Blog 3475 – 05.09.2025

Take A Walk On The Wild Side

In the mid to late nineteen-seventies I came to know two young men quite well. Carl I met in Bible College and working at a Houston area church in their Children’s Church and Bus Ministry. And Mike I met on my day job, rather night job, working as first a machinist and then later as an expeditor.

I recently reconnected with Carl on Facebook. He is pastoring a church in Joliet, Illinois. When I knew him in the seventies he was a Bible College student and preparing to be a pastor someday as was I

Mike on the other had different plans for his life that was on quite a different trajectory. Our paths crossed and went in the same direction for a while.

As soon as his last name comes back to me, and it will, I hope to reconnect with Mike and find out if his life turned out as he had planned.

I dropped out of Bible College after three years and before getting a bachelor’s degree in both Bible and Sociology which were my majors. I had started a new job where I met Mike at the beginning of my final semester of Bible College. I had been married a year to a girl that I had met at Bible College and she and I were both working on our degrees before and after we married. I was working only a few hours a week when we met just for spending money for as a Veteran I had qualified for VA Educational Benefits which paid for my books, tuition, and dormitory expenses. Linda Gail’s parents were paying her college expenses and she worked part time as a secretary for the college recruiter to earn a little spending money for herself. We had decided to marry on June first of 1974 before the December break between semesters at the end of 1973.

We shared Christmas with her parents in Laurel, Mississippi and mine in Chattanooga, Tennessee and planned to work apart in our receptive hometowns to earn as much extra money as we could to start our lives together the following June. I had planned to look for a full-time second shift job when classes started up again in late January. Because I had worked in Chattanooga as a Teamster freight handler, I knew that I could earn more than a couple of thousand dollars during what remained of our break if I stayed in Chattanooga.

But as the Robert Burns quote goes, “The best-laid plans of mice and men oft’ go awry.” I had no sooner gotten back to Chattanooga from dropping Linda Gail back off with her parents in Laurel than the idea of a month away from her became so unbearable that I called her and said let’s go back to Houston and I will get a job there and we can be together. So we did and my Uncle Joe who also lived in Houston helped me to find a security guard job downtown working from 4:30 pm till 12:30 am which meant I would be able to make all of my classes, still this left no evenings together for Linda and I except on my one day off per week. I did this for about a year and then took the job where I met Mike. For the first eight weeks or so on that job I had machinist training from 12:30 pm till 4:30 pm and then worked as a machinist trainee for an eight hour shift. I was barely able to juggle all that and still take a couple of morning classes. By time I was finished with the training I knew that would be my last semester of college.

Soon after I quit school I started working days with Mike as his assistant in the scheduling department scheduling and expediting jobs through the manufacturing process. Mike unlike Carl swore like a sailor, smoked and drank, a told off color jokes all the time. One of his favoring songs was A Walk On the Wild Side. (Click the link below if you would like to hear it)

I really wonder if Carl ever took even a step on the wild side let alone a walk. In our work together in the Bus Ministry and Children’s Programs at our church on Sunday July 25 one year we had a promotion called Christmas in July and the Bus Minister, Ron Simmers, asked me to dress up as Santa Claus and sit in an antique sleigh and hand out candy. Ron made a 8mm movie that morning of the bus pastors arriving at church to begin their routes picking up a record number of children and bringing them to Sunday school and church. I recall watching that movie with him several times and in it Carl arrives and on his way to his bus stops and bends over to pick up a nail off the parking lot. I never knew him to make a misstep or say an unkind, hurtful, or even off-color word.

I consider both Carl and Mike my friends and brothers. Who knows who you might meet in your travels. The story goes than even Jesus was known to take occasional take a walk on the wild side.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White

Lou Reed – Walk on the Wild Side (Official Audio)

Walk On The Wild Side