I Am Eli: Chasing the World While Being Chased: The Monty Rieck Story

By Monty Rieck

A Wild Ride to Redemption

The Cowboy Preacher, Monty Rieck, knows trouble. Before becoming a minister of Christ, he chased all the world had to offer, leaving him desperate for answers. Little did he know, he was the one being pursued. Despite suffering financial loss, emotional heartbreak and physical pain, he finally fou

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cowboy Preacher Publishing
• Release date: Jan 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798218136086

Monty Rieck

Monty Rieck, son of 1968 Super Stock Car Drag Racing champion William Rieck, grew up with dreams of being a professional rodeo cowboy. But God had other plans. Today, Monty is an ordained minister living in Santa Barbara, California with his wife Heidi.

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I

Part 1: Making Monty

Chapter 1: Setting the Stage

You don’t get snowball fights in Lompoc, California, since that’s situated fifty-nine miles northwest of Santa Barbara. But when my dad returned home from deer hunting in Utah, snow filled the back of our Dodge Power Wagon truck, visible under the edges of the tarp that covered the truck bed and the deer. When my dad removed the tarp, we saw that the long drive turned the snow into a big pile of crystallized ice.

My brothers Steve, Bill, and I—along with a few neighbors who were over—couldn’t resist.

We grabbed frozen snow, formed snow-cone-like balls with our hands, and started zinging them at each other. Steve, the oldest, jumped up onto the truck bed. With prime position, he started firing away, forcing us to scatter in all directions.

To take cover, I made a beeline for the front door of our house. As I opened the door, I looked back and . . .

Splat!

Steve whipped a snowball that slammed squarely against my left ear.

Rinnnggg! Along with the stinging pain, my ear went totally silent except for the sound that rattled my bell, which I still hear to this day.

Despite the joyful tears and pain that day, this remains one of my few, and favorite, memories as a family. And, it seemed to foreshadow a life that would be filled with suffering while experiencing something wonderful.

But my beginning started much earlier.

* * *

I was created on a cold, blustery winter’s night in the mountains of Montana, while my dad, Bill, and my mom, Rosalie, were on a deer hunting trip in September, 1961. The day started out like any hunting day, waking at the crack of dawn, saddling up the horses, and loading the saddlebags with food, water, and of course something hot to drink, along with rifles and binoculars. I’m sure they had dreams of finding that crafty, trophy buck that eludes even the most skilled hunter.

I’m guessing they were exhausted after battling the freezing weather and navigating the valleys and treacherous rocky cliffs on that hunt. In that part of the country, if you lose your concentration for just one fleeting moment, you could slip and seriously—or fatally—hurt yourself. After a hard day’s hunt, they cuddled up in their tent and enjoyed becoming one flesh through their intimacy and love for each other.

Although my mom says I was an oops baby, God had a different plan. He started knitting my DNA and 37 trillion cells, which no two people have alike.

Thanks to www.Ancestry.com, I’ve learned that I’m 39 percent Swedish and Danish, 24 percent German European, and 15 percent Norwegian, with 14 percent Scottish, 6 percent English with a final stitch of 1 percent Finnish and 1 percent Welsh.

But as I grew up, I believed I was 100 percent cowboy.

I was born on Flag Day, June 14, 1962, in a little country town called Lompoc (pronounced Lom-poke), California. I used to call it Cowpoke, because the city consisted of farmers, ranchers, and cowboys. Since I was conceived in Montana, and because my dad admired a famous cowboy named Monty Montana, my parents named me Monty, which means mountain man.

I am the baby of five kids from a middle-class family. My brother Bill is eighteen months older than me and my sister, Becca, is five years older than I am. Then there’s Steve, who is seven years older, plus my oldest brother, Larry.

Because of the age differences between us, most of the time, Steve and Becca were out living their lives, while Bill and I were home at the ranch. Steve moved out when I was eight years old, followed by Becca, who moved out four years later. My brother Bill and I, on the other hand, did a lot of growing up together.

