[Oe List ...] More Weird and cramped places in which we lived gloriously

[William Schlesinger]

So David Zahrt decided it was time to buy the Rochester House when he came
to the unheated attic where Carol and I were assigned (in Bob Booher's
house) and saw the icicles comiing from the nails in the roof that were
holding the shingles in place!  It was a grand and glorious adventure!

Bill Schlesinger
Project Vida
3607 Rivera Avenue
El Paso, TX 79905
(915) 490-6148 Cell


On Tue, Jul 5, 2022 at 3:49 PM Mari Crocker via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
wrote:

> Hi Beloved Community,
>
> I’m beginning a new thread, because the last one was sooooo long and
> repetitive, but utterly illuminating.  So here are the Crocker’s offerings:
>
> When Joe and I were assigned as Area Priors to NY, we followed Fred and
> Sarah Buss, who resided with the NYRH in Gramercy Park at a facility I
> believe was provided by the Episcopal Church there. Unbeknownst to us when
> we said YES to that assignment, the entire NYRH residents had just been
> “evicted”, and we arrived to find “there is no room at the inn.”  Joe’s
> first move was to work with former NYRH members, like John and Melinda
> Howell, and LCX colleagues from NY and Philadelphia (where we had been
> House Priors before reassignment) to find temporary housing in diaspora.
> For example, our twin sons, then nearly three years old, were shipped off
> to the care of Galaxy pastor family Gil and Gretchen Horn and another
> family in his parish in Parsippany, PA.
> Joe pulled strings with Methodist colleague Max Trowbridge, UMC in
> Patterson, NJ who found a small, 3 bedroom, post-war Garrison Colonial
> dwelling into which moved the 20+ members of the NY Religious House,
> “Temporarily Located in Patterson New Jersey”, as was our subtitle for the
> next year.
>
> Our space design was creative:
>
>    - The unheated attic, housed the First Prior Family, (Joe and me)
>    sleeping on camp cots, in a small alcove on one end.  The balance of the
>    open, unheated attic, equipped with bunk beds, was inhabited by all the
>    single men — at that time they included Tom Bergdall, Jim Colvin, Mike
>    Harvey, John Jago, Bob Rammage, and Stan ______ (I cannot remember his last
>    name.)
>    - The unheated basement housed the Second and Third Prior Families,
>    Rich and Joanne McCabe, and Melinda and John Howell — separated by a sheet
>    hung from the rafters.
>    - The three-bedroom second floor housed 1. Our newest intern family,
>    Paul and Suzanne Frazer; 2. The young boys dorm: Drew Howell, Jon and Ben
>    Crocker 3. The single women’s dorm: Nan Bailey, Debra Eldrige and her
>    daughter Rebecca; Heather Howell and the two little daughters of Bob
>    Rammage.
>
>
>
>    - We 23 residents used ONE bathroom on the second floor, and one
>    half-bath on the first floor
>
>
>
>    - Each morning we celebrated Daily Office and breakfast collegium in
>    the “livingroom”, which was redesigned as the pre-school when we all left
>    for work/study.
>
>
> Have you ever slept for a whole year on a camp cot?  Or shared one
> bathroom, even an out-house, with 22 others who need to get up and go in
> the morning?
>
> ________________
>
> When the Crockers arrived in Maliwada, we were assigned to the
> “demonstration house.”  Wow, I thought, lucky us!  It was a large one-room
> structure with a tin roof (as I recall), that made it quite hot in the
> day.  But during the day we were working in the village or teaching, so, no
> problem.  Until the night Joe came home LATE from a faculty planning
> meeting.  Our five year-old sons and I were sleeping on straw-filled mats
> on the floor.  Joe snapped on the light — one naked bulb suspended from the
> rafters — and suddenly I was awakened by a thunderous THUD, right over my
> head.  “Get up! “ he expostulated.  “It’s a scorpion!!”  Joe had killed it
> by throwing his shoe!
>
> That experiment was swiftly concluded and our family moved into one small
> room in “the Castle”, similar to those in which pretty much everyone else
> on staff slept. But….scorpions be gone, Nat Shinn and our boys, Jon and Ben
> teamed up for something even more nocturnally enlivening” ---frogs in tin
> cans!!
>
> Wait for the next installment!
>
> _______________________________________________
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>

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