I stood near the back door of the Christian food pantry. My volunteer shift was in full swing. It was 80 degrees.

In the parking lot, some 20 feet away, I saw an older man holding a leash tethering his German shepherd. The man’s shirt was off.

I listened in.

The man was showing off a bullet hole in his lower left shoulder to three young men helping with distribution of food. The man’s brother accidentally shot him when he was a kid. He wasn’t mad at him.

He put his shirt back on.

I caught that he was a pastor of sorts. Something was going on with him. He was gigging.

The pastor placed his right hand on the shoulder of one of the young men. The other two men placed their hands on their friend’s shoulder. They all closed their eyes.

Something Christian was about to happen, and I say that with confidence because I am a preacher and missionary kid.

The pastor began performing what I believe was a kind of exorcism. He began loudly talking to God and imploring the Almighty to cast out the demon afflicting the young man. The pastor said the young man was weak and the Devil was strong. He asked God to thwart and defeat Satan’s tactics and he actually used the word “tactics.” It had to be the first exorcism in a church parking lot where the pastor had a bullet hole in his body and used the word “tactics” in the history of Christianity.

Half an hour later, the pastor was in line with a rolling cart and loading it with food items. He was thankful and gave out blessings as he made his way through.

I carried a heavy box of items from a food pantry to a pickup truck.

“The white one,” said an older, long-haired man behind me pushing a rolling cart laden with grocery bags full of additional items.

I approached the truck. It was a rusted and dented Ford adorned with a faded logo and slogan for a flooring business. I checked the truck’s tags—expired years ago.

The bed of the truck was crammed with an assortment of junk metal contraptions, from barbecues to lawnmowers. The metal was piled several feet higher than the cab of the truck. Nothing was secured by bungee cords or rope. There was no tailgate.

I set down the box and looked inside the cab of the truck. Two older people, a man and a woman, were twisted together, apparently asleep, but with their eyes open.

That didn’t seem possible, but then again, there’s a lot of this going on in America these days if you bother looking.

It is impossible for me not to bother.

I looked at their faces. The woman’s was white and creased. The man’s brown and grooved.

Those faces will never leave me.

I picked up the box when the rolling cart man caught up to me.

There was no way the pantry items would fit inside the cab and that was before a driver took the wheel.

I was directed me to place the box in the bed of the pickup.

How could it fit in there?

We stashed the items inside the metal and then wrapped electrical cords and bent metal edges to secure the load.

I asked about the scrap metal, how much they might get from it. The man didn’t know. That was the sleeping man’s gig.

It was time for me to go.

“Thank you brother,” said the man.

“You are welcome,” I said.

I saw the man getting into the truck.

There was no way it was going to leave the parking lot.

I saw the truck leave.

The trio was still on the move, still trying in America.

I admire that. It’s called mettle.

The other day, my Dad and I were sitting on the back deck talking, when he recounted a story about one of the sermons he gave during his long and eclectic career as a minister. Apparently I was there but was too young to remember.

The sermon was given aboard a US Navy guided missile cruiser berthed at a port in San Diego. My family, along with several others, were staying in the area prior to boarding a ship to sail to Brazil and begin missionary service in Belo Horizonte. It was the summer of 1968.

I asked Dad how in the world he came to give a sermon on a guided missile cruiser in the middle of the Cold War. He told me he’d met the captain and informed him of the impending journey to Brazil and the captain invited him to come aboard and give a sermon.

Dad accepted the invitation. And why not?

Some sailors showed up one Sunday morning and Dad delivered a sermon on a vessel armed with nuclear weapons.

He doesn’t recall the name of the vessel or the content of the sermon.

As I was volunteering at a local food pantry the other day, it occurred to me that I may have made a greater positive impact in my small corner of the world if I had worked in other fields rather than spending almost 30 years in various classroom and teaching almost 30 different subjects (along with coaching three sports).

Up until recently, I had never thought this before, and it was a bit unsettling to consider.

I certainly don’t believe I wasted my professional life, but I now sense I could have put my writing, speaking, education, organization and presentation skills to much more lasting, and quite frankly, meaningful use.

In the course of my professional life when I took breaks from teaching or after my teaching career ended, I have worked as a paid staffer and/or volunteer with animal shelters, the incarcerated, the homeless and multiple conservation and literary arts organizations. I also worked for rural newspapers.

During these experiences, which I enjoyed very much, I found I improved these organizations/businesses and elevated their capacity to serve causes, people, animals and watersheds. I also wasn’t spending $4000-$5000 of my own money every year to support my efforts like I did while teaching.

Can you imagine what I could have done with the energy I expended staging a couple hundred lunchtime open mics out of my classroom?

Of course, I wouldn’t have had all the summers off, which I certainly put to good use, including getting the writing going.

I am just thinking out loud here, wondering about certain career choices. I regret nothing about these choices because living with regret is no way to live. But still, I think I could have done so much more with my energy, expertise and passions. I’ll never know. It is impossible to quantify such things.

I rode my bicycle past a battered RV with a makeshift plywood roof and doors. The windows, including the windshield, were covered by pieces of plywood. How can you drive an RV with a plywood windshield? Someone did because the rig wasn’t where it was a week ago.

One side of the RV was lettered with yellow spray paint. The lettering read: “I don’t sell drugs. I use.”

I thought about that declaration. I liked the crisp sentences. I liked that the writer didn’t use a comma or semi colon, just a good old full stop in between. Periods eliminate nuance. There was no need for nuance in that spray paint declaration. There was no doubt.

What was in doubt? In the only window not boarded up, one over the cab, was a color photograph of Marilyn Monroe taped to the glass from the inside. Only people looking at the RV from the outside would ever see it.

Why would someone would decorate a RV like that? It would seem there is something deep to explore in this.