pages 14-15
...about many things, but especially about religion. And in some
cases these would go on until the wee hours in the morning.
Then the next day we would go to the library and get more
ammunition for the argument that was sure to occur that night.
For my part, I took to visiting a different church, with a
different ritual, every Sunday. The most intellectual church to
me was the First Unitarian Church held in the Palace Theater
on North Avenue in Minneapolis. Dr. Dietrick was the lecturer.
But a church service I have never forgotten was held in an old
warehouse. The pulpit was a large barrel on which a kerosene
lamp was placed. The pews were just benches without backs,
and the roof beams were blacked by coal fires. We sat off to one
side on a kind of raised floor. As the poor, mostly colored
people arrived, they seemed so depressed and beaten down
that our hearts went out to them, but when the minister took
over and the singing and praying went on, it seemed as if by
magic their cares and woes went away. At the time, I then
thought this must be one of the better religions, because it was
practicing the law as discovered by our great religious leaders:
that love is a greater power than hate.
We had just paid another month's rent, and believe me,
money was hard to come by at that time. So we conceived the
idea of building a house on the lake to get away from renting.
About a week later we made our decision. Our idea was a
house on the water, not a houseboat. For this purpose, then, we
decided to use fifty-five gallon empty oil drums which were
free for the asking at that time. Those would float our house
nicely.
About one mile west of the university there was an oil
distributor with a huge stack of these empty barrels, and I
secured permission to take as many as I wanted. I was able to
put one barrel in the rumble seat, then tie one on each front
fender of the model A. Three each trip, after school or work on
Saturdays. In this manner we moved eighty-eight drums to the
lake shore, except on my last trip a motorcycle cop stopped me
a mile from our house, and made me unload the two fender
mounted barrels. They obstructed my vision, he said, and of
course he was right.