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Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports and from business to history and everything in between, including your story. Send them to Our American Stories dot com.
They're some of our favorites. James L. Johnson. He's a longtime pastor and he and his wife, Linda, have served together in Washington and California, among other places.
They have nine kids live in Rogers, Minnesota. Pastor Jim finds peculiar friends wherever he goes, wherever he lives, wherever he travels in one form or another. This is the story about one of those friends. Here's Jim Johnson and the story of Everett Model. Everett was a peculiar man in our town, smiling, awkward and heavy footed. He spoke with a backthroat lisp, but he didn't talk much.
Not to most people, but Everett would talk to me. I got the Lord in my life, Everett told me, not so long after he started coming to our church in a small town in northern Minnesota. He cried when he said it. Every time he said it, I think Everett cried. Jesus is in my heart, he would say.
It was 25 years ago this Christmas we sang our last Christmas carol together. I couldn't always understand his words, but I could always understand this much. Everett Model, the peculiar old man who mowed four lawns a day with a broken down mower for five dollars a yard, needed community, he needed to work, and he wanted you to know that he was a Christian.
Everybody knew whoever it was. In the northwestern frozen cold Minnesota burg where we used to live with 1,527 citizens and two grocery stores, a coast to coast and a hardware hank, you couldn't help but notice the Everett's of the world. He was about 60 years old back then, but looked a little older and he was, as we used to say it, a little slow.
Although it doesn't seem nice to say it that way now. Ever since his divorce years ago to a private but functional owner of Mary's Corner Closet, the thrift store, Everett had made his home in a low rent senior home, a rest home as we used to call it, a six room gray shaked house with two gables, aging but well kept, the Johnson rest home said the sign on the side. Because of Everett's quirky personality and his awkward way of talking and his seemingly worsening health, he moved from one rest home to another, one town to the next until his diabetic condition forced the move to Midway nursing home in the oldest part of our town. Staying at Midway said a lot in itself. The seniors with a little better means, who needed help, they stayed in the newer municipal home by the highway. The municipal was definitely a step up. Attached to the regional hospital and a growing health clinic, the municipal was clean and new and bore the look of modern healthcare.
Everett did not live at the municipal home, he lived at the Midway. The Midway home was, well, green. It was the original hospital in our town, a rectangular building with three floors. The Midway was built in the 1920s and saved from razing because it was, as we used to say, too good to go to waste.
Painted in that verdant guacamole color, it brought smiles to first time visitors to our town. But it served fine for Everett and about 20 other also-rans of life back then. Three meals a day and a regular turnover of nursing assistants who made about $8 an hour and worked hard at it. The Midway home was for people who grew up in the country and worked on homestead farms or taught in two-room schoolhouses. Those folks, like my folks, didn't feel necessarily that it was a step down to live in Midway. It was a step up for them and as a pastor of a local mainline church, I held services there every Sunday afternoon and would visit people like Everett. Everett at first lived just two blocks from our parsonage on Second Street, so I saw him often but honestly tried to avoid him. My next door neighbor Steve was the first to befriend him. Steve couldn't help himself. Everett asked if he could mow his lawn one day and Steve was easy.
He was a new Christian with a tender heart and he could not say no. Everett pushed his lawnmower the two blocks from the restroom to our lot near the corner by the Dairy Queen on Second Street. And I have to admit, yes, I did think it looked odd to see a hunched and aging man mowing the lawn of a young, burly maintenance man, but Steve was undeterred. Steve said, everybody needs to have a purpose.
What's life without a job? Well, I couldn't disagree with that, so I paid Everett five dollars to mow my lawn too. The lines weren't always straight. He cut into my tree roots. He started mowing too early in the day. And his ancient Toro lawnmower coughed up clouds of blue smoke, but Linda and I hired him five dollars just to be nice, once a week at least. Whenever it came to mow my grass, he would often crank up the Toro at seven o'clock in the morning, waking up our three little girls. Everett, I'd say, after I had him stop the mower, you can't really start until eight o'clock, okay?
Sorry, he would say, I didn't know. Sometimes my neighbor Steve grew frustrated because Everett would mow over his new dogwood bushes. Everett, you gotta watch where you're mowing, Steve would say.
