Manitou, Oklahoma

Preaching and Bootlegging Sugar

Manitou, Oklahoma is not a very large town, but it was the place where I did my first regular preaching.  One of my co-workers at the maintenance shop was a young man named Leo Schreiner.   Leo was from Manitou.  His father operated a blacksmith shop there, and Leo grew up with an understanding of welding and metallurgy.   He was a natural for the maintenance shop. 

One Sunday he made arrangements for me to go home with him and preach for his home church.  I was all of 19 years old.   The brothers liked what I did and asked me to come back on a regular basis.  I did that for more than a year.  In fact I think it was almost two years.   A big event, among the churches of that day, was the summer gospel meeting.  I was asked to preach in the meeting and preached every night for ten days.   We had great crowds, and it was the only time I ever preached for a ten day meeting.   After that meetings got shorter and shorter, and we have pretty much abandoned them now.

It was 180 miles from Abilene to Manitou.  I had a 1947 Mercury, which got me there most of the time.  Once I called them and told them I had car trouble and couldn’t make it.  I had old tires, and I blew several of them out.  I would buy another used tire for $2.00, but there was a good chance I would blow that one out too.  One night I drove the last few miles back to Abilene on the rim.  They paid me $20.00 a week, but I usually bought gas in Vernon, Texas.  They nearly always had a price war going on in Vernon, so I bought gas for 19 cents a gallon (That is not a misprint).  

Leo led singing, but he was a semi-pro baseball pitcher.  On Saturdays he wanted me to help him warm up, so he handed me a glove and started firing fastballs at me.   At first I was scared of them, but I finally I was able catch them pretty well, although nobody ever suggested that I join the team.  I usually went with him to the games on Sunday afternoons, but I was always scared that a game would go into extra innings, and we would miss the Sunday night service.  We never did.

There was no sign on the church building to give anybody an idea of what kind of church it might be.  After all everybody in Manitou (population 200) knew where everything was.  One Sunday morning I arrived at the building, and I was greeted by an older gentleman I had never seen before.   He said, “I’m glad to see you young men here.  You mean so much to the church.”  He flipped his Bible open and I saw a sermon outline.  I knew something was strange, but when it came time to start the Bible class, I taught the adult Bible class.  At one point he disagreed with something I said, and stood up and shook his finger at me.  I don’t recall what kind of point he made, and I don’t think I understood it at the time.

I was somewhat afraid that he might try to preach that morning, so as soon as Leo finished the last note of the song before the sermon, I hit rostrum preaching.   About ten minutes into the sermon, the fellow leaned over and said something to Leo.  He then got up and left.  Later Leo told me that he asked, “What church is this?”  Leo said, “It’s the Church of Christ.”  He said, “Well where’s the Methodist church.”  Leo said, “It’s two blocks down the street.”  The guy said, “I’m sorry, but I must leave.”   We later learned that the Methodists where wondering where he was.  They were singing extra songs, but finally he showed up.  I’m thinking he saw two church buildings on the same street.  The Methodist church had the biggest building, so I’m guess that he assumed it was the Baptist church.  We had no sign on our building, so he probably figured we were Methodists.   He probably thought we were the weirdest bunch of Methodists he ever met.

Another Manitou experience involved bootlegging sugar.  The stores in Abilene were in the middle of a price war on sugar.  You could buy 10 pounds of sugar for fifty since, but there was a limit of one to a person.  It was strawberry season in Oklahoma.  We distributed fifty cent pieces to our friends, converged on the store, and bought several bags of sugar.  Then I hauled them to Oklahoma.  That went on for two or three weeks.   We never tried to make money on the deal.  We let the people have the sugar for what it cost us.

I owe much to the folks at Manitou.  They listened patiently and offered encouragement when I was learning to preach.  They also fed well, and I usually brought some hungry college students with me.