Of Guns and Bibles

People sometimes have a hard time believing some of the things that happen to me.  So do I.

Olmsted County is the most glazed white, image conscious, yuppie infested county in the Midwest.  It was voted the number one place to live in the US, by "Money Magazine".  Twice.  It is small enough to be plebeian yet arrogant enough to think of itself as cosmopolitan.  The two major employers are the IBM flagship facility and the Mayo clinic.  Mayo is possibly the premiere medical facility in the world and though it takes great pride in its reputation, the county seems to take even more pride in it being here.  IBM is,, well,  It's IBM.  The whole community prides itself on its squeaky clean image and uses an abundance of local ordinances to keep it appearing that way.  Skate boards and hackysacks are considered a public nuisance.  Kids caught using them downtown are in danger of being fined, and having them taken away.  Roller blades are to be used only on designated paths designed for that purpose and landscaped and planned to be visually pleasing while not clashing with the general community development plan.  Even then, they must be used so as not to tarnish the dignity or the image of our fair county.  Building codes are strictly enforced and both suburbs and businesses are planned in an orderly and esthetically pleasing, yet entirely predictable manner.  When they want a little "local color" they hire a professional to bring some in.  And to clean up after it.

I am an old hippie who just never got the hang of converting to yuppie.  I tried.  It just wouldn't take.  I drive an old car, with lots of dents and rust.  Some of my former cars are sitting in my woods behind my house, waiting to be recycled into cars that I can't afford.  And wouldn't buy if I could.  I mow my lawn about three times a year, the same frequency at which I shave.  I don't own a suit.  I hang out with people young enough to be my children, in fact, some of them are. I don't fit in at all.

I do foster care for teenage boys.  A lot of them come back to visit me after they are out on their own and that attracts a lot of their friends.  These older kids range from college students and those pursuing a career, to blue collar to somewhere just short of the Beverly Hillbillies.  Before they struck oil.  On the night of the assault there were two separate groups of these young adults at my house.  One group was in my barn, which we had fixed up as a place to skateboard, listen to music, and generally hang out.  I was with this group having a Bible study. 

My Bible studies were a bit notorious.  They were often held outside, included a bonfire, and sometimes someone ended up thrown into my pond.  The content was entirely orthodox.  The teaching method was not.  These Bible studies were frequented by atheists, agnostics, New Age types, Pentecostals, and a few garden variety Christians.  They usually started with me saying,  "What would anyone like to discuss tonight?"  The discussions and debates that followed often ran late into the night starting with topics such as "What if God made this really big rock, too big to lift; could he lift it then?" and eventually progressing to other topics such as, redemption, relativism, or apologetics.

The Bible studies were held under suspicion in our county for two reasons.  Kids liked to go there. And everyone knows that kids have be forced to do anything positive, yet alone "religious."  One social worker in particular thought we must be a cult because her daughter had come to one of our studies, and liked it.  She figured that anything her daughter liked had to be warped or evil in some way.  The other reason we were under suspicion was that we were not "churchy" enough.  We didn't meet in a church, and though I had theological training, first from The University of Iowa and later from a Baptist seminary, I didn't look like it. I don't even know how to make "hot dish" or dessert with cool whip and jello. The type of people we attracted did not look like church people.  They looked like the kids you saw hanging out on street corners down town.  In fact, many of them were, and our county was embarrassed to have such people staining their fair image.

We were having a bible study in the barn that night.  My wife had brought my five year old daughter down to the barn so that she could be a part of it as well.  She was getting antsy so my wife began taking her back to the house.  She did not want to miss any action and began to protest.  At her tender age she had not yet developed the ability to accept what must be, but she had developed the lung capacity of an operatic diva, and this she employed to the fullest extent, making her protest all the way from the barn to the house.

While we were having our Bible study another group of young adults who were not interested in a Bible study were also on my property.  They had asked if they could do some target shooting.  I live on a farm where it is legal to shoot and three of the four in this group had some type of gun training either as a part of military experience or as a part of law enforcement training or from a civilian gun safety class.  All of their guns were legal and registered.  There is a fairly deep sand pit at the rear of my property where they could place a target against a sand bank that was more than sufficient to stop any bullets. 

It was late when they started setting up but they decided to shoot even though it was getting dark.  The one studying law enforcement in college had learned that there was no law prohibiting target shooting after dark.  They positioned car lights to light up their target range and started shooting.  The depth of the pit muffled the sound enough that we in the barn could not hear them shooting.  But, someone in a nearby town did hear shooting and called the sheriff.  A deputy who we referred to as "Officer Friendly" responded.

Officer Friendly considered it his duty to protect and serve the status quo, and because of this he had been keeping an eye on me ever since I had bought the farm just outside of town.  He just knew there was something nefarious going on there.  It was owned by an old hippie.  He was known to drive cars so beat up that a new Mercedes would depreciate a thousand dollars just sitting next to it at a stop light.  The place was infested with juvenile delinquents, and they could often be heard having unplanned, unorganized, boisterous fun.  He knew that it was used as a foster home that specialized in this type of kid, but he figured there had to be some place better for them to be.  Someplace with more discipline and a better manicured lawn.  Someplace that would make the kids fit in, or in lieu of that, at least keep them out of sight.  He knew that sooner or later I would mess up and he could catch the lot of us in the commission of some heinous crime and put an end to this blight on the community.  He had spent many tedious hours in his patrol car watching the place and pulling over cars that came out of the driveway, searching for drugs or evidence of hooliganism, but the only busts he was able to make were for the occasional burned out head lamp or traffic ticket.  He was determined though. The report of gunfire in the vicinity that night held promise that his persistence would finally be rewarded.  He parked his squad car on the road near my place and got out to see if he could hear anything.

