Chaplain Chris: Part I

By James Osborne
Contributing Writer

...I had two days left to get to Massachusetts before the application deadline for that years cranberry harvest. There weren’t a lot of cars on the eastbound side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and as I’ve mentioned in other stories, people don’t like to pick up sunburned people; they look distraught, anxious…and dangerous. So, I stood at the highway exit ramp with my thumb out from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and nobody stopped.

I hadn’t eaten that day and decided to go to the Petro truck stop to see what could be done about that. I had three dollars in my pocket but I wanted to keep it so after visiting an empty dumpster, I went to the restaurant to ask if I could work for food. They called the manager who told me to go to the “Trucker’s Chapel” to ask.

I’d say asking to work for food gets you fed about 25% of the time. Usually people just give you food. Occasionally, people will make you do menial tasks, like picking up cigarette butts in the parking lot. Once in a while people will exploit your position, case being this cock-knocker at a pizza buffet outside Los Angeles who made a friend and me haul about 100 bundles of roofing shingles from a neighboring restaurant one by one.

After two hours of intense work, we were sore and scraped. When we finished, he gave us each a small piece of heat-lamp-dried cheese pizza from the buffet. We broke our backs for something that we could have pulled from the dumpster. When he saw that we were unhappy he said “I guess you guys weren’t that hungry after all”. I think he would have given us less if he’d had it.

The idea that “drifters” are little more than human garbage with backpacks does exist but it isn’t so common in America. Freight train riding and hitchhiking have actually left me with a better taste for humanity than before.

This Trucker’s Chapel I was asking to work for food at was a little church fashioned out of a truck trailer that sits in the side lot of the Petro in Milford, PA. It had a little deck and little stained glass windows, lots of truck stops have them; they’re really adorable.

I knocked on the door and eventually a thin, elderly woman with beaming red hair answered. I said “Do you have any work I can do for something to eat?”. She gave me a once over and started to say something but was interrupted by a sudden coughing fit that lasted for a full minute. When she was done she said “You’re just in time for service”. It was 6:17 PM on Tuesday and I was the only person there.

She walked behind what looked to me like an Ikea brand pulpit, minimalistic in style with a flat face and cheap plasterboard sides. She looked down at the bible which was lying on top of the pulpit and then glanced over at me still standing in the doorway and motioned towards the two rows of small, one-seat pews with a nod that said ‘assume the position’. I think “You’re just in time for service” meant that for once in a long time she was not the only person in the Trucker’s Chapel.

Her name was Chaplain Chris, she was about 90 years old and she lived in the back of the chapel. It smelled like dying. Not death, but gradual death, that smells like someone microwaving a brick of Velveeta for 20 minutes on high. Cheap plastic floral arrangements filled the chapel.

The little pews had hymnals behind each seat. I sat about three back from the front to fill in the space a little and tried to look attentive as she read from the Good News Bible in between hacking, wet coughing fits. About five minutes into her sermon I realized that she had simply opened the book and started reading and was reading everything, even the liner notes as if they were scripture.

Still though, I was beyond hungry and the fate of my dinner was in her hands, so I tried to be the best one man congregation she’d ever had. I acted like what she was saying was all news to me - ‘Jesus?!’ ‘Heaven?!’ - like it hasn’t been force fed to me since my first breathe. It was easy to look attentive, I kept eyeing a small table of religious brochures behind Chaplain Chris because at the center was a small bowl of cheap, peppermint disk candies. I was so hungry that for the first time since childhood those little meaningless gestures looked delicious.

She read forever. I started thinking that my fake enthusiasm was not earning me a better meal, just a longer sermon. She thought she was killin’ it up there, while she delivered side notes about translation discrepancies with passion and intensity, occasionally raising her hand for emphasis.

I think the peppermints were placed with the brochures because you’d feel like a real dick if you took a candy without taking at least one piece of propaganda with you. I also think that the Trucker’s Chapel people had the foresight to consider that in long lines at weigh stations, rush hour traffic or jackknifed in a ditch waiting for paramedics to arrive, this is likely to be the only piece of literature in many diesel truck cabs on American highways.

