Life in a 24 foot moving box!

My family is having a little getaway in a 32 foot RV of my in law’s. It reminds me a lot of the days when my family of 6 traveled full time in a 24 foot Winnebago. Now I was a very young girl, so I don’t remember time frames really well, so I can’t tell you how long we traveled in the motor home. I just remember events and fun times in our little moving tin can.  Mom said in was a 1974 Winnebago.  I have googled it and found several images. I have tried to no avail to get some of the interior. I have found some that were close, so I included those for you to get an idea of what it was like. I have also made up a little floor plan for you to get an idea of what that was like too. Now, like I said, I was young. I don’t remember there being a sitting area, but there may have been. But I thought I would share with you some of the things I remember about living in a 24foot moving box with 5 other people.

 

First of all showers were interesting to say the least. The bathroom was a small square (small even to a kid, can’t imagine what it was like for mom and dad). When you took your shower, you sat on the potty and pulled the shower curtain around the walls. Now the bathroom became a shower stall. You turned on the water and got your body and hair wet. Then turned off the water quickly, then soaped up all the appropriate areas, including hair, then turned on the water again and rinsed all the water off. Then you put conditioner on your hair, brushed through the tangles, then turned off the water and hoped at this point you had not run out of hot water, you usually had. So you just kinda leaned way over and just ran the cold water over your hair and tried not to get any on you. Then you pulled the shower curtain back and tied into place and it was the bathroom again. Mind you, you have never really stood up, you have to sit on the potty the whole time. That was what we call a motor home shower. We still refer to that, anytime we are in a situation where the hot water tank is small or several people have to shower back to back. We will say “take a motor home shower so the hot water goes further”.



This is the kind of latch that was attached to the ceiling.



Second the sleeping arrangements were unique. Mom and Dad’s beds were at the back of the motor home, it was 2 twin beds that could be made into a king but it was a lot of trouble so they didn’t do that often.  Above that area, was Tina and Jeni’s bed. This was most likely a full size bed. It was only about a foot or 18 inches from the top of the motor home. There was a latch on the ceiling that when the bed wasn’t in use you could just push the bed up and a metal loop on the bed frame would hook into the latch that was attached to the ceiling. This exact same concept was repeated above the driver and passenger seat. This is where Marla and I slept. Now, let me explain something to you, when you are trying to roll over in the middle of the night, 12-18 inches, does not allow you the luxury of sitting up, fluffing your pillow, then rolling over. OH NO, you sit up once and you have a knot on your forehead the next morning so big you look like a Cyclops!! Also, those midnight potty runs, are a little more challenging, especially if you are the sister on the inside (which I always was) First you gotta crawl over another kid, not hitting your head on the ceiling, and know EXACTLY where that metal latch I mentioned before is. Because hitting that thing is a new kinda hurt!! Then drop to the floor, which was about 5 ½ feet or so. Then go to the bathroom then come back. Now Marla and I didn’t usually have the ladder on our side, because we could use the backs of the drivers seat to get into our bed. Which is ok, most of the time, but when you are giving it the ole’ heave ho and you forget about that metal latch and you hit dead in the center of your still developing little 8 or 9 yr old skull, it can make you wanna throw up!! Then of course you still gotta crawl over a kid, who might I add, wakes up like a bear, so you cant scream like you want to cause she might kill you. Then finally drift off to dream land checking the top of your head for a pool of blood.

The drives from town to town were always an adventure. We thought it was great fun to ride anywhere in the motor home. We thought we were cool to get to play games at the table driving down the road, and have mom make us sandwiches and get to eat right there on the road. That was so fun. But inevitably we would get bored sitting at the table and end up on “the hump”. This was located between the driver and passenger seat. It covered part of the engine and it was warm and hummed and all 4 of us girls fit there somehow. We would sit on “the hump” most of the drive. I think there was an 8 track player, and dad talked on the CB. I remember a little fan that faced dad and if I close my eyes and think about it I can still hear the sound that thing made. After a while of all 4 of us girls sitting all over mom and dad one of them would finally say “yall go back there” and we were supposed to go sit in the very back, where their beds were,(when they weren’t beds they were 2 couches). I guess they wanted us to talk to each other or something. That never lasted very long. One by one we would all slowly make our way back to “the hump”.  I realize now that was probably the worst place we could have ridden, one good wreck and we’d all been through the window. But no one believed in seatbelts back then, so we were as safe as anyone I guess.

