Broken Pot: The Making of the Warlpiri Bible

By Steve Swartz

What is it like for a young man from small-town Ohio to answer the call of God into mission work? What family, church and educational influences shaped this man into what he became?

How does one train to become a Bible translator? And how does one find a wife who will share the vision and a lifetime’s journey? What exactly did it take for the Warlpiri people of Central Australia to get the Bible in their language so that they too could read and hear the Gospel in their language?

That’s half of this story... the second half unfolds slowly for the couple – from the very earliest years of their missionary service among the Warlpiri. Together, from the early 80s until the present day, Steve and Bev Swartz have survived his mental health frailties manifesting as suicidal depression and bipolar disorder. Even now, it’s one day at a time.

In Broken Pot, this powerful memoir informs, educates, entertains and challenges the readers to not give up on what God has started. Moreover, it is sincerely hoped that fellow-sufferers of the Black Dog and other forms of mental illness will come to realise that God has not abandoned them; that He can still use cracked pots to accomplish His purposes and that there is help for them even in the darkness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Swartz
• Release date: Dec 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9780648887393

Steve Swartz

Born and raised in Fostoria, Ohio, Steve has spent the majority of his life living in Australia, all of it in the Northern Territory.He and his wife Bev came to Australia in 1977 and, for the next 23 years engaged in Bible translation work among the Warlpiri people, an Aboriginal language group of some 3000+ speakers. They spent eight years (1978-1986) living on the small and very remote community of Lajamanu.Steve and Bev have three grown children and nine grandchildren living in Adelaide, Alice Springs and Hong Kong. They have also fostered about 15 children, most of them Aboriginal and many of these with disabilities. One, age 19, still lives with them.Steve is now retired and enjoying it immensely.

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Ark House Press

PO Box 1722, Port Orchard, WA 98366 USA

PO Box 1321, Mona Vale NSW 1660 Australia

PO Box 318 334, West Harbour, Auckland 0661 New Zealand

arkhousepress.com

Copyright © 2020 by Steve Swartz. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Cover illustration by Jessica (Swartz) Weippert

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible.

Cataloguing in Publication Data:

Title: Broken Pot: The Making of the Warlpiri Bible

ISBN: 9780648887393 (pbk)

Subjects: Memoir;

Other Authors/Contributors: Swartz, Steve

Author email: [e-mail]

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And Jesus was a sailor

When he walked upon the water

And he spent a long time watching

From his lonely wooden tower

And when he knew for certain

Only drowning men could see him

He said "All men will be sailors then

Until the sea shall free them"

(Leonard Cohen, Suzanne)

Dedication

Soli Deo Gloria—to the glory of God alone.

To my Mom and Dad, both gone from this earth so long ago. Mom, your kindness and love to us kids were limitless. Dad, you didn’t do it all right, but neither did you do it all wrong. You did your best, you loved me, and you pointed me towards God.

To my three siblings: Sandra, Buster and David. Two now gone to glory. Thanks for looking after Little Brother.

To my wife Bev of 46 years—my helper, my completer. The one who clung tightly to me, literally, through some very dark struggles.

To my children: Caleb, Jessica and Anna. Each with wonderful spouses. Thank you for nine beautiful grandchildren.

To all of my friends who have journeyed alongside me for many years. Sometimes I did not make the journey easy for you.

To all of our prayer and financial supporters who stood behind us over many years with Wycliffe to see the Warlpiri Bible come to a finish. To the Warlpiri people who let Jampijinpa and Napangardi into your lives. May the joy of the Lord and the beauty of His word in your language be your strength.

Special thanks to Craig Bosel for his early proofreading of the entire manuscript a year or so ago and offering many useful suggestions.

Last but not least, thank you, Chris Jupurrurla Marshall, for undertaking the final proofreading. You steadfastly and patiently resisted my numerous howls of protest these last six months while you slowly nursed this memoir into the light of day.

Finally, to all those who suffer from mental illness in all of its forms. It is not God’s final desire for you.