Everett would shrug, and Steve would hire him the next week. As a new Christian and a kind but burly maintenance man, Steve had a heart for the zeros of this world, and I was working on that too. Yes, Everett smoked too much, and yes, he was odd, and yes, Everett's reputation preceded him, but Everett was family.
To us, he was, anyway. A child of God and a man who needed five dollars, and we agreed to help. And you're listening to James L. Johnson, a longtime pastor, telling the story of this, well, peculiar friend. And we all have peculiar friends. Maybe you're peculiar.
I think I'm pretty peculiar myself. And you're listening to the story of Everett Model. When we come back, more of Jim Johnson's story, and of course, Everett's story, here on Our American Stories. All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird-shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Bartesian. The Bartesian? It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites too.
I just got it for 50 off. So, how about a Clausmopolitan, or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty.
Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and... Wow, it's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly, in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.
Tis the season to be jollier. Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker, Bartesian. Get $50 off any cocktail maker at Bartesian.com slash cocktail.
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VGW Group, void where prohibited by law, 18 plus terms and conditions. Hi everyone, it's Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. We love this time of year. There's so much to celebrate. That's right, nobody does the holidays quite like today. All season long, join us for special performances with the brightest stars. Plus, festive recipes to whip up the perfect holiday feast and great deals on the hottest toys and gifts for everyone on your list.
So join us every morning on NBC to make today your home for the holidays. Congratulations to Easterseals Southern California on their first place win for innovation in customer service at this year's Unconventional Awards by T-Mobile for Business. Easterseals has used T-Mobile 5G to create immersive VR development tools that aid people with autism in addressing transportation barriers. These tools are shaping the way safe and personalized skill building is delivered.
And for that, T-Mobile congratulates Easterseals Southern California for their unconventional thinking. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.
Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we continue here on Our American Stories, listening to a listeners story. Let's continue with Jim and Everett's unlikely friendship. God sent Everett to our church, I think.
Ever since I was a child, God gave me a heart for the nobodies of the world. I knew it from my boyhood in Bloomington, Minnesota. Jay, a neighbor kid with a Kool-Aid mustache and a Hiney haircut, moved across the street because the Lord wanted to teach me something. My neighborhood on Stevens Avenue had 16 houses, all in the lower middle class blue collar range, and the kids became my friends and teachers. They were bullies and brains, athletes and poets, musicians and scrappers and gossips and jocks. And the 20 children of the block on Stevens Avenue had the world in a nutshell, so Stevens Avenue became my training ground for character.
Everyone counts. God made them all. Jesus loved them, and I was supposed to love him, too. Granted, you had to love and stay pretty far away from some people at the same time, but you can learn to do that. It's judgment and discretion and elbow room all at the same time. But if you're a true Christian, you better learn to be nice.
Which brings me back to Everett Model. The old man came to our small town church for two basic reasons. One, we preached the Bible every Sunday, and Everett believed the Bible.
And two, you could wear flannel and boots and big bell buckles in our services if you wanted to, and nobody cared. We were the down-to-earth crowd. Not so many bankers or lawyers or dentists in our church. We drew the regular folks. We captured the market on regular at Calvary Church, the plain everyday people who invested their lives in road construction and milk plants, small grain farms and auto repair. Even so, people still look twice whenever it waddled into our church. He spent his career doing small jobs and farmhand work.
The lower rung of the agricultural ladder in the Midwest. But he came to our church every Sunday, and so he was our family. With 110 people watching him, it was entertainment and theology all at the same time. Everett hobbled up to the third pew on the left every Wednesday night and every Sunday morning, sitting by the inside aisle, usually by himself.
The rumors, of course, drifted in like a cloud, as always. Everett was strange. Mary had to divorce him because, well, we didn't want to say.
He was forced to leave a previous care center because he can't get along with people. He was stubborn. He was weird. He was poor.
He was Everett. I suppose some of the rumors were true, but I chose to believe about 10% of them. And I still do, to this day, with people. Take it with a grain of salt, as my mother used to say. And in a world filled with sin and sinners and flannel and jeans and rest homes and small towns and big cities and good children and the naughty and the nice who don't always live like they should, well, I suppose you have to give people a second chance. I guess there are a lot of things to overlook and of which to be forgiven. The angel said to Joseph in Matthew 1, 20 and 21, that, quote, what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. And Mary will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. I guess Jesus died for people like Everett, too. God had used a man named Bob in a neighboring town to lead Everett to Jesus Christ one year. Bob the truck driver, formerly the town bully, had become a believer in Christ and had become a pretty good role model, too, in our neighboring town.