Mom was the navigator, with a an atlas and a keen sense of direction mom got us where ever we needed to go.  Of course this was before GPS. Mom still is great at getting you somewhere. You can call her from anywhere on I40 in Arkansas and Most of Tennessee and tell her what mile marker you are at and she can tell you what the next 4 exits are and what gas stations and restaurants are at each. Mom and dad have traveled a lot.  One of our families favorite stories is when we were in our 24 foot motor home and mom decided she was going to take a nap. She had mapped out the route we were to take for dad and it was quite simple. All dad had to do was “Stay on 9” I guess this was hwy 9 or interstate 9. All any of us remember is how many times before she went to lay down she said to dad, and all of us “just stay on 9” to the point dad got annoyed and said “I got it honey now go lay down”, to which she replied “just stay on 9”. Well when mom got up from her 2 hour nap we were about an hour and a half off of interstate 9 and she was very unhappy. We don’t know where or how dad got off of 9, that was one time we all got off “the hump” and gladly went to the back and sat on the couches and giggled.

We have great memories of traveling together in that little moving box. When I was looking through to find pictures my heart skipped a beat as I found one of the inside of a motor home that was very close to the inside of ours.  I wish I could go back and watch videos of us back then, I bet I was really cute!! But beyond that, I know that we were building memories and creating a sense of family that has made me who I am. I wouldn’t trade that for the world!!! I hope that I can be the kind of parent to my kids that my parents were to me. They set great examples for me to put God 1^st in your life and to love your family with all your heart!! Thank you mom and dad for takings us on great adventures to revival after revival in a 24foot motor HOME!!!

"The Personality"

We all 6 have it in some varying degree. It is its own entity. I say that only because it takes on a life of its own.  It takes over when you least expect it to. It will give you the boldness that usually comes from bottle of whiskey. It says things you don’t want it to. The personality, is funny at times, inappropriate  at other times, and it can take over a room of unsuspecting party goers in a New York minute!! This personality of ours, we all have fell victim to its good side and its bad side. There is the fact that it can make you a fun loving life of a party kind of a person, but with that comes the bad side of doing or saying something stupid.   I’ll give you some examples, I’ll leave out the names, just to protect the not so innocent.

One example of “the personality” making you say things you don’t really want to is when one of the family members, was visiting the home of the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God. (For those of you that may not be of our denomination, that is like our Pope) While he was giving a tour of his back deck overlooking a beautiful golf course, they paused and “someone” was standing by a large bush  and from that bush came fluttering a HUGE BIRD!! This “someone” is very afraid of birds, so she/he went into the fetal position and began screaming “Jesus, Jesus”! Which was an actual prayer but misunderstood by everyone there as a swear word.

This personality of ours, makes us have the need to be clever, and funny at times. So we often say things to amuse others or ourselves. Like when “someone” orders at Wendy’s and they say “do you want to biggie size that?” and “someone” says “No thank you I am Biggie enough”.  The examples of this kind of banter are endless. But occasionally we are just trying to get through the day, and we end up saying stupid stuff. Like once a particular family member in his/her job was trying to ask a client if they would like an envelope. Instead she said “Would you like a video tape?” Of course the client then wanted to know what kind of video tape she had to offer!!