Contents

Dedication

Foreword

Author's Note

Chapter 1:        Into His Eyes

Chapter 2:        Dad and Grandpa

Chapter 3:        Darlene

Chapter 4:        Sandra

Chapter 5:        Buster

Chapter 6:        David

Chapter 7:        Happy Days

Chapter 8:        Bethel EUB

Chapter 9:        Too Smart For My Own Good!

Chapter 10:      Huntington College

Chapter 11:      Are You Bev Mote?

Chapter 12:      SIL

Chapter 13:      Jungle Camp

Chapter 14:      Aussie Aussie Aussie OY OY OY!

Chapter 15:      Standing on Giants

Chapter 16:      Drowning

Chapter 17:      Pine Rest

Chapter 18:      Putting the Wheels Back On

Chapter 19:      The Roaring ’90s

Chapter 20:      The Rest of the Story

Chapter 21:      Maurice Luther

Chapter 22:      Jerry Jangala

Chapter 23:      Psalm 23

Chapter 24:      A Little Help From My Friends

Afterword

Endnotes

Foreword

Lance Alan Box, PhD (Education)

I lived among the Warlpiri people in Lajamanu for five years with my family. Two of those years were spent judging the Warlpiri for not making the cultural and lifestyle changes that should have been reflected in the influence of a long-time missionary presence and a well-established church (with a local pastor). After the two years, I submitted to being ‘grown-up’ by the son of the Warlpiri pastor in Lajamanu—himself a man of mature understanding, and whilst visiting their initiation Kurdiji ceremony I discovered that the ceremony from start to finish could be seen as mirroring the biblical account of the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and our co-crucifixion with Him.

After visiting the Kurdiji ceremony I then discovered a pulpit Bible, written in the Warlpiri language, covered in dust, hidden away in the bottom of a cupboard at the back of the church building. I spoke with the pastor of the church and showed him how the Warlpiri Bible supported the messages contained in their traditional ceremonies. I also showed him how to discern those elements of culture that were not in accord with God’s Law and those elements which did reflect obedience to God’s Law. I encouraged him to conduct services in the Warlpiri language, read from the Warlpiri Bible when conducting services, and make cultural changes when the culture did not conform to God’s Law.

In two weeks, we baptized 39 people who voluntarily decided to become Christians, and they did so because they learned that they did not have to reject their heritage to live in God’s Kingdom. It was the teaching from the Old Testament written in Warlpiri and pointing out how elements of Warlpiri culture resonated with God’s Law that convinced people to become Christians. Many came to me and asked, ‘Why didn’t the missionaries tell us this? If they had, then life would have been very different now.’ I had no answer to their question. Why didn’t the missionaries encourage the Warlpiri to teach from the Warlpiri Bible? Why didn’t the missionaries take time to learn the Warlpiri language and challenge the culture in the context of Jesus’ command to ‘teach them all that I have commanded you’?

Missionaries have done so in many other places across the world, with the result that significant changes in cultural practice have been made in the light of the Law of God. For the final three years that I was in Lajamanu, I hosted many deep philosophical conversations and saw some very courageous stands against witchcraft and other cultural practices that had prevailed in the midst of the church and the broader community—cultural and lifestyle changed towards a more Biblical manifestation in some important areas.

In the final days of our time in Lajamanu, I met Steve Swartz for the very first time, after a lot of searching. I met him at the Lajamanu airport (actually just a tiny, tin-roofed shed alongside a typical, scraped-dirt community airstrip) just before he left the community. He had come for a brief, one-day visit. I thanked him profusely for his work in translating the Bible, particularly the translation of 12% of the Old Testament. The lifestyle changes that I saw would not have taken place without the ability to point to the Biblical support for those elements of Warlpiri culture that reflect the requirements of God’s Law. And that was not seen as credible until the Warlpiri could hear it in their heart language. They clearly wanted to be proud of their great Warlpiri heritage whilst living a lawful life in God’s Kingdom.

