment hung over me like a storm cloud. And it stayed with me, albeit under the radar, for thirty-three years after graduation; otherwise known as my first marriage. For most of those years I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was falling short, but I had no proof. Then came Sandy’s departure and the ensuing twenty-two page list of my faults. I guess my gut instinct was right. Or maybe I’m really that bad a person. I wish I knew.

Thinking back, there was a person worse than I: Isaac, the other man upstairs. He terrorized the children of the neighborhood from his bedroom window, and he made life hell for my friends and me if we ventured into his side of the yard.
 
Perhaps this is the ultimate tale of judgment, or maybe justice. Maybe it was karma at its best.

After spending a week or two at home the summer after my freshman year at LBC, I left for summer missionary work in Richmond, Virginia. One July evening, after a delicious pot roast dinner with my host family, I received a phone call from Mom. She gave me the news, not necessarily sad, that Isaac had died. She had found him on the floor of his living room. Immediately I called Morty Epstein.

Earlier that summer break, between my arrival home from LBC and my trip to Virginia, Morty stopped by to see me. It must have been mid-May because New York public schools were still in session, and Morty was on his way home from track practice.

Morty drove into the yard—Isaac’s side since that’s where the driveway was—and parked his mint condition 1964 ½ Ford Mustang at the edge of the concrete apron. I’m sure he only planned to be there long enough to say hi and decide where we’d be hanging out that week. He walked around the house to the back door, our usual entrance.

A few minutes into our visit, Mom reminded Morty that it was four o’clock and Isaac would be home from the docks at any minute. Knowing what justice the man upstairs would exact upon our family if the sanctity of his driveway were infringed, Morty turned toward the door.
 
Too late. Crash!

The sound of a Mustang fender assuming an accordion shape exploded through the open dining room window. Isaac, whose eyesight was 20/20 with corrective lenses, and who had plenty of room to negotiate a path around Morty’s pride and joy, had taken stock of the situation and rammed his Pontiac into the Mustang.

Morty was livid. He knew what had happened without having seen it. He rushed toward the door, but Mom beat him to it.
 
“Morty, don’t do anything rash. Let me explain something to you.”

Most kids my age would have assumed their mother was about to issue some calming instructions on how to deal diplomatically with the situation at hand. Someone else’s mom might have told Morty to wait inside while she assessed the accident scene and confronted Isaac. Not my mom.

Mom led Morty to the old sofa bed that occupied the west wall of the dining room, set him down, and sat beside him. Then, in her most evangelistic voice, she explained the truth behind Isaac’s assault on Morty’s beloved car.

“Morty, you’ve got to understand that Isaac isn’t a Christian,” she began.

Morty’s face revealed the workings of his mind,

“Of course he’s a Christian. He’s not Jewish. What else is there?”

Mom went on, “Isaac doesn’t have the Holy Spirit to guide him in situations like this.”

Morty’s mind again, “What the fuck is a holy spirit?”

And back to Mom, “Isaac didn’t really know what he was doing because he doesn’t have the Spirit to show him right from wrong, so even if you went out and beat him up, it wouldn’t help. Just wait till he goes inside and then check on your car. Phil’s dad and I will cover any expenses your insurance won’t pay for. And Morty, as for Isaac and his meanness, don’t worry. God will take care of it.”

And that was that.

Mom’s theologically incomprehensible argument stopped Morty in his tracks. He waited a few minutes, and then we all went out to survey the damage.

One rear fender was badly smashed, but the Mustang was drivable. Morty agreed he would not retaliate against Isaac, and he went home to deal with his insurance company. With some TLC from a nearby body shop, the Mustang was good as new within a week.

Knowing how the Mustang’s attempted murder still irked Morty, even though he’d followed Mom’s advice, when I got that phone call I decided my track team buddy deserved to hear about Isaac’s demise.

Morty himself answered the phone that evening. After exchanging pleasantries and basic information about our summers, I told him about Isaac’s passing from a heart attack right on his living room floor.

Morty couldn’t hold his excitement.

“Wait!”
 
I could almost see Morty’s hand over the mouthpiece as he turned away from the phone.

“Ma! Hey, Ma! Remember when Isaac hit my car and Mrs. Baisley said that God would take care of it. Well, it’s been taken care of.”

Judgment? Karma? Or just good luck (Morty’s perspective) or bad luck (Isaac’s perspective).
 
I never fully subscribed to the fundamentalist Protestant idea that God was constantly watching and judging our actions, or even saving them up for some future Judgment Day. I can understand God keeping an eye on us, mostly for our own protection; guiding us toward the good, even when it temporarily causes us pain; but the idea that God “took care of” Isaac, as appropriate as it sounded, was not part of my theology. I laughed with Morty, who, I’m sure, didn’t own that theology either.

But if God didn’t judge Isaac’s meanness and condemn him to a slightly early death, then why have I always felt that I was being judged? For a lifetime I’ve put off thinking about this. Maybe it’s time to start.

Mom and Pop were the best parents a kid could have. They were conservative theologically, which was not a bad thing in those days. Back then, conservatism meant taking the Bible seriously but not fanatically. It meant celebrating Christmas because Jesus was God in the flesh but not a right wing champion. It meant believing that “we” were going to heaven but welcoming “them” because God loved them too. Somehow, we figured God was going to sort it out.

Mom and Pop were also quite liberal, at least in their parenting. I doubt I’d ever have felt so comfortable in such diverse settings had not Mom and Pop allowed me to go anywhere at any time with anyone, as long as I kept them informed. They trusted me.

So where did I learn judgment? Was it in the 93rd Street Gang? Hell, we were constantly swearing at each other, “ranking” each other out, and insulting each other’s parentage. But even though I sometimes felt like an outsider due to my small stature and younger age, I always knew I was part of the Gang; and that meant I was somebody.

I guess the place I felt most judged was the place that felt most like my second home: the church. Church was where I was expected to live up to standards, not always articulated, simply because I was the “little Baisley boy.”

Kind of paradoxical isn’t it? In the place I felt most secure, I also felt most judged. As part of a congregation that reveled in its freedom, I was held to standards that restricted my behavior to a litany of unwritten rules. I loved my church, but I probably hated it too.

