THE SHEEP SHED: An Obsessive Compulsive Christian's Search for Truth

By Ed Havens

Life on the farm as a son of an extremely legalistic preacher presented a challenge for a young boy whose main goal was to keep from spending an eternity in hell. The relationship he had with his angry father was one of crime and punishment, and that's how he believed God operated as well. As one of five adventure-seeking country preacher's sons who feared nothing, their antics reveal the trials and triumphs of a lifelong search for truth. The seemingly never-ending task of dismantling the sheep shed parallels the author's struggles with finding truth in organized religion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888510377

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Addendum

About the Author

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THE SHEEP SHED

An Obsessive Compulsive Christian's Search for Truth

Ed Havens

ISBN 979-8-88851-036-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88851-037-7 (Digital)

Copyright © 2023 Ed Havens

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Preface

As one of five preacher's sons growing up on a small farm north of Lamar in southeast Colorado, my childhood had a definite effect on the man I am now. My four brothers all experienced the same upbringing, but each of us followed different paths on life's adventurous journey. I never learned how to play or have fun, and I grew up with a much different outlook on life than most of them. All of us have a great work ethic, but with me, working hard was paramount and time off seemed to be such a waste. After all, the tasks I didn't finish today would need to be completed tomorrow, so why not finish every task I could instead of procrastinating. If I didn't, I would just be thinking and worrying about what needed to be done tomorrow anyway! I'm sixty-eight years old now, and my wife of almost twenty years often says that if she could change one thing about me, it would be my intense desire to always be working or fixing something instead of having fun. I am working on that now, and I decided the first thing to do would be to go back into my childhood and see if I could discover what made me the way I am. This story of memories is the result of that effort.

Introduction

The 7.5-mile ride to town in our 1958 Rambler was something I had experienced many times from our little farm north of Lamar, Colorado. I can still remember the familiar smells of stale cigarette smoke and rubbing alcohol that greeted me as we strolled into Doctor Nienhuis's office on Main Street. He was a gruff old-fashioned physician who smoked cigarettes at his desk and made house calls, but not out to our place. As the second-born son of five country preacher's boys, I made quite a few visits to his office to be sewn up, have a bone set, and get vaccinations or, as in this case, a Tetanus shot. Stepping on nails or getting cuts were common occurrences for my brothers and me as we worked at the daunting task of dismantling the sheep shed. There was a definite procedure we adhered to after stepping on a nail amidst the mounds of rotting sheep manure. The first step was to pry the nail out of our shoe and foot and head to the house where Mom rinsed a sewing needle and tweezers with alcohol and tried to pick out rust and dirt from the wound. (On one particular occasion, the nail I stepped on hit a bone in my foot, causing it to bend at a forty-five-degree angle and stick out the side of my shoe. I had to nip the protruding end with side cutters and work the rest of the nail out of the bottom of my foot.) The second step was to dip hot water out of the reservoir on the side of our Home Comfort wood burning kitchen stove, pour it into a porcelain basin, stir in Epsom salt, and soak the wounded foot in the mixture until the skin was as wrinkled as Mrs. Sturdy's face. (Mrs. Sturdy was one of the many elderly ladies who attended the First Christian Church in Holly, Colorado, that my dad started and preached at for about ten years.) The third step was to watch a day or so for the telltale red streak of blood poisoning and head for Dr. Nienhuis's office if it appeared. We all knew if the red streak reached our heart, blood poisoning would lead to locked jaw (tetanus) and almost certain death! Such was the case on this particular day. I was not a fan of vaccinations and Dr. Nienhuis's rough mannerisms, but it was all worth it to get to see his nurse. Bess Harper was a kinder, gentler, prettier version of Nurse Ratched from the movie One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, and I had a huge crush on her. She would always give me a hug and tell me not to cry because everything was going to be all right. Now I wasn't much of a crier, but I could always work up eyes full of tears to get a hug from her.