With great sadness, I had to leave Lajamanu at the end of my five years there so that our teenage sons could get jobs. But concerning matters of missionary practice, I should add that I am not sure how I would have coped in the early days of missionary contact with the Warlpiri. They were the Zulus of Australian desert peoples; a fierce warrior people, proud, independent, opinionated, dominant, colonial (taking over wherever they settled). In the eyes of the Warlpiri, there were only two kinds of people—Warlpiri and those who are not yet Warlpiri. However, I report what I observed.

I am very glad that Steve Swartz has attempted to answer the question that I was repeatedly asked after we discovered Christ in the midst of Warlpiri culture: ‘Why didn’t the missionaries tell us these things?’ I believe that had they communicated the whole counsel of God, in Warlpiri and making fuller use of the Warlpiri Bible as it was being birthed, then the Warlpiri would have made the cultural and lifestyle changes that would have resulted in a much-more godly way of life. I saw glimpses of those kinds of change being made in three short years. What changes might have been made if there were three or four generations of that kind of teaching and preaching? I commend Steve’s work to you for careful consideration as together we see what changes God still wishes to make among the Warlpiri and within the wider Australian culture. Soli Deo Gloria!

Author's Note

I have never been a keeper of diaries, let alone a great keeper of diaries. I have kept diaries of various kinds over the years but always struggled to find new and interesting things to say, either about the events of the day or my thought and emotions. Most of my efforts at diary-keeping have collapsed after a week or so under the weight of mediocrity or just plain insipidness. I usually ended up just boring myself.

This work is a memoir, not a history. As I have tried to resurrect my memories, I wish I had kept a more accurate log of events, names, dates, places, etc. But I didn’t. I have had, therefore, to rely almost solely on an increasingly suspect memory, although conversations with my wife and friends have clarified some points. The upshot of all this is that many dates and events reference the year only—hopefully, these are correct. Any errors in chronology, persons, places and actual events are entirely my fault. As one moves ever closer to the end of one’s life, one is left with one’s fading memories which supplant historical fact.

Similarly, with personal names. In some places, I have referenced people by first name only. I have use pseudonyms in some places to avoid causing anyone embarrassment or offence. In other places, I have used real names, including the full names of Warlpiri people who have played significant roles in my story. Many of the latter are now deceased, and the normal custom culturally would be not to use their first names for a length of time out of respect for the family. However, it was pointed out to me that full names of deceased Aboriginal people should be used for two reasons: firstly, as a means of preserving precise historical information and, secondly, because over time the period of name-avoidance has become shorter and shorter. I mean no harm, disrespect or offence and ask the forgiveness and forbearance of any of my Warlpiri friends who might still be upset by seeing a relative’s name in print.

Two major themes run through this book. The first is historical, a narrative detailing how the Warlpiri people of Central Australia got the Bible (roughly 35% of it overall) translated into their language. I have endeavored to make this account as accurate and dispassionate as possible, although in parts there remains an abundance of passion. In that this is an autobiographical narrative, my emotional and mental states also come into play. So, the second theme, which intertwines with considerable complexity with the first, is my long-term struggle with mental illness, much of it misdiagnosed.

As you read through this personal account, you may notice some vacillation in perspective. My American birth-heritage shines through. Having lived longer in my adopted country than in my country of birth, I no longer know whether I am an Aussie-American or an American-Aussie¹. My mid-western, twangy American accent, which Australians new to me so often comment on, is the thick veneer under which lies the traces of an Australian accent. To attempt and achieve a true Aussie accent (which one?) was beyond me, and my effort to do so would have merely been laughable. The best I seem to be able to do is to sound Canadian, as some Australians have said to me. So, in compiling this memoir, despite my publisher’s best advice to ‘just be consistent,’ I have ended up with what I think is a reasonable compromise. American spellings will predominate through Chapter 13 and then change to Australian spelling in Chapter 14 when we first stepped foot on Australian soil.

God Almighty’s hand has underpinned everything that is described in this book. Were it not for His grace and enabling, the Warlpiri people would not have the Bible in their language, and I would not be alive today. Of these two things I am most certain. And so I trust that this memoir brings glory to God while at the same time being of encouragement to all who have struggles similar to mine.

