“The Man Who Sold The World”
Reconstructed Thoughts With Probable Errors Leaning Towards Potential Fiction Circa 1971
by Greg Teetsell
Prior to Life On Mars & Ashes To Ashes....
"It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. … I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing … but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out." --- from Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Ever since he preached his last crusade in New York City in 2005, and especially since Ruth died in 2007, the man known as God’s ambassador has lived in increasing seclusion, hindered by hearing loss, dimming sight, and the infirmity that comes with great old age. The impatient, gangly Gospel preacher who punctuated his sermons with jagged arm gestures now uses a walker and a wheelchair. The man who was said to have preached for six decades with “a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other,” and who meticulously catalogued his personal library of 13,000 books, now watches Fox, the evening news, and local programming on a massive flat-screen TV. --- from ”The Fight Over Billy Graham's Legacy” Newsweek Magazine 15 May 2011
*
I was entering my 14th year in the autumn of 1971. My lot in life was to be in the green, pine tree curtain of the post World War II, low-cost petroleum world of North Raleigh, in the capital of the Southern US state of North Carolina. Living standards for all of the US then were among the highest in the world, although overall in about the middle for all of the United States there in all of North Carolina. North Hills, in Raleigh, ranked with one of the highest overall standards of living in the state at that time. It is a place of split level homes, faux colonial replications of Plantation houses, California-style western ranch tract houses, GI Bill rectangles plus the odd, if condescending, nod of the head to Joseph Eichler's work in Northern California. And box structures. Two story boxes. All the homes sat upon quarter acre plots. The streets were, and still are, what one might call “spaghetti streets” as well as cul-de-sacs. When taking an airliner into Raleigh-Durham International Airport, the view of these streets from aloft brings to mind ileum coils. There were no sidewalks built for reasons related to the peculiar history of the US South: the build-out of the north side of Raleigh along Six Forks Road was nearly complete by the time the Civil rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson.
To be without an automobile there in North Hills was to be a paraplegic. Indeed, that still holds true for the entire City Of Raleigh to this day. To further complicate life as a 14 year old, I was bored to death in the place. To say that the environment was, and remains, conservative in thought, word and deed, would be a modest understatement. For further enlightenment on the topic of North Raleigh at that time, I would advise a thorough reading of David Sedaris on the topic. David has done a better job of defining the place in that time than I have either the interest or inclination to get on with doing.
Besides, David Sedaris has a major publishing contract, a large following of fans and, hence, gets paid for his musings, evidently well enough to live in an upscale arrondissement of Paris. Buy David Sedaris books. He's a good guy and a good read.
1971. I was in the 8th grade. The summer vacation of that year opened up all sorts of additional avenues for disreputable, Rock & Roll behavior in my sweet, short life. I started sneaking out of my parent's home, running off to play bass in a topless beer hall on the other side of the County Of Wake. For the sake of privacy of the living, the almost living and the dead, there will changed names. My pal Johnny Ray was not not named Johnny Ray. But he was 16 in 1971, had a driver's license, a Gibson SG bass to spare and was a very good, if not nearly brilliant Rock & Roll electric guitar player. Johnny Ray owned a Ford Falcon out of the early 1960's. It ran very well. We got together to play guitar and such as often as possible, even though he lived on the other side of town, off Poole Road, back when blue collar non-Hispanic Caucasians comprised the dominant ethnic and social class population base of that portion of Raleigh. Johnny Ray was responsible for me going to play bass at the above mentioned topless beer hall. Due to quirky laws, North Carolina did not have “liquor bars” as such at that time, so beer and wine were all that could be served at licensed establishments, although the quaint custom of “brown bagging” was quite legal under some circumstances. So here was this very rough beer hall on the other side of the county, but not a liquor bar in the sense one might find elsewhere in the US (except for Kansas and parts of Utah) back then.
Johnny Ray had an ex-uncle who played a Vox combo organ (Think “96 Tears” by ? & the Mysterions) and sang at this establishment. He had a drummer, a bass player and a guitar player along for the ride. Johnny Ray's uncle was named Big Joe. Big Joe consumed alcohol. Big Joe drank a lot of anything with alcohol in it. Anything. Constantly. Johnny Ray once mentioned that Big Joe kept a bottle of Aqua Velva hidden “just in case.” Big Joe was 5'8”, tipped the scales at 350 lbs plus. He shuffled around in bedroom slippers because his feet were not in a condition suitable for proper shoes. He had a strange odor about him, something like sour milk mixed with paint remover and stale urine. His clothing---he seemed to wear converted bedsheets stitched up for shirts with bib overalls or the sort of bottom half coverings used on hospital charity wards. Every now and again the bass player and/or guitar player did not show up for the evening's work. I learned early on not to ask too many questions. No one asked me any questions, either, or not very often. Johnny Ray brought me along to substitute from time to time. I got paid varying amounts depending on what Big Joe and Johnny Ray worked out with the lard-encrusted Neanderthal barman. All went well on the money.
The establishment itself was one of those US Southern roadhouses from where no legends would ever arise. This place would never be featured in any historical retrospective about country music or Rock & Roll pioneers. There were no pictures on the wall of famous people who had played there. It was the last topless bar with a band in it in the US South before falling off the planet or ending up in Smithfield:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SmithfieldKlanBillboard.jpg
There was plenty of liquor to be had, even if it wasn't supposed to be served there. There was a “back room”, just opposite to where “the girls” had what was referred to “a dressing room”. Pills of various types flowed. Obese men with paste shaded complexions and wrap around sunglasses, many wearing bolo ties and sport coat jackets that hadn't fit correctly since the Eisenhower administration entered and exited the back room and the girls dressing room. The men's and women's bathrooms were at the end of the hall. In looking back, it was pathetic---the sort of place where losers went sinnin' on Saturday night before gittin' saved on Sunday. Grey areas not allowed.
I'd heard about these sorts of places from my father. He had an older brother who drank himself to the end of the line in roadhouses very much like this one, albeit in New Jersey. So there were warnings.
The girls were tough cases. Many of them had husbands in prison or dead. No “hookers with hearts of gold”---they were classic examples of what I would come to recognize as compete damage cases from the failing world of textile mills, furniture factories and meat packing plants of eastern Wake County, over toward Smithfield and down by Dunn and Lillington. Johnny Ray told me which ones were “OK enough, won't slit your throat. Don't look anyone in the eyes. Don't say anything unless you absolutely have to.“ I had a guide. This was good. It was very plain that the women were there to do business . Shaking the glandular money makers to listless versions of “All Shook Up” and “Hey Good Lookin'” wasn't where the unreported income was being generated.
For now, we'll leave off on the topic of the bar and return to the world of the junior high school, autumn 1971 back in the suburban dreamscape of perfect teeth, big, late model American cars and happy, smiling young people.
And churches. So many churches---as far as a person might sling a dead cat, the deceased F. cattus
would hit the side of a church. Southern and Independent Methodist, Presbyterian, Independent Presbyterian, too many Southern Baptist facilities to count, Pentecostal Holiness, Church Of The Nazarene, Foursquare Gospel, Worldwide Church Of God, Disciples of Christ, Full Gospel Chapel, Church Of God (Cumberland, Tennessee), Assembly Of God and on and on. What H.L. Mencken said about religion in Los Angeles in the 1920's was, and remains, applicable to Raleigh, North Carolina: it is possible to get one's soul saved by Jesus in ten thousand different ways on every city block in Raleigh. “A miasma of Methodists, a cesspool of Baptist...snake charmers all.” Mencken again, observing a key to living life beneath the Mason-Dixon line. As it was in the beginning so shall it be in the end.
Ain't nothin' changed but the leaves on the trees, y'all.
