Everett’s Last Christmas Carol

On this episode of Our American Stories, Jim Johnson finds peculiar friends wherever he goes. This story is about one such friend, Everett Motl.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
James L. Johnson.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
He's a long time pastor and he and his wife
Linda have served together in Washington and California, among other places.
They have nine kids, live in Rogers, Minnesota. Pastor Jim
finds peculiar friends wherever he goes, wherever he lives, wherever
he travels in one form or another. This is the

(00:48):
story about one of those friends. Here's Jim Johnson and
the story of Everett Model.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Everett was a peculiar man in our town. Smiling, awkward
and heavy footed. He spoke with a backthroat lisp. But
he didn't talk much, not to most people. But Everett
would talk to me. I got the Lord in my life,
Everett told me not so long after he started coming

(01:16):
to our church in a small town in northern Minnesota.
He cried when he said it. Every time he said it.
I think Everett cried. Jesus is in my heart. He
would say it was twenty five years ago. This Christmas,
we sang our last Christmas Carol together. I couldn't always

(01:37):
understand his words, but I could always understand this much
Everett model, the peculiar old man who mowed four lons
a day with a broken down more for five dollars
a yard, needed community, he needed to work, and he
wanted you to know that he was a Christian. Everybody

(01:58):
knew whoever. It was in the northwestern frozen cold Minnesota
burg where we used to live, with one thousand, five
hundred and twenty seven citizens and two grocery stores, a
coast to coast and a hardware hank. It couldn't help
but notice the Everetts of the world. He was about
sixty years old back then, but looked a little older.

(02:20):
And he was, as we used to say it, a
little slow, although it doesn't seem nice to say it
that way now. Ever, since his divorce years ago to
a private but functional owner of Mary's Corner Closet, the
thrift Store, Everett had made his home in a low
rent senior home, a rest home, as we used to

(02:42):
call it, a six room, gray shaked house with two gables,
aging but well kept. The Johnson Rest Home said the
sign on the side. Because of Everett's quirky personality and
his awkward way of talking, and his seemingly wor singing health,

(03:02):
he moved from one rest home to another, one town
to the next, until his diabetic condition forced the move
to Midway Nursing Home in the oldest part of our town.
Staying at Midway said a lot in itself. The seniors
with a little better means who needed help, they stayed
in the newer municipal home.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
By the Highway.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
The municipal was definitely a step up, attached to the
regional hospital and a growing health clinic. The Municipal was
clean and new and bore the look of modern healthcare.
Everett did not live at the municipal home. He lived
at the Midway. The Midway Home was well green. It

(03:46):
was the original hospital in our town, a rectangular building
with three floors. The Midway was built in the nineteen
twenties and saved from raising because it was, as we
used to say, too good to go to waste. Painted
in that verdant guacamole color, it brought smiles to first
time visitors to our town, but it served fine Foreverett

(04:10):
and about twenty other also rans of life. Back then,
three males a day in a regular turnover of nursing
assistants who made about eight dollars an hour and worked
hard at it. The Midway Home was for people who
grew up in the country and worked on homestead farms
or taught in two room schoolhouses. Those folks, like my folks,

(04:31):
didn't feel necessarily that it was a step down to
live in Midway. It was a step up for them,
and as a pastor of a local mainline church, I
held services there every Sunday afternoon and would visit people
like Everett. Everett at first lived just two blocks from
our parsonage on Second Street, so I saw him often,

(04:53):
but honestly tried to avoid him. My next door neghbor, Steve,
was the first to befriend him. Steve couldn't help himself.
Everett asked if he could mow his lawn one day,
and Steve was easy. He was a new Christian with
a tender heart, and he could not say no. Everett
pushed his lawnmower the two blocks from the restroome to

(05:15):
our lots near the corner by the dairy Queen on
Second Street.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
And I have to.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Admit, yes, I did think it looked odd to see
in a hunched and aging man mowing the lawn of
a young, burly maintenance man. But Steve was undeterred. Steve said,
everybody needs to have a purpose. What's life without a job. Well,
I couldn't disagree with that, so I paid Everett five

