Visiting with Old Friends

Fifty-four years ago, in January 1970, I left college and moved to Oregon to work on the Shiloh Study Center (aka the Land) in Dexter Oregon. I was one of sixteen single men, along with two single women (Niki Sands and Nancy Finley), and one married couple, David and Cathy Stewart. (I’m in the far right in this picture.) According to Wikipedia, Shiloh YRC was the largest Christian communal outreach organization in the United States. If you’ve seen the movie The Jesus Revolution [now on Netflix], you’ve seen a depiction of the House of Miracles, the early incarnation of Shiloh.

In June, Kathy Gross was hitchhiking on Rattlesnake Road, just outside of Dexter, when two brothers from the Land, John Higgins and Jack Sawyer, picked her up and asked her if she wanted to come for dinner. She came for dinner, and spent the night in the girl’s dorm where Debbie Bryson shared the Good News of the Gospel with her. She left, but the next day she prayed to receive Christ, and came back and moved onto the Land, where we met.

Later in the summer, two of the brothers, George Bryson (Debbie’s husband), and Larry Pilgrim moved to Burns, Oregon to start a Christian House, and Kathy soon moved there. In August, I left Oregon with three other brothers, Steve Waters, Brad Anderson, and Peter David, for Boise, Idaho where we started one of the first Shiloh Houses outside of Oregon.

 

In January 1971, three of us 21-year-olds left Eugene, Oregon in a 1965 Volkswagen bus, heading for Savannah, Georgia, a city none of us had ever visited. My companions were Larry and Toni Pilgrim and their dog Shadow. Larry and Toni were going to pastor a new Shiloh house, and I was going as their deacon.

Driving over the Rockies, we had the feeling, as Larry said, that “we could have walked faster.” It was bitter cold driving through Montana and Wyoming, and we bought a heater so I wouldn’t freeze in the back seat. It is still one of my fondest memories. This is the Whitaker Street House, across from Forsyth Park in Savannah.

On Monday, Kathy and I went to see Larry and Toni Pilgrim at their home in South Lake Tahoe. We haven’t seen them for over twenty years.

We got to Carson City, Nevada, around 2:30, where we met Larry at his business, Sierra Home and Hearth, where he sells wood stoves, closets, and window coverings. His son, Tobiah and the rest of his staff got a kick out of us old-folks reminiscing about our time in Shiloh.

Larry had some photos on his iPad that we’d never seen, and Kathy insisted he send her this photo of chicken picking, one of the jobs we did to support ourselves. 

I pulled out some pictures that I had of our time in Savannah. This was me in front of a candle shop which we opened, called Beauty for Ashes, and here is Larry officiating at our wedding in Dexter Oregon, a year later.

Around 4 PM, Kathy and I took off to check into our motel, the Blackjack Inn in South Lake Tahoe. It took a while because the street was closed, and we had to figure out how to get by the road blocks. 

By 5 PM we were back at Larry and Toni’s house in Marla Bay on Tahoe’s North Shore. Toni prepared a delicious dinner (although Larry smoked the meat), which we ate on the patio, overlooking the lake.

After dinner, we all took the dog for a walk down to the lake, where a kind neighbor took our picture. The sunset was beautiful. Afterwards, back at the house, we continued talking until almost 11 PM. It was really a wonderful time.

If it’s Thursday, it must be Redding

By the summer of 1972, Kathy and I were engaged. On Saturday’s a group of us would go to the Broadway House in Eugene for a Bible study and then go witnessing on the streets. In Shiloh, couples weren’t allowed to be alone together, so we took this opportunity to go on a date and stop by the Thrifty Drugstore for an ice cream cone while we handed out our tracts.

In front of Thrifty’s we met a young hippie couple named Bruce and Teresa Muller, and engaged them in conversation. We asked if they needed a place to stay, and directed them to the Broadway house, handing them over to a couple of sisters, since Kathy and I were more interested in being alone together, to tell you the truth. They are in the lower-left corner of this picture of the Atlanta Shiloh team.

On Thursday, we went to visit Bruce at their new home in Redding California. We left Tahoe before 9 AM, after a delicious breakfast at the Driftwood Cafe (rated 4.7 on Google Maps, which I’ll attest to). Kathy had a vegetable scramble, while I had a High-Sierra turkey and bacon omelette.

Leaving Tahoe, we headed West on Highway 44 towards Susanville and Lassen National Park. The smoke from the Park fire was heavy in the air. When we stopped in Susanville to get some lunch and supplies, the Safeway was full of firefighters from Cal Fire.

Luckily, the road was not closed by the fire and we got to Redding around 4 PM and checked into our hotel. After getting settled, we headed over to Bruce and Teresa’s house. Unfortunately, the address we had for them, which was eight years old, took us to a condo where they no longer lived. We gave them a call and Teresa sent us their new address, on the other side of town.

Their house is beautiful, set on ten acres above the Sacramento River. It is really a hippie’s dream. All of our old Shiloh friends we have visited on this trip have remarked on how good the Lord has been to us.

Teresa made us a wonderful dinner, and, as the sun set, we went out on the patio to get a picture. Then, as we had the night before, we spent the evening catching up and remembering our time in Shiloh.

It was hard to tear ourselves away, but we had a long drive on Friday to Portland, our next stop, so we left a little after 9 PM and headed back to our hotel.

Friday in Portlandia

Friday was our longest driving day so far. We had breakfast at our hotel, and got started early. The driving was pretty easy, since it is straight up the 5 freeway. We only got off the freeway once in Cottage Grove, where I got a root-beer float and Kathy picked some Oregon blackberries, which were delicious.

Since Kathy is scrupulously honest, I should mention that this picture is actually some blackberries we picked on Saturday, while visiting the Rick Steves Europe store in Edmonds, Washington. However, the Oregon blackberries looked exactly like this, so I’m claiming artistic license.

We didn’t get to Portland until around 5PM. After checking into our hotel, we called Nancy Finley Lukcik, one of the two single women (girls really) who worked on the Land with us when I first got there in 1970, and made arrangements to meet at the Olive Garden. Here’s Nancy on the Land in 1970 taking care of two of the baby goats we had.

Neither of us had seen Nancy for more than 25 years. It was wonderful sharing a meal with her and catching. Nancy’s husband, Andy Lukcik, died a few years ago, and she still deeply misses him. Nancy says that he was the true love of her life. Andy was also one of the brothers in the Savannah House when I was there, as well as the best man at Larry Pilgrim’s wedding.

The last three days have been a wonderful start to our vacation. It’s amazing how strong our friendships are, and how comfortable we all felt with each other. Talking this over with Larry, he said, “It’s just different when you live with someone 24 hours a day.” I agree. I have a lot of acquaintances, colleagues and friends, but there is nothing like the brothers and sisters that we met in Shiloh.