At the top of the religion business in North Carolina, if not in all of Religions, Inc.(or the fundamentalist Protestant franchises of Religions, Inc., at any rate), stood the towering figure of Billy Graham. The humble small town boy conservative Southern Baptist preacher, touch by the Spirit to bring The Word of Jesus and morality to a sinful world full of communists, sinners and materialist “lovers of themselves”, that was North Carolina's very own, personal Savior, Billy Graham. The first “evangelist” to be broadcast via satellite on Telstar. The confessor of presidents, prime ministers and kings. Billy Graham, who once filled the Houston Astrodome for ten consecutive nights. Who thundered and roared when John Lennon dared jest that “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus Christ”, resulting in record burning parties in many locations across the US, included Raleigh:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc7rBVUIHUg
Billy Graham magazines in doctor's waiting rooms, in telephone booths, in coin-op laundromats, and more. Billy Graham concerned about our “young people today”, always so concerned about “our young people in today's world”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHgmYXYtZlk
The preacher-father of a boyhood chum of mine said that “Billy Graham is the greatest living gift God has given this world full of communist liberals armed with atom bombs”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaMavtsbBug
As I returned to school in September of 1971, one of the girls from the neighborhood, we'll call her Susan to be respectful of her privacy, stopped by my parent's house, in the evening before school started. I was outside mowing the lawn. I had known Susan since we were maybe five years old or so. She had always been a sparkling girl. We swam in various competitions at the local private club pool. I didn't care for such team sports, but Susan was highly competitive, winning race after race in her age class. By the first week of September, as we spoke there, me setting aside my lawn mowing chores to chat it up with Susan, I immediately noticed several things. There was a new electricity to her eyes. The other thing was that her intellectual development, which was precocious, got matched by a an even greater degree of physical development. In contemporary terms, think about what actress Christina Hendricks (of “Mad Men” fame) might have looked like in the light of the medically recognized condition of “precocious adolescent development” at 14. The previous year in school, and even when swimming at one of the only indoor pools in town over the preceding winter, she did her best to downplay the obvious. Certain synapses in her brain had not yet connected. Over the summer of 1971, much of that neurochemical and physiological precociousness fit together in short order. Although for the sake of brevity, it will be best to leave out the particulars of what I recall knowing of her life in the summer of 1971, except to say that she had spent most of the summer at a swimming and academic camp at the University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. It was there that she met a fellow, a swimming coach who, as is tastefully said, “mentored” her. He was, by all accounts, a gentlemen about it all. Susan and her mentor parted ways on excellent terms. Those were different times.
We spoke about summer vacation on our way to school for that first day ring ring goes the bell of September morn. After a few false starts at conversation, she released a pent-up, relieved laughter saying: “Throwing me into a volcano won't do any good now.” Such was the height of humor for educated 14 year olds there, in that place. It was also a curious statement for her to make to me, as she certainly had to have noticed that I had noticed the new charge in her pale green eyes. I was quite familiar with this shift. Susan knew my first serious girlfriend, so she must have been at ease with me in making her “volcano” jest. Susan was much, much more self-assured that autumn, with a greater understanding of her intelligence, academic gifts as well as her physical prowess and beauty. On the mornings when she wasn't going to swimming practice, we walked to our nearby school.
She still dressed for school in a very restrained manner. The previous year the local school board had voted to allow female student to wear pants. The dress code was still rather strict, but there was some movement away from ham-fisted controls. Susan wore loose fitting pants and oversized, very plain blouses. She used little in the way of make-up and parted her long, light brown to sun-bleached blonde hair in the middle, along with modest earrings made of small blue feathers and flat shoes. I later learned that her restrained clothing styles were as much a concession to her very conservative parents as those styles were a deliberate activity to draw attention away from the obvious. There was another very shrewd reason for her going along with her parent's wishes, as it had to do with the IUD her mentor of the previous summer had arranged for her. She did not want any questions to be asked. Toning down the clothing was her way of keeping quiet about that roaring within. In addition to her swimming trophies, she was also amassing a small collection of very good, if not great, Rock & Roll albums (Cream, Velvet Underground, The Doors, The Who, The Beatles), most obtained courtesy of a notorious shoplifter who was a few grades ahead of us in school or as gifts from her mentor of the previous summer in Chapel Hill. The shoplifter in question was to be instrumental later on in the series of events concerning the Billy Graham “Crusade” of October of 1971, which, finally, is the pivot point, indeed the point, of this rambling orbiting the planet of being lost in the past, befuddled by the present while being mystified by what resides in between:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWHNVwxJEeU
Susan's dislike of preachers equaled my own. I gave her a copy of Lenny Bruce's How To Talk Dirty & Influence People, in early September which included the prescient sketch about “Religions, Inc.” in essay form. (Due to copyright restrictions, I am unable to provide a link to Lenny Bruce's recording of this still-stinging analysis of the religion sector of the American economy, as a segment of the American economy. I do highly recommend reading this essay form of Lenny Bruce's visionary monologue or obtaining the audio download from Amazon or iTunes for a fee.) A few weeks after I gave her the Lenny Bruce book, I gave her a copy of Penthouse Magazine featuring an investigative journalism article tearing into the entire tax-exempt financial farce of Oral Roberts, Rex Humbard, Bob Jones, Garner Ted Armstrong and many other Radio/TV preachers of that era, with more than a few jabs at Roman Catholic priests buggering altar boys on a 501 (c)(3) basis included for good measure. (As noted above about Lenny Bruce's “Religions, Inc.”, the aforementioned article from Penthouse Magazine is likewise unavailable due to copyright restrictions. Plus it's tough to find.)
All of this fell together on a Wednesday in mid-October of 1971 when everyone in school was sent home with a note and a form requesting parental consent for those of us held in captivity to be placed on buses rented by local churches so that we might attend the Billy Graham Youth Crusade at the basketball arena at North Carolina State University the following Tuesday. Susan's parents, my parents, most of the kids parents signed off on the permission form. I turned mine in the next day.
On Friday evening, I got a call from Johnny Ray. He was wondering if I could get out of the house to play the topless joint. I bluffed around with my parents about going over to Johnny Ray's house, and that I'd be in just a little after midnight. They went along with it. So, it was a done deal.
I got to the dive. There was Big Joe, fatter than he was a month earlier, and wearing, for some reason, a Zorro mask and hat. He was drunk, slurring his words, tottering around. The place was full of people. It was packed, the beer taps were flowing in rivers. The working girls were shaking and working. We played “Mustang Sally” and Johnny Ray cut loose with with Jimi Hendrix guitar solos to cover for Big Joe when the Fat Man himself went face down on the top of his Vox organ. The drummer was way out of his league. I did the one or two of the only fancy bass tricks I had up my sleeve. Johnny Ray took over the vocals when it became obvious that Big Joe was down for the count. We did two more tunes, one the girls liked a great deal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjs5QWjvNWc
...then took a break. Johnny Ray and one of the bouncers tried to figure out what to do with Big Joe. The bouncer and a patron took Big Joe outside and turned a hose on him. That woke him up, he got to standing up, all was well. Meanwhile, I noticed a rather well-dressed gentleman who'd been drinking quite a bit. He looked out of place for a dive like this one. One of the girls was sitting on his lap and his hand was up her skirt. After a bit, he got up to go piss. I needed a piss myself, largely due to the whiskey I'd been drinking off on the sly. I found myself standing at the urinal next to this out-of-place guy, who was about the same age as my father. This guy was teetering back & forth as his relieved himself. I kept my eyes directly in front of me and followed Johnny Ray advice to the letter.
“My name is James, that's King James to you son, an' this shit is big time fun, huh?” the out of place guy slurred, “She's a wild girl that one.” I grunted . “You play that guitar crazy. You on drugs?” I cleared my throat. This could be the trouble Johnny Ray warned me about. Just then some bald guy with a massive pot-belly used that pot-belly to shove open the door, shuffled into the pisser as I finished up. I washed my hands and, as usual, finding no towels, dried my hands on my jeans. King James bellowed out to the bald, pot-bellied pig “You got any more of them pills, Eddie?”
I got home in time, just barely, and all went trouble free. I was not well the next day, but hid it as best as possible. Nyquil for those nasty Saturday morning colds in autumn. Even my father was vaguely understanding, strangely enough.
