The Elmhurst Presbyterian Church was located a few houses south of the intersection of 98th Ave. and East 14th Sts. in Oakland. The congregation were mostly blue collar workers, but a few professional families were members.

The church buildings consisted of a wood frame sanctuary with a social hall behind it. For several years two date palm trees in front of the church had obscured the building and created a messy appearance. So just before we arrived, the Trustees had voted to have the trees removed.

Cost estimates for professional removal seemed beyond their resources, so they had voted to do the job themselves.

In her memoirs, Carol has described our struggles in moving into the manse. My reception as pastor was complicated by a mishap involving the trees.

Work on the tree removal began as soon as we arrived, and I joined in the project. The dozens of tree roots had to be cut, a layer at a time, with mattocks which had been sharpened to a razor edge. My mattock glanced off a root and cut my right ankle.

Because we were working in dirt, the men were concerned about my getting tetanus from the wound. So I was hurried off to the emergency room at Fairmont Hospital (this being a Saturday afternoon when doctors' offices were closed).

The resident on duty gave me a shot of anti tetanus serum and sent me home.

A few days later, just before my formal reception as pastor, my joints began to ache and my jaw started to freeze. Carol took me to the doctor, who recognized the problem was a reaction to the serum which caused a mild case of "lockjaw." So when the Presbytery officials and local officers carried out the traditional ceremony welcoming the new pastor, I was barely able to sit through it and unable to speak.

However, the removal of the palm trees started a chain reaction of improvements. With a lot more light coming through the windows, the drabness of the sanctuary became more obvious. The congregation had also been concerned about the erratic reed organ, which had been "electrified" by attaching a vacuum cleaner motor and hose to eliminate the need for pumping it.

We discovered that a new small electric organ could be bought for $900 with the trade in, and after much deliberation the congregation voted to approve this risky venture. Within three months it was paid for, and the vastly improved music made the drab sanctuary seem even more dreary.

Worship attendance picked up dramatically, so the side room which had been closed off by sliding doors were opened, and this called attention to the carpet, which was particularly threadbare there. Replacing this wall to wall carpet had been discussed for years, but that seemed prohibitively expensive and nobody knew what would have to be done to the floor underneath to make it a first class job.

Finally one day I ripped open one of the carpet seams that was about to rip anyhow, and I discovered that the flooring was the original well finished surface which had been protected from the beginning by that original carpet. So by sanding the floor and varnishing it, and laying new carpet runners down the aisles, the floor was transformed. The job involved tearing out the old carpet and removing the pews, but this brought the volunteer crew members closer together as well as saving money.

The happy spirit at the church was tempered by the fact that the two bedroom cottage which was our manse seemed small enough with three little boys in one bedroom. But when David was born, we obviously needed more room.

Most of the previous ministers had either been childless or their children were grown and living elsewhere. So the question of enlarging or replacing the manse involved the congregation's perception of their future and the kind of leadership they wanted as well as the expense involved in any changes.

The majority of members seemed to favor taking action which would keep us there. But remodeling the manse seemed impractical and adequate housing in the neighborhood seemed hard to find at a price the congregation could afford. A few people were also negative, and I was probably more sensitive to their views than I should have been.

Another cloud over us was the fact that the Nimitz freeway had been completed as far south as 98th Ave. This had brought a sudden spurt in the number of cars and trucks going up and down 98th Ave. between the freeway and Highway 50, the connecting link with the interior valley. Traffic going by our house at all hours was becoming very noisy and an increasing threat to the children.

I had become acquainted with a group of young, progressive Methodist pastors through a local ministerial group, and I had also become disenchanted with the stuffy professional conservatism of some of my Presbyterian colleagues.

One of my Methodist neighbors, Bob Sanford, encouraged me to get in touch with the Methodist district superintendent in San Francisco about a possible transfer to that denomination.

After some delay, I made an appointment with the superintendent, Dr. John Kenney, in his office in the Methodist Book Store building in San Francisco.

He was friendly but cautious, emphasizing the fact that there were openings at that time but that the opportunities would probably diminish as time went on, and the Methodists would be able to supply their churches without "borrowing" from other denominations.

He mentioned that the "Cabinet," consisting of the Bishop and the District Superintendents, were meeting two days later. But that did not register particularly with me, and I left, feeling that nothing was likely to come from this discussion.

Two days later, he came to the house and said that the Cabinet was prepared to offer me the church at Dunsmuir. I asked, "Where is that?", and he described in glowing terms a small town in the mountains, with a large parsonage and beautiful scenery.

At that time, I did not know that Methodist district superintendents often operate with many of the same techniques (and even the same ethical standards, alas) as the proverbial used car salesman, especially when it comes to persuading pastors to accept difficult assignments.

The possibility of transporting ourselves and our small children to a place where there was plenty of living space and room to roam seemed far more important than my professional status at the time.

However, since I was not yet under the discipline of the Methodist system, I had the choice of taking the offer or declining it. So Carol and I took off to Dunsmuir at our earliest opportunity, to "case the joint," as my mother had done for us before we came to Elmhurst.

We arrived late in the day, and stayed overnight in a motel that was on the two lane road which was the Dunsmuir portion of Highway 99 at the time. After we retired for the night, we discovered that almost all of the trucks passing our window going uphill would shift noisily into a lower gear at that point, and the trucks going downhill tended to do the same to brake for the steep downgrade. Thus our introduction to this "quiet" mountain town was not as restful as we expected it to be.

A look at the parsonage the next morning left us with mixed feelings. It was large, as advertised, but obviously far from new. The current pastor, T. Elmer Smith, told us he was hoping to move to San Jose so one of his children could get the musical education his talents deserved, and he hoped we would accept the Dunsmuir appointment so he could move.

By the time we got back to Oakland, we had decided to make the move. We agreed to start Aug. 1, to allow time for the two families to make the transition, and to allow for some repairs on the Dunsmuir parsonage.