And here’s the kicker. I believed, and still believe, that the church is not a building topped with a steeple. The church is people. It’s Peter and John and Mary and Paul from biblical times. It’s the saints in the windows of Holy Family Church in Canarsie. It’s the saints and sinners who showed up at Grace Church on Sunday.
 
But it’s one more thing, and this is where Judgment Day makes its appearance in every calendar year. The church is also me. I am indelibly connected with the good and the bad of that ancient institution. The judgment I felt growing up, and often feel today, is part and parcel with the church I love.

To clarify, maybe I need to quote the great philosopher, Pogo, from the old comic strip of the same name. The venerable possum once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” If I am the church, then this feeling of judgment comes from… well, from me.

Green Day sang, “Do you know your enemy?” After thirty-eight chapters covering twenty-one years, maybe I do.
 
There’s another meaning to the word judgment; it’s “to discern.” I did a lot of stupid, selfish, and occasionally unethical if not illegal things in my early days. It takes a bit of healthy judgment—discernment—to sort them all out. Writing this memoir has helped me see that. But maybe now the time has come for me to judge once and for all that I’m neither worse nor better than just about every kid who grew up on the mean and wonderful streets of American cities in the fifties and sixties. Different? You bet I was, and now I’m proud of it. But worse? Fuhgedaboudit.

We’ve come to the end of my memoir. What started as a few stories written down for my children has turned into over 70,000 words. Still, with the publication of almost every episode, I get a message from some old friend asking why I hadn’t included such and such story. Well, some I simply chose not to tell; they didn’t fit a certain theme or chapter. Others, like the time I drove a carload of track team friends on a boyish prank that ended with us stopped by the SWAT team, I must have worked hard to erase from my memory.
 
So, in true Canarsie fashion, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll add to the memoir at least once a month with more tales from my old Canarsie experience. It’ll be a good way to keep you interested in my next writing project: a crime novel set in 1904 Brooklyn and Manhattan, with scenes in Canarsie.
 
I’d like you to do something too. Please share your stories with me. I’ll add them to the blog, giving you full credit, of course; or, if you wish, keep them just between you and me. I want to let the world know what a great place Canarsie was, and often still is. Just contact me through this blog, or via email (pbaisley@gmail.com) or through Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send me your “Tales of a Canarsie Kid.”
 
So, this isn’t good-bye. It’s just, see ya’ later.

So wrote Paul Anka when he was twenty-six. It’s funny that a person would consider the regrets of a lifetime when he had lived so little of it. I, on the other hand, have lived more than twice that long; but when it comes down to it, my regrets list is still pretty short. It might be a good time to think about them.

Before enumerating my regrets, I want to reflect on that word for a moment. Regret. What does it mean to regret something? According to Merriam-Webster online, to regret is to “mourn the loss or death of,” to “miss very much,” or to “be very sorry for.” Looking at a regrets list I compiled in January 2017, I can find things in common with those definitions. Let’s start with the earliest and easiest one, which harkens back to fall 1969.

I should have run stronger in cross-country my senior year at Canarsie High. For that matter, I should have tried a little harder in every varsity sport in which I participated.

I wasn’t a bad runner in high school. I had the speed, in shorts bursts, to be a decent city-class long and triple jumper. I had the stamina to complete multiple one-mile runs during cross-country practice. I had the drive to practice every day even while recovering from bronchitis. What I didn’t have was a runner’s heart.

I know I could have tried just a little harder. The few times I did, and I achieved the proverbial “second wind,” were pure euphoria. I could have reached that high more often.

I remember one time, decades after high school, when I made one of my occasional restarts at distance running. I set out on a weekday afternoon with snow falling in slow thick flakes. I planned to run an easy 5k, but I just couldn’t stop. The snow, the brisk air without a breeze, the feeling that my legs would last forever. I kept running. As darkness fell I made my way back home, walking the last half mile and still feeling great. The next day I retraced the run: 9.1 miles non-stop.

Guys like Allan and Paul on my high school team did that with regularity. They never quit before they’d given their all. I truly am sorry I gave so little so often.

I have the same regret regarding my soccer playing in college. I should have played my senior year.

I had never played soccer—football to the rest of the world—before enrolling at Lancaster Bible College. I was a distance runner and a jumper in high school and a fair football and hockey player in street versions of those sports.

I arrived at Lancaster to learn the tiny (less than 120 students when I was a freshman) Bible college only had the personnel and the finances to field a men’s soccer team and a women’s field hockey team. Before I graduated we had intercollegiate basketball teams as well.

Since I was still in good shape from track, and since soccer was mostly running—aimlessly it looked as I tried to study it—I went out for soccer. Learning the basic footwork was fairly easy, and I had the requisite speed and stamina, so they made me a second-string midfielder, which they called by the American football name, halfback. Mostly I just ran around trying to get the ball away from an opponent and pass it to one of our guys.

After observing me in practice and in the little playing time I got that season, during spring training the coach moved me up to wing. He’d noticed that I was primarily left-footed. That’s not as good in soccer as being fully ambidextrous, but I was the only strong lefty on the team, and Coach figured I might be of some use getting the ball to our nimble guys in the center. I caught on pretty quickly at wing and when the season began in August, I was the starter on the left side.

For two years I was the LBC Chargers’ starting left wing. I wasn’t great, but I had my moments, scoring a few assists each year and the occasional goal. I think my finest moment occurred in a Homecoming game. I had taken the ball from a defender at midfield and began dribbling down the left sideline. Managing to evade another defender, I could see Robin breaking toward the goal. Summoning up all my left-footed strength, I kicked a long pass high in the air and behind the goal. In true Beckham style, about three years before Beckham was born, the ball bent back above the field and sailed right to the spot where Robin was running. He headed it into the goal without losing a step. My parents were in the stands, and I don’t think Pop was ever prouder of me.

Our soccer coach retired the end of that season. Soon word got around that the incoming coach was determined that LBC’s tradition of losing most of their games would be no more. Through tough practices and strict discipline, our team would be forged into winners.

I liked winning, even though we didn’t win very often. But did I want to run more, practice my dribbling to exhaustion, and—worst of all—give up precious time with my latest girlfriend in order to become a winner? Once again, at a time when I could have pushed harder and achieved significant athletic success, I wimped out. Or maybe I just chose love over soccer.