Perking up a bit later in the day, I made my way over to Susan's house. Her parents had gone golfing. She was up past her eyebrows in homework, books and papers sprawling out all over the dining room table with a goose-necked lamp planted on the surface for good measure . We went up to her room. “I have an idea for that Billy Graham whazzit on Tuesday.” She went to the bottom drawer of a bureau in her room and pulled out a white body shirt. In the event you may not be familiar with the early 1970s' fashion of body shirts, a digression is in order here. Body shirts were a combination cotton and acrylic fiber, often with some elastic interwoven with the cloth. The overall effect was to have the shirt hug the body in a near skin-tight manner. More often than not, the versions of these body shirts for women buttoned down in the front to a level below the cleavage nexus. The fabric used in the shirt Susan had obtained was quite thin, close to sheer and slightly ribbed or ridged. Further to this, the body shirt Susan had managed to obtain was plainly one quarter of a size too small for her, even by 1971 body shirt measures. She then pulled a faded pair of denim hip hugging flairs out from under her bed. She laid the clothes out for me to examine. “This is going to be fun,” she smiled.
“Where'd you get the clothes?”
“From Lynda Mae, Light-Finger Jeff's girlfriend. I just placed the order a week ago. Cash on Delivery!” Susan clicked her tongue with a mock surprise crossing her countenance.
“Jeff's got his girlfriend in on it now, too?” I was smiling at the entire scenario of these two 10th graders at an upscale high school running a racket. Jeff was a source of my ever-growing record collection.
She showed me a big fringed purse, of the sort fashionable amongst “hippies” of the time. Lots of leather fringe. She had “the look” guaranteed to shock Billy Graham-adoring US Southern church ladies set to go into blue hot rage over “women's lib hippies”.
“What's the plan?” I asked.
“We still go to our morning classes, remember? I have PE at second period. We get on the buses at third period. I change into this after PE in the gym locker room. We go to the Billy Graham thing. Make waves.”
“Do I get to sit next to you?”
“Yes,” she rolled her eyes, giving a crinkled smile, “Wallflower goes presto-change-o into crazy girl. In front of Billy Graham's home crowd. It's perfect.”
“How do you get all of this out of the house?” Greg playing the sensible fellow.
“I pack it in my gym bag. I brought my gym uniform home for the laundry.” Crafty.
She then went to her bookcase and pulled the aforementioned copy of Penthouse Magazine out from inside a school notebook, tossed it on the bed next to her new clothes. “And for your information,” she stated with complete authority in her voice, “those girls are just taller.”
I remember how we laughed. Susan then pulled out a copy of “Women And Their Bodies”, a 1970 booklet for women written by a group of feminist female gynecologists and registered nurses from under her bed. “It's an owner's manual!” she exclaimed.
“Women And Their Bodies” was a booklet was frequently cited by all of the region's “leading” fundamentalist Protestant preachers as “subversive”. It was cited as well as by the local ultra-right wing TV editorialist (and later US Senator), Jesse Helms as being “nothing less than the Marxist threat to family life made explicit in print,” and “Another version of Mao's Little Red Book” etc, including speculation that Fidel Castro himself, well-known agent of Satan so it was widely believed, had a hand in the publication of “Women And Their Bodies”. Susan was, as was said at that time, “in town, on time and in control”---which was the last thing fundamentalist Protestants wanted to have around in any female, adolescent or adult, if one was to base one's views on the extensive right-wing religious propaganda machinery of the time and in that region.
She put everything away and we went downstairs. We made a couple of sandwiches for ourselves, then commenced to plot, nay, began to weave a grand conspiracy. “I go there for awards ceremonies for the swimming,” a worldly wise laugh followed from her. After setting up the adventure, since Susan was more familiar with the structure we would be in than I would ever be, I took her word for what we were going to get ourselves into that following Tuesday. I returned home to hammer at my weekend school assignments.
When I got home at around 2pm, the phone rang. It was Johnny Ray. “Wanna go play tonight? Danny the bass player is in jail and nobody knows what happened to Franklin, you know, the guitar guy.” I told Johnny Ray I'd call him back in about thirty minutes. I bluffed around with my parents, who both thought well of Johnny Ray for reasons I can't fathom to this day. Saturday night was a go. Johnny Ray drove over and we went out to the topless dive in order to get started by 7pm---which was when the patrons began filling the place.
It was the same set of tunes, the same topless dancers with missing teeth listlessly swaying back and forth, the same drunks for all I knew or cared. Johnny Ray gave me a couple of pills. I woke up after fifteen minutes or so. I remember drinking Orange Crush with vodka in it and playing the same 1-4-5 patterns. All of it oozed together in LoserLand. Big Joe was Big Joe. A blob at a Vox combo. The bald pot-bellied Dr. Feelgood Eddie was there, in between songs teetering between the edge of the stage where the women moved every now and then and the bar. The band took a break.
King James was there again, this time stumbling back to the women's dressing room with one of the “dancers”. I headed back in the same direction to get another can of Orange Crush from the bar. King James looked at me “Ya'll needs a Goddamned haircut.” he was full drunken bile.
We played until 11pm, which was the official cut off time for electrified music as allowed on the club's operating permit from the county. It was uneventful. I remember starting to dislike all of it, even if the pills and the liquor were great. The dancers started to bother me, not the women, because I took Johnny Ray's advice very seriously after I saw a few knife fights between ex-cons out behind the club, but rather just how stupid it all was---how much it resembled junior high school.
So, we got done playing, Johnny Ray and Greg packed up the equipment, loaded it into the Falcon parked out back. As we were putting everything in the trunk of the car, King James himself stumbles out from the bar with one of the dancers, now fully clothed (and in her case, being fully clothed was an act of mercy). The two of them got into the back of a gleaming, white brand-new Lincoln. As he was closing the Town Car door, King James looked at both Johnny Ray and yours truly with disgust, shaking his head at two guys with almost longish hair and blue jeans---to the right-wing, the stigmata of “hippie”.
That said, I had made $40.00 in two nights, which in 1971 was good money for a 14 year old kid.
My adventures playing bass in that topless joint did not make returning to a world of middle-class to upper-middle class, university bound spoiled brats in throes of adolescent mania a simple matter. Johnny Ray, who would end up a world-class construction equipment repair technician in adulthood, had similar problems over at his high school where was was the star of his vocational education training section even if he was only in the 10th grade “Greg, you know you n' me are the only ones I know who ain't gonna end up in at Central Prison.” Given that his high school wasn't too far from Poole Road, he was probably correct.
Sunday was all yard work and school work.
That following Monday I met Susan at her parent's house and we walked on to school. Full of sly smiles, she was still dressing more or less like she had the previous year, but as I recall it, she was doing so with irony and, now, with hiking boots. She handed me a sheet of paper, folded into fours: “It's all mapped out. All of the entries from the parking lot are marked on an exterior sketch...then there's a diagram of the inside of the place. This is top secret. If you're captured, eat the map.” My Superior Officer had spoken.
She had an after-school mathematics club meeting to attend, so we didn't spend any time together after school, and we had different lunch breaks. We crossed each other in the hallways a few times. Each time we both had to restrain ourselves from bursting out in wild laughter. I had to be a dutiful son, raking pinestraw and leaves off of the front yard of my family's home that afternoon then get on with the dreary business of homework.
At about eight o'clock, the phone rang. It was Susan. She was giggling like a little kid. “Did you watch Viewpoint?” Viewpoint was the five minute editorial read by Jesse Helms, The Great Helmsman to you lubbrul traitors, each weeknight on WRAL, the television station of which he was also a managing general partner. “No, I was doing homework,” I replied.
“My dad watches it every night after dinner. He wanted me to watch it with him tonight,” Susan could scarcely contain her giggles, “You know what Ol' Jess called feminism?” A pause, “He called equal rights for women 'the death of civilization'!” She was trying too hard to restrain her laughter, trying so hard that she sounded as if she was losing control of her ability to speak clearly, “...and after Viewpoint was over, there was a commercial for the Billy Graham Crusade tomorrow!” I'd never heard Susan so over the top. Close to a frenzy, if on the quiet in case of parental intrusion, but still, out of breath from laughter, which was very odd for a competitive swimmer of her level.