Chapter 1

Into His Eyes

You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me

with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)

I didn’t see Him coming. It was like innumerable other Sundays at church. travelled. I had no warning or expectation that this day would be any different, something very special. I had been depressed for so long that I had no sense or awareness of anything at all going on around me. I was simply there. For me, having suffered from depression for over twenty years, life was like walking through the plexiglass-enclosed half-tubes at aquariums where one is surrounded by colourful fish. But the fish in my tube are not colourful, they are somber greys and dull browns. Regardless of what colour the fish are, the plexiglass prevents one from touching the fish, and so one can only spectate what must be a wet and wonderful existence. The world passed by before me, but there was no real connection at all.

Late September of 2006, Bev and I had flown south to Adelaide to see a new grandson, whom I hoped would someday carry on the Swartz family name into another generation. We were sitting in a long row, family to the left and right, when my grandson was passed down to me. I felt a bit awkward, perhaps not wanting to contaminate this babe with my all-consuming gloom. Even with a babe in my arms, I was still alone, my spirit trapped inside a damaged, wounded and hurting mind. Cold inside and depressed, defeated, discouraged and down. I could not remember feeling differently. My heart was pumping, but my heart was dead.

How could this be? I was a burden to myself and increasingly so to my wife and perhaps my children too, who must often have wished for Dad to just snap out of it. How could this be—a missionary, 56 years old at the time, a former professional Christian? Four years had passed since I had completed my calling. A special touch of God upon my life had transported me, my wife and three-month-old son to Australia to do God’s work, His bidding—to translate the Bible into Warlpiri, a people and a culture and a language that was unknown to me at the time of that calling. Now the Warlpiri Bible had been dedicated and I had finished that work.

The pastor begins leading us in worship. We stand as the music plays softly:

I see heaven surround me, angels all around.

Here I stand in awe of your beauty, captured by your holiness… (Lift Up Your Eyes, Planetshakers)

And God emerged out of the gloom and whispered to my heart. Oh, He had done it before, and He has done so from time to time since, but in 2007 it had been a very long time. I stood there and looked down into my grandson’s unblinking eyes—wide, round, black and open—staring back at me. I was unable and unwilling to look away. Eyes like black holes, sucking all light into the vast, all-absorbing blackness, sinking deep, eternally. The song ended, we sat down, announcements, prayers, an offering, a sermon, and through it all, for twenty or thirty minutes, I stared into those eyes, and He stared back as if it were God Himself.

Fast-forward to today—the year 2020, nearly a year since I retired. I now know that what I have suffered from for decades is not merely depression—there was nothing mere about it! More accurately, I suffered from and still battle with bipolar disorder, or manic-depression as it is commonly known as.

I’m 69 now, and I sift through the words and reflections of the years and look back to the Warlpiri, their culture, their language, their problems and their translated Bible. I reflect on the emotional mess that I was for much of that time, and it all remains pretty much a mystery to me. What had God done, what was He doing, and why?

Chapter 2

Dad and Grandpa

Oh Daddy take me on your knee

And hold me by your side

And talk to me of pleasant things

And let me deep inside

Oh Daddy take me on your knee

And bounce me up and down

And toss me up and catch again

And let me play the clown

Oh Daddy take me on your knee

And sing a funny song

And Daddy teach me how to dance

And teach me right and wrong

Oh Daddy now I’m on your knee

It’s not what I had thought

It stings and hurts and makes me scream

It isn’t what I sought

Oh Daddy…

(Steve Swartz, 2007)

I want to make it very clear at the outset that this I do not want this to be another memoir that blames all a person’s problems on their father or upbringing or whatever. The Bible, in Exodus 20:12, commands us to honor our fathers and mothers. It suggests that dishonoring our parents—mother or father—results in the loss of God’s full blessing. Hebrews 12:7-11 states that fathers are but a pale and imperfect reflection of God the Father. Both subject us to discipline, God perfectly and human fathers imperfectly—both to and for our eventual good. So, the bottom line is that while fathers mess up, sometimes very cruelly and badly and wrongly, nonetheless we do not heal ourselves and gain fullness of life by dishonoring them while they live nor their memory after they are gone. Ezekiel 18:1-4 makes it crystal clear that the people of God are not to mimic what the people of this world do, namely blame their fathers for all their sin and woes.

