December 12, 2022 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Jim Johnson finds peculiar friends wherever he goes. This story is about one such friend, Everett Motl.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Leigh Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
James L. Johnson. He's a long time pastor and he
and his wife Linda have served together in Washington and California,
(00:34):
among other places. They have nine kids. Lived in Rogers, Minnesota.
Pastor Jim finds peculiar friends wherever he goes, wherever he lives,
wherever he travels, in one form or another. This is
the story about one of those friends. Here's Jim Johnson
and the story of Everett Model. Everett was a peculiar
(00:58):
man in our town. Smiling, awkward and heavy footed. He
spoke with a backthrowt lisp. But he didn't talk much,
not to most people. But Everett would talk to me.
I got the Lord of my life, Everett told me
not so long after he started coming to our church
in a small town in northern Minnesota. He cried when
(01:21):
he said it. Every time he said it. I think
Everett cried. Jesus is in my heart. He would say
it was twenty five years ago. This Christmas, we sang
our last Christmas Carol together. I couldn't always understand his words,
but I could always understand this much Everett model, the
(01:43):
peculiar old man who mowed four lons a day with
a broken down more for five dollars a yard, needed community,
he needed to work, and he wanted you to know
that he was a Christian. Everybody knew whoever. It was.
In the northwestern frozen cold Minnesota burg where we used
(02:04):
to live, with one five hundred and twenty seven citizens
and two grocery stores, a coast to coast and a
hardware hank, you couldn't help but notice the Everetts of
the world. He was about sixty years old back then,
but looked a little older. And he was, as we
used to say it, a little slow, although it doesn't
(02:25):
seem nice to say it that way now. Ever, since
his divorce years ago to a private but functional owner
of Mary's Corner Closet the thrift Store, Everett had made
his home in a low rent senior home, a rest home,
as we used to call it, a six room, gray
(02:46):
shaked house with two gables, aging but well kept. The
Johnson rest home said to sign on the side. Because
of Everett's quirky personality and his awkward way of talking,
and his seemingly worse singing health, he moved from one
rest home to another, one town to the next, until
(03:06):
his diabetic condition forced the move to Midway Nursing Home
in the oldest part of our town. Staying at Midway
said a lot in itself. The seniors with a little
better means who needed help, they stayed in the newer
municipal home by the Highway. The municipal was definitely a
step up, attached to the regional hospital and a growing
(03:31):
health clinic. The Municipal was clean and new and bore
the look of modern healthcare. Everett did not live at
the municipal home. He lived at the Midway. The Midway
Home was well green. It was the original hospital in
our town, a rectangular building with three floors. The Midway
(03:52):
was built in the nineteen twenties and saved from raising
because it was, as we used to say, too good
to go to waste. Painted in that verdant guacamole color,
it brought smiles to first time visitors to our town,
but it served fine for Everett and about twenty other
also rands of life. Back then three males a day
(04:14):
and a regular turnover of nursing assistants who made about
eight dollars an hour and worked hard at it. The
Midway Home was for people who grew up in the
country and worked on homestead farms or taught in two
room schoolhouses. Those folks, like my folks, didn't feel necessarily
that it was a step down to live in Midway.
(04:36):
It was a step up for them, and as a
pastor of a local mainline church, I held services there
every Sunday afternoon and would visit people like Everett. Everett
at first lived just two blocks from our parsonage on
Second Street, so I saw him often, but honestly tried
to avoid him. My next door neighbor, Steve, was the
(04:58):
first to befriend him. Steve couldn't help himself. Everett asked
if he could mow his lawn one day, and Steve
was easy. He was a new Christian with a tender heart,
and he could not say no. Everett pushed his lawnmower
the two blocks from the restroom to our lots near
the corner by the dairy Queen on Second Street and
(05:20):
I have to admit, yes, I did think it looked
odd to see in a hunched and aging man mowing
the lawn of a young, burly maintenance man. But Steve
was undeterred. Steve said, everybody needs to have a purpose.
What's life without a job? Well, I couldn't disagree with that,
so I paid Everett five dollars to mow my lawn too.
(05:44):
The lines weren't always straight. He cut into my tree roots.
He started move mowing too early in the day, and
his ancient Toro lawnmower coughed up clouds of blue smoke.
But Linda and I hired him five dollars just to
be nice once a week at least. Whenever it came
(06:04):
to mow my grass. He would often crank up the
Toro at seven o'clock in the morning, waking up our
three little girls. Everett, I'd say, after I had him
stop the more. You can't really start until eight o'clock. Okay, sorry,
he would say, I didn't know. Sometimes my neighbor Steve,
grew frustrated because Everett would mow over his new dogwood bushes.
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Evert you gotta watch we were mowing, Steve would say,
Everwood shrug and Steve would hire him the next week
as a new Christian and a kind but burly maintenance man.
Steve had a heart for the zeros of this world,
and I was working on that too. Yes, Everett smoked
too much, and yes he was odd, and yes Everett's
(06:49):
reputation preceded him, but Everett was family to us. He
was anyway, a child of God and a man who
needed five dollars, and we agreed to help. And you're
listening to James L. Johnson, a long time pastor, telling
the story of this well peculiar friend. And we all
have peculiar friends. Maybe you're peculiar. I think I'm pretty
(07:11):
peculiar myself. And you're listening to the story of Everett
Model when we come back, more of Jim Johnson's story,
and of course Everett's story here on Our American Stories.