(05:41):
dollars to mow my lawn too. The lines weren't always straight.
He cut into my tree roots. He started mowing too
early in the day, and his ancient Toro lawnmower coughed
up clouds of blue smoke. But Linda and I hired
him five dollars just to be nice once a week

(06:02):
at least. Whenever it came to mow my grass. He
would often crank up the Toro at seven o'clock in
the morning, waking up our three little girls. Everett, I'd say,
after I had him stop the mower, you can't really
start until eight o'clock. Okay, sorry, he would say, I
didn't know. Sometimes my neighbor Steve grew frustrated because Everett

(06:25):
would mow over his new dogwood bushes. Everett, you got
to watch we were mowing, Steve would say, everwould shrug,
and Steve would hire him the next week as a
new Christian and a kind but burly maintenance man. Steve
had a heart for the zeros of this world, and
I was working on that too. Yes, Everett smoked too much,

(06:46):
and yes he was odd, and yes Everett's reputation preceded him,
but Everett was family to us. He was anyway, a
child of God and a man who needed five dollars,
and we agreed to help.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
And you're listening to James L.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Johnson, a long time pastor, telling the story of this
well peculiar friend. And we all have peculiar friends. Maybe
you're peculiar. I think I'm pretty peculiar myself. And you're
listening to the story of Everett model when we come back,
more of Jim Johnson's story, and of course Everett's story
Here on Our American Stories, Lie Hibib here the host

(07:33):
of Our American Stories.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Every day on this show, we're.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from
our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't
do the show without you. Our stories are free to
listen to, but they're not free to make. If you
love what you hear. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com
and click the donate button. Give a little, Give a lot.
Go to Auramerican stories dot com and give And we

(08:09):
continue here on our American Stories listening to a listener's story.
Let's continue with Jim and Everett's unlikely friendship.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
God sent Everett to our church. I think ever since
I was a child, God gave me a heart for
the nobody's of the world. I knew it from my
boyhood in Bloomington, Minnesota. Jay, a neighbor kid with a
kool Aid mustache and a heiny haircut, moved across the
street because the lord wanted to teach me something. My

(08:40):
neighborhood on Stephens Avenue had sixteen houses, all in the
lower middle class blue collar range, and the kids became
my friends and teachers. They were bullies and brains, athletes
and poets, musicians and scrappers and gossips and jocks, and
the twenty children of the block on Stephens Avenue who
had the world in a nutshells. So Steven's Avenue became

(09:04):
my training ground for character. Everyone counts. God made them all,
Jesus loved them, and I was supposed to love them too. Granted,
you had to love and stay pretty far away from
some people at the same time, but you can learn
to do that. It's judgment and discretion and elbow room
all at the same time. But if you're a true Christian,

(09:26):
you better learn to be nice, which brings me back
to Everett model. The old man came to our small
town church for two basic reasons. One we preached the
Bible every Sunday, and Everett believed the Bible. And two,
you could wear flannel and boots and big bell buckles
in our services if you wanted to, and nobody cared.

(09:49):
We were the down to earth crowd. Not so many
bankers or lawyers or dentists in our church. We do
the regular folks. We captured the market on regular at
Calvary Church, the plain everyday people who invested their lives
in road construction and milk plants, small grain farms and
auto repair. Even so, people still look twice whenever it

(10:12):
waddled into our church. He spent his career doing small
jobs and farmhand work, the lower rung of the agricultural
ladder in the Midwest. But he came to our church
every Sunday and so he was our family, with one
hundred and ten people watching him. It was entertainment in
theology all at the same time. Everett hobbled up to

(10:32):
the third pew on the left every Wednesday night and
every Sunday morning, sitting by the inside aisle, usually by himself.
The room was a course drifted in like a cloud.
As always, Everett was strange. Mary had to divorce him
because well, we didn't want to say, and he was
forced to leave a previous care center because he can't

(10:53):
get along with people. He was stubborn, he was weird,
he was poor, he was ever it. I suppose some
of the rumors were true, but I chose to believe
about ten percent of them, and I still do to
this day.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
With people.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Take it with a grain of salt, as my mother
used to say. And in a world filled with sin
and sinners and flannel and jeans and rest homes and
small towns and big cities and good children and the
naughty and the nice who don't always live like they should, Well,
I suppose you have to give people a second chance.
I guess there are a lot of things to overlook