The next morning, we met out in front of her family's house and walked to school. The weather was due to be unseasonably warm for October, so she wore a light sweater over her usual baggy ensemble. I remember that she was all giggles, full of excitement, she patted her gym bag, grinning. At the start of the walk we didn't speak too much, instead we kept looking in one another's eyes as gleeful co-conspirators in a history-changing game. We did discuss more detailed strategies of how to end up on the same bus together, to sit together and in her words, “give the children something to talk about”.
The ten o'clock bell rang and the announcements by the Principal over the public address system intoned that those of us with signed permission forms were to assemble in five, single-file lines in the teacher's parking lot. I remember looking out at the buses all lined up---a consortium of churches had rented school buses from the city transit district! In looking back at this, the legality of such actions would be blocked by school district lawyers in today's environment, even in Raleigh, but back then, no, it was a private rental benefiting the school district via a pay-out as I later found out from a “secret liberal” teacher.
The sun was bright, with temperatures nearing the low 60'F's. We were all herded down to the teacher's parking lot and lined up. Susan and I joined up near the front of one of the lines. Gone were the baggy fashions. Susan walked with the confident power of an athlete at the top of her game. She had let her hair down, forgoing the clip in the back. The white body shirt was a clinging fit, as were the bell-bottomed jeans. The sunlight reflected off of her eyes---there is that fullness of a woman sunlight has a way of amplifying. As she strode down the sidewalk and up to me, she looped her arm in mine.
“My mother buys these torture devices for me, “ she said, looking down at her chest, “she says these things are good for my back. I can swim butterfly for three miles non-stop in an Olympic pool and she's worried about my back. Go figure.”
I smiled at her. I'd never once heard her complain about anything. That said, the “proper undergarment”, as was noted in the “young ladies student handbook” strapped to her seemed to have been made out of wire “O” rings connected to yet more wire around the sides with thick fabric forming shapeless covers.
“If the bus drops a transmission that would work as a strap to get it back up where it belongs,” I quipped, deluded into believing such banter might pass for humor.
“Auto parts,” she sniffed.
“Good thing there aren't any storms for today...Lightning...” She rolled her eyes.
That sly, devilish glint in Susan's eyes grew and grew. She moved her head in the magical way of young women, her hair moving in that way time, social customs and, most likely, brain chemistry have a sad history of sending into memory.
We sat in the same seat on the bus and, for the first time, we held hands. She sat up straight, square-shouldered, giving “the children” something to talk about. Susan was announcing her arrival that day.
She put her head against my right shoulder the way lovers do, closed her eyes, soaking up the sunlight during the bus ride down from Six Forks Road to Lassiter Mill Road, Oberlin Road, passing by Cameron Village, crossing Hillsborough Street, then into the North Carolina State University campus basketball arena parking lot.
“The pool is over there,” she pointed off at a right angle to the arena, “It's one of the better ones.”
“Is that because there aren't any dead bugs floating in it?” I asked, dead-pan.
“Very funny.”
We got herded once again off the pavement and toward the arena. Bullhorn voice of authority: “Stay in a close group.” There were some other barking noises.
To this day I can only remain in amazement at Susan's combination of brains, wit, beauty and poise. We happened upon a group of the self-appointed “popular” kids and the girls didn't quite know how to make Susan and, er, “him” fit into their little worlds of Bible study, cheerleading and gossip. British people might call these young ladies “proto-WAGS”, but with fundamentalist Protestant and very Southern pretensions. Their football player “boyfriends” were all the more confused after getting a look at unfamiliar beauty unpackaged.
We got into Reynolds Coliseum and quickly broke ranks with the organized plan for we “young people in distress”, as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Inc., had taken to labeling those present. Susan used the excuse of needing to use the women's room in speaking with one of the teachers and I took the hint, using a similar, if gender appropriate, excuse to make a break for the area of the arena where Susan's map indicated that the VIPs and press would be, and, conveniently enough, nearby to the restroom facilities. This was the place, no question. The velvet ropes and the unformed, armed Raleigh police officers posted by a side door were something a giveaway. The women's and men's pissers were just to the right of the doorway leading up to the dais and only at a slight angle from the side door adorned by armed police officers and purple velvet ropes.
All was lining up far better than anticipated.
I emerged from the men's pisser. Susan took a bit longer, but not for the reasons so many men make jokes about.
Her medieval wire torture device had vanished. Instead there was Susan in her nearly sheer body shirt, unbuttoned as far as there were buttons. She was standing even taller than tall, standing free with that fringed “hippie” shoulder bag and her flairs lowered below her pelvic structure. She had the image: her nipples full, no cosmetics and making the statement of being “one of those bra-burning women's libbers”. We maneuvered our way up to the front of the line, mingling with press photographers and TV crews.
As we got to the front of the press area, the Cadillac stretch limos pulled up and disgorged cargo. First out was the Humble Christian Preacher From Montreat himself, Billy Graham and, on his arm, looking for all the world like a formerly pretty small town high school cheerleader school with an IQ below 100 spellbound by her husband's charisma, was the ever-loyal Ruth Graham, feature of so many articles in Decision, the magazine published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Inc. Billy himself, of flawlessly modified pompadour and $1000.00 plus custom tailored suit, had an unwavering narcissistic faith found as a primary component of star power. Billy & Ruth (we were on a first name basis by this juncture) both gave what would be immediately recognizable as “the royal wave”, that is, until Ruth Graham spotted Susan not more than three feet in front the Great Pastor and her Ruthly self. Susan made eye contact with a shocked Ruth Graham and Billy, while still affecting the royal wave glanced over at the two of us with a tightly wound, stern countenance. Ruth Graham's eyes slid to a very rattled review of Susan. A scowl ensued. Susan continued standing tall and smiling as a liberated women, free of cosmetics, wire contraptions and prim dresses. All around us, the starmaker machinery of TV cameras and news reporters ignored us, although one woman reporter from a local TV station smiled and nodded approvingly of Susan's very physical statement. After Billy and Ruth moved on to the back stage area of the dais, another limo pulled up and four couples, occupants of a lower caste, entered through the doorway.
Susan stood a bit apart from me, enjoying all of festivities. Not for narcissistic reasons, but for the contravention of social norms, the simple act of being a woman in full on feminist symbolism of independence in the face of a firestorm of concern for “today's young people”.
The the next group on the Ladder To Salvation entered the building. The first two couples were unknown to us, although later we were to discover that these people sat on the board of directors of a local Bible college, with the men being well-known real estate developers in addition to their humble service in private sector education.
The third couple proved far greater interest than Billy and Ruth.
Seeing this couple exiting the limo, there was no mistaking who it was. In the light of day he looked for all the world like just another exhausted, unfit 50-something blond guy with slicked back thinning sidewall hair in a polyester double-knit leisure suit purchased off the rack at J.C. Penney. His wife was a doughy sort with swollen wrists and bloated hands. She used several layers of make-up to paint over the gin blossoms on her cheeks and her dress could be most charitably described as a dowdy flower print job. Her brown hair had been paved over with some type of chemical compound so as to resemble a standard issue police riot gear head protection covering. King James spotted me immediately upon entering the building. By this time Susan was back on my arm, enjoying every minute of silently taunting those so desperately engaged in spiritual warfare for the souls of “our young people tempted by Satan in ways unimaginable only a few short years ago,” or so said the propaganda mill. Suit slowed his pace to stare at the two of us, although most unreservedly at Susan's distinctly liberated breast tissue. A Very Important Man was going through the process of “worlds in collision” in practical application. Susan smiled at The Personage, her perfect teeth, eyes on fire with open rebellion and hips thrusts slightly forward. I stood up straight at near military attention smirking at him. He would have preferred me dead and Susan servicing him.
As the Humble Preacher and his party of equally humble guests filed out of the entry area and into the back stage holding pen, Susan and I made our way back up in the basketball arena's seating areas, finally finding seats on the mezzanine up above the set of seats reserved for those from our school.
“Who was that creepy old guy with the dump truck in a dress?” Susan asked.
“King James. Long story.”
We ended up sitting by a group of high school students from a public school out in the county. No one seemed to mind, or even care, until one of the teachers noticed Susan.
