December 12, 2024 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Our American Stories listener and regular contributor Jim Johnson finds peculiar friends wherever he goes. This story is about one such friend—Everett Motl.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee 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.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
James L. Johnson.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
He's a long time pastor and he and his wife
Linda have served together in Washington and California, among other places.
They have nine kids, live 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
(00:48):
story about one of those friends. Here's Jim Johnson and
the story of Everett Model.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Everett was a peculiar man in our town. Smiling, awkward
and heavy footed. He spoke with a backthroat lisp. But
he didn't talk much, not to most people. But Everett
would talk to me. I got the Lord in my life,
Everett told me not so long after he started coming
(01:16):
to our church in a small town in northern Minnesota.
He cried when 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
(01:37):
understand his words, but I could always understand this much
Everett model, the peculiar old man who mowed four lins
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
(01:58):
knew whoever it was in the northwestern frozen cold Minnesota
burg where we used to live with one thousand, five
hundred and twenty seven citizens and two grocery stores, a
coast to coast and a hardware hank. It couldn't help
but notice the Everetts of the world. He was about
sixty years old back then, but looked a little older.
(02:20):
And he was, as we used to say it, a
little slow, although it doesn't 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
(02:42):
call it, a six room, gray shaked house with two gables,
aging but well kept. The Johnson Rest Home said the
sign on the side. Because of Everett's quirky personality and
his awkward way of talking, and his seemingly wor singing health,
(03:02):
he moved from one rest home to another, one town
to the next, until 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
(03:25):
was definitely a step up, attached to the regional hospital
and a growing 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
(03:47):
hospital in our town, a rectangular building with three floors.
The Midway 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 Foreverett and about twenty
(04:10):
other also rans of life. Back then, three males a
day in 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
(04:32):
necessarily that it was a step down to live in Midway.
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
(04:55):
to avoid him. My next door neighbor, Steve, was the
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
(05:16):
the corner by the dairy Queen on Second Street and
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,
(05:39):
so I paid Everett five dollars to mow my lawn.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Too.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
The lines weren't always straight. He cut into my tree roots.
He started 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 to
(06:04):
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 mower, 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. Ever,
(06:28):
you gotta watch we were mowing.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Steve would say.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Everwould 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
reputation preceded him, but Everett was family to us. He
(06:54):
was anyway, a child of God and a man who
needed five dollars, and we agreed to help.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And you're listening to James L.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Johnson, a long time pastor, telling the story of this
well peculiar friend.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
And we all have peculiar friends. Maybe you're peculiar. I
think I'm pretty peculiar myself.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
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, Lie Hibibe
(07:32):
here the host of our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Every day on this show, we're bringing.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
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,
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you hear. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, Give a lot. Go
to Ouramerican Stories dot com and give. And we continue
(08:10):
here on our American Stories listening to a listener's story.
Let's continue with Jim and Everett's unlikely friendship.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
God sent Everett to our church. I think ever since
I was a child, God gave me a heart for
the nobody's of the world. I knew it from my
boyhood in Bloomington, Minnesota. Jay, a neighbor kid with a
kool Aid mustache and a heiny haircut, moved across the
street because the lord wanted to teach me something. My
(08:40):
neighborhood on Stephens Avenue had sixteen houses, all in the
lower middle class blue collar range, and the 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 Stephens Avenue. We
had the world in a nutshells, so Stevens Avenue became
(09:03):
my training ground for character. Everyone counts. God made them all,
Jesus loved them, and I was supposed to love them 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 judgment and discretion and elbow room
all at the same time. But if you're a true Christian,
(09:26):
you better learn 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 and boots and big bell buckles
in our services if you wanted to, and nobody cared.
(09:49):
We were the down to earth crowd. Not so many
bankers or lawyers or dentists in our church. We do
the regular folks. We captured the market on regular at
Calvary Church, the plain everyday people who invested their lives
in road construction and milk plants, small grain farms and
auto repair. Even so, people still look twice whenever it
(10:12):
waddled into our church. He spent his career doing small
jobs and farmhand 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 watching him. It was entertainment in
theology all at the same time. Everett hobbled up to
(10:32):
the third pew on the left every Wednesday night and
every Sunday morning, sitting by the inside aisle, usually by himself.
