Twister

As long ago as the summer of 1946, plump, slick-pated Jerry E. Hauff, pastor of the Full Gospel Assemblies in Christ Inc. Church of Van Nuys, Calif., got the word that doomsday was approaching. "Voices from heaven" speaking incoherent foreign tongues had brought it to him. He translated for his congregation and reported that a great storm from the north was going to knock off all mankind--all, that is, who didn't sell their property and flee to the mountains.

Parson Hauff didn't like the sound of this, or so he said, and he asked the voices for further guidance. Take canned food, said the voices, and go. Where? Jerry was told that the best place for fleeing was remote, snake-infested Soledad Canyon, 65 miles from Los Angeles, on the edge of the Southern California desert. He bought 520 acres of it, and founded Eden City--the first, he said, of his "cities of refuge." Two dozen of his elderly parishioners sold their property, handed Jerry the money and headed for safety.

Most of them looked askance at the barren canyon. Jerry soothed them--they were supposed to live "close to the earth." Under his direction they put up shacks, built a fine water wheel (there was no water to turn it) and began scratching out vegetable gardens, and raising chickens and rabbits. A Beautiful Bible Tent for the Last Days was also erected.

The old folks stuck it out for a long time--although they could only raise enough food to support themselves one day in ten, and had to be succored by contributions Jerry collected from parishioners who had stayed behind. But Gabriel refused to blow his horn, and the old folks began to suspect that they were all going to collapse long before the Last Day. Then a competing minister slipped in, sowed "seeds of dissension" and unsportingly left to get a job picking cotton before Jerry could engage him in oratorical combat. Two by two, the inhabitants took their canned food out of hiding and went back to Los Angeles.

Last week eight of them grimly filed suits against Jerry Hauff. They charged that he had forced them to work between 50 and 80 hours a week, without proper food and water, and demanded that he hand back $50,000 which they had forked over after selling their homes, $12,000 they thought he owed them for labor. Twelve more oldsters were preparing similar claims. The great storm which Jerry E. Hauff had predicted seemed to be on its way, and heading right for Jerry E. Hauff.

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