Most of you have  lived far more interesting lives than I have. I would
rather read about you. And since I have a regular venue for haranguing
everyone else, I feel a little foolish about autobiographing myself. But in
the spirit of good sportsmanship, or some such folderol, and since I
challenged Allen and he wrote his, for whatever it is worth, here it is.

My family played a tiny, but interesting role in Sheridan's history. Some of
it has been published in Corral Dust, with more to come.

I was born in a log cabin I built with my own hands. Actually, it was in
Sheridan County Memorial Hospital on the east side of the tracks. (Anybody
else out there remember the running friction between the town and CBQ? Or
who the hospital was a memorial to?)

Though my father was a postal worker, he found he could not refuse delivery
of the merchandise, and took my mother and me home to 916 Clarendon Ave. a
block west and 2 or 3 blocks north of the high school.

I had a sister five years older than I was. At 15 she died of spinal
meningitis. We camped a great deal. I loved to hike alone, often off the
trails. When I got into high school, I always had a job on some ranch or
other for the summer. The summers I was 17 and 18 I spent alone on a ranch
out toward the Wolf Mountains east of Lodgegrass. I remember those as the
most quiet, peaceful, and contented summers of my life.

When I was a sophomore, my father had a heart attack that came within a
heartbeat, literally, of killing him. For some time we had no income except
what I made. He improved, and lived for 15 more years.

When school was in session, I had four part time jobs which always required
rising very early, and often going to bed quite late. One teacher was kind
enough to let me stand by an open window and write tests and quizzes on the
window sill in order to stay alert.

My grandfather, being a gunsmith, had boxes of old pistols of all kinds and
models. Also along his garage wall and in his shop were stacks 18 inches
deep of rifles and shotguns. These were guns people had brought through the
years to be repaired, and had never returned for. Many of them were
irreparable. So he told me to help myself. I cannibalized the worst ones and
repaired the better ones, and sold them to make a little extra money.
Everyone was hurting in the thirties, and we did what we could.

When 16 I suffered a serious attack of religion which produced the delusion
that I would be a fire-eyed evangelist. So when I finished high school, well
over half a century ago, I arrived in Chicago to attend the Moody Bible
Institute. That is not quite true. That green 18-year-old who lugged his
suitcase off the train, wondering how to find Institute Place was a far
different person from the old man writing this. Come to think of it, I'm not
sure I ever knew him. To me Sheridan, with its 10,000 people, was a large
city.

>From this bucolic life alone on a ranch I went to a Chicago of 3 million
people. My room was in a century-old building, the original building built
by Dwight L. Moody. My window looked across an alley at the back of a
tenement.

Never before had I shared a room with anyone but a dog, but at Moody I had a
rampageous roommate. The best thing I can say is that we did not like each
other.

I had gone from where the only sounds were those of nature to the roar of
the el, diabolical screech of streetcars, shriek of sirens. And soot
drifting down like black pollen.

I went from casual bunk house living, sleeping in my bedroll under a canvas
tarp, to a regimentation requiring white shirt, tie, and suit every day. The
saying was, "You can always tell a Moody student because when you meet him,
his face shines; when you pass him, his pants shine." It was true, at least
about the pants.

A lady inspector turned down spreads each day to check if there were
wrinkles in the sheets. Never had I experienced such an intensive antipathy
as I had for Chicago - every aspect of it.

I longed for the lone, cool quiet. The night calls of owls and coyotes, and
the occasional bawl of a bull, the stomp of a horse.

And ignorant! When I arrived at MBI, (I called it Moody Insti-Bible-toot) my
knowledge consisted of some of the Bible stories, and that there was an Old
and  New Testament. I recall asking someone what "doctrine" meant. I had
tried to get a head start on my education by memorizing the names and order
of the 66 books.

In almost intolerable situations one survives sometimes by inventing his own
recreation. Mine was at meal time. The dining room was a block-long room in
a basement, with rank upon rank of tables. Each table seated five on a side,
one at each end.

One day I asked the student next to me about something I had heard in class.
He gave me an answer which he backed up by citing several Bible verses or
half-verses. He had hardly finished his explanation when another young
theologue said, "But in (Book, Chapter, verse) the Bible says ." In no time
the whole table was embroiled in a theological argument.

So after that, not being a nice person, when I was bored, I would casually
ask a question I thought would be controversial. Then I quietly ate while
the war raged around me. It worked every time, and was pretty entertaining.

School went through July. We got August off, and I could hardly wait to get
back to the clean skies and sanity of Wyoming. Problem was I had money
enough to get home, but not to get back. I wasn't about to let a little
thing like lack of money keep me from going home.

When vacation was over, I grabbed a side-door-Pullman. It was a rough,
dirty, and sometimes splintery ride. Trains in those days were still drawn
by steam locomotive, and that black, coal smoke would lay back and churn
over those freight cars.

