Monday, March 21, 2022 (today’s lectionary)
We’ll leave the light on for ya
The snow was three feet deep, and loaders couldn’t clear it all. Northeastern Iowa was a mess in the infamous 1971 blizzard. When it started, Bob was gone in one direction and Ramona in another, and their kids were in school. A smart bus driver took the kids to their grandparents’ house. Ramona stayed in town overnight. Bob found himself sheltered along with 29 other travelers in one friendly farmhouse.
When Bob and Ramona got home the next day, Bob didn’t say hello. He said, “We’re moving!” And within four months they mortgaged their farm, made an offer, bought, and moved into a motel named the Munger Moss Travelers’ Motel in Lebanon, Missouri. Which is where I stayed last night.
Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house.
Ramona told me stories when I checked in, about her daughters and their children, and her great grandchildren, six of the seven in a picture on the front desk. Next week she is closing down the motel and flying to Sacramento to see one more “grandchild,” a boy who hugged her years ago while his family was visiting. “Will you be MY grandma?” What could she say? Now’s he’s 6’2 and his hug will be a lot bigger.
Ramona is 83. The walls of her front office are covered with photos of celebrities who have stayed here over the last 75 years. Munger Moss is the most famous motel on old Route 66. It was built with “underground lumber” in 1945, while wartime quotas made legal lumber impossible to buy, even here in the Ozark mountain forest. Not a problem … they found plenty of sellers, and the ceiling timbers are all oak. Not a single one has had to be replaced.
Naaman had leprosy. The prophet sent him a message: “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean.” But Naaman went away angry. “Our rivers are better than the rivers of Israel!”
Bob loved horses. In the morning he and his two sons headed off for their farm home not far away from the motel. His son went ahead, out of his dad’s sight. When Bob came around the curve his son was on the ground and the horse was gone. His son was dead. He was 16.
Another son died of cancer when he was 21. Three years ago her husband also died of cancer. My heart was breaking for Ramona and she told me these stories.
After his servants changed his mind, Naaman plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of the man of God. His flesh became like the flesh of a little child again, and he was clean.
Ramona has never belonged to a church. But for a week townspeople came around and just sat with her family. “No one does that. I couldn’t believe it. We felt so loved. And we’ve never left.”
Ramona has lovely light red hair and a pink baseball cap covered with Rte 66 pins from around the country. She seems to be the kind of person who absorbs every bit of spiritual nourishment from whatever bits and pieces of experience and relationship she is given. “Nothing is going to get me down for long,” she said. I thought of Ma in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. God holds up the skeleton of her spirit.
Athirst is my soul for the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God? Lead me on and bring me to your dwelling place.
I stayed in the Texas room. It’s decorated with photos and watercolors by Shellee Graham and Jerry McClanahan, both Route 66 travelers, artists, authors and aficionados. I’m using Jerry’s mapbook EZ66 Guide for Travelers for point by point directions while I travel the Old Highway. Towards the end of the book he invites his readers to visit, and gives his address in Oklahoma City.
I won’t make it to his house to visit. But as I get off what Jerry calls the “super slab” and drive over the old concrete roads and bridges of Route 66, my body slows down and I look forward to more encounters with others who have left the fast lane.
(2 Kings 5, Psalm 42, Psalm 130, Luke 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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