Be All That You Can Be!

Years ago when I visited my dying friend in the hospital, I asked, “Prince, how are you doing”? And he said, “Well, John, I’ll tell you. I’m down to the last few sheets on the roll”.

That statement epitomized the crusty world view of my friend Prince Overroad, a grouchy, bitter, sour old man who used to live down the street from us.

I have not thought of Prince in years. Yesterday a lunchtime conversation with my son Donald and his new bride Helen reminded me of him.

Ginny and I relished telling Helen embarrassing tales of Donald’s childhood.

When Donald began talking about the relationship between Christianity and masculinity, he brought up a dangerous incident involving Prince.

This morning I dug in the closet trying to find one of my old journals so I could just quote my entry on the day it happened. But all of my earlier diaries were hand written and not indexed. I browsed back as far as August, 1979, when my father died, but I could not locate the entry about the night Prince threatened to shoot his wife, and the cops threatened to shoot me.

I’ll just try to tell this from my own memory. Donald filled in important blanks I’d forgotten, but here’s the best I recall:

Bitterness, gall and hatred for the whole world and all the people in it characterized this sour old man, but for some unfathomable reason, he liked me.

His father had been a North Carolina tobacco farmer and in the 1890s (?) named his son Prince Albert Overroad — named not for the prince of England, but for the farmer’s best paying tobacco customer.

Prince sported an odd talent. He remembered every item he’d ever bought, the date he bought it, and exactly how much he’d paid for it.

Much of his conversation consisted of: “Back on July 14, 1943, I bought me an Indian motorcycle; cost me 307 dollars and 32 cents. Sold it in ’56 for an even 400 dollars. Used the money to buy That Woman a used Maytag washing machine for 45 dollars, then put the rest of it into a little bit of property over in Arlington…”

“That Woman” was his wife of 50+ years, Nancy. He never referred to her any other way.

Once he even told me all about fluctuations in the price of eggs from 1909 on!

I listened.

Late one hot summer night I was working at my desk in the back room. We had no air conditioning and I worked stark naked beneath a ceiling fan.

Suddenly, out of the blue, with no feeling or thought beforehand, an urgent compulsion came upon me. It demanded, GET UP AND GO OUTSIDE IMMEDIATELY! RIGHT NOW!

I snatched my threadbare robe, which was way too small for me, from the hook on the back of the door and ran barefoot out of the house, down the drive, and into the street.

Here comes Prince stalking along wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. He carried a bottle in one hand and a huge pistol in the other.

“Where you going, Prince,” I asked.

“That Woman locked me out again. This time I’m gonna shoot the lock off the damn door then shoot her right between her teats,” he said.

He’d been down to the shed on another lot he owned to get the gun.

“Mighty hot night to be doing something like that,” I said, “Wouldn’t you like to sit on the porch and cool off a bit first?”

He agreed that it was hot and I persuaded him to let me carry the gun for him. I put it in the pocket of my robe.

The pistol’s weight made my robe sag to one side.

I got Prince to sit in a rocker on his front porch. I knocked on the door and whispered to Nance to bring us some ice tea or coffee. She said she’d already called the cops.

And here they came: two young patrolmen responding to a complaint of a naked man in the street with a gun.

Guess who was on the steps naked except for a too small, threadbare robe with a pistol in his side pocket.

I reached to pull it out of my pocket to give the first cop.

Bad idea.

His partner whipped out his sidearm and leveled it at me. The first cop reached into my pocket and retrieved the gun himself. They did not need to pat me down because my robe flapped open revealing that I carried no other weapon.

About then Nancy unlocked the door and came out on the porch. She explained that the cops had the wrong drunk pervert.

Prince commented long and loud on the efficiency, intelligence and ancestry of police officers. They hauled him away.

“John, That Woman’s nothing but trouble. But you and me, we sure showed them stupid police bubbies a thing or two the other night, didn’t we,” he later said.

Another vivid memory about my friend:

One morning Nancy knocked on my door asking me to help her get Prince to a clinic in another city. She’d arranged for him to be committed for treatment but she’d never learned how to drive.

This clinic, world-famous for success with alcoholics and other addicts, catered to movie stars, tv personalities, CEOs, etc. — but it was 120 miles from where we lived.

I found Prince passed out on his bed soaked in filth.

By phone Clinic doctors instructed us not to clean him; they wanted him to wake realizing what bad shape he was in. So I wrapped him in his soiled bedding and I took down their plastic shower curtain to seal the wrappings.

Another neighbor helped me load him in the back of our station wagon and came along with Nancy and me for the 120-mile trip.

Trouble was this neighbor had an inordinate fear of crossing bridges (I’ve forgotten the psychological name for such a condition). When we approached any bridge on the Interstate, this man would cringe and tremble, or scream in fear and thrash about.

Made for an interesting drive.

Me driving; Nancy crying and praying out loud; the neighbor cringing or screaming; Prince dead to the world but stinking to high Heaven.

The gagging aroma of shit and piss and puke filled the car.

Christian service is so glamorous.

After treatment, my friend survived a few more years till the cancer got him — Down to the last few sheets on the roll.

As I’ve been writing this, I realize a couple of things Prince taught me about faith.

Serving Christ can take any form He wants. Whether it’s as simple as listening to a bore recite the price of eggs, facing an armed drunk naked in the street at midnight, caring for a sick friend, visiting a dying man in the hospital.

When we stop fighting God, surrender unconditionally, and let Christ take His rightful place as King of our lives, then we never know what Christ may enable us to do.

He’s boss.

We serve at His pleasure.

I also realized that the abrupt urge, that compulsion I felt that midnight is an unusual thing for me. Of course I have no way of knowing if that were the voice of God or whether I’d just heard some subliminal noise, or whatever.

As a Christian I recognize the supernatural element in our faith; we deal with a risen, living Savior, not a static system.

It’s not unheard of for Him to issue direct instructions.

But I think that works the same way it did when I was in the army. Only once did a general speak directly to me; the rest of the time, I just followed general orders. And in the ten years I worked for a large company, only once did the CEO ever speak directly to me; the rest of those years I just followed company policy and procedures.

Why should I expect the Kingdom of God to be much different?

So, no, I do not hear divine voices; I just blunder along minding my own business but keeping an eye out just in case the Boss wants to interrupt my routine.

Nevertheless, whether through mystical experiences, reading the Bible, happenstance, duty, or natural inclinations, I believe that at every moment we brush up against the edges of the unseen world and that God speaks continually.

Only our deliberate selective hearing enables us to ignore Him.

I do not recall that Prince ever made any profession of faith, converted and became a Christian; of course I have no way of knowing his deep heart beneath the whisky.

I do hope that when Prince and I both stand naked before the throne of Christ on the last day, we’ll both be shown mercy for our different sins.

In the meantime, for some reason I think of that Army slogan:

Be All That You Can Be!

Christianity: It’s Not Just An Adventure — It’s A Life.