(07:32):
Lee Habibi here the host of our American Stories. Every
day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across
this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.
But we truly can't do the show without you. Our
stories are free to listen to, but they're not free
to make. If you love what you hear. Go to
our American Stories dot com and click the donate button.
(07:54):
Give a little, Give a lot. Go to our American
Stories dot com and give And we continue here on
our American Stories listening to a listeners story. Let's continue
(08:16):
with Jim and Everett's unlikely friendship. God sent Everett to
our church. I think ever since I was a child,
God gave me a heart for the nobodies of the world.
I knew it from my boyhood in Bloomington, Minnesota. Jay,
a neighbor kid with a kool Aid mustache and a
hiny haircut, moved across the street because the lord wanted
(08:38):
to teach me something. My neighborhood on Steven's Avenue had
sixteen houses, all in the lower middle class blue collar range,
and kids became my friends and teachers. They were bullies
and brains, athletes and poets, musicians and scrappers and gossips
and jocks, and the twenty children of the block on
(08:59):
Stephen's Avenue. We had the world in a nutshells, So
Steven's Avenue became my training ground for character. Everyone counts.
God made them all, Jesus loved them, and I was
supposed to love him too. Granted, you had to love
and stay pretty far away from some people at the
same time, but you can learn to do that. It's
(09:21):
judgment and discretion and elbow room all at the same time.
But if you're a true Christian, you better learned to
be nice, which brings me back to Everett model. The
old man came to our small town church for two
basic reasons. One we preached the Bible every Sunday, and
Everett believed the Bible. And two, you could wear flannel
(09:44):
and boots and big bell buckles in our services if
you wanted to, and nobody cared. We were the down
to earth crowd. Not so many bankers or lawyers or
dennists in our church. We do the regular folks. We
captured the market on regular at Calvary Church. The plane
everyday people who invested their lives in road construction and
(10:05):
milk plants, small grain farms and auto repair. Even so,
people still look twice whenever it waddled into our church.
He spent his career doing small jobs and farm hand work,
the lower rung of the agricultural ladder in the Midwest,
but he came to our church every Sunday and so
he was our family, with one hundred and ten people
(10:27):
watching him. It was entertainment and theology all at the
same time. Everett hobbled up to the third pew on
the left every Wednesday night and every Sunday morning, sitting
by the inside aisle, usually by himself. The rooms, of course,
drifted in like a cloud. As always, Everett was strange.
Mary had to divorce him because well, we didn't want
(10:49):
to say, and he was forced to leave a previous
care center because he can't get along with people. He
was stubborn, he was weird, he was poor. He was Everett.
I suppose some of the rumors were true, but I
chose to believe about ten percent of them, and I
still do to this day. With people, take away a
(11:10):
grain of salt, as my mother used to say. And
in a world filled with sin and sinners and flannel
and jeans and rest homes and small towns and big
cities and good children and the naughty and the nice
who don't always live like they should, well, I suppose
you have to give people a second chance. I guess
there are a lot of things to overlook and of
(11:31):
which to be forgiven. The Angel said to Joseph and
Matthew one twenty and twenty one that quote, what is
conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit, and Mary
will give birth to a son, And you are to
give him the name Jesus, because he will save his
people from their sins. I guess Jesus died for people
(11:57):
like Everett. Two. God had used a man named Bob
in a neighboring town to lead Everett to Jesus Christ.
One year, Bob, the truck driver, formerly the town bully,
had become a believer in Christ and had become a
pretty good role model too in our neighboring town. And
as such truck driver Bob knew what it was like
(12:18):
to be alienated and estranged. So Bob brought him to
his church and Macintosh and taught Everett that Jesus was
God's son, that Christ died in across to pay the
price for our sin, that Jesus had risen from the
dead and wanted to enter into our lives and forgive
our sin and create us a new Our small town
(12:39):
church in Foston preached pretty much the same message of salvation.
I'm thinking of that verse. For to you a was
born a savior who is Christ. The Lord. Everett liked that,
and he wanted to be a part of our church.
So I made friends with him because I was a pastor,
and because I had a heart for the zeros of
this world, because I was a zero. Probably we're supposed
(13:01):
to take care of people like Everett, aren't we? But
it went further for me than just being Lutheran clergy. Everett,
to me represented the least of these people, as Jesus said,
like the poor man Lazarus in Luke seventeen, Everett was
only asking for crumbs off the table. Who were we
to say no for? Aren't we all as poor as Lazarus?
(13:24):
And Everett himself the congregation embraced him. After a few months.
We mostly came to love him, almost all of us,
I should say. He came every Sunday rain or shine,
snow or sleet, and he stayed after for snack time,
and ate enormous amounts of food at our monthly potluck
(13:45):
dinners and never brought a dish. Of course, pretty sure
we wouldn't have tried his dishes anyway. But we came
to accept and love Everett just the same. Like most
of us. Everett had his good traits and his bad traits.
