When Carol started teaching in Dunsmuir, her salary made it more practical for us to stay in Dunsmuir than if we had tried to live on my salary. When we came to Dunsmuir, my salary was $3300 a year plus the use of the parsonage and a small allowance for utilities. By the time we left, my salary was $4600 a year—a remarkable set of raises for that small congregation. But even considering the greater buying power of the dollar in those days, it was more expensive in some ways to live in Dunsmuir than in some other places, and the prospects of growth in the church were limited.

So when I was offered the church at Hanford in 1957, at the salary of $5300, we accepted. In those days, appointments were supposed to be a dark, dark secret until the end of Conference week in Stockton. This arrangement gave the Bishop and Cabinet the leeway to change appointments at the last minute in case problems developed.

They met during the business sessions of the Conference, and messages were flashed on the screen in the auditorium to notify those who were to be summoned to the Cabinet. In some ways it was like the midnight arrests by agents of political despots, with the victim trembling in anticipation of the treatment he might receive. Yet the whole process was supposed to be done in a spirit of love and perfect justice to all.

Carol and I knew at least a week before the move to Hanford that we would be moving. But we were not supposed to tell anyone, and we decided with some pain that the children should not be told, for fear they would let slip the news accidentally. So we went off to Stockton without confiding in them, and they got the news during the week while we were gone. They felt betrayed, as they had reason to do, and their years in Dunsmuir had been such happy ones it was hard for them to face leaving. But once we were committed, they took it with good grace.

Just before we left, we had acquired a small travel trailer. So after the moving van left with our furniture, we took off with the trailer behind us.

Because of the summer heat in the valleys, we drove through the night, stopping only briefly along the way, arriving just at dawn in front of the church and the parsonage next door.

A neon bordered cross was mounted on top of the church tower, and just as we arrived the time clock turned off the lighting. In one of my first sermons in Hanford, I mentioned this and expressed the hope that this was not an ominous portent for my ministry there.

We assumed that the church and parsonage were locked, so we tried to sleep for a couple of hours. When I checked the doors and windows, I found that the front window was open. So I climbed through it and opened the house.

After the hot night of driving, we all wanted to take showers. But when we turned on the water, we were greeted by the smell of sulphur dioxide, the "rotten egg" smell that is familiar in volcanic areas like Mt. Lassen and Yellowstone. Our first thought was dismay at the prospect of living with this. But in a few weeks we got used to it (and the first shower was probably more pungent because the water had not been used for a few days). In fact, after awhile the water elsewhere seemed rather flat by comparison, and we knew from drinking the mineral water in Dunsmuir that the Hanford water was very good for health.

My predecessor Harry Shaner had come to Hanford from the affluent suburb of Lafayette, so this country town and its old fashioned parsonage did not suit him or his wife Alice. But we were pleased with the room it offered, and especially that the house was a one story building, in contrast to the two story Dunsmuir parsonage (three stories counting the basement).

Because we seemed happy with the parsonage, the parsonage committee and the Trustees soon got busy and made some significant improvements in the house.

We were especially glad to have adequate space in the parsonage in 1960, when our fifth son Paul arrived, after David had been the youngest son for eleven years.

While we were gone for Annual Conference, some volunteers had transformed the room designated as the nursery by painting it pink, in hopeful anticipation of a girl at last. One of the women also volunteered to call everybody when our daughter arrived. But when the new baby turned out to be Paul, she refused to do it. Carol had some trouble dealing with those who tried to sympathize with her "disappointment" over another boy.

When Paul was born, we bought a movie camera with which we recorded his progress in great detail. Looking at the film in recent years, we found that the central figure of the baby was not nearly as interesting in retrospect as the big brothers hovering lovingly over him or playing with him at various stages. The movies dramatically demonstrate what an appealing child Paul was, and how fondly his brothers treated him.

The movies also record the many trips and outings we took in those years, and the comings and goings of the boys on various expeditions of their own. Carol has delineated these years so colorfully in "Oh Boy," "Another Boy" and "Whither," I won't try to duplicate that record.