The room was a course drifted in like a cloud.
As always, Everett was strange. Mary had to divorce him
because well, we didn't want to say, and he was
forced to leave a previous care center because he can't
(10:53):
get along with people. He was stubborn, he was weird,
he was poor, he was ever it. 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.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
With people.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Take it with a 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
(11:31):
and of 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.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
For people.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Like Everett too, 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 to be alienated
(12:19):
and estranged. So Bob brought him to his church in
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 anew. Our small town church in Foston preached pretty
(12:40):
much the same message of salvation. I'm thinking of that verse,
for you was born a savior who is Christ, the
Lord Everett like 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 too. We're supposed to take care of
(13:02):
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 and Luke seventeen, Everett was only asking
for crumbs.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Off the table.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Who are we to say no for? Aren't we all
as poor as Lazarus? 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
(13:41):
after for snack time and ate enormous amounts of food
at our monthly pot, lugged 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.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Like most of us.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Everett had his good traits and his bad traits. He
always he 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 my lawnmowing friend walked down the aisle, looked up
to see his pew taken, and he didn't know what
(14:16):
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
walking back to the folding chair section in the rear.
(14:36):
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.
We could hear Everett ask it semi intelligibly, can I
(14:59):
have that hymn book? With an annoying shrug. The men
reached over, grabbed the hymn book, handed it to Everett,
and that was that. Everett 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
next time, when you're a little awkward, you need a
(15:19):
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 forever.
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 out 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 Everet would smile. You say, I'm
(16:46):
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 smalltown
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 we say it,
(17:09):
and people raise their hands and offer their requests. Pray
for my aunt Kathy's having a baby, Pray for Norvil's
knee surgery. They would say, pray for travel mercies. We
would use that phrase. But ever it was personal and long,
real long.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
And you're listening to James Johnson, a long time pastor.
And by the way, we do these stories from churches,
from synagogues, from mosques. 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.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
But to avoid these stories, to not tell them, would
be a lie.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
And that's why we bring them to you when we
come back more with this remarkable friendship here on our
American Stories, and we continue here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
James L.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Johnson telling the story of his friendship with Everett Model.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Everett raised his hand for prairiequest 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 start crying, and on
and on he would go. His requests were always personal
and mostly non intelligible. They were primarily unending, and like
(18:43):
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 for Pastor Tom and
Don Fritz and stifled cries for all the people who
didn't know. Pray first. Steve and Barb and Pastor Jim
(19:03):
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 final Christmas wish. It was
the day that I sang my last Christmas Carol with him,
(19:25):
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 a hunting season starts, and
it rarely melts before March, so every Christmas is white.
Our church had this annual tradition of Christmas caroling two
(19:46):
weeks before Christmas. A man in a neighboring town owned
a large sleigh and cared for a team of four
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 in December were slow
nights in our town, and a church group on a
sleigh could jingle and jangle through the city with the
(20:09):
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 off Main Street and park it right
in front of the Midway Home. That's where Everett was
living at the end. Let's go sing Foreverett, I said.
(20:30):
Everybody wanted to see what would happen. So we took
the sleigh 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 had a rough
run of life there that last month. He'd been unable
to attend church services for most of the fall, not
(20:52):
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 after a
dizzy spell one day in November and was fitted for
a cast. When I came into the Midway that time,
he he showed me his cast, and he would joke
and say, so much with my boxing career, Pastor Jim,
(21:13):
how you 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 look at
the sleigh and saw the horses. I haven't seen horses
in years. Some of them said. Our cheeks were red
(21:34):
and rosy. And Everett looked comfy, cozy as we came
into his room. We're singing carols, Everett. We said, you
want to come with? We asked in that Minnesota dialect
that leaves that odd preposition dangling without shame. They all
come with, he said, And in his stretched white T shirt,
Everett was looking good that day, unusually good. He was
(21:57):
happy and even a little bit plump, and the best
way it happens for a sixty year old diabetic and
frail health. The midway die was agreeing with him. His
skin looked good, and he held his injured wrist up high.
I get my cast off tomorrow morning, ever, it smiled.
