Recipes for Living Bob Diehl

When I asked Bob Diehl if I might do his life story, his response was, "Oh, man!" He would be the first to say that he ranks high in the contest for the most controversial figure in Clarke County. If he hadn't known until then, he heard himself described first-hand by a lady who wanted to tell him what a low life "that Bob Diehl" is. When she had finished, he said, "Have you ever met him?" She admitted that she hadn't, so he put out his hand and asked if she would like to shake it. She did a few hurried "Michael Jackson" steps without retracting what she'd said.

May I introduce you to the Bob Diehl I know? Our acquaintance began in the late 1960s when Bob came to a meeting at our home. I didn't know who he was and I don't remember him from the meeting, but he discovered then that I am a Bible reader. He was a member of the Mormon faith and began coming to discuss Biblical interpretations.

His introduction to the Mormons happened when his daughters came home from school and told him there were a couple fellows who would like to meet him. He asked who they were and they knew only that the young men were from a church. His response was, "Oh, they want money." The girls assured him that was not the case, and he said, "Tell them to come and I'll show you how soon the subject of money comes up."

The fellows were Mormon missionaries, and no, they didn't talk about money, but they told Bob things that were impossible for him to believe. Bob had dropped out of high school because he had difficulty reading, but the conversation sent him to the Bible which he read cover to cover, night after night, trying to find proof that the boys were wrong. There were many nights when he began reading when the family went to bed and until it was time to change clothes to go to work the new day. He became convinced by what he read and joined the Mormon Church. He gave me an introduction to it as well, but I chose to remain a Methodist. I was touched when he invited me to attend the service on the day he baptized his father.

Many years went by when I didn't see him, but in 1999, I attended a meeting at which the subject of Bob Diehl's Trailer Court came up. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and asked if there were no zoning regulations to take care of such situations. The answer was that even if there were, he would be "grandfathered" in. Then I asked if there were children there. I was answered by Steve Waterman, the school superintendent, who said the bus picked up about 30 children. He added, "If you want to do something about it, I will help you."

The next morning I was in his office and during our conversation, I remembered my former association. I called Bob and reintroduced myself, asking if we could meet sometime when he was in town, and I would buy him a cup of coffee. Of course, we didn't have coffee, because as a loyal Mormon, he didn't drink coffee, tea, or alcohol in any form, and he has never smoked a cigarette in his life. I asked him what would happen if I came out and had Sunday school with the little kids. He was more than encouraging! He would help any way he could.

I had no committee behind me to give me permission to do this. I simply made little folders inviting them to come to Sunday school, and on a certain Friday, Sally Dulinsky went with me to distribute them. I left a meeting to go and the ladies were frightened for me, urging me to change my mind. On the way, I said to Sally, "Are we nuts?" She said, "Yes," but we went on.

Never have I been so well received! Mike and Kathy Love, with daughter Mikey and grandson Carl, escorted us to the trailers where there were children and we left them a folder. It was an invitation to come to our church for Sunday school and even though it immediately became obvious that they wouldn't be coming (more than a few had no transportation and all would have felt out of place), they were extremely polite and gracious, coming out of their homes before we could get to the door.

They didn't leave my thoughts and I recruited Sandy Smith, the Education Director, and Ben Cox, Evangelism chairman, to go with me on a Sunday afternoon. Our actions answered some of the questions a committee would have raised, "Where would you meet?" We threw down a blanket and the children came. "What would you do when it rains?" Believe it or not, for 63 Sundays in a row it did not rain on Sunday at our time to go. "What about when it gets cold?" Bob let us use his living quarters, and I will never forget a Sunday when 18 children and adults crowded in to have what we called "Fun Church." I treasure a snippet from that occasion when I was acquainting myself with a new resident of the court. During the conversation she said she would be looking for a job and I made a comment about not looking for one myself. Greg injected, "You've got a job. You work for God."