The word of the Lord came to me: "What do you mean by using this proverb concerning the land of Israel:

The fathers eat sour grapes,

and the children’s teeth are set on edge?

As I live—this is the declaration of the Lord God—you will no longer use this proverb in Israel. Look, every life belongs to Me. The life of the father is like the life of the son—both belong to Me. The person who sins is the one who will die.

Instead, it is my sin that leads to death. So. in this chapter I wish to honestly and truthfully honor my earthly father, and in doing so, honor my heavenly Father.

On the surface of things, I’ve long since stopped blaming dad for my woes; at least I don’t do so when I am feeling OK and not quite so prone towards shifting responsibility off my plate and back onto his. Dad was an alcoholic although I never saw him drink. By the time I was born in 1951, he had not had a drink since he had come to know the Lord in 1945. Dad was saved in and into a stern, fundamentalist church tradition strongly-Arminian² bent. That is, he had an assurance of his salvation, but only until the next sin, which meant he no longer had salvation and needed to repent, at which point he had to repent and be saved again, and…well—I guess you get the idea. That was my faith too. So, the seeds of my later-in-life attraction to alcohol started with the fact that there was never a drop of alcohol in our household. Drinking was near the top of the list of the 1000 or so things (including dancing, card playing and Sunday newspapers) that we were not allowed to do because of our faith.

Dad was born on 2 September 1910 in Harpster, Ohio. Harpster is only 35 miles (about 55 kilometres) south of my home town of Fostoria, and for the life of me, now being 9904 miles (16045 kilometres) away, I cannot understand why in all the times I would have driven past Harpster, I never veered off the highway and made my way there to see if the Swartz name was still there on any building. Dad’s father, Edward, was also an alcoholic, and from later-in-life conversations with my dad, I learned that my paternal grandfather tended towards violence within the home. He was, by all accounts, a brilliant architect and builder, with a fine mathematical mind that my father also inherited, in turn passing this talent on to both Buster and me.

Dad must have weighed about 105 pounds as a young man—‘stripped’ as he would always describe it. Too small for the army in WWII, but still strong and wiry. He was a bit of a gymnast and male cheerleader in high school. Dad liked to drink and gamble, both of which he did quite heavily during the latter Roaring ’20s and Depression ’30s. He often told me how he and his dad and brothers would bid on county bridge projects and be busy all the time. He also told me that, had he not drunk and gambled so much, the family would not have lost their construction business in the early ’30s. Dad had a younger brother Jesse who died of TB or the flu in the ’30s. We named our daughter Jessica. Our oldest son, Caleb, could easily have been named Jesse too before we decided on another hero of the faith for him.

Dad had two older sisters, Edith Mueller who lived in Tiffin, Ohio and Eunice Kuenzli who lived in the small town of Nevada, Ohio. Dad had a younger sister Julia DeCicco, who lived with Uncle Tony in Columbus, Ohio. Uncle Franz Mueller was a shoemaker who probably spoke German as a first language, and whose house was attached to his shoe-shop machine room. I have vague memories of a roomful of lathes and machines and the smell of leather and oil. I don’t remember Aunt Edith smiling much, but she was kind, and I remember her shaking more and more as Parkinson’s disease took hold. One of her sons became Father John and served as a Catholic missionary to Mexico all of his life. I remember writing to him once in the mid-’90s and receiving a lovely letter from him in return.

Aunt Eunice and Uncle Andy and their daughter Christine were Methodists and fine people. Aunt Eunice had diabetes and was one of the minority of diabetics who maintained a strict diet throughout her life. Aunt Julia suffered from osteomyelitis (the same bone disease that baseball slugger Mickey Mantle had), and was in and out of hospital all her life, suffering from many broken bones and always walking with a limp and cane. Uncle Tony was a small Italian, a handsome, slightly-built man who could have, based on appearance alone, fit in well with the Mafia. They both smoked way too much and always had a boxer dog much too big for either of them to handle properly.

