CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life From a Place of Winter for the Years
of Winter…
Helen
has spent money in many places, including a motel in Mt. Pleasant, MI. Except
not exactly.
Helen
is not a careful woman, in the sense of being fearful, and she assumes the best
in people, which can make one gullible and vulnerable, but she is smart—and she
also taught high school for many years--so it’s unusual for her to get fooled.
But
the guy who called our room at 9:30 at night, with us already in our night
clothes, had a nice rich baritone with a slight southern drawl, and he was
sorry to bother us but he didn’t need much, just the number of the credit card
she had used when we checked in, because they’d had a computer glitch and lost
all the information. His drawl didn’t sound like the person we had checked in
with, but that was because he had just come on to do the night shift, and he was
the one who had to clean up the computer mess, and for being so cooperative,
we’d get a 20% discount when we checked out in the morning.
The
problem was, the guy at the desk when we checked out didn’t know of any
computer glitch, and said if a local computer crashed, they’d never need to ask
a guest for that info because it was all stored on the great computer in the sky
at Best Western--or wherever—headquarters, and their night clerk was named
Suzanne.
As
soon as we got into the car and on our way, Helen called Visa. The helpful
young Visa operative looked at our account and asked if she had recently
purchased something at the inmate canteen in the Michigan state prison.
Helen
has gotten fooled only twice. Once when a prison inmate asked for her credit
card number in a motel. Once when a young preacher asked for her hand in
marriage. Today is her birthday. I agree with Professor Harold Hill in Meredith
Willson’s great The Music Man—“A
sadder but a wiser girl for me.” At least as far as the inmate canteen goes.
JRMcF
When
we lived in Mason City, Iowa, the first of the 3 places we lived to follow the
grandchildren, Meredith Willson’s hometown, in which The Music Man is set, I preached several times in his home church,
First Christian, where his mother taught Sunday School. She always ended her
class by saying, “May the good Lord bless and keep you.” Later, Willson set
that to music.
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