And as such, truck driver Bob knew what it was like to be alienated and estranged. So Bob brought him to his church in McIntosh and taught Everett that Jesus was God's son, that Christ died on a cross to pay the price for our sin, that Jesus had risen from the dead and wanted to enter into our lives and forgive our sin and create us anew. Our small town church in Faustin preached pretty much the same message of salvation.
I'm thinking of that verse, for to you is born a Savior who is Christ the Lord. Everett liked that, and he wanted to be a part of our church. So I made friends with him because I was a pastor and because I had a heart for the zeroes of this world.
Because I was a zero, probably, too. We're supposed to take care of people like Everett, aren't we? But it went further for me than just being Luther and clergy. Everett, to me, represented the least of these people, as Jesus said. Like the poor man Lazarus in Luke 17. Everett was only asking for crumbs off the table.
Who are we to say no? For aren't we all as poor as Lazarus and Everett himself? The congregation embraced him. After a few months, we mostly came to love him.
Almost all of us, I should say. He came every Sunday, rain or shine, snow or sleet. And he stayed after for snack time and ate enormous amounts of food at our monthly potluck dinners. And never brought a dish, of course.
Pretty sure he wouldn't have tried his dishes anyway. But we came to accept and love Everett just the same. Like most of us, Everett had his good traits and his bad traits. He always sat on the right side, second row next to the aisle. One day a visitor came early and, not knowing, sat down with his wife and took Everett's spot. My lawn mowing friend walked down the aisle, looked up to see his pew taken. And he didn't know what to do.
I mean, while all 100 of us were watching, piano playing in the background two minutes before the service started. And with the church mostly packed, Everett hesitated. He looked. He turned. He stopped. He deliberated before quickly walking back to the folding chair section in the rear.
But before he came forward, all the way from the back, we all watched him. What was Everett going to do with those two people sitting in his usual seat? He tapped the unsuspecting man on the shoulder. He bent down and asked the visitor if he could have his hymnal. We could hear Everett ask it, semi-intelligibly. Can I have that hymn book? With an unknowing shrug, the man reached over, grabbed the hymn book, handed it to Everett, and that was that. Everett took the book and walked back to the folding chairs in the rear, fully content. Tell you what, no one ever sat in Everett's spot next time.
When you're a little awkward, you need a little time and you need a good friend. And my maintenance chief friend Steve was just the guy. Steve was kind enough to ask him to help him serve as an usher with him. For Everett, that was a huge job and a great compliment. Carrying brass plates with money, offerings, checks, a few coins, that was a new horizon for Everett.
It was perhaps the first time anyone had ever asked him to serve. And Steve, in flannel and jeans and cowboy boots, would stand next to Everett in his lime green leisure suit, which I'm sure he bought at Mary's Corner Closet, the thrift store, while I prayed for the offering, the three of us standing there, front and center, and everyone else watching. And with Everett, his health beginning to fail, his hands clasped in front of him, would lean and list and stagger and catch his footing, just about to fall.
You know, I'm telling you, few of the caring women, none of the observant children of the church, and all but two of the men closed their eyes during those prayers. Everybody was watching. They were sure Everett was going to fall. Don't let this happen.
Give him a brace. But Steve would hang on, steady as can be, provide stability, and Everett never did fall down up there. But there was a new level of alertness during my brief opening offering prayers. But Everett would smile. He'd say, I'm an usher now, he would tell me.
We were watching him crow. The other amusing part of being in a church service with Everett was prayer request time. Our small town church uses a family-friendly prayer request method. Just after the Apostles' Creed and before the special music, we ask if there are any special prayer requests, as we say it, and people raise their hands and offer their requests. Pray for my Aunt Kathy's having a baby.
Pray for Norval's knee surgery. They would say, pray for travel mercies. We would use that phrase.