Fun Church became a regular event every Sunday and throughout the years various people assisted. Some volunteered to go one Sunday, some became regulars - Mark and Vickie Binning, the Bob Cutshall family, and Mike Boldon lasted longest. We sang, we did crafts, we bought Picture Bibles, which the children could read, then graduated to Student Bibles. All in all we had a glorious time. At that time there were many Hispanic families living there, which gave me an introduction to them. They were ones on whom Bob could depend to pay their rent in full and on time. We Caucasians “stiffed him" a lot.

There is no question in my mind that I learned far more than the children. Sometime in August, I began to realize the children knew nothing about Jesus, so I re-studied and attempted to write the gospel in a way they could understand. At Christmas-time, I wrote that Mary and Joseph had to travel a long way and when they arrived there was no room for them, so Jesus had to be born (a blank for which they should use the word for where we keep animals). Their first response was, "A zoo?" No. Alejandra's eyes lit up and she said, "I know! A farm!" We compromised with a barn on a farm and Jesus was laid in a "trough," a word they knew.

But what struck me for the first time in all my Bible reading was God's compassion for the poor and powerless, the "widows and orphans." After all, Jesus could have come into the world in any way to any rank of parents. But he came to a poor, powerless couple, grew up to become a day laborer, and chose for his disciples "common, uneducated" men, according to Luke's account in Acts 4:13. This reconstructed my thinking and rearranged my priorities. It changed my focus on who are the important people.

Easter was a glorious day for us, and the children remember all these years later, that first Easter egg hunt. But just prior to that, one of the ladies mentioned that she would like to have her children baptized. Several others agreed, and some adults said they hadn't been baptized. This was completely beyond my scope of authority, but our pastor, Rev. Jim Louk, agreed to conduct it. He gave me permission to reword the ceremony because the stilted phrases congregations are accustomed to would be totally meaningless to them. I thought they would feel uncomfortably conspicuous if we were to do this during the worship service, so they came for their own service immediately following, which their families and special guests attended. Eleven in all, adults and children, were baptized. Following the ceremony and picture taking, Mark, Vickie, and I provided a lunch.

But a very interesting situation occurred as we were preparing to come to town. Someone came running to tell us there was a fire. It was a grass fire burning in a ditch across the road from the trailer court. It was extinguished, but as Bob walked past me on his way to dress for our service, he whispered, ''By water and by fire." This was associated with the baptism by Jesus.

Bob not only permitted but supported this "ministry'' in every possible way. It likely would not have happened without his help. With the exclusion of my self, no one gave out more angel photographs with the accompanying testimony by the photographer, Cyndie Perry Green, than he. The picture was taken of a pond on his property.

The one sad feature of our endeavor was my learning the reality and consequences of the word "transient." This will continue to be the nature of the trailer court because Bob allows people to move in with no deposit. He helps them find work and pay him when they receive their paycheck. There were families who, as soon as they could afford to pay a deposit along with a month's rent, moved into town. Others, during the several years of Fun Church, left to go back to Texas or Mexico, and never returned. These children, whom I had come to love so dearly, were gone, and chances were I would never see them again. Also, because of the transient nature of the residents, at the present time (2005) there are no young children. I bring a teenage boy to church with me, but he is the only one interested in coming. These years, however, leave with me some of the most precious memories of my lifetime. Bob is an important part of them.

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Bob tells his own story: I was born in Clarke County, 2 ½ miles from where I presently live on Liberty Highway, about a mile from highway 34, on what is now R59. I have a lot of relatives whose names would be familiar to long-time residents of the area. When I was active in the Mormon Church, I studied our genealogy. I've traced Dad's line back to the 1700s, and have Mother's completed to the 1400s.

My maternal grandmother was Nan Jenks Johnson, who married Robert Johnson. She was a sister to Grace Touet, married to Bill. They are the parents of Bill and Dick. The other sister was Nina Tillotson, who had one daughter, Emilia, who married Judd Reynolds. They had three children, two boys and a girl. The Jenks line goes back to the man whose life was honored at the cemetery several years ago - who helped survey the county and was possibly the first judge in Clarke County. Mom had a little brother who passed away in infancy, and two others – Gerald and Marvin. Gerald's wife was Betty and they lived in Des Moines. They had two boys and one daughter. They lost one boy in Viet Nam. Marvin's wife's name was Mary. Mom had a sister, Alita, who married Wayne Ferrill. He retired as one of the vice presidents of Dial Finance, which was a big finance company in Des Moines. They had no children. Mom had a sister Roberta, her husband was Harry Smith, and they had two children, Harry and Charlotte.

