The Case of the Kidnapped Priest

When I was young, life just sort of happened to me. I’d be minding my own business, and then, suddenly, Life would show up, and I’d wind up going down some goat trail, rabbit hole, or hobbit-esque adventure. It was never planned. I didn’t have some calendar on my bedroom wall with Tuesday circled in red crayon with the words, “Rabbit Hole trip: 3 pm.”

At least, it was never planned by me. Everyone else in the family always seemed to have a firm grasp on what was transpiring on certain days.

Me? I’d be sitting on the linoleum floor of my bedroom, playing with my Hot Wheels, Matchbox cars, sticks, rocks, our tabby cat, Hosea (pronounce Ho-shee), and whatever else was nearby. I’d be there, constructing an entire universe in my head. A universe that could change in an instant by merely taking the plastic wheels off of a Matchbox car. What was once a car driving around Floortown, is now a spaceship, and my little make-believe universe is now taking place on the moon of Plexor-6….

My sister would come into the room. “Are you ready?”

I was in the middle of a intergalactic war that involved wheel-less cars and plastic dinosaurs. Three feet away, open, but empty, was my suitcase. I was the poster boy for Not Ready.

“You’re not even packed yet?”

Sure, I didn’t like her tone, but the fact was, I had completely forgotten to pack my suitcase. Not only did I forget to pack, I forgot why I was packing in the first place. Tucked away in the back of my mind, there was a little bit of relief because I finally had an answer as to why there was a suitcase on my bedroom floor. Other than being the future site of Suitcaseville, that is.

I looked up to my sister, and without breaking eye contact, picked up three Hot Wheels, and slowly placed them into the suitcase. “There. All packed.”

This, apparently, was not the acceptable packing method. After the involvement of the entire family, complete with exasperated sighs and angry looks, we were on the road to….somewhere.

I honestly never knew where we were going. Looking back on those long trips, I think I was more like ballast than a traveling companion. As though Mom and Dad couldn’t fully justify leaving me behind, while at the same time couldn’t find a solid answer to the question, “Why are we bringing him? Are you sure we can’t just leave him here? It’s only for a few days…. Maybe there’s a kennel we can call….”

My sister seemed to always know. She was probably involved in all of the pre-trip briefings, assisted with the possible route changes, and made the list of side trips that would be enjoyable for everyone. She would lean over, and tell me, “We’re almost there.”

To which I would reply, “Great. Where, exactly?”

Another aspect of long trips for me was I never knew how we arrived to our destination. I knew I was in my bedroom, then I was sitting in a car for a very long time, then we were “there”. I had no concept of direction or time.

For example, if someone took my dad, blindfolded him, dropped him off in the middle of the Gobi desert, spun him around, then asked, “Where are you?” He would answer with his precise latitude and longitude. If that were to happen to my six year old self, I would promptly sit down, and start playing with my Hot Wheels until I died. The fact that I would later join the US Coast Guard as a Quartermaster (navigator) was a source of never-ending astonishment to Dad.

This lack of attention to destination, directions, and dimension of time is further complicated by the fact that the modes of transportation my family used were early 1970’s era Volkswagens that didn’t concern themselves with little things like, say, eliminating carbon monoxide in the cabin. Instead, my sister and I would be sitting on top of the lawnmower sized engine inhaling all of that wonderful exhaust for six hours.

Just as a way of clarification, Overactive Imagination + Carbon Monoxide = No Clue Of Reality. I’ve often wondered if my current ability to maintain a daydream for weeks at a time is a direct result of a leaky exhaust manifold on a VW bus, or if it’s my superpower. Or both.

By way of example to how life just sort of happens to me, I present the Case of the Missing Priest.

We had traveled to Gertie’s house in the Desert. Allow me to clarify: I have no idea to which desert we traveled. I was told it was in California. I was also told that it was the “high” desert, which, to my six year old brain, meant that there must’ve been a “low” desert. At this point in my life, I’m still not sure where either of these deserts exist on a map, or if the US Geological Service has other levels of deserts in the books. “Middle Desert” “Desert Higher That A Really Low Desert, But Still Not Very High” “Super High Desert” “Bakersfield”

Further clarification: I’m not entirely sure I know the true identity of “Gertie”. In the wholly inadequate filing system in my mind, in between “Gadzooks, Shazam, and Other Expletives That Have Been Vetted” and “Good Sandwiches”, there is a file marked, “Gertie”. In that file, there is a small, slightly used napkin that has written upon it, “Mom’s Step-Mom.” To this day, I’m not sure if that’s accurate or if that napkin had been misfiled altogether.