I wish I’d played my senior year. How good could I have gotten with a tougher coach? And why did I have to spend so much time with that girl? There’s a regret for you. I regret that I chose a series of semi-long-term relationships with women I expected to marry rather than simply having fun getting to know a lot of people.

My favorite month in all my years at LBC was April 1973. My latest pre-engagement girlfriend had just broken up with me. With about six weeks of school left, I posed a challenge to myself: how many different girls could I date before the end of the semester? The final tally was thirteen, including donuts and coffee with a graduate assistant after an evening class. For the first time in my life, dating was fun. No strings. No commitments. No reason for being together except to have a good time. True, there were no steamy-windshield make out sessions in the cornfields on Butter Road, only one quick peck after one perfect date; but everything else was better. Why couldn’t I have discovered that sooner? And why did I not learn from that month, falling back into my old ways just a few months later, and ending my career as a college athlete.

Regrets are hard to write about. They’re not funny like sledding spills or grouchy old neighbors. While enumerating these incidents felt like fun at the time, writing about the details brings me about as much joy as a trip to the dentist. Still, the dentist serves a valuable purpose, and I hope these recollections do as well.

Because I quit the LBC soccer team, I was able to spend my senior year pursuing the woman who became my wife. Of course, she was not the one I quit the team for.

Sandy was only a month younger than I, but she entered college as a freshman after spending three years in the workforce at a Kresge lunch counter. We met on a November evening, the day after her birthday. Some friends and I, including Sandy’s roommate, were talking about going to a Hershey Bears hockey game. Sandy walked in, overheard us, and said, “I’ve never been to a hockey game. Can I go too?”

Ever the suave one, I replied, “Sure! If you pay your own way.”

It might have been our first date, but we never got to the hockey game. Russ and I ended up working very late delivering a large organ to a house in Maryland. The best I could do was call Sandy and express my regrets.

Our second date was in January, and it ended with our wreck on US30 that earned the four of us a week’s “campus,” which I’ve previously described.

With one broken date and one disaster by mid-January, Sandy and I moved swiftly to the expected conclusion: we got engaged, diamond ring and all, during spring break. The wedding was August 17th.

We were both almost twenty-two when we got married. That’s not necessarily too young, if you’ve spent some time getting to know each other. We didn’t. Even our premarital counseling sessions with Sandy’s pastor didn’t make a dent in our lack of awareness of basic issues like how differently our parents related to each other, and that made all the difference in our marriage.

To give you an idea of how immense were the gaps in our knowledge of each other, I’ll share a story that came from a telephone conversation between Sandy and me. It concerned our move from Indiana to Oregon in 1994. While our household goods were traveling in a horse trailer, Sandy and I drove our 1991 Ford Festiva and 1993 Pontiac Grand Am, each one carrying one of our children as well. We made regular bathroom, gasoline, and meal stops.

Traveling across Interstate 90, we began seeing signs for Wall Drug Store as soon as we entered South Dakota. Wall Drugs may be the world’s first superstore. Long before Wal-Marts took up city blocks, this roadside landmark started selling just about everything from its small town pharmacy roots. The store’s claim to fame was its offer of free ice water to parched Midwestern travelers.

I’d heard about Wall Drug from my parents years before, although they'd never been there. Sandy had never heard of the place. So, at a rest stop somewhere east of Wall, She asked me about those green and yellow “Wall Drug” billboards. I explained to her that Wall Drug was an overgrown drugstore that was kind of like a big Wal-Mart, and how it had grown from a small store to a bit of rural Americana. She thanked me for the explanation and that was it, or so I thought.

Fast forward to the phone conversation. Sandy said, “Do you remember on our way to Oregon when I asked about Wall Drug?”

“Sure,” I replied.

“I really wanted to go there.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“The way you spoke, I thought you didn’t want to see it.”

“Oh. I figured I answered your question. I didn’t care one way or the other, but if you’d wanted to go I’d’ve gladly stopped.”

And that was it. One little piece of information about our families of origin that decades of marriage without really communicating failed to uncover. In Sandy’s home, what Dad said was done with little or no space for rebuttal. With Mom and Pop it was more democratic. For thirty-three years we tried to live up to our expectation of each other’s parents’ marriages, without ever talking about those marriages. We were doomed.

My regret, at this point is not our marriage, but it is that we should have remained friends in college and never taken the marriage step. I know that sounds convoluted. How can you regret getting married but not regret a failed 33-year marriage? It’s not that simple. It never is.

I talked to Sandy a few years ago, and I brought up the “should have remained friends” conversation. I said we were wrong about that. Our marriage produced two amazing kids, who have overcome tremendous obstacles—some of their own making—to become very fine human beings. We have four wonderful grandchildren. We’ve instilled in them all some values that have withstood our failures. That is nothing to regret.

I don’t regret the friendship Sandy and I have now. It may be strained a bit when Jen and Thomas and I get together with Sandy and our daughter, Kellyn, and her kids, but it’s worth keeping. Maybe friends are what we should always have been. I can’t answer that. I’m glad we’re friends now, and I’ll take that.

Sandy figures into my last two regrets, although she is not the reason for either. They fit in the shoulda, woulda, coulda category, which I’m inventing just for them. First, we should have bought that house in New Holland.

After our August wedding, Sandy and I moved into a tiny, maybe 50’ x 10’, trailer. Calling it a “mobile home” would be too much of a stretch. We made it a cute little love nest thanks to some furniture I bought from a coworker at the fried chicken factory where I worked, using the last of my inheritance from good ol’ Uncle Charlie.

The problems began no sooner than the nearby cornfields were harvested. I woke up one morning to grab some milk and Entenmann’s chocolate-covered donuts only to find the chocolate had been gnawed off every donut in the top layer. Mice! I was terrified of them ever since a scary childhood incident with a very large rat back in Canarsie.

“Sandy! We have to move!”

In December we moved into a third floor apartment in a brand new faux-Tudor complex in New Holland, PA, walking distance from the chicken place. Sandy got a job there too. We were doing pretty well for a young couple just starting out.

After about a year, when it looked like our future in eastern Lancaster County was secure, we took a walk through the neighborhood and spied a realtor’s sign on a brick half-duplex between our apartment and the factory. We had no down payment saved up, but we figure the monthly payment would be no more than we were paying in rent. We checked it out.

