Inspections for Illicit Materials

Back in November, I partnered with a friend from church (and his wife) to flip a 600 square foot property in a depressed part of town.

The nature of our coming together on the project made it clear that it was a “God-thing”, that God was partnering us specifically for this project. When things like that happen, I look for the spiritual meaning, the spiritual purpose of the event. As it was clear that He had partnered people, it was also clear (in my mind) that ultimately He wanted to work a spiritual change in us; the property flip was simply the vehicle, the catalyst, for that change.

On an evening of the first week, after we had made the purchase of the property, and were now meeting each evening to discuss plans and visions, I had an odd dream about the house. It had something to do with a problem with the house wiring, and my partner may have even left. The dream itself wasn’t so odd, but the fact that I was having it at all, plus the fact that it was about a problem, made it unusual.

I remember sharing the dream with my partners the next afternoon. We all had a chuckle about it, and his wife even proclaimed, “Well, lets hope it doesn’t come true!”

Back track about one week.

In the day or two immediately proceeding our partnership, we met to discuss the possibilities and feasibilities. I specifically asked, in spirit with my sense of God’s workings, “what do you have to bring to this partnership”. He said, “I can do carpentry”, and his wife spoke up praising him strongly for his carpentry skill. “That’s great,” said I, “I can do electrical. So we’ll have those covered.”

Fast forward five months.

We are in the electrical phase of the project. We have a local licensed electrician who has agreed to let us do our own wiring work. I am fairly familiar with the the key elements of the National Electrical Code, and I believe in the value of the code. I believe it reflects — for the most part — best practices in the installation of wiring for the maximum safety of the occupants. I also believe in its uniformity, so that other trades may work around and within a wired installation with reasonable expectations of consistency.

My partner does not. Despite introducing the subject in a variety of ways, he does not attempt to drill his holes in the center of a stud. He does not attempt to line up his holes when drilling through ceiling joists or studs. He doesn’t make any effort to untwist the cable as it comes off the spool, nor to nail it smoothly along a run. He will bend the wire at right-angles against the edges of framing, which are friction points.

He generally shows no respect for wiring, even though he has admitted that the subject confuses him utterly.

On the other hand, I do respect it. I took the time to measure the first dozen holes or so I drilled, until I had retrained my eye as to where the center of the stud is. I make a reasonable effort to plan out the entire run visually in my mind, along with all the other runs in the vicinity, and plan for common holes, and nail the runs stacked where possible. I leave longer tails than are necessary, at least on one side of a run, in case adjustments are needed. I recognize that while I am knowledgeable and competent, I am NOT a professional, and so my work will need to be adjusted, modified, and sometimes re-run — and that this is simply part of “doing it yourself”.

Throughout the project, my wishes have been overridden by my partner(s). I’m good with this, because if he wants to build a slum house, who am I to complain as long as I get my share of the profit. When we had a confrontation early on about slum building, I made a point of saying, “Fine, we will build it that way, but you take all future responsibility for it.” He accepted, but his wife asked me to clarify what I meant.

I said, “In the scope of eternity, when we’ve all been sitting around heaven for a few thousand years.. when someone says, ‘hey, what was up with that property flip you did. That was the worst thing you’ve ever done!’, I’m going to point to you guys and say, ‘that was all their idea.'” She smiled and understood.

So the fact that I did not get to put in an energy-efficient tankless water heater, Icynene expanding foam insulation, attic mounted mechanicals, a spacious bathroom, and so on, was no surprise and was accepted by me in due course.

Nor was I anything less than encouraging when my partner, who said his gift was carpentry, frequently had to cut twice – or more – to make a good fit, or when he pulled up (or out) framing he had just installed because he had nailed it in the wrong place, or nailed it up crooked. After all, he claimed that as his skill, and God brought us together as people, and I intended to respect God’s judgment as well as my partner’s ego. I eagerly helped him nail, snap chalk lines, hold things up, and take measurements.

But this respect was not reciprocated during wiring.

And its not that the respect itself is what I’m wanting, at least not for me. But for the wiring. For the future homeowner, for their safety. For the contractors who will be applying the siding in the next few days. For the plumber and the HVAC contractor. If you plumb a house incorrectly, you get hot on the right. You may have damaged furniture, or a big bill. If you set up HVAC wrong, mostly, it doesn’t work, or work well.