Meanwhile, down in the pit, the boys were practicing rapid fire bursts at the target.  Four of them were shooting at once, firing two small semiautomatic pistols, one semiautomatic rifle, and an old bolt action Russian rifle from world war two.  At the same time my wife was taking my vocally gifted daughter back to the house.  She was utilizing her gift at maximum volume.

Officer Friendly walked from his patrol car a little closer to the property so that his running squad car would not drown out any distant sounds.  He peered across the bog that was between the barn and the road where he was standing.  Suddenly, repeated bursts of gun fire rang out and someone began screaming.  Fearing that he might catch a stray bullet he ran for his life back to his squad car.  He fumbled with the radio microphone and blurted out,

"Automatic weapon fire!  Just north of town!  I think they are shooting someone with a machine gun!  Approach with caution.  There are stray rounds all over the place!"

His persistence and hours of tedious stakeouts had finally paid off.  This time he had us!  Someone had finally cracked and done something that all of us could be put away for.

At the Sheriff's office, plans made for such a contingency were quickly and smoothly put in action.  Though the public presence of the law officers in the county seemed to deal primarily with traffic offenses and ticketing kids for having a skateboard down town, they were about to prove that they could handle any situation as well as any cop on TV.  Within minutes the multi-county SWAT team had assembled on the road closest to the shooting.  Dressed in stylish black uniforms with matching bullet proof vests, shiny new riot shields, color coordinated helmets, and armed with M16 assault rifles, they began making plans for assaulting the area the gunfire was coming from.

By then a fog had begun to roll in and the boys in the sand pit decided to quit.  They unfortunately also decided to use the rest of their ammunition in one last volley of rapid firing. 

The SWAT team was undecided about a plan for the assault.  Calling the residence to see what was going on was rejected.  It would have to be either a direct assault up the driveway, past the house and then to the barn, or a sneak attack across the bog between the sand pit and the road.  Suddenly one last burst of gunfire erupted from the sand pit. Fearing they might be outgunned, they opted for the sneak attack and began to form lines of battle for a blitzkrieg via the bog.

As they were preparing for this my neighbor with whom I share a driveway, drove down to the road to see why all of the police cars were there.  Officer Friendly approached him with pistol drawn, and after ascertaining that he was not one of us, told him of the plan.

The neighbor told the SWAT team that some of the older kids were target practicing and that no one there was the sort of person likely to machine gun anyone. He informed the SWAT team that he had shot with some of them in the past, knew the type of guns being used and assured them that they were all legal.  He suggested that they all get in his pickup and he would drive them down and introduce them to the people involved.  Most of them had a good laugh about it but officer Friendly was not convinced.  It seemed like a perfect ambush to him, and not being a part of the SWAT team and having no M16 or body armor he was not about to chance it.  The rest of the officers climbed into the back of my neighbor's truck.

Meanwhile, I was blissfully ignorant of these happenings.  I don't recall what the group in the barn was discussing that evening but I think most of them had gotten past the "big rock" type questions and moved into deeper waters. We looked up from our discussion to see several officers in riot gear walking into the barn.  We decided that was a good stopping point for the study and went outside with the officers who by now had met the shooters coming up out of the pit.  The SWAT team checked ID's all around and looked at the paper work on the guns and looked at the gun range.  Satisfied that we were not international terrorists, they left.

Officer Friendly though, felt cheated.  No bodies.  No machine guns.  No one led away in handcuffs.  He didn't even get to put up any of that yellow tape that says "Crime Scene, Do Not Enter."  As the SWAT team was leaving he drove past the house down to the barn in his squad car.  As he got out of his car he could hear music and the sound of roller blades on a wooden ramp.  He walked into the barn.  A small boom box at the top of the skate ramp was blaring out music.  I was sitting with some young people talking.  A couple of kids were skating on the ramp.

"That music will have to be shut off."  He said.  "you can hear it all the way into town.  It's disturbing the peace.  You can't skate here anymore either.  Those little wheels make two much racket on that wooden ramp and you are too close to town."

We looked across the corn field to the adjoining woods and beyond that, to the twinkling lights of the nearest homes.  Knowing it would do no good to argue with him I said,

"OK."

Officer Friendly knew it wasn't much.  But at least he was able to get us on something.  He got back into his patrol car and drove back to town to make out his report.

The strangest thing about this whole story is that it is true.  I don't have nearly enough imagination to make something like this up.  The only consolation was that we now could brag that we had the only Bible study in all of Minnesota that had been raided by a swat team.  Most of the kids thought that was cool.  After a while the county told us we could not skate in our barn or have bible studies there.  It was a barn and it should only be used for "barn type" things.  To do otherwise was a violation of building codes and zoning.  I suggested the Bible studies could continue if we moved them to the house.  When the county building safety department found out about it though, they put a stop to it. They said that having a Bible study in a home was a violation of building safety codes.  Our Bible studies are now a thing of the past, Kids are back to skating in the streets and outrunning cops, and the barn is being used for storage. 

Oh,,
And all is well in Olmsted County.