The house was adorable. Two bedrooms--one for our anticipated first child, who didn’t really show up for another six years--a cute little yard, a sunny kitchen; it was a great little place for a reasonable price. We talked to Mom and Pop about the down payment. They drove over from their new home in Leola and took a look. They had a lot of questions. I think if we had pushed a little harder they’d have given us the money. Had they, we might still be living in Pennsylvania. Who knows? But they didn’t, and we took what little we did have and traded our 1969 BMW 1600 for a more family friendly 1975 BMW Bavaria.

What if we’d waited a little longer, saved up a little more money, and then asked Mom and Pop for the rest? What if we’d asked them one more time for the down payment on the duplex? We’d have become homeowners, the American dream and Sandy’s heart’s desire. A house would have tied us to one locale, which would have made too difficult to move to places like Williamsport, PA; Pittsburgh; Springfield, OH; Greenfield, IN; and Newberg, OR. Those many moves were long a part of Sandy’s dissatisfaction with our marriage.

I’d have moved up in the corporate ranks and made a lot more money at a younger age. Sandy could have gotten her wish and never had to work to help with our support. She’d have become the stay-at-home mom she always wanted to be. Maybe we’d still be together.

Yeah, I regret not buying that house; but I think I’d still have made the moves necessary to get me into the kind of ministry I now enjoy. I think our kids are stronger because of the moves than if they’d been raised in one place with only one perspective of the world. I don’t know if Sandy would have been happier or not. They say a house is not necessarily a home. It’s not a guaranteed recipe for happiness either.

So we bought the Bavaria. Man, that thing could accelerate. I wanted the new model, the 530i, which I could have ordered with a stick shift. We couldn’t afford it. We took the on-the-lot, end-of-year Bavaria with an automatic transmission. I thought it would be as much fun as the 1600. I was wrong.

My favorite thing to do with the Bavaria was to get it on the highway, cruising at the new federal speed limit of 55 mph, and kick it down a gear. That metallic blue beast would jerk your neck back as it accelerated to 90 in a split second, making passing a semi a total breeze. And breeze is what you’d get if the sunroof was open.

The problem with the Bavaria, aside from the monthly payments approximately equal to a small brick duplex, was that it was a lemon. I stuck with BMW because my 1600 was so reliable. In less than a year, the Bavaria was in the shop three times. Then the paint started fading and cracking. At the manufacturer’s expense we had to get a new paint job. By that time, I was done. We traded the Bavaria for a 1976 Volkswagen Rabbit (for Sandy) and a 1967 Austin-Healey 3000 (for me). Thus began a lifetime of trading cars every three or four years.

If I regret not buying the brick duplex in New Holland, I regret parting with the Bavaria even more. By the time we traded it, the bugs had been worked out. The paint job may have devalued the car temporarily, but eventually time would have evened things out. We might even have kept it long enough to need the four doors and extra backseat room for a car seat. And I’d have been ready when they finally did away with the 55 mph national speed limit.

Shoulda, would, coulda; that’s what regrets are really about. We are sad about things we missed because we were doing something else. We are disappointed things didn’t turn out the way we wished because of a decision we made or failed to make. We are sorry for our sins of omission or commission. The funny things is, as I look back over six decades, I can find so few things I truly regret; and the last one was in 1976 when I was twenty-three years old. Maybe Paul Anka was right when he, as an old soul of twenty-six, wrote:

I’m not sure when the thought of college first entered my mind. Mom only had an eighth grade education, and Pop dropped out of high school, finishing years later in night classes. My brother quit City College after three days. As far as I know, my cousin, Marilyn, a few years older than John, was the first Baisley to graduate from an institution of higher learning.
 
I must have had at least an inkling of an academic future when I first thought about becoming a war correspondent. I suspected that required a journalism degree. That’s why, whenever Kurt and Judy and I played the Game of Life I hoped I’d land on the “journalist” career space, even though it offered the lowest salary of any of the college degrees.

By the time I was in high school and needed to give serious thought to my academic future, journalism was out of the picture. Me, a writer? Fat chance.

I had already written off pharmacy school after I decided I didn’t want more chemistry to train for a job I had been doing for the past three years. One option remained. It was required of every New York City high school student that they apply to one of the colleges in the City University system. The only one that even remotely appealed to me was the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. That’s the place New York cops go to study Law or finish their bachelor’s degree. I figured, I like solving mysteries, Criminal Justice sounds like a way to do that for a career.

I never really wanted such a career. To tell you the truth, I never thought much about the future. I had no long term goal, or any short ones either, until a guy named Cal Beveridge brought a group of singers from Lancaster Pennsylvania to Grace Church.

I think there were seven of them: a girls trio and a boys quartet; probably a pianist too. They sang and then Cal talked about Lancaster School of the Bible (LSB). I honestly don’t know why, but after that Sunday evening service I decided I was going to be an LSB Charger. Thinking back, maybe it was the fact that you didn’t have to take the SAT exam to apply. Yeah, that was probably it.

Regardless of motivation, I applied to LSB. “Everyone majors in Bible at LSB,” said their catalog, so selecting a major was easy; but I still had to pick my minor. These were my choices and the rationale for my ultimate decision:

--Pastoral Ministry—yeah, right. A pastor was the one thing I never wanted to be. Pastors stand in front of people and talk. I’d rather be a cab driver where the people are behind you, out of sight.

--Missions—I was not the missionary type. More preaching, and in another language no less. Nuh uh.

--Music—after eight years playing the clarinet and six on tenor sax, terrified of every solo, I was through with music.

That left the final choice: Christian education. What the heck is Christian education? It seemed like such a general term it could mean anything. The perfect course of study for someone with no plan for his life.

I learned a lot of things in Bible college. Some of them were things the professors taught, like the cosmological, ontological, and teleological “proofs” for the existence of God and the reasons why a literal worldwide flood explains how the earth seems to be older than it actually is. Some were things I eventually had to unlearn in order to live in the real world, like the cosmological, ontological… well, you get the picture.

A lot of what I learned was not taught, at least not outright; it was in the attitudes passed on to me by the fundamentalist worldview of the institution and its faculty.

The hardest part of this education was the understanding that I just didn’t fit in no matter how hard I tried. It began the last day of orientation, at the freshman class picnic.

