I was going to put Gary Christ’s first name in the title in parentheses in front of “Christ,” but I concluded it would be sacrilegious.

You can see one reason I didn’t use the play on words in the following paragraph from an email that Gary sent me:

“As for me, I am full of faith that this creative mind God blessed me with will be focused on doing the Father’s Will.

“This latest invention, a land mine destroyer, may provide a platform for ministry in Cambodia and other places, I will check out Angola.

“The Cambodians have become so good at de-mining they are hired to go to other countries to teach their skill.”

My first big memory of Gary goes back to when he was promoting a way he had designed to use old tires and plastic to build cheap housing.

He even erected one on his family’s farm near the power lines in what is I think is now Sunset Park. (Well, it’s a park in name only. The Crystal Lake Park District is still growing crops.)

Then, I ran into him at the Illinois Libertarian Party convention in 2002.

He ran against me for the party nomination for governor.

Since we both shop in Crystal Lake, we see each other once in a while. The next time he was taking apart a barn to ship to Cambodia.

And, right before I wrote this article (over a year ago, maybe two years ago) while purchasing some movies at the old Wal-Mart, we found each other again.

This time he filled me in on an invention to dispose of land mines, which he had just finished field-testing in Cambodia.

It is a big steel box, several feet long and wide and about 2 feet high. It is open on the bottom.

This contains the explosion.

The box is attached to the front of a small tractor.

To detonate the bomb, there are 8 pound hammers attached to chains.

As the hammers drop, they activate any land mines.

The force of the explosion pushes the hammers and chains back up into the box.

And is Gary Christ finished?

What do you think?

“I also have plans to restore old water wells, as that is a huge problem in Cambodia and many other places.”