Dad was quite the card-sharp. But by the time I came along, there was never a pack of playing cards in the house. Instead, we played Christian cards, otherwise known as Rook. Mom, Dad and I loved to play Rook three-handed, or with four if someone else was around. Rook is just like ordinary cards with four colored suits and cards numbered 1-14. There wasn’t bidding as such, but the hands were played much like one plays Bridge. Halfway through a hand, Dad would know what cards Mom had left in her hand and proceed to tell her what to play—drove her nuts!

A few years after Dad died, while we were home on missionary furlough, my brother-in-law Lenny, some fifteen years older than I, told me a story about my dad that I never knew. Lenny’s dad had operated a small, family-run café on South St in Fostoria, and knew my dad in the ’30s. Dad’s nickname at the time was, of all thing, Maverick, and he was known locally as a card sharp, a cheat. He didn’t play for fun, but for money, and used his mental card skills to take advantage of his opponents. But, when Dad became a Christian, my dad went around, according to Lenny’s father, repaying the money he had cheated out of others. My dad had a strong sense of right, wrong and Christian duty.

Dad would also play dominoes with me. Once, while playing dominoes at our house on High St, Dad stepped out to go to the bathroom. While he was gone, I snuck a peek at his tiles. How he knew it I do not know, but he knew that I had looked, and he brought it to my attention, with a frown on his face and left the game. Last time I ever cheated against him!

During the epic 1972 World Chess Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, Dad and I both developed an interest in chess (probably for geopolitical reasons in those Cold War days) and would play through the games each day as they were reported in the newspaper. I continue to play online chess to this day, although if my rating is any indication, I am going downhill!

I don’t know much about Mom and Dad’s courtship other than it was short. Dad somehow had come to live with Mom’s family, and shortly afterwards they were wed. My maternal grandfather, Maynard Jewell, was the only one of my four grandparents I ever knew. The others had died years before my birth, and Grandpa Jewell was remarried to Eva whom I knew as Grandma. Grandpa Jewell was a large man, probably about 6'2" with long, wavy white hair and a large, brown mole smack dab in the middle of his forehead, not unlike a miner’s light. It always fascinated me, perhaps because of the monstrosity on the back of my right calf, something that was a source of great embarrassment when I was young. But it never seemed to bother Grandpa. He was quite handsome. He and Eva lived about fifty miles from us in Sandusky, Ohio, home of Cedar Point Amusement Park—the roller coaster capital of the world. We would visit them only once or twice a year because of the expense and time it took to drive there and back in one day. It seemed a huge distance to travel. Grandpa’s house was chock-a-block with antiques of all descriptions as he was an antique dealer, photographer and painter. I never thought of the house as Eva’s, as she was as tiny and cold as Grandpa was large and warm. She specialized in making lumpy mashed potatoes.

Grandpa was simply wonderful I cannot remember him without a smile on his face, whether he was patting his dog Sandy or picking me up. I remember his voice as being moderately deep and crackly. So, if I need some visual imagery of the face of God, Grandpa’s would be close enough. He always smelled of cigar smoke, mainly because he seemed always to be smoking one—not little, wimpy cigars but long fat ones. He more chewed them than smoked them, because the fire would always die out, and he would suck and chew them down to mush until the end of the cigar was a sodden, and rather disgusting, mass of tobacco. But to me, the smoke smelled nice. I think when I am eighty and not too troubled by the risk of getting lung disease I will smoke and chew my way through a Cuban cigar, and I will remember him.

One day Grandpa Jewell showed me a large glass tumbler full of old, colored marbles and I imagined I would get them someday along with one of his oil paintings. But when he died around 1962 of bowel cancer, Eva’s family, through the connivance of her son, Orville, eventually managed to get all the possessions away from our side of the family, and now we have nothing of his except for a couple of paintings. One of them was a scandalous semi-nude, quite tastefully and demurely done but which spent much of its life buried in a closet at my sister Sandra’s house.