After playing some volleyball and eating hot dogs, hamburgers, and potato salad, the evening wound down with some campfire songs and a brief message from an upperclassman. Then we were asked if anyone would like to share a testimony. I was already known on campus as the guy with the autographed yellow door on his blue Ford, the Galaxie with writing on the fenders. To myself I was still the shy skinny kid from East 93rd Street. But for once I decided to speak up, to let my love for God break through my timidity. I stood and gave a brief testimony of how excited I was to be part of LSB and how ready I was to learn more about God’s Word.

I bombed. To the guys I’d already begun to hang out with I was now some kind of goody two-shoes, holier even than they. To the ones who’d already formed the opinion that city kids had no place in a rural Pennsylvania Bible college, I showed myself to be a hypocrite, ready to say anything to mask my true worldly, backslidden self.
 
I didn’t exactly fit in.

At LSB we had very strict rules concerning social behavior. We had to be in our rooms by 10:30 pm Sunday-Thursday night, 12:00 on Friday, and 11:30 on Saturday. A resident assistant (RA) would go room to room and check. I wasn’t used to curfews. My parents’ policy was, “Let us know where you are and who you’re with, and don’t do anything stupid.” That’s all. The rest was up to me, and they believed I’d make good choices.

Well, a good choice when the best place for breakfast is a 24/7 diner just minutes from campus is to go there late on Friday night. Come on, in my room by midnight? Why? If I didn’t get in trouble after midnight on a Friday in New York, why would trouble be likely in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Amish capital of the world?

So, on Friday nights, I’d dutifully be in my room, tucked in bed when the RA came around. Minutes later I, and any friends I could talk into joining me, would be ordering grilled sticky buns or biscuits and gravy, plus coffee, at the diner. We’d roll back to the dorm around 2:00 a.m., the scent and feel of grease in our pores.

Getting caught was inevitable. It was only a matter of when. I think it may have been in second semester. Which brings me to LSB’s system of punishment for minor crimes.

For the lowest level of offense, such as forgetting to go to supper on a night you were responsible for busing your table, there would be one to three hours of physical labor. How many hours depended on which offense it was—your first, second, or third. My first offense—eating out when I was supposed to be at my table—occurred only a few weeks into the fall semester. The dean’s punishment of choice for this offense was picking up the trash that blew into the chain link fence separating campus from the highway. It was convict labor, but I made the best of it.

Back when my brother was a U.S. Marine stationed in Turkey, he sent me an antique sword. Just because it was so cool, I packed it in Atsama when I left for college. I’m not sure it really belonged in Bible college, but it came in handy during my afternoon of punishment. Rather than bemoaning my lost estate and grudgingly picking up every piece of trash by hand, I made a game of it. I tied one end of a rope to a cardboard box and the other end around my waist. I picked up each piece of trash with the point of the sword and dropped it into the box behind me. Singing as I went, I looked like I was having so much fun the dean came to check on me. I was breaking no rule and collecting as much trash as could be expected, so he let me be. Still, I never received that punishment again.

Staying out late at the diner incurred the second level of retribution, a “campus.” That’s where the offender was confined to their room for a designated number of days, being allowed out only for classes, meals in the dining hall, going to the library, and practice if the campused person was on a sports team. They also weren’t allowed to talk to other students except as part of the classroom experience or to say, “pass the potatoes” at a meal.

Ever the literalist, I took my first campus, a weekend, to the nth degree. I did not leave my room at all except for church on Sunday. Even there I didn’t speak to anyone or even sing the hymns. Prior to my weekend incarceration, I arranged with friends to procure my main meals. I kept some orange juice and milk in the fridge, so a box of donuts worked for breakfast. Other meals, such as hamburgers and pizza were purchased by friends with prewritten instructions accompanied by cash including tips. I did not speak one word the entire weekend. I was proud of my accomplishment.

During my senior year, Sandy and I and another couple got into a car accident involving a drunk driver—not one of us. We ended up getting back to campus around four in the morning. We had called an RA on duty and explained about the wreck and waiting for a ride back to LBC (Lancaster Bible College - the school changed its name when it became an accredited, degree-granting college). That didn’t help. All four of us were campused for an entire week. Once again, I made the best of it.

The other male offender, Russ, and I lived across the hall from each other in a part of the dorm where no doors separated our rooms, a kind of open suite. We were also best friends who loved the same music. It was the perfect recipe for a fun week of punishment.

Russ and I worked together delivering pianos and organs on evenings and weekends. For those seven campused days we worked together, but we never addressed each other directly. Our customers wondered what was going on, and we reveled in explaining the draconian penal system of the local Bible college. But we never spoke in the delivery truck or in the dorm, even though we were alone in both of those places part of the time. Honorable men we were.

We sang a lot, though. No, we didn’t speak to each other in sing-song rhyme; that would be cheating. We just sang to pass the time, and we knew a lot of the same songs. The week passed quickly for us. For the girls, not so much. They didn’t know each other as well as we did.

I got into a lot of trouble at LBC. My total number of days campused set a record that was never broken, to the best of my knowledge. I also had the distinction of being threatened with suspension at least once a year.
 
One time, the dean of students called me into his office to discuss my failure to conform to the image the college wanted for its students.
 
“Phil, you’re sneaky and devious, and I don’t like that.”

I couldn’t argue with him. But my grades were decent, and every semester when other students did a required Christian service project, I always did two. I loved doing ministry, especially with kids and senior citizens. I even traveled on behalf of the college as part of a folk duo with my buddy Debbi. We weren’t really an “official” college group, but sometimes a church would want someone to do less “churchy” stuff for a coffee house or a youth event. So Debbi and I would play our eclectic blend of Larry Norman and Jesus rock, traditional gospel songs, folk music, and stuff by James Taylor, Stephen Stills, and other not-exactly-Christian artists.

In spite of all this, in the eyes of the college administration I was still the same pest who made a game of their most intimidating threats. Of course, even the administration had use for my expertise when it suited their purposes.

I suspected the worst one day when in my mailbox I found a “See me” note from the dean of students. “See me” notes were the one thing that intimidated me at LBC. They were always an invitation to something bad. To this day, when the dean of the seminary where I teach puts a note like that in my faculty box, I shudder. Even though the notes are now about grants I’ve received for funding teaching trips to Rwanda, I’m terrified. Old habits cling to us like leeches.