But when some times that personality kicks in and like I said before gives you the boldness that usually only comes from a whiskey bottle. Once a family member went to a LARGE prophetic conference that was being led by some VERY big names in those circles, there were over a thousand people in attendance. After one very moving service where the conference leaders had brought up some Native American Indians and led the people in a lengthy prayer service of repentance for the way our nation had treated them many years ago. “Someone” went to the conference leaders and let them know that if the Lord led them to lead the congregation in a prayer service of repenting for all the redneck jokes she and our family would be willing to stand in the gap for all the rednecks of America.   

Once when we were teenagers, our family was eating at McDonalds. We were all cutting up and having a great time, like we usually do. That day the personality came out in full force in one particular unnamed individual who became slightly annoyed with the stares we were getting. So she began “taking names”, (like your elementary teacher used to have you do when she would leave the room to make everyone behave). Anyway she announced loudly that she was going to be taking names. For whatever reason, this made one patron very unhappy, and she let us know just how unhappy she was with “someone’s” decision to take names. So to help calm the situation down that “someone” looks the unhappy patron in the eye and says “you just got a CHECK MARK”. Needless to say we had to leave McDonalds rather quickly after that.

We have had to leave restaurants rather quickly a few times.  Mostly because we have laughed so loud that we have made everyone around us upset. Once we left a restaurant and dad told us “ya’ll did everything but yell out the secret code” (that’s a Ray Stevens song reference in case you aren’t a fan!!) Once we were almost kicked out of a grocery store because of “the personality” it had us doing some creative coupon shopping. Where one person would give us hints of what the coupon was for then the rest of us would have to run all over the store to find the product then back to the coupon holder to see if we got it right.  We were making a small scene, not to bad, for us anyway, until the coupon holder gave us the hint “it rhymes with Utty EBBLES” We all fell out laughing and had to quit playing the game.

This personality is a blessing and a burden. It is great that we all 6 have it. Sometimes we will call each other and say stuff like “I was at a party last night and I was doing that thing that we all do” and we know exactly what the other one means. From the way you were sitting to the emotion behind whatever you said. When you answer the person “yeah, I know” there are many levels to that understand, that no one but the 6 of us may ever truly get. I am so very glad that I have my family to share this personality with. No one can make me laugh like they do, cause we think the same things are funny. No one thinks I am as funny as they think I am, cause they would do the same thing in my shoes. We work together like gears in a machine!! If you are reading this blog, that is because you know one of the 6 of us, or you may have the pleasure of knowing all 6 of us. If you only know one, you really should spend some time with all 6 of us together, it is quite a show. If you have ever had the joy of spending time with the 6 of us together then you may have a few stories of “the Personality” to share too!!

A family that works together..................

All of us worked when we were on the field. When we got to a church on a Saturday, everyone had a job to do. Dad set up the outside of the motor home, electric, water, “gray water” etc…. Mom set up the inside of the motor home, beds, pantry, fridge etc.  The kids set up the tape table, I think we had the best job. It was the easiest by far. The pastor would tell us where to set up, sometimes we were in the foyer, sometimes we were in hallways, or the back of the sanctuary or anywhere in between. We would pull out the maroon velvet table cloth with the gold tassel trim that had “Lift Jesus Higher Ministries Evangelist Sam Austin” in gold block letters in an arch on the front. We worked for quite a while to make sure that the letters were centered just right on the 6 foot table provided by the church. We would find the closest plug in and plug up the tape duplicator, which a must have for any traveling evangelist in the 80’s. Ours could duplicate an hour long sermon on 3 tapes front and back in about 60 seconds. It weighed no less than 65 pounds which was about 10 pounds more than our little sister, so picking it up and getting it on the table, was an adventure.  Then we would lay out the books, preaching series and the ever coveted tape “The Austin Girls Sing” featuring songs like “Jesus is alive and well” , “He’s still working on me”, “We’re not home yet children”, “When Jesus returns for His own” and many more!!  I know that there are some of you are thinking, “HEY!!! I want one of those!!!”, well, they were only available for a limited time.   So I am sorry to tell you, that we have sold out and they are no longer in circulation. 