But if you do wiring wrong, people die.

Despite my efforts both gentle and blunt to have him follow some standards, he continues to run wire willy-nilly. So I’ve been arriving early at the job site and redoing his wiring. Usually, this amounts to nothing more than adjusting its position along a stud and/or re-nailing it. Recently, I had to run a whole new cable, because he — in good faith, but incorrectly none-the-less — cut a cable at a box, when it needed to run to the switch.

I don’t mind doing the work. I don’t mind re-doing his work — work is work. But I’ve been frustrated by the fact that he complains about my reworking it, but still makes no effort to conform to the standard. I do understand his frustration with my reworking his work; who wouldn’t be offended when their work is redone. However, as he is unapproachable to discuss the subject, and continues to refuse to reform, I have little recourse but to continue as I have.

It is in this frame of mind that I sought wise counsel from fellow Christians at work on Wednesday. One had nothing to say; it was a subject outside his ability to advise. Two others offered similar advice: my options are to leave his work alone, and let it fail inspection, try to have a long, sit-down, serious discussion about how he seems to be threatened by my knowledge of wiring, or simply plug away as I am for the next few days until wiring is finished.

Wednesday evening, I rushed to the job site and set about to work and rework as much as possible before he arrived. If this led to a confrontation, I would try a reasoned approach, and if that failed, I would simply let his work sink or swim as it may.

Gradually, I became aware that he was overdue. This was both a blessing and a concern, as I thought maybe he had been in an accident. After several hours, I was coming down the ladder and saw his car — not his pickup — pull into the drive. I gathered some material from near the doorway and headed back up the ladder. He came in.

“Hey, hidey-ho, neighbor!”

“Hey,” he replied.

“As you can see, we’ve got siding materials now,” and I gestured to the piles of foam and vinyl siding filling our main room.

“Yeah. Listen, I’m only here to give you some information.”

“Lay it on me,” I sang as I ascended the ladder once more!

“As of today, I can no longer work with you on this project. The options are you can buy me out, or we can buy you out.”

I stopped, thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay. Work up some figures,” I smiled!

God answered prayer in a rapid, positive way. Though the outcome is positive for me, myself and several of my friends still sense woe for him and his family, insomuch as he is not listening, not learning what it is God is trying to teach him. I believe I am being removed from the situation, because God is about to begin dealing with him more sternly, and He wants me clear of harm’s way.

I wrote all of this because it validates the dream, the vision, which I had at the beginning.

Last night, I had another strange dream. I was heading south through Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico… one of the south-central/southwestern states. It was early in the day, probably around 7 AM on a late spring Saturday morning, as the roads were free of workday drive-time traffic.

I was part of a light traffic pack moving south through a city such as Houston or Oklahoma City, with large highway interchanges on the Interstate system. At this time of morning, most of us are travelers, and we had been sharing company and positions in our pack for several hours. For my part, I was heading to some event further south: maybe it was a vacation or rendezvous with friends, maybe at the beach, maybe in their home town.

I had just finished a call on my cell phone confirming that I was still on schedule, traffic was light, and barring any difficulty I should arrive on time. I remember that I was greatly looking forward to arrival, both for the event at hand, and because I had been driving for several hours already, and still had several hours ahead.

As I closed and stowed my phone, I was able to take the steering wheel in two hands, as the highway we were on began to curve along the ground under a large, dense stack of connecting ramps. The south-bound lane split off from the north bound lanes, and the K-rails disappeared, leaving a large, open concourse of grass in the deep, early-morning shadow of the ramp structures.

The highway began a graceful arc to the right into what was almost a tunnel caused by the overpassing of the northbound lanes of some other highway. As I’m entering the turn, the bright morning light on the grass beyond the ramp stack paints silhouettes starkly of a row of vehicles parked on the left shoulder. The vehicles were mini-pickups with shells, passenger vans, and Hummers, all in “stealth” flat-black.

The vehicles were each pulled off at an angle on the shoulder as the road curved right, each equidistant from each other, almost as if they had been parked there on purpose, on display. Or, on point. As startling as it was to see them there, I was most impressed about the completeness of their blackness. Except for the lenses and windscreens (which were tinted) there was nothing not black about them.

