Pilgrimage of Joy . . .

AND BABY MAKES THREE
W. Carl Ketcherside 

I have been casting about for the right word to describe our relationship with the community centered around Nevada, and I have decided upon the term "idyllic." When you look it up in your dictionary you will see at once why I selected it. If you will permit me to backtrack a little, I should like to tell you we moved there on November 7, 1928. After we had remained at my father's home until I recovered strength following my surgery, we returned to Nell's home, so she could vote for a president the first time. The election was on November 6. 

The choice was not an agonizing one. She voted for Herbert Hoover. His opponent was Al Smith, four times governor of New York. As if that were not enough to condemn him in the eyes of midwesterners he was also a Catholic and a "wet" during the days of prohibition. Moreover, he wore a brown derby, and the thought of someone in the White House with that kind of hat seemed ridiculous. So Nell voted for Hoover. I was not quite old enough to vote. The Republicans campaigned on their record of increasing prosperity under the Harding and Coolidge administrations. They promised to end poverty and make possible "a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage." None of us realized we were facing a depression in which every car would go to pot and most of us would be raising chickens in the garage. 

Nevada is the county seat of Vernon County, Missouri. We moved there because it was about halfway between our parental homes. When we d id the rural flavor was still quite pronounced. Both the Missouri Pacific and the Missouri-­Kansas‑Texas railways ran trains through the town so that it was linked with every part of the United States by connecting lines in great industrial centers. But Nevada was still a country town. Saturday was the big day of the week. Farmers with produce to sell parked around the courthouse square and dispensed their wares from the backs of their vehicles. There were still hitching racks for those who drove teams. 

Sidewalks were crowded with people who visited all day, going home only in time to do the chores in the evening. Harmless gossip flowed freely and tidbits of news were exchanged. When two persons met the general form of greeting was, "Have you heard?" and the newcomer was given the latest news. It was a day when one could speak on the courthouse lawn and be assured of a crowd eager for something to provide a diversion from whittling and spitting tobacco juice at a mark on the ground. 

The small congregation meeting in the plain little white frame structure on North Main Street was composed primarily of farmers with a sprinkling of railroad employees. It was under the care of three elders ‑ Brethren Kryselmier, Billings and Journey. The first was a retired "hog‑head" as everyone called a railway engineer, the second was a dairyman, and the third a farmer. They did not "hire" me to move to the town to work with the church. They were surprised when I told them I was coming to their town, a decision I reached while holding a meeting for the congregation the year before. I suspected at the time they were glad to hear it, but they did not make a great fuss over the announcement. 

No congregation among us had "a minister." I was regarded as an evangelist. There was a clear understanding that the primary task of an evangelist was to proclaim the good tidings to those who had never obeyed the gospel. When a congregation was planted, the evangelist remained to train and prepare his converts until men with the qualifications for bishops arose among them. We were imbued with the idea enunciated by Benjamin Franklin, the gospel preacher, who said, "Feed the whole church the whole word, and leadership will rise among the members as cream rises upon the milk." When men exhibited the qualifications required of bishops they were elected by the multitude of the saints and ordained by the evangelist. 

At this juncture his work was terminated as he commended the congregation and the elders "to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified." The evangelist was then ready to move on or to band together another group in the locality and duplicate the process. The idea of hiring out to preach the gospel to a congregation of saints with bishops at so much per week, no more entered our minds than it did those of the believers in the days of the apostles. Such terms as hiring or firing preachers, contracts, vacation stipulations, were as foreign to our spiritual vocabulary as they were to the new covenant scriptures. 

When an evangelist was a member of a local body of disciples, he held no office or priority in that congregation. As a member he took his turn in edifying and exhorting, but a great deal of the time he was laboring with new or weak places which needed his talents and advice. It seemed silly to concentrate the strongest talent in a place which needed it least. In war the greatest firepower is directed to the weakest spots. During the first winter I was in Nevada I spoke about once every six weeks. At other times I sat with Nell and listened to the other brethren admonish us. But I was making personal calls in every part of the country. I mapped out areas and visited the farm homes of all who lived within the perimeter. I talked to them about the Lord and began to hold Bible studies in rural meetinghouses, grange halls and school buildings at night. Frequently I was invited by the schoolteacher to come and speak to the children during the day. I came to know hundreds of people. 

In the town I secured permission to speak one day per week to the crew working in the roundhouse of the Missouri Pacific Railway. While they were eating lunch together I spoke to those who were willing to come. It soon became so much a part of their life that I broke up the card games on the day I was there. I spoke frequently at the chapel for the mental patients in the State Hospital north of town. Soon I was becoming a kind of regular fixture at the noon luncheon clubs of the Rotarians, Kiwanians and Lions. When a speaker cancelled out on them they called me. The railroad men elected me chaplain of the combined Booster Clubs of the Joplin and White River Divisions of the Missouri Pacific. 

As a result of these contacts I was immersing men and women in ponds, lakes, rivers, and even stock tanks in feedlots. So many railroaders became Christians that on Sunday "the caller" could come and hand in a list of workmen needed on an emergency train and we could make up his crew of engineers, firemen, brakemen and conductors, from the congregation. We even had the Railway Express representatives. I was thrilled with life, filled with zest, and ready to believe that we could take the world for Christ. 

Then, during the sixth month of out marriage, Nell discovered she was pregnant. I was still soaring on imaginary wings at the thought of being a husband, and now a new dimension was to be added. I would be a father. It was all kind of mind‑boggling to realize that at my age I was going to be entrusted with rearing a future president of the United States. I was overwhelmed with the thought that we would have a baby of our very own. As the weeks passed into months and Nell's body began to swell with the new life within, she became as beautiful to me as she appeared grotesque and ungainly to herself. I shall never forget the night I placed my hand against her abdomen and felt the fetal heartbeat of our joint production. 