After we had worked our marketing magic on the tape table, placing the books and tapes in just the right places to catch the revival attending, holy spirit seeking, shopper’s eye, Dad would come in and we would “help” set up the sound system. Dad would always bring in his own sound system, he liked to be loud, and if someone else controlled the knobs they turned him down the louder he got.  He would run the mic check. We would run through our song that we were planning on singing for Sunday morning. Then we were all set to begin the week’s services.

Then during the week we had work to do too. One job that was always needed was, cleaning the spit screen of dad’s mic. Dad’s one of those holler and walk the aisle kind of preachers. So every night he would have to have the spit screen cleaned out, because trust me you don’t want to be near a spit screen that has not been cleaned with soap and water after a week of preaching.

Another one of our during the week jobs was cleaning old tapes. Every night dad taped his sermons. Then sometime around the beginning to middle of the altar time, he would stop the recording and give one of mom the tape. It was usually mom’s job to go make 3-6 copies (only because often we forgot to load the Master tape in the top left slot. If you put a blank tape in that spot and the master tape in the top right, the blank records white nothingness over the master and you get a grumpy daddy.) At the end of the week sometimes we had tapes didn’t sell, and we needed to reuse them. So it was our job to clean them. First we ran them through a magnetic eraser. The old “master” tapes were written on with sharpie, so we had this one chemical that we would put on a cotton ball and it would wipe the sharpie off with a few swipes. But the ones with the labels on were harder to get off. So we had to put another other chemical on them. I am not sure how wise it was to allow us to handle these chemicals, I just know we weren’t allowed to smoke around them. I don’t know what chemicals these were, but I am wondering now if they might be what ruined my short term memory. I don’t know what chemicals these were, but I am wondering now if they might be what ruined my short term memory. 

Friday nights, after service, mom would at some point begin to sing “I feel like traveling on” and we would start the tear down process.  Packing everything back in the boxes that we took them out of last Saturday, I will say, that most of the time we would be missing one sister. She was rather famous for figuring out ways to get out of the manual labor type work.  Dad would back the trailer, motor home, truck, van, car, or whatever we were driving at the time up to the doors of the church and we would load it up and drive to the next church and do it all over again.

We loved what we did, didn’t know any different. I swear, I thought everyone went to church 7 times a week, knew how to set up a sound board,  knew how to duplicate tapes and how to pack a trailer with 2 speakers and 13 boxes and old suitcases by the time they were 10!! I laugh now when I am at ladies events and something goes haywire, with the audio or projector stuff and  the first thing they all do is yell “go get a man in here so they can fix this” or “go get someone to push play on this DVD player for us” or “there is no sound coming from this soundboard whatever shall we do” and I feel great sense of accomplishment when I can go over and say “we don’t need a man, I got this” and push play on the dvd, player, set up the surround sound better than George Lucas himself could have done it and all without breaking a nail!! I love the life lessons I learned on the field and wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world!!

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Getting Called Out!!

As you can imagine we spent many many nights at church growing up. As we have stated, mom kept us on the 2nd pew. I remember one night at a revival, in some town, in some state, (who can keep them straight at this point!!) Mom was sick and couldn't come to church. She sent dressed us all in our matching dresses, and we took our seats in the expected 2nd pew. I remember this night very well because as daddy was preaching that night us 3 little girls must have been cutting up pretty good. With mom not there to give us the occasional "shhhh" or pinch when we needed it, or pop on the back of the head (Mom, was famous for this she would reach over and pop each one of us in the back of the head POP- POP- POP as needed. Then just keep on worshiping, never miss a beat.)  things must have gotten out of hand pretty bad. I just remember us writing, laughing, talking and all the sudden #4 was lifted in the air and gone, Dad was moving her to the front row on the opposite side of the sanctuary. I looked up and about that time Dad lifted me up and put me on the front row of the section we were sitting on. #2 stayed on the 2nd row we were originally sitting on. The great part was Dad never stopped preaching, he never broke his train of thought, wasn't distracted, never lost his anointing.  I will say, I don't think I took a deep breath the rest of the service, I didn't know what was going to go down when we got back to the motor home. 