“You don't belong here, young lady,” said the woman in a dark blue dress. Susan stood up, in no mood to be corrected by what Susan later told me was, “a really twisted chemistry teacher”.
“Great,. So where do you want us to sit?” I asked in what I recall as being a restrained tone of voice.
“Where are your name tags?” Twisted Case was rolling now.
Meanwhile Billy Graham's warm-up act, a gospel baritone named George Beverly Shea, was inspiring the crowd with short selections from the Methodist hymnal accompanied by a truly skilled pianist. Shea, who's baritone voice could cause large buildings, including the one we were in, to shake loose from their foundations was warmly received by much of the crowd.
Dark Blue Dress teacher from this other school kept eying Susan, glancing over at me, manifesting unvarnished contempt. “We'll have to get y'all back to your group. We can't have this level of disorder. We're here to learn.” Dark Blue Dress teacher was no longer simply eying Susan. Dark Blue Dress was starting to boil with hate. “Who do y'all two think you are, anyway?” this teacher drawled in a way that way so Southern that one might be excused for thinking that she might be her own parents. A bra-less hippie in low-slung flairs and hiking boots on the arm of blue jean long hair low-life. Disgusting. Dirty.
“Stay right here. We'll find a way to deal wif ya'lls,” the teacher snarled, language constructs revealing her true social class heritage as she steamed.
Dark Blue Dress huffed, then click-clacking high-heels easily distinguished above the music, stomped off. George Beverly Shea had gotten the crowd into a sing-a long of some hymn I'd never heard before. Susan and I wandered around the seats in the mezzanine until we found ourselves one row up above our schoolmates, at a right angle.
“Who's is that woman?” I asked Susan.
“Her names is Miss Darla Jane Wright, formerly Mrs. Darla Jean Baxter,” Susan said. “Were we supposed to get name tags?”
You've met?” gaining entry into someone's life has it's hazards, I knew that early on from my first girlfriend who would prove useless if tossed into a volcano. See “Deliverance” by James Dickey for further details, albeit within a heterosexual context.
“Darla Jane has a lot of secrets.”
“Like?”
“She was my after school swimming coach at the 'Y' when I was in the 5th grade. She got fired.”
Curious in entering into Susan's life in this way, I probed further: “Why did she get fired?”
“Darla Jane was full of valium when she got into a car wreck. Two other swimming coaches were in the car with her. She was driving them to a Fellowship Of Christian Athletes convention in Greensboro. She's not allowed to teach PE any more.”
“Anyone get hurt?”
“One of the coaches lost an eye, “ Susan said this at an near whisper.
“So now she's all concerned about order?”
“Darla Jane is a lot stranger than that. She speaks in tongues. I saw her go into whatever that is they do...you know, those throat sounds...she did that up at the Winn-Dixie in front of everybody. Her husband left her after the wreck He got the children AND the house in the divorce. She lives in a little apartment over a garage out on Millbrook Road.”
“Did she go to jail for, I dunno what it's called with pills, but, like drunk driving when people get hurt?”
“She had to pay a huge fine, lost her teacher's license and her driver's license for a long time. I heard she was in some kind of home for people...” The language of going to rehab had not yet entered regular vocabulary for 14 year olds as of 1971, said no, no, no.
“I'm surprised that she didn't recognize you.” Greg raised his eyebrows.
“There have been a few changes since the 5th grade, thank you,” she straightened up her posture.
Finally it was time for our featured presentation, the Humble Messenger Of The Lord Jesus Christ and bearer of the Holy Spirit in the face of a world full of sins, mentionable and otherwise. Star time at the Personal Salvation Theatre. Time for the hardest working man in Religions, Inc. to take the stage.
The Simple Pastor didn't just take the stage. He consumed it from the podium. Billy Graham ranted on and on. Flailing about with a Bible in his right hand, expertly flipping through the pages to read quotes in support one or another element of salvation by the grace of accepting Jesus rather than: the temptations of Playboy Magazine. The temptations of cheap morals tempting young people in print, on radio, on TV and especially tempting in the movies and particularly tempting in “the popular music of our day”. And the temptations of fast cars combined with temptations of liquor and temptations offered by the rejection of salvation by the temptations of sin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyZhhohdPnw
Billy thence succumbed himself unto temptation, taking a short break to introduce his guests, “great Christian examples for our troubled and tempted young people to follow as Christian role models as they negotiate through that sea of materialist sin all around in this modern life.”
“...and as a very special guest today, I would like to introduce the director of Salvation Christian Academy, Dr. James Hargett...” King James and his gin blossom faced wife stood up and took a bow as the crowd let go with a thunderous round of applause...
Lenny Bruce died for somebody's sins but not mine.
Following on Message after the guests on the dais got to bask in Eternal Light for a few moments, Billy spoke about Jesus delivering True Happiness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPjS4FRSY6c
Then our Humble Anointed Messenger Of The Word Of God did his finale: The Altar Call. “I'm asking those of you here today who wish to dedicate your lives to Jesus Christ to come forward and accept Jesus Christ as your very own personal Savior. We have many fine youth pastors and ministers here today waiting to pray with you as you make the single most important decisions of your lives, right here, today....” Big drama afoot. Billy seemed to be breaking out in a sweat as he held his Bible out in front of him at the podium. While the gravity of the moment was clearly taking it's toll on God's Ambassador, he showed that he had the Inner Strength to bear Extraordinary Weight, the Responsibility, handed to him this day at, in this very Palace Of Basketball, oh yes!
Susan pointed down at the throng lining up. “It's Darla Jean!”
Sure enough, there was the Dark Blue Dress Darla marshaling three entire rows of “today's youth” up to the stage to “accept Jesus” as their very own personal Invisible Friend.
Figuring that this would be a good time to use the crowd milling toward the stage with a low-volume piano playing “Jesus Is the Rock Of Salvation” over the sound system, we made a break for where we saw a few familiar faces from school and found seats.
“You stay here,” Superior Officer in town, on time with a dose of irony.
So I sat down. A few minutes later Susan returned.
“You didn't,” I sighed.
“Had to put it on for the return trip,.” Her displeasure was not hidden in a return to entrapment..
“Sell out,” I joked. She made a face as if she'd just chewed on an aspirin, “At least you didn't use any make-up.”
“We get cut loose when we get back, remember?” Electric eyes as she moved her head back and forth, mane tossing, “I'll fix some lunch back at the house if you'd like, “ another smile, “My mom doesn't get in from work until five,” she looked at her watch, “It's quarter to one...”
We joined the children in the line up for the return bus ride Susan nuzzled up next me, as lovers will do at rare moments we take refuge in arise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YHECdNLFtg
"It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. … I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing … but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out." --- from Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Ever since he preached his last crusade in New York City in 2005, and especially since Ruth died in 2007, the man known as God’s ambassador has lived in increasing seclusion, hindered by hearing loss, dimming sight, and the infirmity that comes with great old age. The impatient, gangly Gospel preacher who punctuated his sermons with jagged arm gestures now uses a walker and a wheelchair. The man who was said to have preached for six decades with “a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other,” and who meticulously catalogued his personal library of 13,000 books, now watches Fox, the evening news, and local programming on a massive flat-screen TV. --- from ”The Fight Over Billy Graham's Legacy” Newsweek Magazine 15 May 2011
*
I was entering my 14th year in the autumn of 1971. My lot in life was to be in the green, pine tree curtain of the post World War II, low-cost petroleum world of North Raleigh, in the capital of the Southern US state of North Carolina. Living standards for all of the US then were among the highest in the world, although overall in about the middle for all of the United States there in all of North Carolina. North Hills, in Raleigh, ranked with one of the highest overall standards of living in the state at that time. It is a place of split level homes, faux colonial replications of Plantation houses, California-style western ranch tract houses, GI Bill rectangles plus the odd, if condescending, nod of the head to Joseph Eichler's work in Northern California. And box structures. Two story boxes. All the homes sat upon quarter acre plots. The streets were, and still are, what one might call “spaghetti streets” as well as cul-de-sacs. When taking an airliner into Raleigh-Durham International Airport, the view of these streets from aloft brings to mind ileum coils. There were no sidewalks built for reasons related to the peculiar history of the US South: the build-out of the north side of Raleigh along Six Forks Road was nearly complete by the time the Civil rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson.