“See me.” That’s all the note said, but it was written on the dean’s personal note paper, so it had to be serious. I walked to his office with my brain sorting out the various things I’d recently done that might have gotten me in trouble, hoping the actual offense would cross my mind in time to manufacture a suitable defense. Too late. I was already there.

The secretary had me sit down for a while until the dean was free. Still, I had no clue why I was there, or which specific ‘why’ it might have been.

“Come in, Phil,” he said.

That was unusual. When I was in trouble I was always “Mr. Baisley.” What was he trying to pull?

I took the seat he offered as he got right to the point.

“I don’t know how widespread the news is, but you may have heard we’ve been experiencing some incidents of racism we cannot tolerate.”

I immediately stood up to protest.

“Sit down, Phil. I know it’s not you. You may be a lot of things, but racist isn’t one of them. Fact is, it’s those other qualities we need right now.”

“Phil,” he said in a voice too much like Richard Nixon’s, “Someone has been entering Ron Jackson’s room and damaging his stuff. They even tore up his Bible. No one has seen any of this happen, but it’s got Ron scared. We need someone, uh, sneaky, to keep an eye on things without any students knowing. I don’t care how you do it, just help me get to the bottom of this.”

Wow! This could be fun. It could also be weird. I’d be spying on Ron as well as his room. I’d have to know his comings and goings because when he wasn’t around I’d have to be there. Every incident occurred when he was in class or at the library or in town. I determined that when the mysterious Bible-ripper came back, I’d catch him in the act.

Let me tell you, detective work is boring. I spent hours over the next few weeks watching Ron’s movements and then breaking into his room and hiding in his closet with the door slightly ajar. No one else ever came in, unless they did so between the time I’d leave and the time Ron would return.

After three weeks, I had to report to the dean that I had observed nothing unusual in Ron’s room. No papers destroyed, no Bibles torn, no racial slurs scratched into the walls.

Eventually, the problem just went away. And so did Ron. A rumor surfaced the next semester that Ron had been doing those things to himself. That’s why no one ever got caught. I never quite bought that rumor. During Ron’s one semester at LBC, no one knew him better than I, although we rarely spoke. I knew where he went and with whom, what he did, and what he didn’t do. He never struck me as the type to lie about something so serious. But “blame the victim” worked, and the mystery was successfully solved. Guess we might have had a racism problem after all.

For all their talk about sex being so wrong outside of marriage, their rules against physical contact with the opposite sex, and their talk about God having selected only one mate for you, Bible colleges seem do more to lead students into premarital sex and premature marriage than statistics give them credit for.
 
I met a girl in the freshman registration line and we were talking marriage after a couple of weeks. We broke up before Spring Break. Sophomore year the same thing. Junior year too. One girl per year with the goal not being fun but being married. Along the way, opportunities to really get to know each other were sacrificed to the chance to make out in a steamy car in a cornfield on Butter Road. When I finally got officially engaged—with a diamond—my senior year, all I could think of was starting a good Christian family. And after knowing Sandy for only nine months, we got married. Children came years later, and divorce years after that.

As Sandy and I talked on the phone during divorce negotiations, we both reached the same conclusion: we should have remained friends instead of getting married. But what choice did we have? We weren’t trying to meet interesting people and get to know them. We were trying to find “the one.” And we were trying in an atmosphere that did everything to separate us while, at the same time, encouraging us to get together for life.

My years at Lancaster Bible College produced a lot of laughs, like putting Bob’s beloved Vespa scooter in the bathtub (Hey! We didn’t turn on the water.); going to a Blood, Sweat & Tears concert with girls who had to wear their jeans rolled up under a skirt to leave campus, removing the skirt in the car to look like real college kids; sneaking to a forbidden Christian rock concert only to see the Christian Education professor sneak into a seat behind us (“I won’t tell if you won’t,” he said.); driving back onto campus after a soccer victory over Penn State-Harrisburg with windows wide open and my car stereo blasting the third movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony Pathétique. I guess most of my LBC memories are related to music or sports or girls. I’ve told people I majored in soccer and women. Maybe that’s why it took me five years to graduate.

I actually finished my course work at LBC in four years, concluding with a 2.85 GPA; not great, but solidly passing. However, it takes more than B- grades to graduate from Bible college. One must conform to the moral standards of fundamentalist ministry. I never quite got there. A couple of weeks before graduation day, I received a letter—not a “see me” note—from the dean informing me that I would not be graduating due to my “bad attitude.” Instead, I would be required to complete a one-year internship at a local church. Upon successful completion of said internship, my ankle bracelet would be removed and I would be set free. Okay, I lied about the last part. Bad attitude.

By this time Mom and Pop had moved to Leola, PA, just down Route 23 from the college. Their pastor agreed to take me on. I began what would turn out to be a wonderful four-year term of service at his church. During that time, Sandy and I created a vibrant children’s ministry in the two-room trailer behind the main building. We helped raise a generation of kids most of whom are still involved in churches today. Bad attitudes get the job done.

Against the advice of friends who said what LBC did was against the law, and I should sue the college, I walked the stage in May 1975 and received my Bachelor of Science in Bible. That oxymoron made my education complete.

I never wanted to sue anybody. I deserved the internship, not as a punishment but as a chance to get the seasoning, the maturation, I had not picked up in college. The 1975 employed, married, child educator was a far cry from the kid who drove onto campus in 1970, car stereo playing Life Is a Carnival by The Band. But life was a carnival back then; often, it still is.

Paul Anka was only twenty-six years old when he wrote the words, “regrets, I’ve had a few; but then again, too few to mention.” How many regrets can a guy in his sixties accumulate? Find out in the next episode of Tales of a Canarsie Boy.

In spite of my bubble gum robbery when I was five and my short career in drug dealing and organized crime, I was basically a good kid. I credit my parents for that. Mom and Pop trusted me, and I always tried to live up to that trust.

I never had a curfew when I was a kid. During my youngest years, I would be out playing in the street. When it came time for dinner or bed, Mom would just open the front window and yell, “Philip!” When I got older, the only rule was, “Just call and let us know where you are and who you’re with.” It’s crazy, but I think my first leanings toward being a pastor were because of Mom and Pop’s laissez faire parenting.
 