Bill was born mad at the world and at me, so I was often the target of his anger. To this day, I still wear emotional scars from his traumatic treatment from those early childhood years. Still, we played on the high school football team together. He played linebacker and fullback, and I played cornerback and tailback. My Dad called us Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside. We played in the 1979 CIF championship game together but lost. Then, as a senior, in 1980, our team went to CIF again and we lost again. Still, it is a great memory!

My oldest brother, Larry, was born shortly after my mom and dad married. Both were teenagers. Sadly, Larry’s brainstem and spinal cord were severely damaged after the doctor used forceps to pull him out of the womb. Larry experienced seizures and many other neurological problems, which made it extremely difficult for my mom and dad. Back then, in the early ’50s, doctors weren’t as knowledgeable or equipped to treat Larry’s condition. So, my parents were constantly taking Larry to the emergency room for various medical problems. He never matured more than a two-year-old child, and was unable to walk, talk, or sit up on his own. He had no control of his limbs, so he had to be fed through a feeding tube. That meant he couldn’t do anything we all take for granted to take care of ourselves on a daily basis. He was 100 percent reliant on others.

When Larry was five years old, my parents reluctantly decided that Larry needed to be admitted to a state hospital in Camarillo, California, where he would remain for the rest of his twenty-one years, before succumbing to pneumonia. I never really knew Larry and was about twelve years old when he died. Still, he is not forgotten.

* * *

My mom says that I grew up keeping quiet and to myself mostly. I played with my big yellow toy dump truck, filling it with dirt and dumping it out again while making engine sounds. The truck was big enough for me to kneel in the truck’s bed and roll down the sidewalk.

Later, I rode a bright red bicycle with a banana seat and a low sissy bar. My favorite thing was to put my stuffed monkey on the handlebars to ride shotgun all over town.

My mom says I was a kind soul and rarely found trouble at home or at school. Of course, I did have occasions of misbehavior, like when I accidentally helped set a field on fire (now Beattie Park) while playing with matches with my friend Scott. The fire department was called to put it out.

And there was the time I was sent to the principal’s office because I climbed onto the shoulders of a friend and stood up to do a balancing acrobatic trick.

The recess monitor screamed, Monty, get down from there!

Why? I know what I’m doing! My confidence was bolstered from the gymnastics I was learning from my coach, Mr. Alexander.

That’s enough! You’re going to see Principal Manzo!

After my dismount, I made my way to his office.

Mr. Manzo explained that I was endangering myself and others, and it would not be tolerated. He threatened to swat me with his big tennis shoe if I ever did it again.

That was enough to convince me not to try it again.

Besides that, I always had great compassion for other kids at school, especially the kids who got picked on by bullies. I could relate because I was also bullied during those early elementary school years. I had a high-pitched voice and long, shiny white hair. I was nicknamed Cotton-Top and teased because you could easily mistake me for a girl.

Sadly, most of the ridicule came from my brother Bill. I couldn’t understand why some people could be so nice, while others were so rotten. Maybe Bill was jealous of me, or just angry because of the condition of his heart. But having a brother as a bully often sent me retreating into myself.

Looking back, I can see that God used that suffering to grow mercy in my heart for others, and especially those in need. To this day, I still stand up and care for the homeless, the outcast, and the underdogs in life.

Between those early years and many years that followed, I had a lot to endure. That made me blame God for all the trouble and give me a reason to pursue the world’s ways, often at the cost of others.

My parents, God rest their souls, were the definition of opposites attract. My mom was nurturing, while my dad was rarely around during my childhood. They emulated the good and the bad from their own upbringings. And I grew up a product of their parenting patterns—some good, and some not so good.

My Dad

My dad was born in Wheaton, Illinois, in the early 1930s. He grew up with a hardworking old-school father and mother, my Grandpa Hubert and Grandma Iona Rieck. Grandpa was a man’s man who didn’t show his personal feelings much. My dad followed suit, working hard and playing hard. By the age of fourteen, my dad occasionally went into bars, drinking and smoking cigarettes.