To be without an automobile there in North Hills was to be a paraplegic. Indeed, that still holds true for the entire City Of Raleigh to this day. To further complicate life as a 14 year old, I was bored to death in the place. To say that the environment was, and remains, conservative in thought, word and deed, would be a modest understatement. For further enlightenment on the topic of North Raleigh at that time, I would advise a thorough reading of David Sedaris on the topic. David has done a better job of defining the place in that time than I have either the interest or inclination to get on with doing.
Besides, David Sedaris has a major publishing contract, a large following of fans and, hence, gets paid for his musings, evidently well enough to live in an upscale arrondissement of Paris. Buy David Sedaris books. He's a good guy and a good read.
1971. I was in the 8th grade. The summer vacation of that year opened up all sorts of additional avenues for disreputable, Rock & Roll behavior in my sweet, short life. I started sneaking out of my parent's home, running off to play bass in a topless beer hall on the other side of the County Of Wake. For the sake of privacy of the living, the almost living and the dead, there will changed names. My pal Johnny Ray was not not named Johnny Ray. But he was 16 in 1971, had a driver's license, a Gibson SG bass to spare and was a very good, if not nearly brilliant Rock & Roll electric guitar player. Johnny Ray owned a Ford Falcon out of the early 1960's. It ran very well. We got together to play guitar and such as often as possible, even though he lived on the other side of town, off Poole Road, back when blue collar non-Hispanic Caucasians comprised the dominant ethnic and social class population base of that portion of Raleigh. Johnny Ray was responsible for me going to play bass at the above mentioned topless beer hall. Due to quirky laws, North Carolina did not have “liquor bars” as such at that time, so beer and wine were all that could be served at licensed establishments, although the quaint custom of “brown bagging” was quite legal under some circumstances. So here was this very rough beer hall on the other side of the county, but not a liquor bar in the sense one might find elsewhere in the US (except for Kansas and parts of Utah) back then.
Johnny Ray had an ex-uncle who played a Vox combo organ (Think “96 Tears” by ? & the Mysterions) and sang at this establishment. He had a drummer, a bass player and a guitar player along for the ride. Johnny Ray's uncle was named Big Joe. Big Joe consumed alcohol. Big Joe drank a lot of anything with alcohol in it. Anything. Constantly. Johnny Ray once mentioned that Big Joe kept a bottle of Aqua Velva hidden “just in case.” Big Joe was 5'8”, tipped the scales at 350 lbs plus. He shuffled around in bedroom slippers because his feet were not in a condition suitable for proper shoes. He had a strange odor about him, something like sour milk mixed with paint remover and stale urine. His clothing---he seemed to wear converted bedsheets stitched up for shirts with bib overalls or the sort of bottom half coverings used on hospital charity wards. Every now and again the bass player and/or guitar player did not show up for the evening's work. I learned early on not to ask too many questions. No one asked me any questions, either, or not very often. Johnny Ray brought me along to substitute from time to time. I got paid varying amounts depending on what Big Joe and Johnny Ray worked out with the lard-encrusted Neanderthal barman. All went well on the money.
The establishment itself was one of those US Southern roadhouses from where no legends would ever arise. This place would never be featured in any historical retrospective about country music or Rock & Roll pioneers. There were no pictures on the wall of famous people who had played there. It was the last topless bar with a band in it in the US South before falling off the planet or ending up in Smithfield:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SmithfieldKlanBillboard.jpg
There was plenty of liquor to be had, even if it wasn't supposed to be served there. There was a “back room”, just opposite to where “the girls” had what was referred to “a dressing room”. Pills of various types flowed. Obese men with paste shaded complexions and wrap around sunglasses, many wearing bolo ties and sport coat jackets that hadn't fit correctly since the Eisenhower administration entered and exited the back room and the girls dressing room. The men's and women's bathrooms were at the end of the hall. In looking back, it was pathetic---the sort of place where losers went sinnin' on Saturday night before gittin' saved on Sunday. Grey areas not allowed.
I'd heard about these sorts of places from my father. He had an older brother who drank himself to the end of the line in roadhouses very much like this one, albeit in New Jersey. So there were warnings.
The girls were tough cases. Many of them had husbands in prison or dead. No “hookers with hearts of gold”---they were classic examples of what I would come to recognize as compete damage cases from the failing world of textile mills, furniture factories and meat packing plants of eastern Wake County, over toward Smithfield and down by Dunn and Lillington. Johnny Ray told me which ones were “OK enough, won't slit your throat. Don't look anyone in the eyes. Don't say anything unless you absolutely have to.“ I had a guide. This was good. It was very plain that the women were there to do business . Shaking the glandular money makers to listless versions of “All Shook Up” and “Hey Good Lookin'” wasn't where the unreported income was being generated.
For now, we'll leave off on the topic of the bar and return to the world of the junior high school, autumn 1971 back in the suburban dreamscape of perfect teeth, big, late model American cars and happy, smiling young people.
And churches. So many churches---as far as a person might sling a dead cat, the deceased F. cattus
would hit the side of a church. Southern and Independent Methodist, Presbyterian, Independent Presbyterian, too many Southern Baptist facilities to count, Pentecostal Holiness, Church Of The Nazarene, Foursquare Gospel, Worldwide Church Of God, Disciples of Christ, Full Gospel Chapel, Church Of God (Cumberland, Tennessee), Assembly Of God and on and on. What H.L. Mencken said about religion in Los Angeles in the 1920's was, and remains, applicable to Raleigh, North Carolina: it is possible to get one's soul saved by Jesus in ten thousand different ways on every city block in Raleigh. “A miasma of Methodists, a cesspool of Baptist...snake charmers all.” Mencken again, observing a key to living life beneath the Mason-Dixon line. As it was in the beginning so shall it be in the end.
Ain't nothin' changed but the leaves on the trees, y'all.
At the top of the religion business in North Carolina, if not in all of Religions, Inc.(or the fundamentalist Protestant franchises of Religions, Inc., at any rate), stood the towering figure of Billy Graham. The humble small town boy conservative Southern Baptist preacher, touch by the Spirit to bring The Word of Jesus and morality to a sinful world full of communists, sinners and materialist “lovers of themselves”, that was North Carolina's very own, personal Savior, Billy Graham. The first “evangelist” to be broadcast via satellite on Telstar. The confessor of presidents, prime ministers and kings. Billy Graham, who once filled the Houston Astrodome for ten consecutive nights. Who thundered and roared when John Lennon dared jest that “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus Christ”, resulting in record burning parties in many locations across the US, included Raleigh:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc7rBVUIHUg
Billy Graham magazines in doctor's waiting rooms, in telephone booths, in coin-op laundromats, and more. Billy Graham concerned about our “young people today”, always so concerned about “our young people in today's world”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHgmYXYtZlk
The preacher-father of a boyhood chum of mine said that “Billy Graham is the greatest living gift God has given this world full of communist liberals armed with atom bombs”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaMavtsbBug
As I returned to school in September of 1971, one of the girls from the neighborhood, we'll call her Susan to be respectful of her privacy, stopped by my parent's house, in the evening before school started. I was outside mowing the lawn. I had known Susan since we were maybe five years old or so. She had always been a sparkling girl. We swam in various competitions at the local private club pool. I didn't care for such team sports, but Susan was highly competitive, winning race after race in her age class. By the first week of September, as we spoke there, me setting aside my lawn mowing chores to chat it up with Susan, I immediately noticed several things. There was a new electricity to her eyes. The other thing was that her intellectual development, which was precocious, got matched by a an even greater degree of physical development. In contemporary terms, think about what actress Christina Hendricks (of “Mad Men” fame) might have looked like in the light of the medically recognized condition of “precocious adolescent development” at 14. The previous year in school, and even when swimming at one of the only indoor pools in town over the preceding winter, she did her best to downplay the obvious. Certain synapses in her brain had not yet connected. Over the summer of 1971, much of that neurochemical and physiological precociousness fit together in short order. Although for the sake of brevity, it will be best to leave out the particulars of what I recall knowing of her life in the summer of 1971, except to say that she had spent most of the summer at a swimming and academic camp at the University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. It was there that she met a fellow, a swimming coach who, as is tastefully said, “mentored” her. He was, by all accounts, a gentlemen about it all. Susan and her mentor parted ways on excellent terms. Those were different times.
