Lawton, OK

July 9.

We had an excellent host in Lawton, OK.  The church we were staying at was in downtown Lawton, First Christian Church.  The pastor was headed out to the General Assembly in Indianapolis, so Henry was the speaker for the day.  Tom Springli hosted us the entire time we were there.  He drove us around in the church van, got up and started breakfast early in the morning, stayed overnight with us, and even took us on an outing in the afternoon.

The church hosts breakfast for whoever comes on Sunday mornings, and they also have an Agape meal on Wednesday evenings.  Including us, during the morning church service, it was announced that 143 meals were provided that morning.  I don’t know if that includes seconds.  It didn’t really seem like a hundred people went through.

This was the best chance I have had to meet people for a long while, so I took advantage of it.  I was there early, helping to clean our stuff out of the dining area.  The cold breakfast was served at 7:30 and the hot breakfast started at 8:30.  I got to talk to Peggy and Coy, to a man named Ronell, and to a man named George.  Peggy and Coy had just moved back to the area and were living in a hotel while they looked for a place.  They needed to get out of there soon because of the expense.

Ronell attracted my attention because he was wearing nicer clothes than most of the folks there, and he had on a headdress that looked like it could be religious in nature.  I asked and he said it was not.  He said that he was rich, very wealthy.  He also told me that his real name was Zeus, but that wasn’t the name on his government ID so he usually just told people his real name was Zeus.  He’s been hearing it in his head since he was young, apparently.

I spoke for the longest time with George.  He told me that they treat him like a king there.  He didn’t have to stand in line for the bacon and eggs, for example.  Someone brought them to him.  I was telling him about our bike trip and he asked where we were going.  I turned around to show him the map on my back, but then he said, “I can’t read.”  So another one of the riders showed him on the map where we had been and where we were going.  George had been all over the US picking tomatoes, radishes, onions, peaches…herding sheep.  He couldn’t read because he never got to go to school.  He was born in San Antonio, but he never spoke a word of English until he had to learn at age 16.  He started working in the fields at about age 6, but he couldn’t remember for sure.  I don’t know what year he referred to, but for a bunch of radishes picked you received a penny.  So you needed to pick 100 bunches of radishes to get a dollar, 1,000 bunches to get $10.

George never complained a bit.  As I said, he thought they treated him like a king there at the church.  But after talking to him, I was overwhelmed.  I went back to our room and asked someone to sit with me for a few minutes.  By the time they got there, I had tears running down my face to think of George never going to school because he was working in the fields.  He was born in the US and is a US citizen.  I have read about the plight of migrant workers, but this was the first time I had met one and heard and imagined for myself.

In the afternoon, Tom took us on an outing.  We went to the Wichita mountains wilderness area and the Holy City.  It’s supposedly a replica of the Holy City but it’s more of a stage set for the oldest continuously running Passion Play in the US.

After hanging out at the Holy City for a while, we drove up to the top of Mt. Scott and climbed around on the boulders.