My father was Clark Diehl, and my mother was Helen Sylvia Johnson Diehl. Frank Diehl was dad's oldest brother. He married Goldie Neff. They had a son Bernard, who married Marie Peterson, and sons Randy and Roger. Randy had three children - a girl and two boys. They would be my third cousins. Frank's and Goldie's daughter, Louise, married Eddie Liggitt. They had two children - a daughter, Carmelita, and a son, Gary Lee Liggitt.

Dad had a sister, Maude, who married Kelly Peed. They lost a boy when he was about 12 years old. Another son, Clarke Peed, was in the body shop business, first working for Ford garage, then in a business of his own. Paint fumes during all those years finally caused his death. Dad's sister, Gertrude McCloney, and her husband had a daughter Virginia who married Don Cole; and another daughter, Doris, married Jim Porterfield. A younger sister, Ida, married Millard Smith. They lived in Marshalltown, and their two daughters were Charlotte and Jean.

I have a sister, Anita, retired auditor of Clarke County, married to Jack Chandler. They had two sons, Danny and Lee. About 20 years ago, Danny was in a serious car accident when he was about 29. He laid in a coma for about 13 months, which caused a great deal of suffering for everybody except him because when he woke up, he thought it was the next day. He has been in a nursing home in Waterloo ever since. Anita goes to Waterloo just about every weekend and brings him home. She is my shining star, the most sacrificial and helpful person I know.

I always liked good cars, but it was at that time that I learned to hate sports – I guess I was jealous of sports. But they teach kids to compete against each other. Leon and Osceola were bitter rivals. They fought all the time because they thought they were better than we were and vice versa. I didn't participate, although I did used to shoot a little pool from time to time. But the only way I could feel good about that was to let the other guy win. I hate competition, although there is such a thing as good competition, which is letting the other guy win. I didn’t feel good about beating him.

When I was 18, I worked for a sod company in Indianola, where I met and married Donna Lammey. We had one daughter, Bonnie Louise, who has lived in Las Vegas since she was 18. She now has her own real estate firm in her name. Bonnie has a step-daughter, Danielle, and two little boys.

Donna and I bought a 32 foot Masonite non-modern trailer house for which we paid $700. We moved it, set it up on Dad's farm, and our plumbing consisted of a well and an outhouse. At that price, making 50¢ an hour, it meant I worked 1400 hours for a non-modern trailer. They say times were better in those days, but if you were making 50¢ an hour, and gas was 23¢, you could buy 2 gallons. Today if you make $8 you can still only buy two gallons.

One day I was looking in a farm journal and saw an article about a fellow who had lost a mare when she delivered her foal. A picture showed a nanny goat standing on a feed box nursing the colt. I said "If a nanny goat can raise a colt, she can raise a calf.” So I went into that enterprise. The most I ever had was 30 nanny goats suckling 30 calves. The nanny goat cost $5, the calf cost an average of $13, and the calves were a lot healthier on goats' milk than on cows.'

After Bonnie's mother and I divorced, I married Carmen Gibbs from Corydon, whom I met in Des Moines. We had a daughter, Salowa. She works for Mercy Hospital and her husband is a heavy equipment operator for the union. They have a son, Colton and she has a step-son, Chase I was then in the logging business.

I want to make special mention of the fact that, even though I married and was divorced from two ladies, the fault was not theirs. They are the mothers of my children and we are still friends.

My sister and I inherited the land where I live. I was having trouble with the bank, so I didn't feel good about them. When I watched my cousin inherit 120 acres of his mother's land, and in 1 1/2 years the bank had their name in the plat book, told my dad, "Don't put me in your will. I didn't want that to happen to me, so his will stated, "My son is omitted." Anything he wanted me to have, he put in my in the name of my oldest daughter in Vegas. My sister got the land on the west side of the road, and my daughter got the land on the east side, but I continued to work the land. Because I was in the wood business, I built fences, barns, and the ponds. Everybody said I shouldn't be doing that because "You and your sister will be fighting when it comes time to settle up."