We spoke about summer vacation on our way to school for that first day ring ring goes the bell of September morn. After a few false starts at conversation, she released a pent-up, relieved laughter saying: “Throwing me into a volcano won't do any good now.” Such was the height of humor for educated 14 year olds there, in that place. It was also a curious statement for her to make to me, as she certainly had to have noticed that I had noticed the new charge in her pale green eyes. I was quite familiar with this shift. Susan knew my first serious girlfriend, so she must have been at ease with me in making her “volcano” jest. Susan was much, much more self-assured that autumn, with a greater understanding of her intelligence, academic gifts as well as her physical prowess and beauty. On the mornings when she wasn't going to swimming practice, we walked to our nearby school.
She still dressed for school in a very restrained manner. The previous year the local school board had voted to allow female student to wear pants. The dress code was still rather strict, but there was some movement away from ham-fisted controls. Susan wore loose fitting pants and oversized, very plain blouses. She used little in the way of make-up and parted her long, light brown to sun-bleached blonde hair in the middle, along with modest earrings made of small blue feathers and flat shoes. I later learned that her restrained clothing styles were as much a concession to her very conservative parents as those styles were a deliberate activity to draw attention away from the obvious. There was another very shrewd reason for her going along with her parent's wishes, as it had to do with the IUD her mentor of the previous summer had arranged for her. She did not want any questions to be asked. Toning down the clothing was her way of keeping quiet about that roaring within. In addition to her swimming trophies, she was also amassing a small collection of very good, if not great, Rock & Roll albums (Cream, Velvet Underground, The Doors, The Who, The Beatles), most obtained courtesy of a notorious shoplifter who was a few grades ahead of us in school or as gifts from her mentor of the previous summer in Chapel Hill. The shoplifter in question was to be instrumental later on in the series of events concerning the Billy Graham “Crusade” of October of 1971, which, finally, is the pivot point, indeed the point, of this rambling orbiting the planet of being lost in the past, befuddled by the present while being mystified by what resides in between:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWHNVwxJEeU
Susan's dislike of preachers equaled my own. I gave her a copy of Lenny Bruce's How To Talk Dirty & Influence People, in early September which included the prescient sketch about “Religions, Inc.” in essay form. (Due to copyright restrictions, I am unable to provide a link to Lenny Bruce's recording of this still-stinging analysis of the religion sector of the American economy, as a segment of the American economy. I do highly recommend reading this essay form of Lenny Bruce's visionary monologue or obtaining the audio download from Amazon or iTunes for a fee.) A few weeks after I gave her the Lenny Bruce book, I gave her a copy of Penthouse Magazine featuring an investigative journalism article tearing into the entire tax-exempt financial farce of Oral Roberts, Rex Humbard, Bob Jones, Garner Ted Armstrong and many other Radio/TV preachers of that era, with more than a few jabs at Roman Catholic priests buggering altar boys on a 501 (c)(3) basis included for good measure. (As noted above about Lenny Bruce's “Religions, Inc.”, the aforementioned article from Penthouse Magazine is likewise unavailable due to copyright restrictions. Plus it's tough to find.)
All of this fell together on a Wednesday in mid-October of 1971 when everyone in school was sent home with a note and a form requesting parental consent for those of us held in captivity to be placed on buses rented by local churches so that we might attend the Billy Graham Youth Crusade at the basketball arena at North Carolina State University the following Tuesday. Susan's parents, my parents, most of the kids parents signed off on the permission form. I turned mine in the next day.
On Friday evening, I got a call from Johnny Ray. He was wondering if I could get out of the house to play the topless joint. I bluffed around with my parents about going over to Johnny Ray's house, and that I'd be in just a little after midnight. They went along with it. So, it was a done deal.
I got to the dive. There was Big Joe, fatter than he was a month earlier, and wearing, for some reason, a Zorro mask and hat. He was drunk, slurring his words, tottering around. The place was full of people. It was packed, the beer taps were flowing in rivers. The working girls were shaking and working. We played “Mustang Sally” and Johnny Ray cut loose with with Jimi Hendrix guitar solos to cover for Big Joe when the Fat Man himself went face down on the top of his Vox organ. The drummer was way out of his league. I did the one or two of the only fancy bass tricks I had up my sleeve. Johnny Ray took over the vocals when it became obvious that Big Joe was down for the count. We did two more tunes, one the girls liked a great deal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjs5QWjvNWc
...then took a break. Johnny Ray and one of the bouncers tried to figure out what to do with Big Joe. The bouncer and a patron took Big Joe outside and turned a hose on him. That woke him up, he got to standing up, all was well. Meanwhile, I noticed a rather well-dressed gentleman who'd been drinking quite a bit. He looked out of place for a dive like this one. One of the girls was sitting on his lap and his hand was up her skirt. After a bit, he got up to go piss. I needed a piss myself, largely due to the whiskey I'd been drinking off on the sly. I found myself standing at the urinal next to this out-of-place guy, who was about the same age as my father. This guy was teetering back & forth as his relieved himself. I kept my eyes directly in front of me and followed Johnny Ray advice to the letter.
“My name is James, that's King James to you son, an' this shit is big time fun, huh?” the out of place guy slurred, “She's a wild girl that one.” I grunted . “You play that guitar crazy. You on drugs?” I cleared my throat. This could be the trouble Johnny Ray warned me about. Just then some bald guy with a massive pot-belly used that pot-belly to shove open the door, shuffled into the pisser as I finished up. I washed my hands and, as usual, finding no towels, dried my hands on my jeans. King James bellowed out to the bald, pot-bellied pig “You got any more of them pills, Eddie?”
I got home in time, just barely, and all went trouble free. I was not well the next day, but hid it as best as possible. Nyquil for those nasty Saturday morning colds in autumn. Even my father was vaguely understanding, strangely enough.
Perking up a bit later in the day, I made my way over to Susan's house. Her parents had gone golfing. She was up past her eyebrows in homework, books and papers sprawling out all over the dining room table with a goose-necked lamp planted on the surface for good measure . We went up to her room. “I have an idea for that Billy Graham whazzit on Tuesday.” She went to the bottom drawer of a bureau in her room and pulled out a white body shirt. In the event you may not be familiar with the early 1970s' fashion of body shirts, a digression is in order here. Body shirts were a combination cotton and acrylic fiber, often with some elastic interwoven with the cloth. The overall effect was to have the shirt hug the body in a near skin-tight manner. More often than not, the versions of these body shirts for women buttoned down in the front to a level below the cleavage nexus. The fabric used in the shirt Susan had obtained was quite thin, close to sheer and slightly ribbed or ridged. Further to this, the body shirt Susan had managed to obtain was plainly one quarter of a size too small for her, even by 1971 body shirt measures. She then pulled a faded pair of denim hip hugging flairs out from under her bed. She laid the clothes out for me to examine. “This is going to be fun,” she smiled.
“Where'd you get the clothes?”
“From Lynda Mae, Light-Finger Jeff's girlfriend. I just placed the order a week ago. Cash on Delivery!” Susan clicked her tongue with a mock surprise crossing her countenance.
“Jeff's got his girlfriend in on it now, too?” I was smiling at the entire scenario of these two 10th graders at an upscale high school running a racket. Jeff was a source of my ever-growing record collection.
She showed me a big fringed purse, of the sort fashionable amongst “hippies” of the time. Lots of leather fringe. She had “the look” guaranteed to shock Billy Graham-adoring US Southern church ladies set to go into blue hot rage over “women's lib hippies”.
“What's the plan?” I asked.
“We still go to our morning classes, remember? I have PE at second period. We get on the buses at third period. I change into this after PE in the gym locker room. We go to the Billy Graham thing. Make waves.”