But Everett was personal and long, real long. And you're listening to James Johnson, a longtime pastor. And by the way, we do these stories from churches, from synagogues, from mosques. We do them because so many Americans in this country take their faith and spiritual walk seriously. And we don't back away from those things and we don't proselytize here, as you well know.
But to avoid these stories, to not tell them would be a lie. And that's why we bring them to you when we come back. More with this remarkable friendship here on Our American Stories. All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird-shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Bartesian. Bartesian? It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites, too.
I just got it for 50 off. So how about a Closmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty.
Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and... Wow. It's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.
Tis the season to be jollier. Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker, Bartesian. Get $50 off any cocktail maker at Bartesian.com slash cocktail.
That's B-A-R-T-E-S-I-A-N dot com slash cocktail. Step into a world of unparalleled brightness and lifelike color with Vizio's Quantum Pro TV. This premium QLED TV, available in 65 and 75 inch sizes, is designed for those who demand the best in picture quality. Breathtaking brightness brings every scene to life, while wide viewing angle delivers the perfect picture from any seat in the room. Enjoy all your favorite apps built in so you can blast your top songs through the iHeartRadio app straight out of the box.
Head to Walmart to find your Vizio Quantum Pro TV today. Hi everyone, it's Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. We love this time of year. There's so much to celebrate. That's right, nobody does the holidays quite like today. All season long, join us for special performances with the brightest stars. Plus, festive recipes to whip up the perfect holiday feast and great deals on the hottest toys and gifts for everyone on your list.
So join us every morning on NBC to make today your home for the holidays. Congratulations to Easterseals Southern California on their first place win for Innovation in Customer Service at this year's Unconventional Awards by T-Mobile for Business. Easterseals has used T-Mobile 5G to create immersive VR development tools that aid people with autism in addressing transportation barriers.
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Let's return to the story. Everett raised his hand for prayer request time every single time. Yes, it's Everett. Do you have a prayer request? Yes. Do you have a prayer request? Yes. Do you have a prayer request? Yes. Do you have a prayer request? Yes.
Yes. Do you have a prayer request? We knew it was coming and, yep, Everett would start talking and start praying and start asking and start crying, and on and on he would go.
His requests were always personal and mostly non-intelligible. They were primarily unending and like some of my sermons, Everett's requests marched on and on. Pray for Bob and Bill and my brother Clarence who needs to know the Lord, the Lord," he would say, or we were pretty sure he said, and for Pastor Tom and Don Fritz and stifled cries for all the people who didn't know, he prayed for Steve and Barb and Pastor Jim and Linda and the children and the people, and after about three minutes you had to cut in and interrupt and I would say, thank you Everett, anybody else. I'll never forget, though, Everett's final Christmas wish. It was the day that I sang my last Christmas carol with him, 25 years ago this December on that Sunday night. In case you didn't know, in northern Minnesota the snow comes almost every early November, right after the hunting season starts, and it rarely melts before March, so every Christmas is white. Our church had this annual tradition of Christmas caroling two weeks before Christmas. A man in a neighboring town owned a large sleigh and cared for a team of four Belgian horses, beautiful animals, and every year we would ask him to cart our church around town on the sleigh with those horses, and Sunday nights in December were slow nights in our town, and the church group on a sleigh could jingle and jangle through the city with the pleasure of the entire town.
We could take the back roads to family homes and senior residences and park in the front yard. We also, we figured, could pull our sleigh one street off Main Street and park it right in front of the midway home. That's where Everett was living at the end. Let's go sing for Everett, I said.
Everybody wanted to see what would happen. So we took the sleigh up to the midway home and parked it and marched in, our boots and coats or glasses frosting over, and we came to see Everett there. He had a rough run of life there that last month. He'd been unable to attend church services for most of the fall, not able to leave the nursing home since the end of the summer except for visits to the doctor, and he had fallen and broken his right wrist after a dizzy spell one day in November and was fitted for a cast. When I came into the midway that time, he showed me his cast, and he would joke and say, so much for my boxing career, Pastor Jim. Oh, you'll box again, Everett, I'd smile and say. So when the 30 or so people from our church filed into the lime green nursing home that night to sing Christmas carols at the midway, the seniors who could walk peered out the door and smiled, and they'd look at the sleigh and saw the horses.
