MONDAY DIARY: ALMOST EXCRUCIATINGLY TRUE STORIES: AFTER CHRISTMAS SHOPPING

In order to understand this story, one must understand Akro/Barberian terminology.  Below is a diagram to help the uninitiated figure out what is meant by the "devil strip."

I very much like the rectory in which I live.  It was largely furnished by people giving us furniture they no longer wanted, by going to junk stores (which I enjoy), and picking up lots of things off of the devil strip.  The devil strip is a highly undervalued place to find furniture at prices that cannot be match anywhere else.

So the night before New Year's Eve, a seminarian (mentioned in last week's Monday Diary), Sebastian (the dog) and I went for our evening airing-out-the-dog-before-going-to-bed walk.  It was unseasonably warm and I suggested that we lengthen our walk a bit.  The seminarian readily agreed and we veered off into the neighborhood.

It was trash night so everybody had dutifully put out their trash cans.  But there was one house that seemed to be emptying out its contents on to the devil strip.

Sebastian found a zebra with which he has fallen in love.  There was some great stuff there but nothing that the St. Sebastian Parish Rectory needed.  But there were some cool chairs there (expertly drawn above) and so the seminarian took a picture of them and we sent it out to Fr. Pfeiffer to see if he needed such chairs and headed back to the rectory.

Here is a picture of Sebastian with his zebra in front of the fire:

A text came back from the good Reverend Father Pfeiffer that he could indeed use such chairs in his rectory and, if we wouldn't mind, would we go snag them for him.  Well of course we wouldn't mind and set off into the night to retrieve the chairs.

The whole walk there had been nobody out that night - not a car - not thief.  BUT THE VERY SECOND WE REACHED THE DEVIL STRIP WHERE THE CHAIRS WERE everybody and their mother came outside.  The neighbors pulled into their driveway.  People came by walking their dogs.  Cars drove by.  A police cruiser pulls over near by.  It was like being in a giant game of Pac Man and the ghosts all start closing in.

It was a good lesson in humility I suppose.  Funny how those things work out.  But now you know where a lot of the furniture in my rectory comes from.  And if you ever go to St. Paul/s rectory and sit in really cool wooden chairs, you will know their provenance and the story of humility at the end of the year 2016.