(11:31):
and of which to be forgiven. The angel said to
Joseph and Matthew one twenty and twenty one that quote
what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit,
and Mary will give birth to a son, and you
are to give him the name Jesus, because he will
save his people from their sins. I guess Jesus died

(11:55):
for people like Everett too, had used a man named
Bob in a neighboring town to lead Everett to Jesus Christ.
One year. Bob, the truck driver, formerly the town bully,
had become a believer in Christ and had become a
pretty good role model too in our neighboring town. And
as such truck driver Bob knew what it was like

(12:18):
to be alienated and estranged. So Bob brought him to
his church in Macintosh and taught Everett that Jesus was
God's son, that Christ died in across to pay the
price for our sin, that Jesus had risen from the
dead and wanted to enter into our lives and forgive
our sin and create us anew. Our small town church

(12:39):
in Foston preached pretty much the same message of salvation.
I'm thinking of that verse to you was born a
savior who is Christ the Lord Everett like that, and
he wanted to be a part of our church. So
I made friends with him because I was a pastor,
and because I had a heart for the zeros of
this world, because I was a zero. Probably we're supposed

(13:02):
to take care of people like Everett, aren't we? But
it went further for me than just being Lutheran clergy. Everett,
to me represented the least of these people. As Jesus said,
like the poor man Lazarus in Luke seventeen, Everett was
only asking for crumbs off the table. Who are we
to say no for? Aren't we all as poor as Lazarus?

(13:24):
And Everett himself the congregation embraced him. After a few months.
We mostly came to love him, almost all of us,
I should say. He came every Sunday rain or shine,
snow or sleet, and he stayed after for snack time,
and ate enormous amounts of food at our monthly potluck

(13:45):
dinners and never brought a dish. Of course, pretty sure
he wouldn't have tried his dishes anyway. But we came
to accept and love Everett just the same. Like most
of us. Everett had his good traits and his bad traits.
He always he sat on the right side, second row,
next to the aisle. One day, a visitor came early and,
not knowing, sat down with his wife and took everett

(14:08):
spot my lawnmowing friend walked down the aisle, looked up
to see his pew taken, and he didn't know what
to do. I mean, while all one hundred of us
were watching piano playing in the background, two minutes before
the service started and with the church mostly packed, Everett hesitated.
He looked, he turned, he stopped, He deliberated, before quickly

(14:33):
walking back to the folding chair section in the rear.
But before he came forward all the way from the back,
we all watched him. What was ever going to do
with those two people sitting in his usual seat. He
tapped the unsuspecting men on the shoulder. He bent down
and asked the visitor if he could have his hymnal.

(14:54):
We could hear Everett ask it semi intelligibly, can I
have that hymn book with an unknowing shrug. The men
reached over, grabbed the hymn book, handed it to Everett,
and that was that. Everett took the book and walked
back to the folding chairs in the rear, fully content,
tell you what no one ever said, and Everett spot

(15:15):
next time when you're a little awkward, you need a
little time, and you need a good friend. And my
maintenance chief friend Steve was just the guy. Steve was
kind enough to ask him to help him serve as
an usher with him forever. That was a huge job
and a great compliment, carrying brass plates with money offerings,

(15:40):
checks a few coins. That was a new horizon forever.
It was perhaps the first time anyone had ever asked
him to serve. And Steve, in flannel and jeans and
cowboy boots, would stand next to Everett in his lime
green leisure suit which I'm sure he bought out Mary's
corner closet the thrift store, while I prayed for the offering,

(16:01):
the three of us standing there front and center and
everyone else watching, and with Everett, his health beginning to fail,
his hands clasped in front of him, would lean and
list and stagger and catch his footing just about to fall.
You know, I'm telling you a few of the caring women,
none of the observant children of the church, and all
but two of the men closed their eyes during those prayers.