He always sat on the right side, second row, next
to the aisle. One day, a visitor came early and,
not knowing, sat down with his wife and took everett spot.
(14:09):
My Lawton moowing friend walked down the aisle, looked up
to see his pew taken, and he didn't know what
to do. I mean, while all one hundred of us
were watching piano playing in the background, two minutes before
the service started and with the church mostly packed, Everett hesitated.
He looked, he turned, he stopped, He deliberated, before quickly
(14:32):
walking back to the folding chair section in the rear.
But before he came forward all the way from the back,
we all watched him. What was Ever going to do
with those two people sitting in his usual seat. He
tapped the unsuspecting men on the shoulder. He bent down
and asked the visitor if he could have his hymnal.
(14:54):
We could hear Everett ask it semi intelligibly, can I
have that hymn book? With an unknown shrug. The men
reached over, grabbed the him book, handed it to Everett,
and that was that. Evert took the book and walked
back to the folding chairs in the rear, fully content,
tell you what no one ever said, and Everett spot
(15:15):
next time, when you're a little awkward, you need a
little time, and you need a good friend. And my
maintenance chief friend Steve was just the guy. Steve was
kind enough to ask him to help him serve as
an usher with him forever. That was a huge job
and a great compliment, carrying brass plates with money offerings,
(15:40):
checks a few coins. That was a new horizon for Everett.
It was perhaps the first time anyone had ever asked
him to serve. And Steve, in flannel and jeans and
cowboy boots, would stand next to Everett in his lime
green leisure suit which I'm sure he bought up Mary's
corner closet the thrift store, while I prayed for the offering,
(16:01):
the three of us standing there front and center and
everyone else watching, and with Everett, his health beginning to fail,
his hands clasped in front of him, would lean and
list and stagger and catch his footing just about to fall.
You know, I'm telling you a few of the caring women,
none of the observant children of the church, and all
but two of the men closed their eyes during those prayers.
(16:25):
Everybody was watching. They were sure, Ever, it was going
to fall. Don't let this happen. Give him a brace,
but Steve would hang on steady as can be. Provides
stability and Everett never did fall down up there. But
there was a new level of alertness during my brief
opening offering prayers. But Ever, it would smile. You say,
(16:46):
I'm an usher now, he would tell me we were
watching him crow. The other amusing part of being in
a church service with Everett was Prairie quest time. Our
small town church uses a family friendly prayer request method.
Just after the apostles creed and before the special music,
we ask if there are any special prayer requests as
(17:08):
we say it, and people raise their hands and offer
their requests. Pray for my aunt Kath, he's having a baby.
Pray for Norvil's knee surgery, they would say, pray for
travel mercies. We would use that phrase. Whatever. It was
personal and long, real long. And you're listening to James Johnson,
(17:29):
a long time pastor. And by the way, we do
these stories from churches, from synagogues, from musque. We do
them because so many Americans in this country take their
faith and spiritual walk seriously, and we don't back away
from those things, and we don't proselytize here, as you
well know. But to avoid these stories, to not tell
them would be a lie. And that's why we bring
(17:49):
them to you when we come back more with this
remarkable friendship here on our American Stories, and we continue
(18:10):
here on our American Stories. James L. Johnson telling the
story of his friendship with Everett Model. Let's return to
the story. Everett raised his hand for prairie request time
every single time. Yes, it's Everett, do you have a
prairie request? We knew what was coming, and yep. Everett
would start talking and start praying, and start asking and
(18:32):
start crying, and on and on he would go. His
requests were always personal and mostly non intelligible. They were
primarily unending, and like some of my sermons, Everett's requests
marched on and on. Pray for Bob and Bill and
my brother Clarence, who needs to know the Lord, he
would say, or we were pretty sure, he said, And
(18:54):
for Pastor Tom and Don Frits and stifled cries for
all the people who didn't know. Pray for Sta Steve
and Barb and Pastor Jim and Linda and the children
and the people, And after about three minutes you had
to cut in and interrupt, and I would say thank
you ever at anybody else. I'll never forget though Everett's
(19:18):
final Christmas wish. It was the day that I sang
my last Christmas Carol with him, twenty five years ago,
this December, on that Sunday night. Casey didn't know. In
northern Minnesota the snow comes almost every early November, right
after her hunting season starts, and it rarely melts before March,
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so every Christmas is white. Our church had this annual
tradition of Christmas caroling two weeks before Christmas. A man
in a neighboring town owned a large sleigh and cared
for a team before Belgian horses, beautiful animals, and every
year we would ask him to cart our church around
town on the sleigh with those horses. And Sunday nights
(20:01):
in December were slow nights in our town, and a
church group on a slay could jingle and jangle through
the city with a pleasure of the entire town. We
could take the back roads to family homes and senior
residences and park in the front yard. We also we
figured could pull our sleigh one street of Main Street
and park it right in front of the Midway Home.