The sheep shed was an abandoned building once used to provide shelter for the hundreds of sheep that were raised on our little farm before we moved there in 1961. It was one hundred fifty feet long and fifty feet wide with mounds of rich sheep manure inside. Dad saw the sheep shed as a source of fertilizer for Mom's huge vegetable garden and a means to keep my brothers and me occupied for years. We were tasked with dismantling the shed, pulling nails out of the boards, bending the nails straight, and stacking the wood on a storage shelf for future use. As the oldest of the four boys, Bill felt it was his job to be the supervisor of the project. He would sit on a pile of lumber and watch to see if any of us were slacking off. If it looked to him like we were, he'd send a rock flying toward the slacker. The rest of us learned to duck when we heard the familiar singing of a flat rock sailing through the air. For many years, coffee cans full of straightened nails lined the shelves in our barn. The boards that were ruined as well as the broken shake shingles from the sheep shed also provided an almost endless supply of kindling and firewood we used in the woodburning kitchen stove. Over the years, Dad used the salvaged lumber and straightened nails to build a chicken coop, rabbit cages, a walk-in pigeon cage for my 4-H project, and eventually an indoor bathroom when we finally got running water, a propane furnace, and electricity in the whole house. Dad was a jack of all trades and could build or fix anything. Carpentry was his specialty.

Chapter 1

The Formative Years

We weren't country kids all our lives. When I was born on July 5, 1951, we lived in the town of Lamar where Dad worked for the Santa Fe Railroad, and later on the US Post Office. In town there were no chores and no sheep shed to tear down, so we had plenty of playtime. Our neighborhood was full of fun things to do and wonderful childhood playmates. Sherry Flowers lived across Oak Street from us and was just a year older than me. We used to get together at her house and raid their cupboards for sugar cubes. I still remember sitting on their porch with her, eating sugar cubes, and singing Sugar in the Mornin'. Her mom Dolores and my mom were also best friends, so we spent many days together playing and singing. The Flowers family went to the same church we attended, and this turned out to be a lifelong friendship.

I still remember in great detail all the kids and families within a couple blocks of our house. Lorne Gold and the Gold kids were kind of like Scut Farkus and Grover Dill from A Christmas Story. They were the local bullies and would occasionally roam the neighborhood acting tough. Gibby Nelson, Dorsen Nischwander, my brother Bill, and I would meet them in the alley behind our house where we'd square off and threaten each other with annihilation. Our weapons of mass destruction were rocks we found in the gravel. Everyone soon found out that Bill was a deadeye rock thrower, so the confrontations never lasted long. I still have a scar in the center of my hairline from a rock that Bill threw at me. That head wound bled so much we thought I might bleed to death, but we knew better than to go home to patch it up. Mom had warned us many times not to throw rocks, and we would have been in a world of hurt if she saw it. Instead, we went to Loretta Schoonover's apartment, and she got the bleeding to stop. I just had to wear a baseball cap for a couple of days so Mom wouldn't find out.

Gibby Nelson lived across Eighth Street from us and was the local Fonzie. He wore a leather jacket, slicked his hair back, smoked cigarettes, and rode a motorcycle. Actually, it was a Bridgestone 49cc motor scooter, but that was very impressive to the rest of us. Years later, he did get a two-cylinder Triumph, and we all thought that was just about the coolest bike ever. I admired Gibby and wanted to be more like him. He definitely lived life outside the box and feared no one! I always felt safe from the Gold gang when he was close by. Gibby, Bill, Sydney Roulette, and a couple of older boys used to play tackle football in the middle of Eighth Street, and I loved to watch them. One day, they were short a football player, and Gibby told me he would give me a set of real shoulder pads if I would play with them and not cry if I got hurt. I of course accepted the challenge. They beat the crap out of me, but I never whimpered at all, and Gibby gave me the shoulder pads.

Don Dolson was the local mortician and ham radio operator who lived across the alley to the west of us. He built a wonderful playhouse in their backyard for his daughter Lois, and we occasionally used it as a fort whenever a rival gang invaded our turf. It had windows in it just big enough for us to launch rocks from and small enough that our rivals struggled to throw their rocks through. Every now and then, Lois would come and chase us out of her playhouse, and we never argued with her about it. We were more afraid of her than the Gold boys. Don used to talk on his ham radio in the evenings, and sometimes his voice would bleed through our television speakers. One night, he was describing what they were eating for supper, and Mom called him on the phone to jokingly complain about the interference and tell him she wished we were having the same food at our house. All of a sudden, we heard Don's voice coming through our TV loud and clear inviting us to join them for supper. We had great neighbors on Oak Street, and life was very good for my brothers and me.