Crowd moved down the hall to the beat of heavy
sorrel snow boots. He followed us in the pack and
(22:21):
wandered down to the lounge that exists at the end
of every decent northern Minnesota nursing home. And the people
beamed as we sang. Ever, it was to my left,
peeking into the lounge and smiling. We were singing.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes, But little
Lord Jesus, no crying. He makes I love you, Lord Jesus,
look down from the sky, and stay by my cradle till.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Morning is nigh. I lucked, and sure enough Everett was singing,
actually quite loud in that lisping hoarse voice to his ride,
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. Everet looked vibrant and
(23:10):
alive and steady as he sang with the heavy coated
Calvary church carollers. That night, be near me, Lord Jesus.
I asked THEE to stay close by me forever and
love me. I pray bless all the dear children in
night tender care, and fit us for heaven to live
(23:31):
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.
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
(23:54):
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
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
(24:17):
that was that. We rode the sleigh back to church
and went home. I never saw Everett alive again. The
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
(24:38):
of Lawns got his cast off the next day. In heaven.
He was swinging his arm and standing firm, no leaning,
no listening. 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
(24:59):
the Lord fit him for heaven to live with him there.
Like the hymn says, as a follower of Jesus. Everett,
in the most simple and childlike of ways, had turned
from his sin and gave them all to Jesus the Immanuel,
born two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, born to die
for the losers and the winners of this world. Everett
(25:23):
repented and said, I love you, Lord. Jesus looked down
from the sky, and Jesus stayed by his nursing home
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
(25:44):
fists and smile just a little and fake a left
jab and a right hooked as before I hug him. Everett,
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
(26:10):
in heaven today. Aren't you glad? Jesus was born for
peculiar people like us.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And that was Pastor Jim telling a beautiful story about
his faith walk with a brother, And that's everitt model.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
And you know I keep hearing and can see.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
That that singing of that last Carol, and we all
know what believers are not 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.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
I wasn't a Christian at the time.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I had a beautiful girlfriend in high school who served
in nursing.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Homes and I would go with her and just hang out.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
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. This is
(27:22):
our American story. It's the story of Pastor Jim Endevor
This is Lee 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.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
James L. Johnson.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
He's a long time pastor and he and his wife
Linda have served together in Washington and California, among other places.
They have nine kids, live 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
(00:48):
story about one of those friends. Here's Jim Johnson and
the story of Everett Model.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Everett was a peculiar man in our town. Smiling, awkward
and heavy footed. He spoke with a backthroat lisp. But
he didn't talk much, not to most people. But Everett
would talk to me. I got the Lord in my life,
Everett told me not so long after he started coming
(01:16):
to our church in a small town in northern Minnesota.
He cried when 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
(01:37):
understand his words, but I could always understand this much
Everett model, the peculiar old man who mowed four lins
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
(01:58):
knew whoever it was in the northwestern frozen cold Minnesota
burg where we used to live with one thousand, five
hundred and twenty seven citizens and two grocery stores, a
coast to coast and a hardware hank. It couldn't help
but notice the Everetts of the world. He was about
sixty years old back then, but looked a little older.
(02:20):
And he was, as we used to say it, a
little slow, although it doesn't 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
(02:42):
call it, a six room, gray shaked house with two gables,
aging but well kept. The Johnson Rest Home said the
sign on the side. Because of Everett's quirky personality and
his awkward way of talking, and his seemingly wor singing health,
(03:02):
he moved from one rest home to another, one town
to the next, until 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
(03:25):
was definitely a step up, attached to the regional hospital
and a growing 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
(03:47):
hospital in our town, a rectangular building with three floors.
The Midway 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 Foreverett and about twenty
(04:10):
other also rans of life. Back then, three males a
day in 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
(04:32):
necessarily that it was a step down to live in Midway.
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
(04:55):
to avoid him. My next door neighbor, Steve, was the
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
(05:16):
the corner by the dairy Queen on Second Street and
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,
(05:39):
so I paid Everett five dollars to mow my lawn.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Too.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
The lines weren't always straight. He cut into my tree roots.