(20:24):
That's where Everett was living at the end. Let's go
sing for Everett, I said. Everybody wanted to see what
would happen. So we took the slay up to the
Midway Home and parked it and marched in our boots
and coats, our glasses frosting over, and we came to
see Everett there. He had had a rough run of
(20:45):
life there that last month. He'd been unable to attend
church services for most of the fall, not able to
leave the nursing home since the end of the summer,
except for visits to the doctor, and he had fallen
and broken his right wrist after a dizzey spell one
day in November and was fitted for a cast. When
I came into the Midway that timy, he showed me
(21:08):
his cast, and he would joke and say, so much
my boxing career. Pastor, Jim, I'll you'll box again, Everett,
I smile and say so. When the thirty or so
people from our church filed into the Lime Green Nursing
Home that night to sing Christmas carols at the midway.
The seniors who could walk peered out the door and smiled,
and they'd look at the sleigh and saw the horses.
(21:30):
I haven't seen horses in years. Some of them said.
Our cheeks were red and rosy. And Everett looked comfy,
cozy as we came into his room. We're singing Carol's Everett.
We said, you want to come with? We asked in
that Minnesota dialect that leaves that odd preposition dangling without shame.
Y'all come with, he said, and in his stretched white
(21:52):
T shirt. Everett was looking good that day, unusually good.
He was happy and even a little bit plump, and
the best way it happens for a sixty year old
diabetic and frail health. The Midway diet was agreeing with him.
His skin looked good, and he held his injured wrist
up high. I get my cast off tomorrow morning, Everett smiled.
(22:15):
Crowd moved down the hall to the beat of heavy
sorrel snow boots. He followed us in the pack and
wandered down to the lounge that exists at the end
of every decent Northern Minnesota nursing home and the people
beamed as we sang. Everett was to my left, peeking
into the lounge and smiling. We were singing. The cattle
(22:35):
are lowing, the poor baby wakes, but little Lord Jesus,
no crying. He makes I love you. Lord Jesus looked
down from the sky and stayed by my cradle till
morning is nigh. I lucked, and sure enough Everett was singing,
actually quite loud in that lisping, hoarse voice. It to
(23:00):
his right, and even stopped for a phrase or two
just to hear him sing another verse. He was bouncing,
no leaning or listing, not about to fall. Everett looked
vibrant and alive and steady as he sang with a
heavy coated Calvary church carollers that night be near me,
Lord Jesus. I asked thee to stay close by me
(23:21):
forever and love me. I pray bless all the dear
children in night tender care, and fit us for heaven
to live with thee there. Well, the night was over
and we left in a hurry. It was after eight
thirty pm, I'm pretty sure, pretty late for a nursing home,
and the school children would go to school the next day.
(23:44):
We were hustling to leave, and I was the last
one out the door. As I was about to walk
out the door, I heard Everett yell Pastor Jim. I
turned and looked down the hall and smiled, and he
held up his cast and he said, holding up his
right wrist, I'll get it off tomorrow. I smiled, and
(24:06):
I remember I said these exact words. I said, I
hope you do, Everett. We'll be boxing by tuesday, I said,
and I waved, and I walked out the door. And
that was that. We rode the sleigh back to church
and went home. I never saw Everett alive again. The
(24:26):
nursing home said he died in his sleep that very night.
They found him around five o'clock in the morning. And
you know, I wasn't sad. No Everett Model the more
of Lawns got his cast off the next day. In heaven.
He was swinging his arm and standing firm, no leaning,
(24:47):
no listing. He was talking to the Savior like Lazarus,
with his wrist experiencing full motion. The poor child of
God woke up in glory, no crying, just laughing, because
the Lord fit him for heaven to live with him
there like the hymn says, as a follower of Jesus, Everett,
(25:07):
in the most simple and childlike of ways, had turned
from his sin and gave them all to Jesus the Emmanuel,
born two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, born to die
for the losers and the winners of this world. Everett
repented and said, I love you, Lord. Jesus looked down
from the sky, and Jesus stayed by his nursing home
(25:29):
bed until morning was nigh. Yeah, the cast came off,
And no, I don't suppose Everett is boxing in heaven
like he wished that Christmas caroling night. But when I
see him one day, I'm going to hold up my
fists and smile just a little and fake a left
jab and a right hooked just before I hug him. Everett,
(25:53):
that peculiar old man, mostly loved by a hundred people
down here, and loved by a savior up there, pursued
by a Messiah, born in Bethlehem, crucified in Jerusalem, alive
in heaven today. Aren't you glad? Jesus was born for
(26:15):
peculiar people like us? And that was Pastor Jim telling
a beautiful story about his faith walk with a brother,
and that's Everett, Everett model. And you know, I keep
hearing and can see that singing, that singing of that
less Carol, and we all know what believers or not,
(26:36):
but special meaning for those of us who are believers.
And Aquinas once said, when we sing, we pray twice.
And that's so true. And by the way, the most
substantive experience I ever had in my life with other
human beings where I learned this kind of mercy and
grace and kindness and patience. I wasn't a Christian at
the time. I had a beautiful girlfriend in high school
who served in nursing homes and I would go with
(26:59):
her and just hang out. And I got to meet
people who were close to dying and people weren't visiting them.
And what I learned about people and humanity. And if
you get a chance over the holiday seasons, anytime, visit
these folks, sing with them, just love on them. And
that's what our show is all about, folks. Mercy, grace, kindness, patience,
love and the beautiful things that Americans do for each other.
