Thread by @danielsilliman, Fifty years ago today, my dad accepted Jesus. He was a 21-year-old [...]

Fifty years ago today, my dad accepted Jesus.

He was a 21-year-old drug dealer who had *just* stolen 2,000 pounds of marijuana and the money to pay for 2,000 pounds of marijuana. Instead of doing the deal, he'd decided to split.

Then he had a run-in with some Christians.

A story/thread for Friday afternoon ...

As my father told it to me ...

My dad grew up in Berkeley, CA and became a serious hippie drug dealer until he grew sick of it and the hypocrisy of the scene and decided he was going to "retire."

On his way out of town (looking over his shoulder), he bumped into the guy who’d first introduced him to drugs. Guy was now a Christian, living on a Jesus people commune, and getting married that weekend. My dad decided to stick around for the wedding.

He thought the Jesus stuff was weird though.

He'd been having some of what he called "religious feelings," though he didn't grow up in church or anything like that. Partly, this was because a street preacher named "Holy Hubert" kept telling him he was going to hell.

This is Holy Hubert:

One of Hubert's schticks was he had the whole Bible memorized and he’d challenge passersby to find a verse he didn't know, and then he’d preach that verse to them.

Another was telling everybody they were going to hell. He knew my dad was a big time hippie drug dealer, so he made a point of telling him he was damned every day for like 2 years. Now that my dad was sick of the Berkeley scene, he was thinking about what Hubert had said.

My dad had a couple of days to wait for the wedding, but he couldn’t go back to where he was living because of the robbery thing, so he just drove around a lot. At one point he stopped at a gas station and bumped into a cop that he knew named Harry Brizee.

Harry was the beat cop assigned to be nice to hippies and college students in Berkeley, to help the police department with its image. He was called “Smiling Harry” by the hippies.

Here’s how one street paper described him at the time:

Harry, for his part, told the Fresno Bee that he didn’t think the hippies and street kids were mainly about drugs or revolution.

“Actually what they are,” he said, “are a bunch of lost kids.”

Harry smiled at my dad every day (while Hubert was telling him he was going to hell) and Harry also tipped him off several times to help him avoid arrest.

Which was weird, my dad thought.

At the gas station, my dad said "hey" and told Harry he was leaving town and not coming back.

Harry said, “Well if I’m not going to see you again I should tell you why I helped you not get arrested those times. It was because of Jesus.”

Apparently when Harry took the job, God told him to keep my dad out of prison, because God had a better plan for my dad’s life.

That gave my dad more weird Jesus feelings.

Back to the Jesus people commune. My dad's waiting for things to start and read a newsletter they had laying around. In the corner was a little box that said, "If you don't know if Jesus is real, why don't you ask him? If he doesn't answer, you can go on your way."

That seemed like good way to get rid of the religious feelings. By now, they were really starting to freak him out.

So he prayed "Jesus, I guess if you're real, be real to me." And he was immediately overcome by peace. Everything was different after that.

Here's my dad—standing on the right, looking out of the picture—listening to Holy Hubert with some other early Jesus people and assorted hippies.

He and I are very different people, and have different faith journeys, but I am so grateful for what happened to him that day 50 years ago.

/The end.

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