(16:25):
Everybody was watching. They were sure, ever it was going
to fall. Don't let this happen. Give him a brace,
but Steve would hang on steady as can be, provide stability.
And Everett never did fall down up there. But there
was a new level of alertness during my brief opening
offering prayers. But Everet would smile. You say, I'm an

(16:46):
usher now, he would tell me we were watching him crow.
The other amusing part of being in a church service
with Everett was prairie quest time. Our Smelltown Church uses
a family friendly prayer request method. Just after the apostles
creed and before the special music, we ask if there
are any special prayer requests as we say it, and

(17:09):
people raise their hands and offer their requests. Pray for
my aunt Kathy's having a baby, Pray for Norvil's knee surgery.
They would say, pray for travel mercies. We would use
that phrase. But ever it was personal and long, real long.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
And you're listening to James Johnson, a long time pastor.
And by the way, we do these stories from churches,
from synagogues, from mosques. We do them because so many
Americans in this country take their faith and spiritual walk seriously,
and we don't back away from those things, and we
don't proselytize here, as you well know.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
But to avoid these.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
Stories, to not tell them would be a lie. And
that's why we bring them to you when we come
back more with this remarkable friendship here on our American Stories,

(18:09):
and we continue here.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
On our American Stories. James L.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Johnson telling the story of his friendship with Everett Model.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
Let's return to the story.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
Everett raised his hand for prairie request time every single time. Yes,
it's Everett, do you have a prairie request? We knew
what was coming, and yep. Everett would start talking and
start praying, and start asking and start crying, and on
and on he would go. His requests were always personal
and mostly non intelligible. They were primarily unending, and like

(18:43):
some of my sermons, Everett's requests marched on and on.
Pray for Bob and Bill and my brother Clarence, who
needs to know the Lord, he would say, or we
were pretty sure, he said, And for Pastor Tom and
Don Fritz and stifled cries for all the people who
didn't know pray first day, Steve and Barb and Pastor

(19:03):
Jim and Linda and the children and the people. And
after about three minutes you had to cut in and interrupt,
and I would say thank you ever at anybody else.
I'll never forget though Everett's final Christmas wish. It was
the day that I sang my last Christmas Carol with him,

(19:25):
twenty five years ago, this December, on that Sunday night.
Casey didn't know. In northern Minnesota the snow comes almost
every early November, right after a hunting season starts, and
it rarely melts before March, so every Christmas is white.
Our church had this annual tradition of Christmas caroling two

(19:46):
weeks before Christmas. A man in a neighboring town owned
a large sleigh and cared for a team of four
Belgian horses, beautiful animals, and every year we would ask
him to cart our church around town on the sleigh
with those horses. And Sunday nights in December were slow
nights in our town, and a church group on a
sleigh could jingle and jangle through the city with the

(20:09):
pleasure of the entire town. We could take the back
roads to family homes and senior residences and park in
the front yard. We also we figured could pull our
sleigh one street off Main Street and park it right
in front of the Midway Home. That's where Everett was
living at the end. Let's go sing Foreverett, I said.

(20:30):
Everybody wanted to see what would happen. So we took
the sleigh up to the Midway Home and parked it
and marched in our boots and coats, our glasses frosting over,
and we came to see Everett. There had a rough
run of life there that last month. He'd been unable
to attend church services for most of the fall, not

(20:52):
able to leave the nursing home since the end of
the summer except for visits to the doctor, and he
had fallen and broken his right wrist after a dizzy
spell one day in November and was fitted for a cast.
When I came into the Midway that time, he he
showed me his cast, and he would joke and say,
so much with my boxing career, Pastor Jim, how you

(21:14):
box again, Everett, I smile and say so. When the
thirty or so people from our church filed into the
Lime Green Nursing Home that night to sing Christmas carols.
At the midway. The seniors who could walk peered out
the door and smiled, and they'd look at the sleigh
and saw the horses. I haven't seen horses in years.
Some of them said. Our cheeks were red and rosy.

(21:35):
And Everett looked comfy, cozy. As we came into his room,
We're saying carols, Everett. We said, you want to come with?
We asked in that Minnesota dialect that leaves that odd
preposition dangling without shame. You all come with, he said,
and in his stretched white T shirt, Everett was looking
good that day, unusually good. He was happy and even

(21:58):
a little bit plump, and the best way it happens
for a sixty year old diabetic and frail health. The
midway die was agreeing with him. His skin looked good,
and he held his injured wrist up high. I get
my cast off tomorrow morning, ever, it smiled. Crowd moved
down the hall to the beat of heavy sorrel snow boots.