I had one of my religious awakenings when I was fifteen. It was on a Wednesday night. I managed to get home from the drug store early enough that summer evening to make it to prayer meeting. Pastor Watt was on his annual August-long vacation, so we had a guest preacher, Capt. Roger Lingle from the U.S. Army Chaplain School in nearby Bay Ridge. He gave a message that inspired no one except me. And when he asked for those who “really meant business” with God to step forward and dedicate their life to Christ I was out of my seat in a flash. My life was never the same after that.

I felt like I’d enlisted for duty in some kind of cosmic army. It wasn’t a “calling” per se, like to be a pastor or a missionary; I just felt like God might be able to use what little talent, giftedness, and spirit I might possess for God’s purposes. Some of those purposes got a little strange, but Mom and Pop always backed me up.

The first time my parents’ latitude was tested was during the ten days of Billy Graham’s 1969 Crusade at Madison Square Garden. Sometime before the Crusade I learned that Billy’s pianist, Tedd Smith, was working with some local Graham supporters to create an after-hours coffee house to reach the younger crowd of evangelicals. I was all over that. I signed up to be an usher at the Crusade and volunteered to work at the coffee house.

After completing the required usher training, sometime before the June Crusade, I went to a loft in a building a block away from the Garden. There I met Tedd Smith and received my training in operating a soda fountain and running a spotlight. Our house band was a group of Jesus Freak musicians calling themselves The Exkursions. One of them, guitarist Mike Johnson, went on to a long career in Christian rock and blues. The coffee house drew a decent crowd every night, and I enjoyed hobnobbing with Christian celebrities like Smith and Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea. I got pretty good at running a follow spot as well, good enough to reprise my lighting career in the boom era of Christian rock—I ran spots for White Heart among others—and later in local theater.

The part where Mom and Pop come in is when I’d come home. The coffee house was open until 11:00 p.m. After that we cleaned up the place, which took at least half an hour, and then I had my fifty-five-minute subway ride back to Canarsie and a fifteen minute walk home from the subway station. Almost half the Crusade nights were school nights. Mom and Pop thought long and hard about me coming home so late and still having to get up at 6:00 for school. But it was June. School was almost over. I guess they figured the Lord’s work could trump school work. Gotta love Mom and Pop.

The first night of the Crusade I made a friend, a guy my age named Jack who lived in Howard Beach, Queens. We took the first part of our subway ride home together that Friday night, and continued to ride together each night for the duration of the event. Our ride together was only two stops. I got off the “A” Train at 14th Street; he continued all the way to Howard Beach. It was great to have someone with whom to walk the two blocks to Penn Station late at night, and to wait for the subway together. The second Friday of the Crusade provided us, and ultimately Mom and Pop, with an adventure in ministry we’ve never forgotten.

As we had for the previous week, Jack and I worked at the coffee house. There were only two nights left of the Crusade, and we were already beginning to miss the excitement as we walked to the subway. When we reached the corner outside Penn Station, we saw a middle-aged Black guy sitting by himself on one of the stone benches, clutching a small brown paper bag. He looked lonely, and we were aggressive young fundamentalist Christians. It was a match made in heaven, or so Jack and I thought.

As soon as we struck up a conversation with the stranger, Jack and I knew that saving the guy’s soul would not be as easy as presenting to him the “plan of salvation” from the Epistle to the Romans. First off, he was mumbling just shy of incoherently. We listened carefully. He seemed to understand that we were religious people, and he clearly said he loved the Bible. That was good. We even got something about his mother. But we were totally clueless when he tried to tell us his favorite scripture passage. He kept repeating “when he was set, when he was set.” When who was set where? We just didn’t get it.

Our mumbly friend grew a little impatient with us and grabbed Jack’s arm. I could tell immediately that Jack’s career as an evangelist was coming to a close.
 
“When he was set! You know. When he was set. It’s my favorite part.”

Had it been the twenty-first century, I’d have Googled those words, or maybe entered them into a search at BibleGateway.com, but we had no shortcuts back then. It was my memory, a quick skim through the Bible, or nothing.

Where had I heard those words, “when he was set”? Fortunately, my race through the Bible started in the New Testament with the Gospel of Matthew. I found what I was looking for in chapter five, the "Sermon on the Mount”:

     And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him. . . .
 
“Is this your favorite passage?”

I read the first of the Beatitudes to him, and our new friend nodded vehemently, grinning from ear to ear.
 
“My mama used to read that to us!”

I read some more about the blessedness of the “poor in spirit,” the “peacemakers,” and “they that mourn.” The man’s eyes misted over, but the smile remained.

“I’m Maurice,” he said. “Maurice Charles.”

“Do you live around here?” Jack queried.

“I think so.”

Maurice hesitated. He furrowed his brow, concentrating deeply.
 
“I don’t remember where. Maybe we can find it.”

By this time, Maurice had emitted enough breath for us to realize the cause of his confusion. Alcohol. Demon Rum! Maurice was drunk as the proverbial skunk. The comparison didn’t end there; he needed a shower badly.

We couldn’t provide Maurice with proper washing equipment, so we suggested the next best thing: food.

“Have you eaten anything tonight?”

Our vast experience with television had taught us that nothing helps weaken the effects of liquor like food and coffee. This being Manhattan at 1:00 a.m. we knew there’d be an open coffee shop nearby. There was.

We carefully walked Maurice a block to the coffee shop. We figured a cup of coffee and a cherry danish would get him, and all of us, feeling better. I think it helped, but not his memory.

“I’m sure I live around here. Maybe the next street.”

We walked to the next street west, then north, then south, then another street. Jack’s missionary zeal had run its course.

“I’m sorry, Phil, you’re on your own. Maurice, it was nice to meet you. I’ll be praying for you. Gotta split.”

And he did.

Maurice and I wandered a bit more around Midtown, but his memory of home got worse, not better. It was time to go into full gospel mode.

“Maurice, I can’t let you stay out on the street tonight. If you don’t mind a subway ride to Brooklyn, I’m taking you to my house.”

He didn’t mind. Now it was time to check with my parents.

I thought, rightly, that they were still awake. The call went almost exactly as expected. After explaining why I still wasn’t home at three in the morning, I told them I’d be bringing a guest when I did arrive.
 
“Yes, he’ll need a place to sleep.”

Pause.

“Oh, gee! I forgot I have to be at the drugstore at noon. Uh, could you help Maurice get back to Manhattan and maybe find his way home?”

I being me, Mom and Pop were not surprised. Mom and Pop being them, they said they’d take care of it.