Wade and Margie Davis lived in the house on the north end of the block with their three kids. Gary was the oldest, Rhonda was next, and Mark was the youngest. Wade was the manager, and I think he might have been part owner of the truck stop north of town. We all became very good friends and would frequently have meals together. One evening, when we were at their house for supper, Margie had baked a fresh apple pie and served it up for dessert. I couldn't believe what she did to that pie though! Before handing pieces out to everyone, she covered them with shaving cream! I cried and told Mom that I didn't want shaving cream on my pie, and everyone burst into laughter. I had never seen whipped cream in a pressurized can before. Technology had seemingly gotten out of control in the fifties.

My brother Bob was probably four years old, and Rhonda was the same age. When they played cowboys and Indians, Bob was always the Indian, and he played the part well. He had a feathered headdress, painted his face with Mom's lipstick, waved a rubber tomahawk around, and could shoot a rubber tipped arrow with his trusty bow. He would put a leather belt around his waist and hung brightly colored washcloths in front and back as loin cloths. Authenticity was his specialty, so he was deeply offended when Margie informed him that if he was going to play cowboys and Indians with Rhonda, he needed to wear underwear under his loincloths. Bob had a vivid imagination and watched a lot of TV. He had a lazy eye, and the doctor put a patch over his good eye, gave us a screen to put over out television set, and told us to let Bob watch a lot of TV to strengthen his eye. As well as cowboy and Indian shows, he also loved watching cartoons, especially Popeye. One day we got a call from Dolores Flowers who told us Bob was standing in the middle of Oak Street with his hand up trying to stop traffic. We rushed out to see what was going on and found Bob with a toy corncob pipe in his mouth and a can of spinach tucked away in his T-shirt. His dream was to become a doctor, but until that time, he would just have to settle for being a fierce Indian or a sailor with super strength that came from eating spinach.

We were taught that The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I took that passage very seriously. With the Ten Commandments as my guide, I made a commitment to God at an early age that I was going to be the best person I could be, but I failed miserably when I was about six years old. Thou shall not murder, commit adultery, give false witness against thy neighbor or covet thy neighbor's wife were easy for me to obey, but my failure was with Thou shall not steal. I got a cap pistol for Christmas that year and had great fun playing cowboys and Indians with the neighbor kids, but soon ran out of caps. Somehow pointing the gun at the bad guys and yelling Bang, bang just did not cut it for me. I needed to smell the pungent odor of burned gunpowder that swirled up to my nose when the caps exploded, so I asked Mom for a quarter to buy some caps. Unfortunately, she didn't have any spare change to give me, so I set out to find pop bottles that I could sell for cash to buy the caps, but there were none to be found.

One Saturday morning Fred Mitchell and his sister stopped by our house on the way the movie theater on Main Street. This was a Saturday morning tradition that we all enjoyed, especially Bob. He would move from seat to seat around the theater while the movie was going and always came home with a mouth full of chewing gum that he had harvested from the bottoms of the seats. He was very excited when he came across some that was relatively fresh! Since the theater was close to the local Ben Franklin store, Fred and I decided to go in that store after the movie. He wanted to buy a ten-cent glider, and I wanted to see how many pop bottles I'd have to find to get enough money for the caps I needed. All of a sudden, without warning, Satan entered my soul, and I slipped a roll of caps into my pocket without anyone noticing. I nervously followed Freddie around the store trying hard to look as casual as possible until we finally walked out the door and headed south on Main Street. All the way home, I expected to hear police sirens and bullhorns calling my name, but that never happened. Not only had I dishonored the seventh commandment by stealing the caps, but when my Mom saw them, I lied and told her I had found enough pop bottles to pay for them. Now there is no commandment that specifically says, Thou shalt not lie. It does say, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, but I didn't think that applied in this situation. Sadly, my life of sin began at a very young age, and I knew God had seen what I did. Somehow smelling the burnt gunpowder from the stolen caps wasn't quite as fulfilling as I thought it would be.

My singing career began at the corner of Eighth and Oak Street in Lamar.

I have always loved music, and it has been a big part of my life. My auntie