(27:22):
This is our American Stories. The story of Pastor Jim
end Ever
This is Leigh Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
James L. Johnson. He's a long time pastor and he
and his wife Linda have served together in Washington and California,
(00:34):
among other places. They have nine kids. Lived in Rogers, Minnesota.
Pastor Jim finds peculiar friends wherever he goes, wherever he lives,
wherever he travels, in one form or another. This is
the story about one of those friends. Here's Jim Johnson
and the story of Everett Model. Everett was a peculiar
(00:58):
man in our town. Smiling, awkward and heavy footed. He
spoke with a backthrowt lisp. But he didn't talk much,
not to most people. But Everett would talk to me.
I got the Lord of my life, Everett told me
not so long after he started coming to our church
in a small town in northern Minnesota. He cried when
(01:21):
he said it. Every time he said it. I think
Everett cried. Jesus is in my heart. He would say
it was twenty five years ago. This Christmas, we sang
our last Christmas Carol together. I couldn't always understand his words,
but I could always understand this much Everett model, the
(01:43):
peculiar old man who mowed four lons a day with
a broken down more for five dollars a yard, needed community,
he needed to work, and he wanted you to know
that he was a Christian. Everybody knew whoever. It was.
In the northwestern frozen cold Minnesota burg where we used
(02:04):
to live, with one five hundred and twenty seven citizens
and two grocery stores, a coast to coast and a
hardware hank, you couldn't help but notice the Everetts of
the world. He was about sixty years old back then,
but looked a little older. And he was, as we
used to say it, a little slow, although it doesn't
(02:25):
seem nice to say it that way now. Ever, since
his divorce years ago to a private but functional owner
of Mary's Corner Closet the thrift Store, Everett had made
his home in a low rent senior home, a rest home,
as we used to call it, a six room, gray
(02:46):
shaked house with two gables, aging but well kept. The
Johnson rest home said to sign on the side. Because
of Everett's quirky personality and his awkward way of talking,
and his seemingly worse singing health, he moved from one
rest home to another, one town to the next, until
(03:06):
his diabetic condition forced the move to Midway Nursing Home
in the oldest part of our town. Staying at Midway
said a lot in itself. The seniors with a little
better means who needed help, they stayed in the newer
municipal home by the Highway. The municipal was definitely a
step up, attached to the regional hospital and a growing
(03:31):
health clinic. The Municipal was clean and new and bore
the look of modern healthcare. Everett did not live at
the municipal home. He lived at the Midway. The Midway
Home was well green. It was the original hospital in
our town, a rectangular building with three floors. The Midway
(03:52):
was built in the nineteen twenties and saved from raising
because it was, as we used to say, too good
to go to waste. Painted in that verdant guacamole color,
it brought smiles to first time visitors to our town,
but it served fine for Everett and about twenty other
also rands of life. Back then three males a day
(04:14):
and a regular turnover of nursing assistants who made about
eight dollars an hour and worked hard at it. The
Midway Home was for people who grew up in the
country and worked on homestead farms or taught in two
room schoolhouses. Those folks, like my folks, didn't feel necessarily
that it was a step down to live in Midway.
(04:36):
It was a step up for them, and as a
pastor of a local mainline church, I held services there
every Sunday afternoon and would visit people like Everett. Everett
at first lived just two blocks from our parsonage on
Second Street, so I saw him often, but honestly tried
to avoid him. My next door neighbor, Steve, was the
(04:58):
first to befriend him. Steve couldn't help himself. Everett asked
if he could mow his lawn one day, and Steve
was easy. He was a new Christian with a tender heart,
and he could not say no. Everett pushed his lawnmower
the two blocks from the restroom to our lots near
the corner by the dairy Queen on Second Street and
(05:20):
I have to admit, yes, I did think it looked
odd to see in a hunched and aging man mowing
the lawn of a young, burly maintenance man. But Steve
was undeterred. Steve said, everybody needs to have a purpose.
What's life without a job? Well, I couldn't disagree with that,
so I paid Everett five dollars to mow my lawn too.
(05:44):
The lines weren't always straight. He cut into my tree roots.
He started move mowing too early in the day, and
his ancient Toro lawnmower coughed up clouds of blue smoke.
But Linda and I hired him five dollars just to
be nice once a week at least. Whenever it came
(06:04):
to mow my grass. He would often crank up the
Toro at seven o'clock in the morning, waking up our
three little girls. Everett, I'd say, after I had him
stop the more. You can't really start until eight o'clock. Okay, sorry,
he would say, I didn't know. Sometimes my neighbor Steve,
grew frustrated because Everett would mow over his new dogwood bushes.
(06:28):
Evert you gotta watch we were mowing, Steve would say,
Everwood shrug and Steve would hire him the next week
as a new Christian and a kind but burly maintenance man.
Steve had a heart for the zeros of this world,
and I was working on that too. Yes, Everett smoked
too much, and yes he was odd, and yes Everett's
(06:49):
reputation preceded him, but Everett was family to us. He
was anyway, a child of God and a man who
needed five dollars, and we agreed to help. And you're
listening to James L. Johnson, a long time pastor, telling
the story of this well peculiar friend. And we all
have peculiar friends. Maybe you're peculiar. I think I'm pretty
(07:11):
peculiar myself. And you're listening to the story of Everett
Model when we come back, more of Jim Johnson's story,
and of course Everett's story here on Our American Stories.