He started 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 to
(06:04):
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 mower, 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. Ever,
(06:28):
you gotta watch we were mowing.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Steve would say.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Everwould 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
reputation preceded him, but Everett was family to us. He
(06:54):
was anyway, a child of God and a man who
needed five dollars, and we agreed to help.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And you're listening to James L.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Johnson, a long time pastor, telling the story of this
well peculiar friend.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
And we all have peculiar friends. Maybe you're peculiar. I
think I'm pretty peculiar myself.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
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, Lie Hibibe
(07:32):
here the host of our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Every day on this show, we're bringing.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
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 Ouramerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, Give a lot. Go
to Ouramerican Stories dot com and give. And we continue
(08:10):
here on our American Stories listening to a listener's story.
Let's continue with Jim and Everett's unlikely friendship.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
God sent Everett to our church. I think ever since
I was a child, God gave me a heart for
the nobody's of the world. I knew it from my
boyhood in Bloomington, Minnesota. Jay, a neighbor kid with a
kool Aid mustache and a heiny haircut, moved across the
street because the lord wanted to teach me something. My
(08:40):
neighborhood on Stephens Avenue had sixteen houses, all in the
lower middle class blue collar range, and the 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 Stephens Avenue. We
had the world in a nutshells, so Stevens Avenue became
(09:03):
my training ground for character. Everyone counts. God made them all,
Jesus loved them, and I was supposed to love them 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 judgment and discretion and elbow room
all at the same time. But if you're a true Christian,
(09:26):
you better learn 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 and boots and big bell buckles
in our services if you wanted to, and nobody cared.
(09:49):
We were the down to earth crowd. Not so many
bankers or lawyers or dentists in our church. We do
the regular folks. We captured the market on regular at
Calvary Church, the plain everyday people who invested their lives
in road construction and milk plants, small grain farms and
auto repair. Even so, people still look twice whenever it
(10:12):
waddled into our church. He spent his career doing small
jobs and farmhand 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 watching him. It was entertainment in
theology all at the same time. Everett hobbled up to
(10:32):
the third pew on the left every Wednesday night and
every Sunday morning, sitting by the inside aisle, usually by himself.
The room was a course drifted in like a cloud.
As always, Everett was strange. Mary had to divorce him
because well, we didn't want to say, and he was
forced to leave a previous care center because he can't
(10:53):
get along with people. He was stubborn, he was weird,
he was poor, he was ever it. 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.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
With people.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Take it with a 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
(11:31):
and of 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.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
For people.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Like Everett too, 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 to be alienated
(12:19):
and estranged. So Bob brought him to his church in
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 anew. Our small town church in Foston preached pretty
(12:40):
much the same message of salvation. I'm thinking of that verse,
for you was born a savior who is Christ, the
Lord Everett like 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 too. We're supposed to take care of
(13:02):
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 and Luke seventeen, Everett was only asking
for crumbs.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Off the table.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Who are we to say no for? Aren't we all
as poor as Lazarus? 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
(13:41):
after for snack time and ate enormous amounts of food
at our monthly pot, lugged 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.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Like most of us.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Everett had his good traits and his bad traits. He
always he 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 my lawnmowing friend walked down the aisle, looked up
to see his pew taken, and he didn't know what
(14:16):
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
walking back to the folding chair section in the rear.
(14:36):
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.
We could hear Everett ask it semi intelligibly, can I
(14:59):
have that hymn book? With an annoying shrug. The men
reached over, grabbed the hymn book, handed it to Everett,
and that was that. Everett 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
next time, when you're a little awkward, you need a
(15:19):
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 forever.
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 out 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 Everet would smile. You say, I'm
(16:46):
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 smalltown
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 we say it,
(17:09):
and people raise their hands and offer their requests. Pray
for my aunt Kathy's having a baby, Pray for Norvil's
knee surgery. They would say, pray for travel mercies. We
would use that phrase. But ever it was personal and long,
real long.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
And you're listening to James Johnson, a long time pastor.