But the curving of the road called and kept my attention, and as the right-hand curve finished, it shortly began a sweep back to the left, toward the south. I released the accelerator and covered the brake following the example of the vehicles ahead of me as they entered the curve. Then I saw that they weren’t just casually braking, they were actually slowing.

Vehicles began changing lanes, merging to the left, merging into my lane, and presuming an accident, the black vehicles parked on the shoulder fled my mind. Then even the possibility of an accident was crowded out as I focused on evasive driving and a rapid deceleration. There were officers of some type directing traffic down to one lane – the left hand lane. K-rails blocked each of the other five lanes at intervals, like crash barriers.

And then we all quickly came to a halt.

As we each stopped, an officer was walking down the line of cars, motioning for drivers to exit their vehicle. I was stopped on the section of highway which was once-again southbound. Three stories above was the flat underside of a huge highway portion, itself making a huge sweeping arc to the south from the west, balanced on columns of concrete. As I opened my door to step out, I noted the coolness and relative cleanness of cool morning air holding a promise of sunshine just a few hundred yards from where we were. Sounds of braking and of car-doors slamming echoed tranquility from the hard surfaces.

As the officer walked past me down the line of stopped cars, I began to notice an apron had been prepared here starting at the left shoulder of the road and extending just wide enough to allow for most automobiles to pull onto it at an angle, and then pull through and out south. The asphalt was marked with diagonal lines and stenciled with numbers counting each slot. There were small wooden benches every few stalls, and there were at least two small booths or kiosk-type office structures , one not far from where I was currently standing.

The officer was asking all of us to step from our vehicles and into the nearest slot on the tarmac, and in confusion, all of us complied. Within moments, the individuals and families standing in individual marking areas eventually began to draw closer together, seeking information and moral support. Other law enforcement officers floated through the group uttering empty assurances to a stunned crowd feeling as sheep.

Another shock. The black vehicles I spotted earlier sped along the shoulder, between us and our cars. When they stopped, persons poured from the vehicles. They all wore black from head to toe, military styled special-ops black, including their black ski-masks. Bearing no insignia, they moved to enter our private vehicles, and together the black vehicles and our own sped away from us.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” one of the nearest officials said. He was wearing a turtleneck and a suit jacket, but his crisp haircut and bulge around the holster under his arm identified him, too, as some kind of law enforcement. “Your vehicles are being inspected for illicit contraband materials. They will be returned to you shortly.”

I remember resigning myself to the necessity of this event, and that while an inconvenience, it must be important or it wouldn’t be being done. I thought perhaps they were looking for a terrorist, or for bomb making materials, and the expectation for seizing something must be very high. For a moment, I felt a sense of relief, that someone who was posing a threat to the nation may be immediately caught.

But then I gave more thought to my circumstances: an inspection apron with permanent kiosk shelters for staff, it being in a location not visible from any vantage point outside the immediate controlled vicinity, a fleet of black vehicles… and I had just let a stranger drive off in my pick-up!

Then I began to understand, this was not a spot inspection during an imminent alert. This was routine, or expected to be routine. They had no probable cause, or even reasonable cause to suspect us. This, THIS was the full effect of the

Police State.

Then I began to realize that my truck contained documents, documents which speak in support of the Constitution and against the Corporation of the United States, and also my documentation of my specific citizenship.

A sense of dread soaked through me.

I began looking at the law enforcement officials around me. Two were standing nearby, one the jacketed gentleman who had announced our circumstances, another was a uniformed deputy of the County Sheriff. As I made my way to them, I began to ask, to explain, “I’m sorry. There’s been some kind of mistake. I do not give my permission for this. I am not a subject of the Corporation of the United States, nor this State. As a deputy Sheriff, you have a duty to protect me under your oath to the Constitution. Please, I do not give my permission for this…

Both officers acknowledged me with a glance, but they continued their discussion of sports or politics and my please disappeared into the wind as I feared that I would. That I would be taken from this spot to the back of a black van and whisked away as quickly as my truck and no one on the highway with me would know that I never came back, and my friends who were expecting me would never know I had disappeared from this spot.

I would simply be vanished. Left to rot in one of the new hidden KBR prisons.

That’s when I woke up.

Was it a dream, or a vision?