I haven't seen horses in years, some of them said. Our cheeks were red and rosy, and Everett looked comfy cozy as we came into his room. We're singing carols, Everett, we said. You want to come with?
We asked in that Minnesota dialect that leaves that odd preposition dangling without shame. You all come with, he said. And in his stretched white t-shirt, Everett was looking good that day, unusually good. He was happy and even a little bit plump in the best way it happens for a 60-year-old diabetic in frail health.
The midway diet was agreeing with him, his skin looked good and he held his injured wrist up high. I get my cast off tomorrow morning, Everett smiled. Crowd moved down the hall to the beat of heavy, sorrel snow boots. He followed us in the pack and wandered down to the lounge that exists at the end of every decent Northern Minnesota nursing home, and the people beamed as we sang.
Everett was to my left, peeking into the lounge and smiling. We were singing, the cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. I love you, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky and stay by my cradle till morning is nigh. I looked and sure enough, Everett was singing, actually quite loud in that lisping hoarse voice. I stood to his right and even stopped for a phrase or two just to hear him sing another verse.
He was bouncing, no leaning or listing, not about to fall. Everett looked vibrant and alive and steady as he sang with the heavy coated Calvary Church carolers that night. Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask thee to stay, close by me forever and love me, I pray. Bless all the dear children in night-ender care and fit us for heaven to live with thee there. Well, the night was over and we left in a hurry. It was after 830 p.m., I'm pretty sure, pretty late for a nursing home and the school children would go to school the next day. We were hustling to leave and I was the last one out the door. As I was about to walk out the door, I heard Everett yell, Pastor Jim! I turned and looked down the hall and smiled and he held up his cast and he said, holding up his right wrist, I'll get it off tomorrow. I smiled and I remember I said these exact words, I said, I hope you do Everett, we'll be boxing by Tuesday, I said. I waved and I walked out the door and that was that.
We rode the sleigh back to church and went home. I never saw Everett alive again. The nursing home said he died in his sleep that very night. They found him around five o'clock in the morning and you know what?
I wasn't sad. No Everett model, the mower of lawns, got his cast off the next day. In heaven, he was swinging his arm and standing firm, no leaning, no listening, he was talking to the Savior like Lazarus with his wrist experiencing full motion. The poor child of God woke up in glory, no crying, just laughing because the Lord fit him for heaven to live with him there, like the hymn says. As a follower of Jesus, Everett, in the most simple and childlike of ways, had turned from his sin and gave them all to Jesus.
The Immanuel, born 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, born to die for the losers and the winners of this world. Everett repented and said, I love you, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky. And Jesus stayed by his nursing home bed until morning was nigh.
Yeah, the cast came off and no, I don't suppose Everett is boxing in heaven like he wished that Christmas caroling night, but when I see him one day, I'm going to hold up my fists and smile just a little and fake a left jab and a right hook just before I hug him. Everett, that peculiar old man, mostly loved by 100 people down here and loved by a Savior up there, pursued by a Messiah, born in Bethlehem, crucified in Jerusalem, alive in heaven today. Aren't you glad that Jesus was born for peculiar people like us? And that was Pastor Jim telling a beautiful story about his faith walk with a brother.
And that's Everett, Everett Model. And I keep hearing and can see that singing, that singing of that last carol, and we all know it, believers or not, but special meaning for those of us who are believers. And Aquinas once said, when we sing, we pray twice.
And that's so true. And by the way, the most substantive experience I ever had in my life with other human beings where I learned this kind of mercy and grace and kindness and patience, I wasn't a Christian at the time. I had a beautiful girlfriend in high school who served in nursing homes, and I would go with her and just hang out. And I got to meet people who were close to dying and people weren't visiting them. And what I learned about people and humanity, and if you get a chance over the holiday seasons anytime visit these folks, sing with them, just love on them. And that's what our show is all about, folks, mercy, grace, kindness, patience, love, and the beautiful things that Americans do for each other.
This is Our American Stories, the story of Pastor Jim and Ever. All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird-shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Bartesian. The Bartesian? It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites too.
I just got it for 50 off. So how about a Closmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty.
Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and... Wow. It's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.
Tis the season to be jollier. Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker, Bartesian. Get $50 off any cocktail maker at Bartesian.com slash cocktail.
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