They were right. When it came time to settle the estate, we were fighting. My sister insisted I take the land that Dad gave her, because I had taken care of Dad the last 15 years of his life. I said, ''No," but she was more insistent than I, and I finally said okay but I wouldn't let her transfer it to me because I was afraid of the liability of the trailer court. Every time my daughter came back, Anita would say, "You tell your Dad to get his things in order so I can put this in his name." If I sell any, she puts it in my younger daughter's name. She sells it and pays the income tax on it, which helps me because I have used it to pay taxes on the trailer court.

The beginnings of the trailer court was when I ran onto a Vietnamese family. Counting the extended family, there were about 16 members. The church was going to split them up four different directions, so I told them if they wanted to help, I would set up a trailer and build a house onto it. That would provide for them to all stay together. We used the lumber off a saw mill for the house, and the trailer for the kitchen, bedrooms, and bathroom. They lived there a couple of years. Three of them worked at Snowdon's and one at the nursing home. They moved to Kansas City, where the priest could speak their language and ended in Orange County, California, pretty successful.

That venture cost me $4,000 out of pocket, but it was when I had money. I don't now. Church and family members were saying, ''You shouldn't do that. You should use that money for your family." The way it turned out, the Vietnamese helped me build it, and when they went to Kansas City, my father lived in it for 15 years. It was the first time he had ever lived on his own land, because when I was 20, we lost my mother with breast cancer. It broke my father and he was never able to build on his own land. After he passed away, I built a kitchen and bathroom in the house, and rented the trailer separately and the house for just a little more each year than it cost me to build it.

I went to the bank and asked to borrow $10,000 so I could buy trailers that were behind on taxes, which I thought would be good for both the county and me. I was turned down. Six months later a trailer park in Des Moines was bringing me trailers free, and transportation was free. That was possible because when somebody couldn't pay lot rent in Des Moines, trailer court owners went to court and took the trailer. I they wanted to dispose of it, it cost them $300 to get it ready, $300 to have it transported, and $300 to have the city dump accept it. If they gave it to me, I got the trailer ready, and didn't charge them to accept it. These were not junk trailers.

The reason this was happening - and it is a sad thing for poor people - was because the newly manufactured homes people gave the trailer court people $6,000 up front to use the lot, and put a new modular home on it. It suited the trailer court people because, in addition to the cash payment, they knew whoever bought that modular home was going to stay. If you are a nice lady living in Des Moines, and you have a nice trailer for sale, you cannot sell it because the buyer cannot find a decent place to move it for the same reason. The law is that if you sell it, you must move it.

I've had the trailer court now for about 25 years, and I care about the people who live here. Being poor is not unknown to lots of us, myself included; but I doubt that many people of the "middle class" realize what it is to be poor these days. When there were farms, there was usually work of some kind for nearly everyone. Now there are the unemployed, the unemployable, and the working poor. Lots of people work two jobs but at minimum wage, they still can't have the standard of living they have a right to expect for their family.

I get people who cannot afford a place in town because I ask nothing from them up front. They pay their rent at the end of the month when/if they get a paycheck. It has brought me lot of misery, but I've never charged a deposit. They can get a $200 voucher from the county, but doesn't get them started anywhere. It doesn't pay a deposit and a month's rent in advance. They bring the voucher to me and I give them back $100 so they can turn on electricity.

A lot of people come here without a job, a car, or money for gas if they do have one. I transport them to get jobs, which they often don't know how to do. They don't know how to approach a boss. I have one sad story about a young lady, 20 years old, unmarried, and pregnant. She asked if I would help her. I asked her about working at Kentucky Fried Chicken because I knew they had a big turnover of help. She said that would be wonderful. I took her and talked to the manager in private. I promised him she would be polite to customers and considerate of co workers, that she would not be late to work, if she took time off it would be with their permission and I would back up what I said with a $50 deposit. He told me to come back with her on Friday and meet him at the back door. He said, "I'll hire her part time, and if she is any good, as soon as I have a full time job, she can have it." He hired her, even without an interview.

