The Town Bully Who Was Saved~A Story from Cordell Baker

The Town Bully Who was Saved

It has been my privilege to meet many interesting people along the trail of life. None was more interesting than the man who had been the town bully of a small town in north central Washington. They called him "pop".

Pop was a self educated man. He taught himself to read when he was 15 years old, by reading the Bible while he drank his morning coffee. He had been shortchanged on education because he had to drop out as a primary aged kid to sell newspapers on the street of Spokane to help support his widowed mother and some younger siblings.

But he did not let his lack of education holds him back. In his lifetime he mastered seven trades. He was once a railroad engineer. He once manage a large store in Spokane which catered to railroaders. He was a carpenter, painter, a plumber, an electrician, a wheat farmer in an orchardist.

But Pop had some terrible vices. He was a drunkard, a gambler and a brawler who just loved to fight. He had learned to fight as a kid who was forced to fight to protect his newspaper earnings from bigger boys who would attempt to rob him. He became so good at it, he later went into the professional ring both as a boxer and a wrestler.

When he moved to the small town where I knew him, Pop became the town bully. After a while, no one in the town would dare fight him. A rough cattle rancher told me that as he grew up he went to all the local high school games. He said he didn't care at all about the sports. He attended because he knew that after the game, Pop was going to fight. Since no one in his own town would dare to fight him, he would make it a point to pick a fight with some out-of-town guy who didn't know him and was foolish enough to take him on. The outcome was always a sound beating for the ignorant guy who took the bait.

However, Pop had a deep emptiness in his heart which his drinking, gambling and fighting could not fill. It all came to a head when his brother who was also a drunkard and brawler died suddenly.

I don't recommend this approach to a funeral, but the preacher preached from the text in First Corinthian letter where it states that no drunkards shall inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:10). Pop had not been a religious man. He hadn't attended church since the few times he went as a small child. He was not even sure in his mind that there was a god. But that Bible text got a hold of his mind and wouldn't let go. The next day he was irrigating his orchard and he couldn't get that text out of his mind. As he came to the end of his rope, he walked under a big apple tree, looked up into the heavens and said "God, if you are really God, if what that preacher said is true, my brother has gone to Hell. But I don't want to go there. " Then he stopped and thought for a moment and looked up again and said, "Now God, I've got you on the spot, because I don't want to go to hell.”

Most of us who have had some religious teaching would say that surely was an ignorant prayer. And it was! "But God has chosen the foolish things of the world confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27).” God took him at his word. Soon he learned the blessed truth of how Jesus, God's son, died on the cross and rose again, suffering the pains of Hell to take the place of sinners. The town bully was saved!

My cowpoke friend couldn't understand what had happened to pop, but after watching his life for many years, he had a deep respect for him. That drunken brawler was not only delivered from his carousing lifestyle, but he became an effective lay preacher who was known and loved throughout that region. Pop has long gone to his reward, but as long as I draw breath I will thank God that he brought that transformed bully across my path.