As a sidenote, there is also a file folder marked “Lois” that remains utterly empty. I have no idea where this person fits in my family tree, but I’ve been instructed to refer to her as “Aunt”.

We arrived at Gertie’s house in the desert. We were not the only ones there. Also in attendance were my aunt, and cousins. I say cousins in the plural, but, in full disclosure, at six years old, I only remember the youngest cousin being there at the time. His age fell in between mine and my sister’s. I had older cousins, but they were all older than my sister, therefore making them all perilously close to “Grown-Ups”. So I’m saying “cousins” only in case the older ones were there, though I have no recollection of their presence.

As is the wont of deserts, it was impossibly hot. I believe this was the trip where I discovered that I knew how to sweat. Or melt. Not sure which. This was before the invention of Heat Stroke, Heat Exhaustion, or Death By Walking On The Surface Of The Sun. Because of this, my cousin, sister, and I were told to go play outside in the noonday 120 degree heat without any hesitation or concern to our welfare. We would run around like small feral animals whose brains were baked down to the size of walnuts.

This was because we WERE small feral animals whose brains were baked down to the size of walnuts.

Across the street from Gertie’s, was the Our Lady of the Blistering Desert Heat church. Again, this is where my lack of direction, time, and space come into play. I say “across the street”, but I really do not know. We left Gertie’s little house, and, after some indefinite time, we arrived at the church. I’ve always assumed it was just on the other side of the street, but it could just as easily be somewhere in Maine, or Latvia.

This small church was relatively new, or so I’d been told, and it was under the care of Father Scanlon. It was a beautiful little building, done in a stylistic desert motif, with Spanish mission flavors. When we were there, there was some sort of add-on being built. Off of the main building, sprouting from a large cement slab, was the 2×4 framework of a large building. If I had to put forth a guess, I would say it was a gym, or a fellowship hall. But, as mentioned previously, I wasn’t a Catholic, and I wasn’t sure if the Vatican allowed gyms or fellowship halls to be built in the desert, so I have never tried to assign a purpose to the structure.

Our Lady of the Blistering Desert Heat church was a campus of sorts. There was the main church, tall and slender, a meditation garden that had a nicely proportioned collection of boulders, cacti, scrub brush, and with benches where parishioners could sit and pray before combusting in the desert heat. There was the parsonage, which, in hindsight, probably wasn’t called a parsonage, but a priestage. I didn’t find out until years later that it was called a rectory.

This was where Father Scanlon lived. To us, the entire church campus was where Father Scanlon lived. It was all his property. As if he was some old priest that decided to move to the desert and build himself the Our Lady of the Blistering Desert Heat.

Father Scanlon was a very nice guy. He was always at the church when we visited. He always had popsicles for us, and cold bottles of soda pop. Going to the Our Lady of the Blistering Desert Heat church was akin to a Holy Pit Stop.

It’s important to reiterate that Father Scanlon was ALWAYS at “his” church. Always. The idea that Father Scanlon would ever leave the confines of the church was just crazy talk. Much like the disbelief a child has when they see their school teacher ANYWHERE else but at school. So, in our minds, there was the Our Lady of the Blistering Desert Heat, and one of the permanent fixtures of that church was Father Scanlon, Who. Never. Left.

Except this one time.

My cousin and I were running on empty, and so, in between building full sized cars out of rocks and sticks and running around for no reason, we decided to swing by Father Scanlon’s place for a cold one. We knocked on his door at the priestage, but he did not answer. We looked in the church, but he wasn’t there. Nor was he in the garden. We looked into the half built May or May Not be a Gym, but he was nowhere to be found.

Here’s where Life just sort of happens to me.

A normal brain would draw up a series of options. Father Scanlon was out getting stuff for tomorrow’s service. Father Scanlon was out golfing/bowling/riding his Harley. Father Scanlon was out doing priestly duties like visiting the shut-ins, performing Last Rites for the dying, First Rites for the newly born, and Middle Rites for those that have hit their 40’s and realized that they don’t like their careers and have never really started saving for retirement. That’s what a normal brain would think.

My cousin and I didn’t, and still don’t, have normal brains.

My cousin looked at me, and with eyes full of fear and concern, whispered, “He’s been kidnapped.”