When she got her first paycheck, she, the guy she was living with, another young man and his girlfriend, were going to Des Moines to celebrate. The driver didn't have a driver's license and borrowed a vehicle from a lady who shouldn't have loaned it to him. He was a young man who lived at the trailer court. I had seen him get upset and I knew he had a short fuse. I almost stopped them that night, and wish I had. As everybody knows, I hate mischief, and I hate revenge. It is as closely related as you can get to murder, which proved true that night. Between Des Moines and Indianola, the driver got into a road rage attitude toward the driver of another vehicle, and decided to pass it. He clipped the car, broad-sided his vehicle, rolled it over a few times, killed the young lady who had just gotten her first check, and another passenger. At the funeral they laid the deceased newborn infant in the casket beside the mother. It all started as mischief. People old or young do not understand the power of mischief or the power of revenge.

Thirty-eight years ago, I was introduced to the Mormon missionaries and couldn't prove them wrong. I joined their church, in which there were only about five families who met in the library basement. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the fastest growing religion in the world today, and it didn't seem long before we went to what had been the Lutheran Church at 629 South Jackson. It is now a private home. We outgrew that and have built the church on highway 34 east of town. When a church grows to so many members, they qualify for a "first space," that is an initial portion of a church, and are helped financially from Utah.

Each church is a ''ward," and there are ten churches grouped together in a "stake." In every position to which you are called in the church, you receive training by the next "higher" church, in monthly meetings. There are hundreds of callings and everyone is trained. I've been Sunday school president, and in that position, I was president over the teachers. I was taught that if a teacher had a problem, we would meet together. I would not tell the teacher he or she had a problem or identify what kind of problem it was. We would visit until the problem came out. My input was to ask if they wanted to set a goal to deal with the problem, and they would agree. Then I was to ask if they wanted to set a few short time goals to reach it. Without hardening their hearts, this method allows them to identify the problem and set goals to correct it. If you take the time and they are intelligent, they will identify their own problem and the way to overcome it. If the president were to tell the teacher he or she was doing something wrong, it would hurt them.

I was also Ward Mission Leader over missionaries in the field. The lessons are the beginning and history of the church. We use the Bible and the Book of Mormon together because in the Book of Mormon, if you have a version that gives cross-references, you will find it crossreferenced with the Bible on every page. The Book of Mormon is the history of Joseph sold in Egypt, as found in the book of Genesis. The Book of Mormon covers the period from 600 B.C. to 420 A.D. coming to South America and migrating into North America.

Once I began reading, I read everything. Of all the churches whose history I studied, the first was the Christian Church, because that was my father's church. A man by the name of Stoner started it, and then he joined with Campbell because they pretty much had the same doctrine. Mother was Methodist. John Wesley started it. I studied a lot of other churches, even non Christian like the Buddhist religion, but I never found a church that didn't tell the truth about their beginnings. There are people who question the beginnings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because they do not understand that we believe that just as Jesus was resurrected from the dead, this is what happens to all. Paul wrote a whole chapter about this in a letter to the Corinthian church. In 1 Corinthians 15:12, he wrote, ''Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how some of you can say there is no resurrection of the dead?"

The history is that John the Baptist, who had his head cut off 2,000 years ago, as told in Matthew chapter 14, officiated at the first baptism of Joseph Smith. He didn't baptize Joseph Smith, but he laid his hands on Joseph's head and gave him the keys and authority that he had and told him, ''Now you have the keys and authority to baptize your friend." So Joseph baptized Oliver Cowdry. When Oliver Cowdry came up out of the water, John said, ''Now, Joseph, you lay your hands on his head and give him the same keys and authority that I just conferred on you." Oliver was then qualified to baptize Joseph Smith.

Six months after John the Baptist took care of the ordinances for Joseph Smith, Peter, James, and John, the presidency of the apostles, came down to earth to set up the apostleship for the new church. The resurrected being that showed up before John the Baptist was Moroni, who was the last Israelite prophet to record in the Book of Mormon. It is like some grandson getting three letters from his grandpa when he was in the Army, and one letter would be equal to the Old Testament, the second equal to the New Testament, and the third equal to the Book of Mormon. What happened to the first letter, and the second, was that someone got hold of them and changed them a little to make grandpa look better. The third letter they didn't get hold of, so to find what the truth really was, the court put all three together in the Book of Mormon.