I was stranded one evening in a small town in Iowa, and walked all night to
stay warm. I watched the lights come on in cozy homes, and my heart ached.
After supper, folks sat in their living rooms reading the paper. Then blinds
were drawn, lights came on in bedrooms. Around ten they started going dark.
By 12:30 every house sat somber in the night, stores were dead, and streets
empty. I believe I covered every street full length, some several times,
before dawn.

Never did I learn to love Chicago. I didn't learn much from the curriculum
at MBI. Mostly whatever I learned that was useful had nothing to do with the
curriculum.

The Navy rescued me by pulling me out to go beat the Japanese for them. I
don't think I shortened that war by 15 seconds. I doubt I even scared them.
But I think I did win that quiet, continuing war between the enlisted men -
that was me - and the officers.

Kathleen says I color outside the lines. I think I have always been somewhat
of a misfit. At least, that young ranch hand trying to be a Bible student in
the heart of Chicago was.

I was a slow learner about some things, so after the war, on the bad advice
of the pastor, I went to a religious college in Minneapolis. There I met
Kathleen. She graduated in 1948, a year ahead of me. August 6, 1949, with
the temperature around 100 or more, we were married. And it was the first
time on record that the temperature in Sheridan did not cool at night. We
may as well have been in Chicago. Some of you more senior ladies,
considering feminine underclothes of that era, have some idea of Kathleen's
problems dressing in that heat.

I still had not learned the big lesson life was trying to teach me, so I was
ordained in the Baptist Church which was then on the little triangle at the
confluence of Coffeen and Burkitt I think. In a way, the ordination exam was
the toughest I ever took.

One would think after Bible school and college I would have begun to learn,
but as I said, I am a slow learner. So off we went (again on lousy pastoral
advice) to a Baptist theological seminary in Portland, Oregon. In 1955 I
obtained a degree in divinity, and we moved to Springfield so I could take
graduate work at the University of Oregon.

We had already had one pastorate, but being a slow learner . . So in
Springfield, both of us holding down jobs, and enrolled in graduate studies,
we took another pastorate.

Finally, (how often must I stick my finger in a socket?) it began to dawn on
us (me mainly) that I was decidedly and profoundly on the wrong track. When
my contract ended, we quit pastoral work.

Though we attend church with moderate regularity, we have never joined
another. But what does one do with all that specialized education? I took a
few Ed courses at the U.O. and went to teaching language arts in secondary
schools.

Over the years I have worked in Sheridan driving a dump truck, and in Oregon
driving tractor-trailer rigs. I worked for the Baptist Church in Sheridan as
teamster and caretaker at Camp Bethel. Using the team, I snaked all the logs
off the steep mountain sides and helped in  building the original
dorm/meeting hall.

I have worked for a veterinarian, as a glazier, for a safe and lock company
in Minneapolis. I was in Civil Service on the Portland waterfront, fireman
at a mill, and some other things; and have been jailed only once.

I retired from teaching in 1985, and in 1987 I was sent as a delegate with
WFP to observe first hand our war against the people of Nicaragua. I think
that may be the most positive thing I ever did for doing some real good.

We built an octagonal house on a lot at the coast. We had never built a
house before, and the lot had a 45 degree slope. So we learned a lot about
construction including the plumbing and electrical - and compound miters;
lots of compound miters - and we learned a great deal about ourselves.

I have been freelancing for close to 15 years, and a little over a decade
ago The Springfield News asked me to be a feature writer for them. For a
year or so I also wrote for Dr. C. Everett Koop's website, and have sold
articles to some national magazines.

I have been a finalist in several contests, and got honorable mention (came
in 95th) in a Writers Digest poetry contests. I did not win, but the editors
said it was a field of 13,000, so I did not think that was too shabby.

I also got 4th place for a short story in a WD contest of 9000 entrants.
Both of these pieces have been picked up to be published in an anthology
called Scent of Cedars in October of 2002.

Kathleen is a brilliant thinker (Don't ask me! I don't know why she married
me!) And a prolific reader. She reads to me while I knit. Occasionally I do
leather carving.

My hobby is collecting mixed metaphors, tautologies, and skid talk.

I have written about 50 short stories - several of them pretty good, about
50 limericks - some of them clean, some sonnets and other poems, several
parodies, and a couple of novels of the west, neither published yet.

In 1988 I was diagnosed with a large cancer, and have been in a running
battle with it ever since. In 1991 my aortic valve was replaced with a
mechanical one. I have had two mild strokes, and a subdural hematoma
(bleeding between the brain and the skull). With so many things trying to
kill me and failing, I figure neither place wants me.

Well, death is a joke. It is certainly a part of life, and life is a joke,
so .

Next time around, maybe I will do something .... Is there a next time?

Milt Cunningham, el Viejo

I think I put in about sixty times more than anyone is interested in, but
you didn't have to read it, you know.