My Dad was a barber for 45 years. He rated a mention in a 1977 article on the History of Barbershops in Fostoria. For many years as I was growing up, he walked to work, leaving well before eight and coming home after six, or nearly seven on Saturdays. Wednesday afternoons were off as Mac & Swartz would close for the afternoon. His partner in the business was Wayne MacAlevy. How the two of them, ‘Mac and Swartz’ (their trade name), ever got together is one of those imponderable mysteries of life because I never knew either of them to say a nice thing about the other. It was truly an Odd Couple, Felix and Oscar relationship. Dad would always complain about how messy Mac’s work area was, how clogged with hair his comb and razor receptacles were, on and on. The two of them had a business arrangement which allowed them both to take two weeks’ vacation a year, with the proceeds during these brief absences being split 50-50. Dad always took his two weeks, but Mac never did—another source of friction, as Mac resented Dad taking the time off. I never remember our two families getting together after hours for a barbecue or meal or anything, and given that the barbershop was open six days a week from 8 am–6 pm, with Wednesday afternoons off, they probably saw quite enough of each other without out-of-hours socializing.

There was never any doubt in my mind that Dad was the best barber in town, perhaps in the state of Ohio—if not in the entire USA. One of the few material legacies of Dad’s is an old, reddish leather satchel that contains a couple of his straight razors, some clipper heads, and about twenty years’ worth of State of Ohio barber licenses.

Dad disliked labor unions, which probably explains why I view labor unions with suspicion to this day. The barbers’ union in Ohio was dominated by Italians and had a pension fund that Dad paid into for many years out of his meagre income. The pension would not have amounted to very much, by today’s standard, but it was something I am sure Dad looked forward to in retirement, to supplement US Social Security. But sadly, the funds were embezzled by leaders within the union, and most if not all of Dad’s retirement funds were lost.

I’m not certain that it was a formal union, but there was something of a local barbers’ fraternal in Fostoria that Dad belonged. They would all charge the same prices for haircuts, shave and such, haircuts being $1 in 1960. There was one barber who did not belong to this group and who would set his own prices, usually undercutting the standard price. I also know there was considerable discussion and negotiating before Dad and the others raised their haircut price to $1.25 in the mid-’60s.

Dad told me that when he went to barber school in the ’30s, they would practice shaving with straight razors (Australian cut-throats—a much better name, if you ask me!) on foam-lathered balloons. Burst the balloon, fail the course—good system Dad was a superb barber of the old school, wielding his scissors quickly and efficiently in his left hand—SNICK SNICK SNICK—while his right hand combed and parted and prepared the way for the clicking blades. Men got straight-razor barber shaves in those days, and so Dad was also a dab hand at this, to my way of thinking, rather dangerous way of removing facial hair. Behind him was a nickel-plated, push-button hot shaving cream dispenser from which he would squirt out hot foam which he would rub carefully on the face of the next shavee. He would take his straight razor and strop it rapidly back and forth. I can still hear the rhythm of the sound it made—SLIP SLAP SLIP SLAP, SLIPPY SLIPPY SLIP SLAP Then he would proceed with the shave, carefully wiping the excess shaving cream onto the backside of his right wrist. One day, he must have gotten distracted and laid the back of his right thumb open nearly to the bone. Another time he sneezed and his back seized up, locking him into an L-shape, and that’s how they carted him off to the hospital.

Dad, being a south-paw (left-handed), had over the years tended to put all his weight on the right leg. Eventually, his hips shifted permanently so that his beltline and pants didn’t hang horizontally but canted on a 10-15-degree angle.