It's always fun when you are the preacher's kid and your sitting in a service not really paying attention till you hear your name and it's followed by "go sit with your mother". The few times that has happened. I knew that I might as well get ready, the storm was coming when we got home!!

I am so glad that when God called mom and dad they didn’t answer with “we have young kids we can’t go on the evangelistic field full time”. They just picked up and went. Dad didn’t cancel a service cause mom was sick and couldn’t take care of us during church, he just preached, and moved us as necessary, cause we were busy being kids. Sometimes people let the littlest things get in the way of doing what God calls them to do. If God asks you to do something, He knows what you have on your plate, and he obviously thinks you could do it or he wouldn’t ask you to do it. So I encourage you to pick up and go like mom and dad did, no matter what obstacles you think might be in your way.

Paper trail

In her comment on my first entry mom tells about letting us have paper in church.  We were not allowed an iPad, PSP or any such invention.  No dolls or etcha sketch nary even a slinky were we permitted. But we had paper,and we knew how to use it.  (This was mainly the three youngest, Tina used her paper in far more mature ways than we.)  

This is how you take three sheets of typing paper and make it last for at least a one hour sermon:  First you tear each sheet in half, instantly doubled the fun.  You do this accurately by letting the oldest (2 of 4) be in chrage.  You line up the edges crease with your fingernail and finally lick it.  By licking it you ensure that the tearing sound of paper dividing does not attract the attention of the Pastors wife sitting in front of you,on the 1st pew.

Next, you chose what games are to be played on what sections of paper.  You have the dot game, tic tac toe, the game that predicts who you will marry, what car you will have and so on.  But the most fun was taking a sheet and tearing it into small shapes, licking them and sticking them to a song book, much like you would a flannel board in Sunday School.  There really are no limits to what you can do with typing paper and very creative sisters!

And if it so happened that dad preached a little longer than usual......there was always looking under the pew and trying to match feet to people, good times.

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Family Prayer Time

One of the things I love about our family time together is when we get to have "church".  Sometimes it is hard for families to pray together. Mainly because our family knows us better than anyone else.  They see when we act crazy and get angry, or maybe say something we shouldn't.  I love that my family sees all of us "warts" and all, but when it comes time to come before God in prayer and worship, we allow each one the grace God gives us to approach the throne of grace. 
The best thing we can do for each other is to give a "clean slate" to each other as often as possible.  God does it for us.  His grace for us is limitless, how can we do anything less for each other?
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Provision from a can of Dr. Pepper

When we were on the field full time (for those not familiar with the lingo, that just means evangelistic filed, where dad was preaching in a different church every week.) Usually our week consisted of revival services Sunday morning and Sunday night then Monday thru Friday nights. Then on Saturdays we would travel to the next location.

This one summer we were traveling in a truck and 5th wheel motor home. From what I remember the truck was brown and old. It seems to me that something on it broke, blew up, spewed out or popped, on every road trip. We planned extra time in our travel days for breakdowns.

Once when traveling to the next revival, dad noticed that smoke was coming from under the hood of truck. He quickly pulled over, a rather burly looking man on a Harley was behind us and passed us as soon as dad got stopped good. Dad popped the hood and there was a fire in the engine. About the time dad started yelling for mom to get all is out of the truck the man on the Harley was back. He was shaking his 20oz Dr. Pepper as he came to a stop. He jumped off his Hogg and popped the top off the Dr. Pepper and let it spew all over the fire. It was just enough to put the fire completely out.

It's those very cool memories of God's timing and provision that reminds me that He will always take care of us . I don't know what we would have done if the Harley man wouldn't have been there. I guess we would have had to watch the truck go up in flames, along with the 5th wheel motorhome. But instead God provided a thirsty burly man to the rescue!!

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