The resurrected body is totally different from ours. When the apostles went to the Upper Room after Jesus' death, they were scared. Their leader had just been done away with. They had no reason to believe they wouldn't be killed, also. So when they went into this meeting, they barred the doors and windows. But in John 20:19, after Christ was resurrected, he came into the room even though there was no door or window open for him. The apostles were afraid because they thought they saw a spirit. Jesus said, "A spirit does not have flesh and bone like you see me." His resurrected body was able to come into a room that was barred, without any difficulty. This resurrected body is pretty powerful. A lady astronaut talked to the kids in Lamoni. When she stepped out of that space ship to take a space walk, the craft was moving 17,500 miles an hour. Not only was it moving that fast, but she walked around the earth beside it three times. Now, she was only 200 miles from us. Look how different that set of laws is. There is no friction. We couldn't step out of a machine going 20 miles an hour.

In the 29th verse of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul wrote, "...What will those people do who receive baptism on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?" This in our indication that we can and must baptize for the deceased and it is the reason for our emphasis on and use of genealogies.

Baptism in the church is by immersion. The couples who come to the church, to qualify for baptism, must be married. If the mother and father are not married they have to get married. If they are drinking coffee, they have to stop; if they are smoking cigarettes, they have to stop; there might be some teas that qualify now, but when I was in the church we couldn't be baptized if we drank tea. If you break one of these promises after you are baptized, you won't lose membership in the church but it will keep you from progressing toward the temple. After you are baptized into the church, there will be two men who will visit each family once a month. They are called Home Teachers. If there are any real problems they will refer back to the one they are responsible to, to seek help. This goes from spiritual to practical issues, even to helping them find a job. They help them get started on their genealogy and whatever else they need to start on. Two women will visit the lady of the house once a month and report back to their leaders, constantly trying to keep families intact and successful. fu a local church you can be married until death do you part, but if you are in good enough standing, and you can get to the temple with your spouse, you can be married for eternity. This comes from Jesus saying to Peter that what he bound on earth would be bound in heaven and what he loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven (Matt. 16:19). If you study carefully you will find that the way they used "loosed" is the same way they used divorce, and "bound" the same way they used marriage.

The father is the head of the family, as it says in the scriptures (Eph. 5:22 and following). There is nothing negative here because the husband and father are subject to Christ, as the family is subject to the father. He has to seek his inspiration from Christ. If something happens to the father, the oldest son takes his responsibility.

I was active in the church for about 25 years and qualified to baptize my father. Chase, Solawa's step-son now adopted, is 13 years old. His 17 year old cousin came back from Arizona and baptized Chase. If his relations with the church are as they are supposed to be, Chase has the right to baptize his father. You will not believe what a humbling experience it is for young people to keep their lives in order so that they can do these things. In fact, they take trips to temples to baptize the deceased, who have not had the work done for them. They will stand in proxy in the temple and do baptisms and work for the dead.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has crews microfilming all the vital statistics of the United States. I have seen them go through the Clarke County courthouse twice, the second time because they had relaxed some laws and they could microfilm more. They have microfilmed every genealogy library in the world, and it is all in one library back in the granite mountain in Salt Lake City, to be safe in case of flood, war, fire, or any disaster. You can go to almost any local church and order any microfilm that Salt Lake City has. They will send it to you free, and you can study it, study your people on it, and return it.

Lots of people have tried to prove the book of Mormon a fraud. One of the little things was talk about steel bows. In later years one of those steel bows showed up in South America. The book of Mormon talks about a prophet whose wife's name was Sariah. They had four sons; two were for them, two against them. The father's name was Lehi and he had a vision of the tree of life, a river going by the tree, a bridge over the river, and a steel rod, which is the word of God, hanging on the bridge railing. A man in South America found a stone weighing 10 ton. It is in a museum. It has Lehi's entire vision carved on the stone.