25 JANUARY
Sunday
Norm Worth and Owen Scott, pastors at the downtown Full Gospel Church, hold a dedication ceremony for Nathan.
Since I no longer enjoy my work at the General Hospital, I look for another job and find one as a shipper-receiver at Foothills Bookstore, a Lutheran retail book outlet.
Basically, the job involved wrapping books and various other items ordered by customers in corrugated cardboard that we had to send out in the mail.
I photograph two young ladies—Wendy and Diane—who work there and who are willing to pose for me.
MARCH
To increase my understanding of Christianity, I consider taking assorted Bible and theological classes from the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada correspondence school, but the courses are too expensive for me.
7 MARCH
Sunday
I sing a special number at the Full Gospel Church
While working at Foothills Bookstore, Fred—one of the men who works with me—helps me get my driver’s license, after which I begin making mail deliveries of parcels to the post office warehouse at the airport.
Fred’s sage advice to me when learning to operate the truck was—“Drive with reckless abandon and if you hit something, jump out and see what the damage is!”
I used to take up to 12 bags of wrapped items to the post office every day. When I got there, I’d take the bags out and place them on the docking bay relatively gently so none of the packages inside would dent or rip. However, when the postal workers grabbed them, they tended to hurl the bags a good five to ten feet to holes in the dock down which the bags would subsequently tumble.
29 MAY
Saturday
Lana and I attend the wedding of Bill and Annabelle who wears Lana's wedding dress.
12 JUNE
Saturday
I hold a Revival Meeting at the Vista Heights Community Hall, but very few people attend.
SUMMER
We buy our first car—a 1962 Ford Galaxie, for $1.00, from our friend, Paul.
One upside of the year, of course, was that first car which we got so cheap! And, in those days, car insurance wasn’t very expensive, either, especially for a vehicle as old as that one happened to be. But, at the time, it was in very good shape.
31 JULY
Saturday
We attend Charles & Frances Hunter’s Holy Spirit Christian Walk Seminar.
Oddly enough, the only thing I remember from the whole seminar occurred when the Charles and Francis walked up the center aisle of the auditorium with their hands outstretched, many people ‘fell under the power of the Holy Spirit’.
15 AUGUST
Sunday
I sing at the 1976 Western Canadian Charismatic Conference on Prince's Island Park.
I certainly enjoyed ministering at various concerts and services. I wish there could have been more of them, but outlets at the time were quite limited in Calgary’s Christian circles. Or—more likely—you had to be a member of a particular church or denomination in order to participate.
Lana becomes an Avon representative.
Lana did extremely well as an Avon representative. She later got involved in sales work for different businesses. It was something at which she excelled. Before and after we met, she worked for the Alberta Government Telephones in Calgary as a long-distance operator. She told me that one day she got to talk for a few moments to entertainer, Jack Benny, who was calling someone in the city.
23 AUGUST
Monday
In response to my previous inquiry, Sparrow Records lets me know they are not currently looking for new artists.
25 AUGUST
Wednesday
For Lana's birthday, our friends Tim and Karla join us at the Tiki Tiki Restaurant.
Tim and Karla later became involved with the Rosebud School of the Arts with Tim’s brother, Laverne, and after that, the Honeymoon Bay Lodge & Retreat in British Columbia.
31 AUGUST
Tuesday
I pitch an idea for a superhero adventure comic book series to Spire Christian Comics, but they already have enough titles.
I'm asked at Foothills Bookstore if I'd be interested in helping in the store’s printing department since the person currently working there is due to leave in a few weeks.
I say I would. That is on a Friday. I come in the following Monday to find out that the printer has already left, so I'm left pretty much on my own to figure out how the printing press [an A B Dick 360] works, as well as the darkroom equipment, bindery, folder, collator, plate burner, and other paraphernalia. Fortunately, one of the managers also knows quite a bit, so I won’t be completely lost.
I thoroughly enjoyed working in the printing department once I knew what I was doing. They left me on my own and, if I got the required work done, I could do what I liked. Many times, I worked past closing time because I had gotten so involved on whatever project I was working. The hardest part proved to be learning how to run the press, but I soon got the hang of it.
One time, I had to run 500 copies of a four-color, 2-sided cover for the store catalogue—one color at a time: yellow, cyan, magenta, and black. It was tedious and not a little stressful trying to align one color over the other in the precise position it needed to be, using a folding magnifier loupe and miniscule movements of the metal plate by hand. By the time I finished, I’m sure I must have wasted three or four times the amount of cover stock needed for the job in order to get some decent-looking final copies.
SEPTEMBER
I look into the possibility of recording a 33 1/3 rpm album of my music at Master’s Workshop in Rexdale, Ontario, or at Sound West Recording Studios in Calgary, but I find the prices too expensive for me.
I continue to market myself and my songs, but still don't find an interested music publisher or record producer.
For various personal reasons, in a continuing search for a new church home, we begin to attend services at Calgary Christian Centre where, once they get to know me and my ministry, they let me lead worship on occasion.
An announcement in the church bulletin indicates I will be involved in several projects—printing and song leading in special outreach services—but none of them ever happen.
This year proved to be one of major ups and downs for me spiritually and emotionally—so many promises made at Christian Centre [running the church offset press; recording tapes; forming and directing the church choir; traveling with the pastor to hold charismatic meetings] and none of them saw fruition. It proved very disheartening for me, and I never understood the reason[s] why nothing ever happened.
No comments:
Post a Comment