By 1960 or so, the church school had grown to the point where we needed more classroom space. The First Baptist Church had just built a fancy new building designed by a local firm of architects, who had also charged a fancy fee for their services. Our finances were shaky enough, and the negativism of the "farm mentality" (much akin to the railroad mindset) made it imperative to be as economical as possible in our plans.

So in designing the new educational building, we recruited a large Building Committee which included representatives of all the age groups. They worked out a floor plan based on their real needs, and by the time the plan was approved a wealth of personal ideas and commitment had been invested in it.

Then we got approval to hire a fund raising firm. In order to have pictures of the new building to show as part of the campaign, I took Polaroid snapshots of the existing building which had a kind of Spanish flavor. These were sent, with a floor plan drawn by a couple of civil engineers in the congregation, to a commercial artist in Fresno who came up with a remarkably accurate rendering of the way the building turned out to look.

This maneuver saved a considerable amount of money. It also avoided some of the problems created when architects design church buildings with more concern for "making a statement" that would glorify the architect than for filling practical needs in a way that would also glorify God.

The financial campaign was successful enough to justify the start of construction, and the resulting building was a great boon during the years when there were children and young people in the congregation. Unfortunately in later years these age groups went elsewhere, and one can only hope that the day may come again when these rooms will be adequately used.

In order to make room for the educational building, the parsonage was sold to a farmer who moved it out into the country. It had been so solidly built, the movers carted it off in one piece.

Our "new" parsonage was several blocks north of the church. The previous owner had operated a carpet shop, and the parsonage floors were covered with wall to wall carpeting, including the closet floors. This seemed luxurious at first, something new to our experience. But we discovered that the floors themselves were uneven in spots, so the effect was more superficial than it was a basic improvement.

One big advantage of the new house was the large back yard, with several large shade trees. This was a particularly welcome boon on hot summer afternoons.

The far end of the back yard had been covered with asphalt for some sort of game area. The older boys decided to dig up this area and make a vegetable garden of it.

They worked diligently for some time to prepare the ground and plant it. But the asphalt or some other condition had "poisoned" the soil, so the crops were disappointing. Even so, I think it stimulated the boys to have an interest in gardening which carried over into their adult lives. It was certainly not an interest I had inspired them to practice, although I did develop some enthusiasm for gardening while we were in Farmington many years later, thanks to the expert advice of certain members.

One of the advantages of living in Hanford was that we could drive up to Yosemite, spend a few days camping or just drive through the park and come home on the same day. We often took visitors on this one day trip.

Once when we were camping with our travel trailer in Yosemite, Carol and I decided to have dinner at The Ahwanee, the fancy hotel in the Valley. I hadn't brought along a dress jacket, not expecting to need one while we were camping. So the desk clerk assigned us to the second serving, a less desirable arrangement.

While we waited, a number of tourists from New York City paraded past us. They were overnight guests as part of a package bus tour. Several of the men were very sloppily dressed, but they were ushered right into the dining room. When Carol and I were finally seated, we were put behind a pillar as though we were an unsightly embarrassment.

It seemed particularly galling to me, feeling as though my family's "California credentials" entitled us to fairer treatment, and I resented the very existence of a luxury hotel with this kind of snob appeal in the middle of Yosemite Valley. It has made me conscious also of the disparity between ourselves and the "natives" when we have stayed at luxury hotels while traveling with a group overseas. However, I must admit that I have tried not to let my conscience disturb my enjoyment of the luxury too much at the time!

By far the greatest highlight of our last year in Hanford was the experience of having an exchange student in our home while Charles was in Germany. Carol has described this so well in "Whither," I won't try to duplicate it. But it should not go unmentioned here, except to point up the confusion over the name we used for our exchange student.

His legal name is Wolf Rüdiger Wilke. But in a letter he sent us before coming to the U.S., he suggested that this might be too big a mouthful for some people, so he offered "Roger" as a near equivalent.

Without consulting Carol, and really half conscious of what I was doing at the time, I introduced him to the congregation on the first Sunday after his arrival, as "Roger." This fixed his nickname among us for the year and thereafter until his wife Sibylle told us that her pet nickname for him was Mechi, from a German cartoon bear whose fur stuck up from his head like "Roger's" crew cut did. Since then we have tried to use Sibylle's nickname for him.