She had me watch a scare tactic movie which presented six heaven or hell scenarios. It was actually very intense, and would have been more compelling had I been a child or an idiot. I sang hymns with her and even recited the “Sinner’s Prayer” which I guess “...absolves you of all sin and allows you to enter the kingdom of heaven.”. This was the most difficult part of the whole experience.

[“Heavenly Father, have mercy on me, a sinner. I believe in you and that your word is true. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God and that he died on the cross so that I may now have forgiveness for my….”]

I felt uncomfortable reciting it because I did not believe the words I was saying. I wondered if I could get smited for praying to god when he knows I don’t believe in him. The situation was surreal, at that point I was made aware that I wasn’t as solid in my disbelief as I’d convinced myself I was.

[“...forgive me and come into my heart as my personal lord and savior today as you are now my Father and friend…”]

During this short prayer I was mentally transported by way of guilt to another world. The world of my childhood, a world of security and Sunday school, the world of my grandmother. Chaplain Chris’s voice was soothing but authoritative. This ten line prayer seemed to last for an hour. I was unnerved, uneasy.

[“I give you my life and ask you to take full control from this moment on…”]

This was a really big commitment. My only comfort was thinking about an article I’d read about brainwashing methods employed during the Korean War which included repeated phrases, sleep deprivation and rewarding cooperation with food. I also recalled a story I’d read in the eighth grade where Spanish conquerors discovered that it was easier to convert natives to Catholicism when they were starving. I wasn’t being overcome by the power of Christ, I was just really hungry.

[“......the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.”]

Another hour of songs and sermon and church was over, I wiped my proverbial brow and headed straight for a peppermint disk which was as sticky and old as the brochures it was selling were dusty.

She took me to the truck stop restaurant and I ordered the soup and salad bar. We ate and talked. I was her recent convert, a soul she’d saved. If this were true and my soul were in the clear at that point, I wonder how long it took me to f*ck it up again. I asked her about herself and her story; but when conversation with the Chaplain got too personal, it turned back to god.

Hitchhiking as often as I do gets me picked up or fed by religious people a lot. They attribute whatever deed they’re performing, whether it be a bean burrito or a lift from Chino to Truckee, to divine intervention - and Chris was no different. She told me it was a miracle that I came upon the chapel and that god was acting as my shepherd, guiding me toward the glorious light of the truck stop in rural Pennsylvania. Though, I did appreciate the meal, bagged salad mix and canned “hearty vegetarian vegetable” make for a pretty shitty miracle.

That sounds ungrateful, I’m not. James Osborne once said “Hitchhiking has actually left me with a better taste for humanity than before.” at the beginning of this story. My point is that these aren’t selfless acts. These are favors performed by people who’ve been duped into thinking that there is an invisible man in the sky who can see them and has the power to keep them alive forever. I wish I could say that Chaplain Chris was exempt from the self-serving generosity I’m speaking of, but I can’t.

Humans are selfish inherently and all acts with seemingly altruistic intent are at their foundation rooted in personal gain. With this argument most people will bring up “self-sacrifice” like relief work and charity; but if they dig deep down and really ask themselves if they would do these things without an audience even if that audience only included god, they would honestly have to answer no. Some people will still say yes. Some people are liars.

I’m only questioning motive, I’m thankful these people exist, of course. Here’s a good example of why: When Chaplain Chris asked me where I was going, I said “Massachusetts to harvest cranberries”. She then told me that the chapel had a traveler fund that helps stranded motorists and that she could get me a bus ticket to Boston if I did some work for her the next day. If I got to Boston, I’d be a six-dollar train ride away from Middleboro, Mass. which is where I needed to apply and get a piss test for Ocean Spray.

Knowing that I was going to make it in time brought me joy, down in my heart. I liked her more now. I laughed and smiled a lot. Her jokes were funny now and the truck stop cheddar and broccoli soup was all of a sudden delicious since the anxiety of getting to Middleboro was gone.

Questions and comments: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)