(07:32):
Lee Habibi here the host of our American Stories. Every
day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across
this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.
But we truly can't do the show without you. Our
stories are free to listen to, but they're not free
to make. If you love what you hear. Go to
our American Stories dot com and click the donate button.
(07:54):
Give a little, Give a lot. Go to our American
Stories dot com and give And we continue here on
our American Stories listening to a listeners story. Let's continue
(08:16):
with Jim and Everett's unlikely friendship. God sent Everett to
our church. I think ever since I was a child,
God gave me a heart for the nobodies of the world.
I knew it from my boyhood in Bloomington, Minnesota. Jay,
a neighbor kid with a kool Aid mustache and a
hiny haircut, moved across the street because the lord wanted
(08:38):
to teach me something. My neighborhood on Steven's Avenue had
sixteen houses, all in the lower middle class blue collar range,
and kids became my friends and teachers. They were bullies
and brains, athletes and poets, musicians and scrappers and gossips
and jocks, and the twenty children of the block on
(08:59):
Stephen's Avenue. We had the world in a nutshells, So
Steven's Avenue became my training ground for character. Everyone counts.
God made them all, Jesus loved them, and I was
supposed to love him too. Granted, you had to love
and stay pretty far away from some people at the
same time, but you can learn to do that. It's
(09:21):
judgment and discretion and elbow room all at the same time.
But if you're a true Christian, you better learned to
be nice, which brings me back to Everett model. The
old man came to our small town church for two
basic reasons. One we preached the Bible every Sunday, and
Everett believed the Bible. And two, you could wear flannel
(09:44):
and boots and big bell buckles in our services if
you wanted to, and nobody cared. We were the down
to earth crowd. Not so many bankers or lawyers or
dennists in our church. We do the regular folks. We
captured the market on regular at Calvary Church. The plane
everyday people who invested their lives in road construction and
(10:05):
milk plants, small grain farms and auto repair. Even so,
people still look twice whenever it waddled into our church.
He spent his career doing small jobs and farm hand work,
the lower rung of the agricultural ladder in the Midwest,
but he came to our church every Sunday and so
he was our family, with one hundred and ten people
(10:27):
watching him. It was entertainment and theology all at the
same time. Everett hobbled up to the third pew on
the left every Wednesday night and every Sunday morning, sitting
by the inside aisle, usually by himself. The rooms, of course,
drifted in like a cloud. As always, Everett was strange.
Mary had to divorce him because well, we didn't want
(10:49):
to say, and he was forced to leave a previous
care center because he can't get along with people. He
was stubborn, he was weird, he was poor. He was Everett.
I suppose some of the rumors were true, but I
chose to believe about ten percent of them, and I
still do to this day. With people, take away a
(11:10):
grain of salt, as my mother used to say. And
in a world filled with sin and sinners and flannel
and jeans and rest homes and small towns and big
cities and good children and the naughty and the nice
who don't always live like they should, well, I suppose
you have to give people a second chance. I guess
there are a lot of things to overlook and of
(11:31):
which to be forgiven. The Angel said to Joseph and
Matthew one twenty and twenty one that quote, what is
conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit, and Mary
will give birth to a son, And you are to
give him the name Jesus, because he will save his
people from their sins. I guess Jesus died for people
(11:57):
like Everett. Two. God had used a man named Bob
in a neighboring town to lead Everett to Jesus Christ.
One year, Bob, the truck driver, formerly the town bully,
had become a believer in Christ and had become a
pretty good role model too in our neighboring town. And
as such truck driver Bob knew what it was like
(12:18):
to be alienated and estranged. So Bob brought him to
his church and Macintosh and taught Everett that Jesus was
God's son, that Christ died in across to pay the
price for our sin, that Jesus had risen from the
dead and wanted to enter into our lives and forgive
our sin and create us a new Our small town
(12:39):
church in Foston preached pretty much the same message of salvation.
I'm thinking of that verse. For to you a was
born a savior who is Christ. The Lord. Everett liked that,
and he wanted to be a part of our church.
So I made friends with him because I was a pastor,
and because I had a heart for the zeros of
this world, because I was a zero. Probably we're supposed
(13:01):
to take care of people like Everett, aren't we? But
it went further for me than just being Lutheran clergy. Everett,
to me represented the least of these people, as Jesus said,
like the poor man Lazarus in Luke seventeen, Everett was
only asking for crumbs off the table. Who were we
to say no for? Aren't we all as poor as Lazarus?
(13:24):
And Everett himself the congregation embraced him. After a few months.
We mostly came to love him, almost all of us,
I should say. He came every Sunday rain or shine,
snow or sleet, and he stayed after for snack time,
and ate enormous amounts of food at our monthly potluck
(13:45):
dinners and never brought a dish. Of course, pretty sure
we wouldn't have tried his dishes anyway. But we came
to accept and love Everett just the same. Like most
of us. Everett had his good traits and his bad traits.
He always sat on the right side, second row, next
to the aisle. One day, a visitor came early and,
not knowing, sat down with his wife and took everett spot.