And by the way, we do these stories from churches,
from synagogues, from mosques. 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.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
But to avoid these stories, to not tell them, would
be a lie.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
And that's why we bring them to you when we
come back more with this remarkable friendship here on our
American Stories, and we continue here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
James L.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Johnson telling the story of his friendship with Everett Model.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Everett raised his hand for prairiequest 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 start crying, and on
and on he would go. His requests were always personal
and mostly non intelligible. They were primarily unending, and like
(18:43):
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 for Pastor Tom and
Don Fritz and stifled cries for all the people who
didn't know. Pray first. Steve and Barb and Pastor Jim
(19:03):
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 final Christmas wish. It was
the day that I sang my last Christmas Carol with him,
(19:25):
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 a hunting season starts, and
it rarely melts before March, so every Christmas is white.
Our church had this annual tradition of Christmas caroling two
(19:46):
weeks before Christmas. A man in a neighboring town owned
a large sleigh and cared for a team of four
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 in December were slow
nights in our town, and a church group on a
sleigh could jingle and jangle through the city with the
(20:09):
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 off Main Street and park it right
in front of the Midway Home. That's where Everett was
living at the end. Let's go sing Foreverett, I said.
(20:30):
Everybody wanted to see what would happen. So we took
the sleigh 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 had a rough
run of life there that last month. He'd been unable
to attend church services for most of the fall, not
(20:52):
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 after a
dizzy spell one day in November and was fitted for
a cast. When I came into the Midway that time,
he he showed me his cast, and he would joke
and say, so much with my boxing career, Pastor Jim,
(21:13):
how you 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 look at
the sleigh and saw the horses. I haven't seen horses
in years. Some of them said. Our cheeks were red
(21:34):
and rosy. And Everett looked comfy, cozy as we came
into his room. We're singing carols, Everett. We said, you
want to come with? We asked in that Minnesota dialect
that leaves that odd preposition dangling without shame. They all
come with, he said, And in his stretched white T shirt,
Everett was looking good that day, unusually good. He was
(21:57):
happy and even a little bit plump, and the best
way it happens for a sixty year old diabetic and
frail health. The midway die was agreeing with him. His
skin looked good, and he held his injured wrist up high.
I get my cast off tomorrow morning, ever, it smiled.
Crowd moved down the hall to the beat of heavy
sorrel snow boots. He followed us in the pack and
(22:21):
wandered down to the lounge that exists at the end
of every decent northern Minnesota nursing home. And the people
beamed as we sang. Ever, it was to my left,
peeking into the lounge and smiling. We were singing.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes, But little
Lord Jesus, no crying. He makes I love you, Lord Jesus,
look down from the sky, and stay by my cradle till.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Morning is nigh. I lucked, and sure enough Everett was singing,
actually quite loud in that lisping hoarse voice to his ride,
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. Everet looked vibrant and
(23:10):
alive and steady as he sang with the heavy coated
Calvary church carollers. That night, be near me, Lord Jesus.
I asked THEE to stay close by me forever and
love me. I pray bless all the dear children in
night tender care, and fit us for heaven to live
(23:31):
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.
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
(23:54):
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
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
(24:17):
that was that. We rode the sleigh back to church
and went home. I never saw Everett alive again. The
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
(24:38):
of Lawns got his cast off the next day. In heaven.
He was swinging his arm and standing firm, no leaning,
no listening. 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
(24:59):
the Lord fit him for heaven to live with him there.
Like the hymn says, as a follower of Jesus. Everett,
in the most simple and childlike of ways, had turned
from his sin and gave them all to Jesus the Immanuel,
born two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, born to die
for the losers and the winners of this world. Everett
(25:23):
repented and said, I love you, Lord. Jesus looked down
from the sky, and Jesus stayed by his nursing home
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
(25:44):
fists and smile just a little and fake a left
jab and a right hooked as before I hug him. Everett,
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
(26:10):
in heaven today. Aren't you glad? Jesus was born for
peculiar people like us.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And that was Pastor Jim telling a beautiful story about
his faith walk with a brother, And that's everitt model.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
And you know I keep hearing and can see.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
That that singing of that last Carol, and we all
know what believers are not 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.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
I wasn't a Christian at the time.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I had a beautiful girlfriend in high school who served
in nursing.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Homes and I would go with her and just hang out.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
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. This is
(27:22):
our American story. It's the story of Pastor Jim Endevor
Host
Lee Habeeb
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