Ruckman's Battlefield Notes by Dr. Peter S Ruckman

Author:Dr. Peter S Ruckman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-12-17T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Leading the “Irregulars”

Since I was fifteen years old, I have been forced into positions of leadership. I coveted none of them and volunteered for none of them. I am, by nature, an introvert, a bookworm, an artist, and musician; and I HATE responsibility. I am not a full-blooded Saxon or Prussian “Berliner.” I am much more like an Austrian artist or a Bavarian woodsman. I believe an Austrian is “a Kraut in 3/4 time.”

I have that depraved, degenerate trait in me that makes me want to lie down on a river bank under some willow or mimosa tree, on a warm spring day, with my belly full of black bread, swiss cheese, and knackwurst (or Mexican rice, nachos, and Polish sausage!), and let the world go to Hell while I listen to Mozart or Schubert on a portable CD player.

When my brother left our “gang” back in his teens (1936), I was ostracized because I was a “pee-wee” (a shrimp, minnow, etc.). So another gang adopted me as their leader. Needless to say, it was not a CLEAN gang. We highjacked cars, stole gasoline out of filling station pumps, bootlegged liquor from Missouri to Kansas, did “second story work,” jimmied locks, played “chicken” on the highways at 60 m.p.h., “broke and entered,” and (often) ran from the “Fuzz.” Instead of playing “Cowboys and Indians” or “Cops and Robbers,” we played “Teenagers and Fuzz.” (See The Full Cup, Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1992 for a detailed account.)

Inspite of this proclivity to avoid LEADERSHIP, I was thrust, time and time again, into places of responsibility for the actions (and even lives) of others.

Why God did this I do not know, for if ever a critter lived on this “terrestrial ball” who had no ambition to run ANYTHING or ANYBODY, it would be Peter Sturges Ruckman.

I would rather be a mullet fisherman than mayor of the largest city in the USA. I would rather play ice hockey or street hockey with young men than be a Governor or a Senator from any state in the UNION. You couldn’t GIVE me the King Ranch in Texas or one acre of land that was owned by Ted Turner, unless I could sell it and get rid of it. I would rather be a street preacher than the president of any country, including the United States. And if you offered me a position as Secretary General of the United Nations I would trade it in for a chance to teach forty young men in a Bible study.

If I ever got engaged in Christian combat, it would be one “low profile,” “non-advertised,” back-road, undercover, covert, junkyard operation. No flash, no glory, no national publicity, no front headlines, no “names” in lights, no glamor, no large financial remunerations, and no monuments of brick, cement, stone, and lumber would be erected ANYWHERE.

I would still be found in the prisons (not the city-wide revivals), on the streets (not in elaborate, ornamental, $20,000,000 to $100,000,000 offices), and on foreign soils (Germany,

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