(22:19):
He followed us in the pack and wandered down to
the lounge that exists at the end of every decent
northern Minnesota nursing home. And the people beamed as we sang. Ever,
it was to my left, peeking into the lounge and smiling.
We were singing. The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes,
But little Lord Jesus, no crying. He makes. I love you,

(22:43):
Lord Jesus, look down from the sky, and stay by
my cradle till morning is nigh. I lucked him. Sure enough.
Everett was singing, actually quite loud, in that lisping, hoarse voice,
he said to his ride, and even stopped for a
phrase or two just to hear him sing another verse.

(23:04):
He was bouncing, no leaning or listing, not about to fall. Ever,
it looked vibrant and alive and steady as he sang
with the heavy coated Calvary church carollers. That night, be
near me, Lord Jesus. I asked THEE to stay close
by me forever and love me. I pray bless all

(23:26):
the dear children in n tender care and fit us
for heaven to live with THEE. There. Well, the night
was over and we left in a hurry. It was
after eight thirty pm, I'm pretty sure, pretty late for
a nursing home, and the school children would go to
school the next day. We were hustling to leave and

(23:46):
I was the last one out the door. As I
was about to walk out the door, I heard Everett
yell Pastor Jim. I turned and looked down the hall
and smiled, and he held up his cast and he said,
holding up his right wrist, I'll get it off tomorrow.
I smiled, and I remember I said these exact words.

(24:08):
I said, I hope you do, Everett. We'll be boxing
by tuesday, I said, and I waved, and I walked
out the door.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
And that was that.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
We rode the sleigh back to church and went home.
I never saw Everett alive again. The nursing home said
he died in his sleep that very night. They found
him around five o'clock in the morning. And you know,
I wasn't sad. No Everett Model the more of Lawns

(24:40):
got his cast off the next day. In heaven. He
was swinging his arm and standing firm, no leaning, no listening.
He was talking to the Savior like Lazarus, with his
wrist experiencing full motion. The poor child of God woke
up in glory, no crying, just laughing, because the Lord

(25:00):
fit him for heaven to live with him there. Like
the hymn says, as a follower of Jesus, Everett, in
the most simple and childlike of ways, had turned from
his sin and gave them all to Jesus the Immanuel,
born two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, born to die
for the losers and the winners of this world. Everett

(25:23):
repented and said, I love you, Lord. Jesus looked down
from the sky, and Jesus stayed by his nursing home
bed until morning was nigh. Yeah, the cast came off,
And no, I don't suppose Everett is boxing in heaven
like he wished that Christmas caroling night. But when I
see him one day, I'm going to hold up my

(25:44):
fists and smile just a little and fake a left
jab and a right hooked just before I hug him. Everett,
that peculiar old man, mostly loved by a hundred people
down here, and loved by a savior up there, pursued
by a Messiah, born in Bethlehem, crucified in Jerusalem, alive

(26:10):
in heaven today. Aren't you glad? Jesus was born for
peculiar people like us.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
And that was Pastor Jim telling a beautiful story about
his faith walk with a brother, And that's evert model.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
And you know, I keep hearing and can see that that.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Singing of that last Carol, and we all know what
believers are not but special meaning for those of us
who are believers. And Aquinas once said, when we sing,
we pray twice. And that's so true. And by the way,
the most substantive experience I ever had in my life
with other human beings where I learned this kind of
mercy and grace and kindness and patience. I wasn't a

(26:53):
Christian at the time. I had a beautiful girlfriend in
high school who served in nursing homes and I would
go with her and just hang out. And I got
to meet people who were close to dying and people
weren't visiting them. And what I learned about people and humanity.
And if you get a chance over the holiday seasons,
anytime visit these folks, sing.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
With them, just love on them. And that's what our
show is all about, folks.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Mercy, grace, kindness, patience, love and the beautiful things that
Americans do for each other. This is our American story.
It's the story of Pastor Jim Endeavor,