I always loved visiting my dad’s barbershop when I was little, although I must admit to never appreciating the hair he always managed to put down my itching back. No matter how tightly he strangulated me with the satiny apron around my squirming neck, hair always got down my back. His first barbershop in Fostoria (or at least the first one I have memories of) was in the basement of the First National Bank Building, whose main claim to fame was several bullet holes above the main doors, placed there in the ’30s by the infamous, bank-robbing John Dillinger gang. Walking into the bank building and the marbled, main corridor, to get to the basement you had to take an old-style elevator operated by a man who pulled brass levers to make it go up and down. Dad’s barbershop was at the very end of a long arcade-like corridor alongside a few other small shops, including Rosie’s flower shop. Not sure I ever met Rosie, although I am sure I did.

I could smell the barbershop before I could see it, because in those days everybody smoked, and even if you didn’t, you always gained the benefits second-hand. My dad had given up smoking by then—being frugal, there was no need to buy his own. One of the few remnants of his early life is an old color home movie taken by Grandpa, showing a very young dad in a reddish leather jacket, strutting cock-a-hoop up some garden path, smoking a big cigar. But as I said, getting out of the elevator, you could smell the barbershop—smoky and sweet, the sweetness coming from the innumerable bottles of hair lotions, oils and tonics—magical liquids of red and yellow and green, with names such as Lucky Tiger, Vitalis and Rose Oil. Oh yes, there was a Brylcream, which was a greasy white goop, not unlike lard. ‘Brylcream—a little dab’ll do ya,’ Brylcream—you’ll look so debonair Brylcream, the girls’ll all pursue ya! They love to rub their fingers through your hair!’ as the jingle went. Perhaps, but through junior high and into high school, the slick-hair look seemed not to have enhanced my romantic aspirations.

Crew cuts were the style of the day for young boys like me, and the means for keeping the stubble pointing north was the generous application of crew wax, a pinkish, waxy goo that had a unique, sweetish smell. After cutting my hair short, Dad would rub the wax liberally into my scalp. Dad was a vigorous rubber of scalps, and once he was finished with the rubbing, your head was electrified for a good ten minutes afterwards. He didn’t so much give massages as knead your head like bread dough as if trying to get the lumps out.

In the ’50s, men got their hair cut once a week, or if they were very daring, every two weeks—hair was kept short Dad and Mac always worked by appointment, with regulars coming in like clockwork. There were always three newspapers in the shop: The Toledo Blade, The Plain Dealer from Cleveland and The Fostoria Review Times, the latter an exemplar of small-town middle America, if there ever was one. There was also a checkerboard in the shop because Dad was a fine player. The principal of the local junior high, Gene Zuber (all the kids called him Zip Zuber or Piz Rebuz backwards), was at one time the state champion of Ohio at checkers (draughts), and he and Dad would play regularly. Dad would play checkers with me at home, and I beat him only once—ever. However, he played checkers like he played cards, telling me, ‘No, don’t do that!’ and ‘No, move there!’ He was always six moves ahead of me, having plotted my downfall well in advance.

Barbershops were the men’s hangouts of the era, and so several men would always be in the chairs getting trimmed or reading newspapers, with the blue pall of smoke adding to the sweet musk of the unguents. Marvellous memory That was the era too when drugstores (pharmacies, chemist shops) had soda fountains, and so if you got a haircut at Mac and Swartz, you got a voucher for an ice cream cone at Edison’s Drugstore.

I went to the barbershop one day with Mom and she must have left me for a while as she went shopping. I remember walking out the door of the shop and down the well-lit basement hall. Off to the right was a darkened corridor leading to somewhere mysterious and unknown. I was three or four years old because I know we were still living on Crocker St. I wandered down the hallway which turned left into an even darker hallway. I was heading towards the furnace room. I stayed there a while and then thought better of it and scurried back to my dad’s shop—but he was gone. I remember panicking and starting to cry and running up the stairs or taking the elevator back up to the ground floor, running out into the street, looking for my dad and calling out, but not finding him. I vaguely remember some man finding me crying and taking me home, but maybe this memory is a false one—nothing but a dream.

But I do know that I have spent a lifetime looking for my dad. Perhaps I have spent much of my life searching for God, one who is up close and personal and a friend. But the corridors of my faith have always been long and dark. Funny thing, the memory. For decades I have had a recurring and always puzzling dream. In these dreams I’m usually