Maurice and I got off the subway in Canarsie around 5:00 a.m. The sun was edging into the eastern sky as we walked the seven blocks to my house. He still carried the brown paper bag. I knew what was in it.

“Maurice,” I said, “You’re gonna have to get rid of that bottle now. My parents won’t allow alcohol in the house.”

He looked a little sad, like he was losing a friend, but somewhere on East 94th Street, about two blocks from home, he poured the contents of his prize into the gutter. We walked on, both a little nervous at seeing Mom and Pop.

They had already decided to be up and out of their bedroom when I got home. That way Maurice could sleep in their bed until he woke up, and I’d be able to catch a few Zs before heading to work. Pop said we could discuss the whole situation when I got home that evening.

I walked Maurice upstairs to the bedroom. Mom and Pop had the bed made up with fresh sheets, ready for their guest. They had even placed a set of towels out for him. Maurice was impressed, and also tired; but before he turned in he asked me a question.

“Are you going to sleep with me?”

My answer was a simple, “No. I have a room downstairs, and I have to get up for work in a few hours. You sleep as late as you want. My dad will get you home after you have some breakfast.”

Then I gave him an extra Bible I had and suggested he read more of the Gospels.

For years I wondered about the motivation for Maurice’s’ question. At first I thought he was hitting on me. Then I thought he believed I was hitting on him. Lately I’ve wondered if he expected to be asked for a sexual favor after I extended hospitality to him. Or maybe he was just craving human contact. Maybe it doesn’t matter. He asked an honest question, and I gave an honest answer.

Later that morning I woke up and got ready for work. Mom and Pop planned to drive Maurice into the city, hoping he would know where he lived but willing to drop him off at Penn Station if that was all he knew. They figured he’d survive.
 
We never really had that talk about what I’d done. They understood why I felt I needed to bring Maurice home, and they knew I’d eventually learn there might be other ways to help people than dragging them to Brooklyn in the middle of the night. Thinking about it now, I wonder what they talked about on that trip home from Manhattan.

A year and a half later I was home from college for a weekend. The phone rang and Mom answered it. Then, to the phone she said,

“He’s here. I’ll get him.”

And to me she said, “It’s for you; some guy named Maurice Charles.”

At first I didn’t recall the name, but I took the phone and said hello. Then I recognized his voice. He said he called because he wanted me to know that he’d gotten his life together. He was working, and he’d quit drinking. He was going to church as often as he could. He thought I might be glad to know that. I was. Before we said goodbye, he said,

“I still have that Bible you gave me. I read it every day.”

I never doubted that Mom and Pop would allow Maurice into their home. It was just what Baisleys did.

Mom and Pop’s trust extended even farther when necessary. During my senior year at Canarsie High, some of my friends did drugs more than the few I sold them. Occasionally they’d do them at parties. I’d always get invited to those parties even though my short-lived drug days were long past. There was a reason for that. Because of my reputation as a basically good kid, and because I was kind of crazy-fun even without chemical additives, I’d be the guy they’d entrust their drug-free girlfriends to. I’d have a great time surrounded by beautiful women, and they’d get high. A win-win if I ever heard one.

One night, however, a friend had some hash he felt guilty about possessing. He knew he’d smoke it if left on his own, so he called me—at midnight.

“Phil, can you meet me on the Parkway near the station? I’ve gotta talk to you. I’ve got some shit I don’t want to use, and I need you to talk me out of it.”

I woke Mom and Pop, telling them my friend was in a little trouble and needed my help. I didn’t know when I’d be home, but if it went past 2:00 I’d give them a call. It went past 2:00. I called. They said to wrap it up soon if I could, but take care of my friend. I don’t know how many or what kinds of drugs that guy took after that. I only know that for one night he stayed clean. I guess that was another kind of hospitality.

Hospitality was something my parents instilled in me at a very early age. We lived within five miles of Kennedy Airport, the biggest airport on the East Coast. Just about every flight to the U.S. from Europe and Africa landed there, which meant that American missionaries returning home for a “furlough” had to pass through there.

Grace was a very “missionary-minded” church. Although we never had a missionary conference, I know we had two to three missionary speakers each year. And we supported at least eight financially. I grew up hearing stories of miraculous healings, victories over demons and witch doctors, and exciting adventures with exotic animals and dangerous humans in far off places.

The adventure reached me from time to time in the middle of the night when Pop, knowing I was always ready for excitement, would wake me up saying things like, “Hey Phil, Missionary X just flew in from the Congo. The mission board called and asked me to pick him up. He’s going to stay with us tonight and tomorrow and then continue home.”

Off we’d go; me in my pajamas, to pick up a friend or, often, a stranger and offer them a bed and some meals. It’s what my family did, no questions asked.

Missionary airport runs, the occasional stray human brought home, and other hospitalities were ingrained in my genes. Eventually they became part of my life with Sandy and our children. While those years are truly another story, one incident is worth repeating in this context.

Between 1978 and 1982 Sandy and I served as local directors for an evangelical children’s ministry called Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). Since it was an international mission organization, we were often at meetings with folks from all over the world. We didn’t know many of our French, South African, Brazilian, or other area directors, personally, but we were still connected by our mission affiliation and shared faith.

One night, when Sandy and I were getting ready for a vacation in Florida, we received a phone call from a stranger.

“You don’t know me, but my dad’s the national director of CEF New Zealand. A friend and I are traveling across the U.S. on holiday, and we’re trying to keep our expenses to a minimum. Would it be possible to stay with you for a day or two? We’re only an hour or so from your town.”

I checked with Sandy. We planned on leaving for Florida early the next morning. We thought about it for a second or two, and then the Baisley in me won out. I removed my hand from the receiver.

“Sure. Come on over. Have you eaten yet? We’ll get some food ready.”

When our guests arrived we ordered a pizza. Then we explained what was going to happen the next morning. Basically it was this: we were going to give them a house key and leave them our home for as long as they needed it.
 
“We’ll be leaving about 6:00 a.m. Use what you need from the fridge and pantry. There’s a supermarket a few blocks away if you need anything. Just put the key through the mail slot in the front door after you lock the back door for the last time. Have fun!”

And that was it. We left our home, one of our cars, and everything we owned except our suitcases with two strangers whom we would likely never see again. It’s just what Baisleys do.