(14:09):
My Lawton moowing friend walked down the aisle, looked up
to see his pew taken, and he didn't know what
to do. I mean, while all one hundred of us
were watching piano playing in the background, two minutes before
the service started and with the church mostly packed, Everett hesitated.
He looked, he turned, he stopped, He deliberated, before quickly
(14:32):
walking back to the folding chair section in the rear.
But before he came forward all the way from the back,
we all watched him. What was Ever going to do
with those two people sitting in his usual seat. He
tapped the unsuspecting men on the shoulder. He bent down
and asked the visitor if he could have his hymnal.
(14:54):
We could hear Everett ask it semi intelligibly, can I
have that hymn book? With an unknown shrug. The men
reached over, grabbed the him book, handed it to Everett,
and that was that. Evert took the book and walked
back to the folding chairs in the rear, fully content,
tell you what no one ever said, and Everett spot
(15:15):
next time, when you're a little awkward, you need a
little time, and you need a good friend. And my
maintenance chief friend Steve was just the guy. Steve was
kind enough to ask him to help him serve as
an usher with him forever. That was a huge job
and a great compliment, carrying brass plates with money offerings,
(15:40):
checks a few coins. That was a new horizon for Everett.
It was perhaps the first time anyone had ever asked
him to serve. And Steve, in flannel and jeans and
cowboy boots, would stand next to Everett in his lime
green leisure suit which I'm sure he bought up Mary's
corner closet the thrift store, while I prayed for the offering,
(16:01):
the three of us standing there front and center and
everyone else watching, and with Everett, his health beginning to fail,
his hands clasped in front of him, would lean and
list and stagger and catch his footing just about to fall.
You know, I'm telling you a few of the caring women,
none of the observant children of the church, and all
but two of the men closed their eyes during those prayers.
(16:25):
Everybody was watching. They were sure, Ever, it was going
to fall. Don't let this happen. Give him a brace,
but Steve would hang on steady as can be. Provides
stability and Everett never did fall down up there. But
there was a new level of alertness during my brief
opening offering prayers. But Ever, it would smile. You say,
(16:46):
I'm an usher now, he would tell me we were
watching him crow. The other amusing part of being in
a church service with Everett was Prairie quest time. Our
small town church uses a family friendly prayer request method.
Just after the apostles creed and before the special music,
we ask if there are any special prayer requests as
(17:08):
we say it, and people raise their hands and offer
their requests. Pray for my aunt Kath, he's having a baby.
Pray for Norvil's knee surgery, they would say, pray for
travel mercies. We would use that phrase. Whatever. It was
personal and long, real long. And you're listening to James Johnson,
(17:29):
a long time pastor. And by the way, we do
these stories from churches, from synagogues, from musque. We do
them because so many Americans in this country take their
faith and spiritual walk seriously, and we don't back away
from those things, and we don't proselytize here, as you
well know. But to avoid these stories, to not tell
them would be a lie. And that's why we bring
(17:49):
them to you when we come back more with this
remarkable friendship here on our American Stories, and we continue
(18:10):
here on our American Stories. James L. Johnson telling the
story of his friendship with Everett Model. Let's return to
the story. Everett raised his hand for prairie request time
every single time. Yes, it's Everett, do you have a
prairie request? We knew what was coming, and yep. Everett
would start talking and start praying, and start asking and
(18:32):
start crying, and on and on he would go. His
requests were always personal and mostly non intelligible. They were
primarily unending, and like some of my sermons, Everett's requests
marched on and on. Pray for Bob and Bill and
my brother Clarence, who needs to know the Lord, he
would say, or we were pretty sure, he said, And
(18:54):
for Pastor Tom and Don Frits and stifled cries for
all the people who didn't know. Pray for Sta Steve
and Barb and Pastor Jim and Linda and the children
and the people, And after about three minutes you had
to cut in and interrupt, and I would say thank
you ever at anybody else. I'll never forget though Everett's
(19:18):
final Christmas wish. It was the day that I sang
my last Christmas Carol with him, twenty five years ago,
this December, on that Sunday night. Casey didn't know. In
northern Minnesota the snow comes almost every early November, right
after her hunting season starts, and it rarely melts before March,
(19:40):
so every Christmas is white. Our church had this annual
tradition of Christmas caroling two weeks before Christmas. A man
in a neighboring town owned a large sleigh and cared
for a team before Belgian horses, beautiful animals, and every
year we would ask him to cart our church around
town on the sleigh with those horses. And Sunday nights
(20:01):
in December were slow nights in our town, and a
church group on a slay could jingle and jangle through
the city with a pleasure of the entire town. We
could take the back roads to family homes and senior
residences and park in the front yard. We also we
figured could pull our sleigh one street of Main Street
and park it right in front of the Midway Home.