That was it. Old Father Scanlon, little parish priest, had been kidnapped. No other option available. Once uttered, it was truth. If my cousin said it was so, then there was no reason to counter with other possibilities. I didn’t say, “Well, let us not rush to conclusions, Dear Cousin. Why, he could just be out for a stroll, or visiting friends. Let us wait for a day or so before alerting the authorities.” Didn’t say that. Nope. I DID say, “Kidnapped?! Father Scanlon has been KIDNAPPED?! We have to save him!”

I don’t fall down rabbit holes. I swan dive.

In our young, overheated brains, the obvious place to search for clues of Father Scanlon’s kidnapping was in the unfinished May or May Not be a Gym. There was just no other logical place for kidnappings to occur. We were sleuths. We were Super Detectives. The Hardy Boys had nothing on us. Columbo could have learned a thing or two from us. We would have out thunk Sherlock Holmes. We were a pre-adolescent CSI team.

My cousin was busy looking for the place where the abduction took place amidst the sawdust, lumber leftovers, and tools. Everything I saw was important, and resulted in a, “A-ha” and a, “Very innnnnteresssting….” from me.

My cousin stood on the far wall, arms akimbo, slowly nodding his head. “There was a struggle here. You can see from the scuff marks in the dust and the way the tools are moved here… and there….”

I came up with, “The way these nails are lying on the ground….it’s not normal. I think it’s a code. I think Father Scanlon left a message for us to decipher.”

After twenty minutes, it was incredibly obvious to us that Father Scanlon was, in fact, in some sort of witness protection program, hiding from the Mob. They found him here in the desert, and snatched him away to punish him. And they did it on a Saturday, too, with church services happening the next morning! It was up to my cousin and I to find Father Scanlon for his own safety, and for the purpose of Sunday Mass!

My cousin and I were busy formulating a plan on how we were going to storm the bad guy’s hide out. The fact that we didn’t know where they were hiding out was a non-issue, and, quite honestly, wasn’t as important as figuring out if we should try to lure them outside for the attack, or bring our Kung-Fu skills inside the hovel where they were holding Father Scanlon.

I had nearly convinced my cousin that we should bust in through the front door, and fight the bad guys inside because then we would be able to use chairs to bash people over the heads and stuff. The finer points of the attack were almost complete when the door that separated the priestage from the May or May Not be a Gym opened.

In a flash, I knew that the bad guys had retraced their steps, and had come back to the scene of the crime. The fight for Father Scanlon had come to us! This was it! The fight was starting, and I hadn’t had time to stretch properly!

But it wasn’t a group of Mob Toughs coming to “clean up”. There, in the doorway, holding two paper grocery bags from the local Circle K, stood our Father Scanlon. “Hey, Boys. What’s going on?”

I didn’t see that coming. His sudden appearance refused to compute. “You were kidnapped!” I blurted out. “They released you?”

My cousin also yelled out, almost simultaneously, “How could you be released? We haven’t even found the ransom note yet! We haven’t had time to fight the bad guys!”

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re Father Scanlon. You were just out picking up some food down at the convenience store. It’s late in the afternoon, you’re tired, and you probably still have to work on tomorrow’s sermon. You pull in the driveway, go in the house, and you hear noises from the construction site just outside the kitchen door. You open that door, and there, wearing cut-offs and t-shirts, are two of the most scruffiest ragamuffins in the long history of ragamuffins. You can barely say, “Hi” before they scream out that you’ve been kidnapped, and how is it possible that you were released without their assistance?

There is surreal, and then there is this moment in history. Two boys, covered in the dust of the desert, standing dumbfounded because the priest they thought had been kidnapped was standing there before them holding grocery bags.

A pause. Then Father Scanlon stood up straight, looked us right in the eyes, and said, “I ESCAPED!”

Which, in my mind, is the absolutely the coolest thing that could possibly be said in that instance.

After a celebratory popsicle (Lime for me, orange for my cousin, lemon for Father Scanlon), my cousin and I spent the remaining daylight hours pretending to to use our prestigious Kung-Fu skills to rescue other kidnapped priests.

But that was a key turning point in my life. Even with everything that went on, I knew… I KNEW that Life just sort of happened to me….

…and when it does, even now, I always hoped that I would have the wherewithal to come up with the right responses, like Father Scanlon when he told us that he escaped from his kidnappers.