We knew we could not continue another winter in an apartment so cold that ice froze at night in the bucket of water in the kitchen. And then, just as if an unseen hand was guiding our destiny, a small five‑room house became vacant directly across the street from the meetinghouse. We rented it and moved in. There was nothing good or fancy about it. Our furniture was not adequate for it, but this did not affect us. The folk in the congregation were good to us and the baby shower provided for all the immediate needs of one about whom we had dreamed but had not yet seen. 

There was no hospital in the city so we made arrangements for the delivery at home, following instructions of the dignified and elderly Dr. Love, who seemed to be altogether too calm for such a momentous task. It was early in the morning of September 18, 1929, when Nell prodded me awake to tell me that the hour was approaching. I could not find the light switch in the dark and fell over everything in two rooms trying to get to the telephone. When I finally got the doctor awake to give him the news of the century, he told me he would get dressed and be along as soon as he fixed himself a cup of coffee. I could not understand how anyone could stop to drink coffee while facing the most momentous event of his whole career. I was walking the floor, trying to remember what I had read in doctor books about delivering babies when he knocked on the door. 

He was as much a master of delivering young husbands of their fears as he was in delivering young wives of their babies. He told me he would need some things done and issued some orders for me to prepare this and that. While I was bustling about doing it he sat down in our only comfortable chair and took a nap. It was only after it was all over and he had gone that I realized he had asked me to do things which he never referred to or asked about again. 

We had arranged for our aged sister in Christ, Mrs. Richard F. Edwards, to come and help us with the baby. She was a precious and gentle soul who had borne a number of children of her own, and had assisted with the birth of many more. She was present soon after the doctor arrived, and proceeding efficiently in spite of my getting in her way. She was helping Dr. Love in the actual delivery when, all of a sudden, he said, "Well, well, it's a fine big boy." It was, too, because the scales registered nine‑and‑a‑half pounds. 

Nell seemed to take it fine, but I was completely worn out from the ordeal. I shall never forget the sense of well‑being which was mine when they laid Gerald Bernard in my arms for the first time. Nell selected the name, choosing it because we could not think of anyone in either of our families who ever bore such a name. I do not recall that anyone has ever called him Gerald since that morning. Somehow he became tagged with "Jerry" and that is what it has been ever since. A completely new phase of life had begun for us. I found myself humming a snatch of the song made famous by "Little Jack Little" a famous radio performer of the time, ". . . the baby makes three, we're happy in my blue heaven." 

When I had recovered sufficiently to walk to town I went to the office of Dr. Love and told him I had come to pay my bill. He got out his account book and said, "Let me see. I examined your wife four times here in the office during her pregnancy, and then came to the house and delivered the baby, and have made two trips back since to check on things. I'm afraid I shall have to charge you thirty dollars in all, but if you think that is too much I can take the baby in on it." 

I have known a lot of experiences in life. Some of them have been tragic. Others were joyful. But for sheer pleasure mingled with constant concern there is nothing equal to rearing a baby. Every degree of fever arouses grave apprehension. Every little cry at night is heard and brings you from a snug bed to tramp across a cold linoleum. In reality, babies are tyrants. They are utterly and wholly selfish. It is better to realize this and be truthful about it. They scream until they grow livid in the face and quickly change to gurgles of contentment as soon as you pick them up and start talking softly in the special vernacular of baby‑talk which they love. If you do not pick one of them up soon enough he shifts into the tactic of holding his breath. You become frantic. The fact is that no baby ever died from holding his breath. He always catches it just in time to go on living and employ the same ruse next time. 

Babies belch in your face and burp down your back just when you are preparing to leave for a special meeting and haven't time to change suits, if you are fortunate enough to have another one. You arrive smelling like the custodian in the sour cream division of the local dairy. Babies sleep all morning and arouse only to mess up their diapers just when you have poured the coffee and sat down to luncheon. The timing of a baby is uncanny. He can be trusted implicitly to disrupt any plan and wreak havoc on any schedule. And he is worth every minute of it! 

His first attempt at crawling, the first time he yanks the table cloth off and sits amidst the wreckage gaily flailing away at it and scattering gravy with both hands, the first stumbling step, the first bumbling word, all of these are mileposts in a career, the topic of telephone calls with which to bore patient listeners, the subject of letters with which to thrill the hearts of distant grandparents. Regardless of one's educational attainments, he will learn more about life by living with a baby than by sitting in ivy-covered towers of scholasticism listening to bearded professors. 

But the world has to go on even if you have a baby. No moratorium is declared on the making of history while you play with your offspring. Six days after Jerry was born Lieutenant Jimmie Doolittle made the first all‑instrument plane flight. A new era was ushered in. One month later the stock market crashed. Millions of shares were dumped. Billions of dollars were lost. On October 29 panic selling increased. The ticker tape was almost three hours behind. Thousands of investors saw their fortunes completely wiped out.  Some of them jumped from office windows to shatter their bodies on the concrete far below. Men who were wealthy a few days before blew their brains out rather than face life as paupers. Fear and foreboding gripped the country. 

Men began to speak of national bankruptcy. It was as if some evil genius had suddenly taken control. The feeling of ominous threat was heightened when a strange fire broke out in the Executive Office building in Washington, D.C., on Christmas Eye. We were tottering on the brink of "The Great Depression."