Around the World in 88 Years -E Book - Arthur Burt

ut on Christmas night, they returned to me. Steve’s head wasbandaged, and he explained that Brenda’s mother had emptied ahot teapot over his head and had kicked them all out of herhouse. So Marj and I took them in.That began four months of chaos. Steve would come in with aload of groceries and give them to me as a substitute for payingrent. At the time, we didn’t realize we were receiving stolen goods.Steve and Brenda brought perpetual upheaval to the house —the hurling of billiard balls at 1:00 in the morning, the smashingof glass, voices shouting, and people coming and going late intothe night.When I returned from a ministry trip, I went down into the basementfor some tools. There, I bumped into a woman who appearedto be in her eighth month of pregnancy. “Who are you?”I asked.“Who are you?” she asked me.“I happen to live here,” I informed her. “What are you doing inmy basement?”At that moment, Steve burst in. “Mr. Burt,” he explained. “Weknow you are a kind man and help those who can’t help themselves.This is Joan.”Joan was living with a Hungarian who was on the run from thepolice, and Steve had offered them a mattress in his bedroom.Here they were: Steve, Brenda, the two babies, Joan, and thisHungarian fellow, all sleeping in the same room, while Marj didn’teven know this couple was in the house. Each night, Steve andBrenda had slipped them in through a basement window afterMarj had gone to bed. They didn’t make an appearance until theafternoon, so Marj thought they were friends who visited Steveand Brenda every day — not realizing they were actually livingthere. I told the unmarried couple they would have to leave. Inretaliation, they reported us to the police, accusing us of rentingrooms unfit for human beings to live in because they had spiders.Brother Jack Perkins and his three little girls were also living withus at the time. One day, Brenda complained about an electriccooker that wasn’t functioning properly. I asked Jack to go downto look at it.151