(20:24):
That's where Everett was living at the end. Let's go
sing for Everett, I said. Everybody wanted to see what
would happen. So we took the slay up to the
Midway Home and parked it and marched in our boots
and coats, our glasses frosting over, and we came to
see Everett there. He had had a rough run of
(20:45):
life there that last month. He'd been unable to attend
church services for most of the fall, not able to
leave the nursing home since the end of the summer,
except for visits to the doctor, and he had fallen
and broken his right wrist after a dizzey spell one
day in November and was fitted for a cast. When
I came into the Midway that timy, he showed me
(21:08):
his cast, and he would joke and say, so much
my boxing career. Pastor, Jim, I'll you'll box again, Everett,
I smile and say so. When the thirty or so
people from our church filed into the Lime Green Nursing
Home that night to sing Christmas carols at the midway.
The seniors who could walk peered out the door and smiled,
and they'd look at the sleigh and saw the horses.
(21:30):
I haven't seen horses in years. Some of them said.
Our cheeks were red and rosy. And Everett looked comfy,
cozy as we came into his room. We're singing Carol's Everett.
We said, you want to come with? We asked in
that Minnesota dialect that leaves that odd preposition dangling without shame.
Y'all come with, he said, and in his stretched white
(21:52):
T shirt. Everett was looking good that day, unusually good.
He was happy and even a little bit plump, and
the best way it happens for a sixty year old
diabetic and frail health. The Midway diet was agreeing with him.
His skin looked good, and he held his injured wrist
up high. I get my cast off tomorrow morning, Everett smiled.
(22:15):
Crowd moved down the hall to the beat of heavy
sorrel snow boots. He followed us in the pack and
wandered down to the lounge that exists at the end
of every decent Northern Minnesota nursing home and the people
beamed as we sang. Everett was to my left, peeking
into the lounge and smiling. We were singing. The cattle
(22:35):
are lowing, the poor baby wakes, but little Lord Jesus,
no crying. He makes I love you. Lord Jesus looked
down from the sky and stayed by my cradle till
morning is nigh. I lucked, and sure enough Everett was singing,
actually quite loud in that lisping, hoarse voice. It to
(23:00):
his right, and even stopped for a phrase or two
just to hear him sing another verse. He was bouncing,
no leaning or listing, not about to fall. Everett looked
vibrant and alive and steady as he sang with a
heavy coated Calvary church carollers that night be near me,
Lord Jesus. I asked thee to stay close by me
(23:21):
forever and love me. I pray bless all the dear
children in night tender care, and fit us for heaven
to live with thee there. Well, the night was over
and we left in a hurry. It was after eight
thirty pm, I'm pretty sure, pretty late for a nursing home,
and the school children would go to school the next day.
(23:44):
We were hustling to leave, and I was the last
one out the door. As I was about to walk
out the door, I heard Everett yell Pastor Jim. I
turned and looked down the hall and smiled, and he
held up his cast and he said, holding up his
right wrist, I'll get it off tomorrow. I smiled, and
(24:06):
I remember I said these exact words. I said, I
hope you do, Everett. We'll be boxing by tuesday, I said,
and I waved, and I walked out the door. And
that was that. We rode the sleigh back to church
and went home. I never saw Everett alive again. The
(24:26):
nursing home said he died in his sleep that very night.
They found him around five o'clock in the morning. And
you know, I wasn't sad. No Everett Model the more
of Lawns got his cast off the next day. In heaven.
He was swinging his arm and standing firm, no leaning,
(24:47):
no listing. He was talking to the Savior like Lazarus,
with his wrist experiencing full motion. The poor child of
God woke up in glory, no crying, just laughing, because
the Lord fit him for heaven to live with him
there like the hymn says, as a follower of Jesus, Everett,
(25:07):
in the most simple and childlike of ways, had turned
from his sin and gave them all to Jesus the Emmanuel,
born two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, born to die
for the losers and the winners of this world. Everett
repented and said, I love you, Lord. Jesus looked down
from the sky, and Jesus stayed by his nursing home
(25:29):
bed until morning was nigh. Yeah, the cast came off,
And no, I don't suppose Everett is boxing in heaven
like he wished that Christmas caroling night. But when I
see him one day, I'm going to hold up my
fists and smile just a little and fake a left
jab and a right hooked just before I hug him. Everett,
(25:53):
that peculiar old man, mostly loved by a hundred people
down here, and loved by a savior up there, pursued
by a Messiah, born in Bethlehem, crucified in Jerusalem, alive
in heaven today. Aren't you glad? Jesus was born for
(26:15):
peculiar people like us? And that was Pastor Jim telling
a beautiful story about his faith walk with a brother,
and that's Everett, Everett model. And you know, I keep
hearing and can see that singing, that singing of that
less Carol, and we all know what believers or not,
(26:36):
but special meaning for those of us who are believers.
And Aquinas once said, when we sing, we pray twice.
And that's so true. And by the way, the most
substantive experience I ever had in my life with other
human beings where I learned this kind of mercy and
grace and kindness and patience. I wasn't a Christian at
the time. I had a beautiful girlfriend in high school
who served in nursing homes and I would go with
(26:59):
her and just hang out. And I got to meet
people who were close to dying and people weren't visiting them.
And what I learned about people and humanity. And if
you get a chance over the holiday seasons, anytime, visit
these folks, sing with them, just love on them. And
that's what our show is all about, folks. Mercy, grace, kindness, patience,
love and the beautiful things that Americans do for each other.
(27:22):
This is our American Stories. The story of Pastor Jim
end Ever
Host
Lee Habeeb
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