The Jeep Is Stolen Again

As I mentioned in a previous post, our Jeep was stolen twice in as many years. The second time was during the summer, and the thieves might have reconsidered their choice had they known that the air conditioning was broken. Again, we found broken glass on the ground when we went outside in the morning.

That evening, we were at home and I was playing a scary video game called Fatal Frame. The game is about a girl with a camera that can capture ghosts. When I heard a pounding noise, I thought at first that it was part of the game. But it was someone at our back door. We didn't use the back door because it led into the bedroom of our small one-bedroom apartment. [j5] looked through the blinds to see who it might be, and the man at the door shouted, "I see you in there! Open up!" He continued pounding on the door. He wasn't anyone we knew, and he didn't identify himself, so we ignored him. After a while, he gave up and left. I guessed that he might have had some connection to the vehicle theft.

When the police recovered the Jeep this time, we weren't given any details. But the inside was in pretty bad shape and extremely filthy.

One other short story from around the same time: some friends were looking for an apartment in our area of town. During a brief visit to our apartment, they asked us whether the area seemed to be safe. We replied that we thought it was safe enough, despite our Jeep having been stolen once or twice. Our conversation was interrupted by some commotion outside. We looked out the window to see a police officer chasing a man down the street.

LDS Fiction

I've been reading some novels and short stories by and about LDS people lately. I've sort of avoided such books in the past, assuming that there weren't likely many good ones, if any.

Summer Fire (1983) by Douglas H. Thayer
This is the story of a strait-laced fifteen-year-old boy from a sheltered environment who goes to work on a ranch for the summer. He's presented with many challenges to his attitudes. I liked the characters and was impressed with Thayer's reserved writing style.

Under the Cottonwoods (1977) and Mr. Wahlquist in Yellowstone (1989) by Douglas H. Thayer
These are short story collections. Each story in Under the Cottonwoods is about a character facing some sort of decision or challenge. I think that some of the stories are very good. The stories in Mr. Wahlquist take place in the western United States, but the characters are not necessarily LDS. "The Gold Mine" is probably my favorite from that book--I found it very funny, though the humor is subtle and kind of morbid.

The Backslider (1986) by Levi S. Peterson
In this novel, a young LDS cowboy has difficulty being the type of person he thinks he should be but doesn't necessarily want to be. This book initially surprised me with some of its language and subject matter, though I suppose that it's relatively tame compared to a lot of non-LDS-themed fiction. But what surprised me more was the religious attitudes and understandings of some of the characters. I wasn't really sure what to think of the book until I neared the end, but I was ultimately impressed and found the story uplifting.

The Broken Covenant (1985) by Carroll Hofeling Morris
A friend recommended this book and let me borrow it. It's a story about adultery and its consequences. Not a topic I'd think of when looking for something to read, but I found the book pretty compelling. Some of the characters struck me as odd or exaggerated, but the story held my interest. And this book made curious to know what other LDS fiction might be out there, so I did some research and discovered the others in this list.

I suppose that these aren't really useful book reviews, but I think it would take me too long to write more detailed impressions of the books.

Wherein Our Jeep Is Stolen

Because some people have linked to this, I suppose I'll post again. But rather than mundane current events, I'll tell a mundane experience from 2001.

About a week after we got married and moved into our new apartment, we walked outside one morning to find the Jeep missing. We saw glass on the ground, indicating that it had been stolen. We called the police and reported the theft. The next evening, the police called us back to tell us that the Jeep had been recovered and that we could pick it up. It wasn’t far away.

We lived very close to the football stadium, and during games police would close off some roads to control the flow of traffic. This often caused us inconvenience, but this time it was helpful. The people who had stolen the Jeep panicked when they encountered a barricade and drove off into the woods. This being suspicious, the police chased them. The thieves soon abandoned the Jeep to escape on foot, but the police used dogs to track them down.

When we arrived to pick up the Jeep, we found that they had broken the steering column open to hotwire the car and had done some other damage inside and outside the vehicle. They had also left behind some shotgun shells, a butterfly knife, and a gospel music cassette tape. I still wonder whether they had taped something else over it, or whether they really listened to gospel music in the Jeep. We collected the items we found in a box and brought them to a police station.

Later, [j5] was supposed to go to some sort of hearing at a juvenile court. It turns out that it had been kids who stole the Jeep. They didn’t show up at the hearing. [j5] was asked to return at another time, but didn't.

Some people had given us money as gifts when we got married. The amount we had received covered the insurance deductible for the repairs almost exactly to the dollar.

A few years later, the Jeep was stolen again. Again from right in front of our apartment during the night. But that's another story.

A Disappointment

Other than Shel Silverstein, I rarely read poetry. But I recently heard this poem on the radio and found it amusing.

"A Disappointment" by Louis Jenkins

The best anyone can say about you is that you are a
disappointment. We had higher expectations of you.
We had hoped that you would finish your schooling.
We had hoped that you would have kept your job at the
plant. We had hoped that you would have been a better
son and a better father. We hoped, and fully expected,
that you would finish reading Moby Dick. I wish that,
when I am talking to you, you would at least raise your
head off your desk and look at me. There are people
who, without your gifts, have accomplished so much
in this life. I am truly disappointed. Your parents, your
wife and children, your entire family, in fact, everyone
you know is disappointed, deeply disappointed.