He started his own plumbing business in his early twenties and rarely came home before eight in the evening. He actually idolized, and was like, John Wayne in many ways. My dad was 6’ 2" and about 240 pounds. He had a deep voice, a big cleft chin like Kirk Douglas’s, and didn’t say much unless he had a couple snorts of Seagram’s 7 whiskey in him.

When he was home, he sat in his black Naugahyde recliner, wearing his black leather slip-on loafers, and for dessert would often eat straight out of a half-gallon ice cream carton, followed by a snooze. I always felt comforted when he was in that chair, even if he never read stories to me at bedtime or played catch with me.

My dad loved hunting for trophy bucks. I still have his largest monster buck hanging on my wall. It measures over thirty-one inches wide, and thirty inches high, with thick main beams and four points on each side. His throwaway horns were another man’s dream buck!

He was a man of extreme passions. Whatever he did, he went all out to be the best at what he was doing.

From the ’50s through the ’60s, my dad spent more time at work than at home. Most spare time he had was spent hunting or working on his drag-racing cars.

My dad and his friends always seemed to be working on the Chrysler 300 to beef it up into a race car with a 413 Wedge motor. Later on, they built dad’s famous Super Stock World Champion drag-racing car called the Quarter Bender. Then, they worked on building his nationally-known funny car, also called the Quarter Bender. My dad and Bob Rowe, his best friend, also built a one-of-a-kind off-road Baja race dune buggy, with a Mopar 426 Hemi in it, called the Pipe Dream.

His car racing started out just for fun, but his competitive drive and desire to be the best at whatever he did took his racing to the professional level. He progressed into one of the best drag racers in the US back in the 1960s, and he was nicknamed the Terror of the West.

Over time, my dad’s hobbies started costing more and more. So he worked long hours in the plumbing business to provide for us and fund his hunting and car racing. There was no middle ground for him. It was all or nothing!

The example I had for what a man, husband, and father should look and act like came from my dad. He had many good qualities, was hardworking, and a good provider for his family. He was also talented in seemingly everything he did. But he lost sight of what is truly important. Outside of his work and hobbies, he struggled as a husband who was not emotionally present and active in his marriage. Although we felt secure knowing he was there for us, he wasn’t available for much of his children’s lives. He was doing what he knew from his own upbringing, which preoccupied his focus from God and family.

I was thirty-one years old when he died at the age of sixty on Thanksgiving Day, 1993 (which has a story to tell later in the book). I never saw or felt the true love from him in an emotional and compassionate way. That lack of affection, affirmation, and acceptance from my dad had a tremendous impact on me and my family members. We grew up without the kind of love that only a father can provide. Still, I learned a valuable lesson:

Beware of focusing too much on your career, dreams, and passions.

You could lose what’s most important in your life.

My Mom

My mom was quite the tomboy who loved the outdoors and the country life while growing up in Spanaway, Washington. When she was in school, she was a very enthusiastic cheerleader, good student, sang in the high school madrigal and church choirs, and played the piano. She even performed on a local radio broadcast. I remember listening to her angelic voice echo throughout our home as she sang and played the piano.

She grew up quite differently than my dad, coming from a home that ended broken in divorce. My mom experienced some traumatic events as a young child, so those tragic traumas affected her entire life in many negative ways, including her marriage to my dad. It never did leave her memory.

My mom’s mother, Marie Beasley, was a Christian and a longtime churchgoer. Grandma, who I never knew, grew up in a strict Lutheran church, which at times, made for an overbearing, legalistic environment for my mom and her sister, Harriett. As a result, my mom developed problems with low self-esteem and codependency. Still, God used that treatment to form my mom into a sweet, loving, and caring person who loved everybody, even though she would spend most of her life searching in all the wrong places for God.

My mom and dad met in Spanaway, Washington, while growing up, at ages fourteen and fifteen, respectively. My dad would go to my mom’s church just so he could