By: Larry Young
This is a true story, but 75% less serious and 100% funnier than usual. Cheryl and I managed an apartment complex on Cuyamaca Street in El Cajon, California long ago. A wide dirt path separated our bedroom window from the bedroom window of an adjacent apartment in the next complex. ‘Lucky us’, some hippies moved in, installing a high power electric guitar system in their back bedroom opposite our windows. Each night, the hippies lit up their ‘funny’ cigarettes and got wasted. We could see them dimly through their venetian blinds as the ‘funny’ smoke billowed out. They would start playing their electric guitars louder and crazier… until they would just hold their guitars up against the speakers, causing a loud screeching sound, like long metallic fingernails pulled across a chalkboard.
But for us, trying to sleep wasn’t an option when that screeching started. I finally went to their apartment manager and complained, but he just laughed, telling me that whatever the hippies do in their apartment is their own business. How reassuring! So we tried earplugs, but to no avail. Then I had an epiphany! Being a radio nerd, I knew that people with mobile CB radios could interfere with almost anything nearby, especially amplifiers with speakers. So a Ham radio friend of mine loaned me his powerful shortwave radio transmitter for my special task. I clandestinely installed a radio coax cable from our bedroom, buried under the dirt path, to the hippies’ window on the other side.
Those guitar amplifiers were just inches away from their window and my transmitter coax antenna. For sure if I pressed the microphone transmit button, my voice would blast through their guitar speakers. So we waited in great anticipation the next night. My transmitter was all tuned up and ready to go. The microphone and transmit button was waiting enticingly on the dresser right next to my window. What could possibly go wrong?!
The smell of the ‘funny cigarette’ smoke started filling the air and we could hear the hippies behind the venetian blinds, getting their guitars all tuned up. I grabbed the microphone in glee, but then I suddenly realized that the hippies would certainly recognize my voice… and I didn’t even know what I would say. I froze and just plain chickened out! Just then, I noticed my clock radio at the other end of the dresser. We often listened to Wolf Man Jack on XERB (the mighty 1090) on our clock radio, a powerful AM radio station just across the border from us in Mexico. So I turned on our clock radio, but… at that time of night XERB carried only pre-recorded half hour religious programs. The featured speaker just then was Curtis Springer, a self-proclaimed doctor and Methodist preacher from Mineral Hot Springs, near Mojave California. He was preaching a Hell-Fire Damnation type sermon. How could I resist that!? So I put the microphone up to the clock radio speaker and hit the transmit button. Suddenly, Curtis Springer’s voice boomed through the hippie’s guitar speakers, threatening listeners with the depths of an eternal burning Hell if they didn’t surrender and repent!! This was an incredible moment: The hippies tried to turn down the volume, but that didn’t work. Behind the venetian blinds and smoke, we could see them flailing their arms in panic and total confusion. When the guitar amplifiers finally did shut down, I also shut down the transmitter and the clock radio. There was an eerie silence, but I didn’t dare giggle or laugh very loud… till later. I had just been part of a really weird miracle.
The next night was totally quiet. I even found out soon after that the hippies had suddenly moved out after their encounter with “God” on their electric guitars. Wow! Since then, I have sometimes wondered if Curtis Springer had scared those hippies straight to God, or if they just thought they had gotten ahold of some really ‘bad stuff’. Regardless, this has always made it clear to me that God is able to use our imperfect efforts to accomplish His purposes. The Bible actually has many of these kinds of stories. While Curtis Springer’s message may not have been correctly aligned with the biblical teaching regards Hell, the Holy Spirit is still able to overcome such errors and direct anyone (hippies included) to discovery of the truth. My hope is that God somehow blessed and eventually brought salvation to those hippies.