“Do I get to sit next to you?”
“Yes,” she rolled her eyes, giving a crinkled smile, “Wallflower goes presto-change-o into crazy girl. In front of Billy Graham's home crowd. It's perfect.”
“How do you get all of this out of the house?” Greg playing the sensible fellow.
“I pack it in my gym bag. I brought my gym uniform home for the laundry.” Crafty.
She then went to her bookcase and pulled the aforementioned copy of Penthouse Magazine out from inside a school notebook, tossed it on the bed next to her new clothes. “And for your information,” she stated with complete authority in her voice, “those girls are just taller.”
I remember how we laughed. Susan then pulled out a copy of “Women And Their Bodies”, a 1970 booklet for women written by a group of feminist female gynecologists and registered nurses from under her bed. “It's an owner's manual!” she exclaimed.
“Women And Their Bodies” was a booklet was frequently cited by all of the region's “leading” fundamentalist Protestant preachers as “subversive”. It was cited as well as by the local ultra-right wing TV editorialist (and later US Senator), Jesse Helms as being “nothing less than the Marxist threat to family life made explicit in print,” and “Another version of Mao's Little Red Book” etc, including speculation that Fidel Castro himself, well-known agent of Satan so it was widely believed, had a hand in the publication of “Women And Their Bodies”. Susan was, as was said at that time, “in town, on time and in control”---which was the last thing fundamentalist Protestants wanted to have around in any female, adolescent or adult, if one was to base one's views on the extensive right-wing religious propaganda machinery of the time and in that region.
She put everything away and we went downstairs. We made a couple of sandwiches for ourselves, then commenced to plot, nay, began to weave a grand conspiracy. “I go there for awards ceremonies for the swimming,” a worldly wise laugh followed from her. After setting up the adventure, since Susan was more familiar with the structure we would be in than I would ever be, I took her word for what we were going to get ourselves into that following Tuesday. I returned home to hammer at my weekend school assignments.
When I got home at around 2pm, the phone rang. It was Johnny Ray. “Wanna go play tonight? Danny the bass player is in jail and nobody knows what happened to Franklin, you know, the guitar guy.” I told Johnny Ray I'd call him back in about thirty minutes. I bluffed around with my parents, who both thought well of Johnny Ray for reasons I can't fathom to this day. Saturday night was a go. Johnny Ray drove over and we went out to the topless dive in order to get started by 7pm---which was when the patrons began filling the place.
It was the same set of tunes, the same topless dancers with missing teeth listlessly swaying back and forth, the same drunks for all I knew or cared. Johnny Ray gave me a couple of pills. I woke up after fifteen minutes or so. I remember drinking Orange Crush with vodka in it and playing the same 1-4-5 patterns. All of it oozed together in LoserLand. Big Joe was Big Joe. A blob at a Vox combo. The bald pot-bellied Dr. Feelgood Eddie was there, in between songs teetering between the edge of the stage where the women moved every now and then and the bar. The band took a break.
King James was there again, this time stumbling back to the women's dressing room with one of the “dancers”. I headed back in the same direction to get another can of Orange Crush from the bar. King James looked at me “Ya'll needs a Goddamned haircut.” he was full drunken bile.
We played until 11pm, which was the official cut off time for electrified music as allowed on the club's operating permit from the county. It was uneventful. I remember starting to dislike all of it, even if the pills and the liquor were great. The dancers started to bother me, not the women, because I took Johnny Ray's advice very seriously after I saw a few knife fights between ex-cons out behind the club, but rather just how stupid it all was---how much it resembled junior high school.
So, we got done playing, Johnny Ray and Greg packed up the equipment, loaded it into the Falcon parked out back. As we were putting everything in the trunk of the car, King James himself stumbles out from the bar with one of the dancers, now fully clothed (and in her case, being fully clothed was an act of mercy). The two of them got into the back of a gleaming, white brand-new Lincoln. As he was closing the Town Car door, King James looked at both Johnny Ray and yours truly with disgust, shaking his head at two guys with almost longish hair and blue jeans---to the right-wing, the stigmata of “hippie”.
That said, I had made $40.00 in two nights, which in 1971 was good money for a 14 year old kid.
My adventures playing bass in that topless joint did not make returning to a world of middle-class to upper-middle class, university bound spoiled brats in throes of adolescent mania a simple matter. Johnny Ray, who would end up a world-class construction equipment repair technician in adulthood, had similar problems over at his high school where was was the star of his vocational education training section even if he was only in the 10th grade “Greg, you know you n' me are the only ones I know who ain't gonna end up in at Central Prison.” Given that his high school wasn't too far from Poole Road, he was probably correct.
Sunday was all yard work and school work.
That following Monday I met Susan at her parent's house and we walked on to school. Full of sly smiles, she was still dressing more or less like she had the previous year, but as I recall it, she was doing so with irony and, now, with hiking boots. She handed me a sheet of paper, folded into fours: “It's all mapped out. All of the entries from the parking lot are marked on an exterior sketch...then there's a diagram of the inside of the place. This is top secret. If you're captured, eat the map.” My Superior Officer had spoken.
She had an after-school mathematics club meeting to attend, so we didn't spend any time together after school, and we had different lunch breaks. We crossed each other in the hallways a few times. Each time we both had to restrain ourselves from bursting out in wild laughter. I had to be a dutiful son, raking pinestraw and leaves off of the front yard of my family's home that afternoon then get on with the dreary business of homework.
At about eight o'clock, the phone rang. It was Susan. She was giggling like a little kid. “Did you watch Viewpoint?” Viewpoint was the five minute editorial read by Jesse Helms, The Great Helmsman to you lubbrul traitors, each weeknight on WRAL, the television station of which he was also a managing general partner. “No, I was doing homework,” I replied.
“My dad watches it every night after dinner. He wanted me to watch it with him tonight,” Susan could scarcely contain her giggles, “You know what Ol' Jess called feminism?” A pause, “He called equal rights for women 'the death of civilization'!” She was trying too hard to restrain her laughter, trying so hard that she sounded as if she was losing control of her ability to speak clearly, “...and after Viewpoint was over, there was a commercial for the Billy Graham Crusade tomorrow!” I'd never heard Susan so over the top. Close to a frenzy, if on the quiet in case of parental intrusion, but still, out of breath from laughter, which was very odd for a competitive swimmer of her level.
The next morning, we met out in front of her family's house and walked to school. The weather was due to be unseasonably warm for October, so she wore a light sweater over her usual baggy ensemble. I remember that she was all giggles, full of excitement, she patted her gym bag, grinning. At the start of the walk we didn't speak too much, instead we kept looking in one another's eyes as gleeful co-conspirators in a history-changing game. We did discuss more detailed strategies of how to end up on the same bus together, to sit together and in her words, “give the children something to talk about”.
The ten o'clock bell rang and the announcements by the Principal over the public address system intoned that those of us with signed permission forms were to assemble in five, single-file lines in the teacher's parking lot. I remember looking out at the buses all lined up---a consortium of churches had rented school buses from the city transit district! In looking back at this, the legality of such actions would be blocked by school district lawyers in today's environment, even in Raleigh, but back then, no, it was a private rental benefiting the school district via a pay-out as I later found out from a “secret liberal” teacher.
The sun was bright, with temperatures nearing the low 60'F's. We were all herded down to the teacher's parking lot and lined up. Susan and I joined up near the front of one of the lines. Gone were the baggy fashions. Susan walked with the confident power of an athlete at the top of her game. She had let her hair down, forgoing the clip in the back. The white body shirt was a clinging fit, as were the bell-bottomed jeans. The sunlight reflected off of her eyes---there is that fullness of a woman sunlight has a way of amplifying. As she strode down the sidewalk and up to me, she looped her arm in mine.
“My mother buys these torture devices for me, “ she said, looking down at her chest, “she says these things are good for my back. I can swim butterfly for three miles non-stop in an Olympic pool and she's worried about my back. Go figure.”
I smiled at her. I'd never once heard her complain about anything. That said, the “proper undergarment”, as was noted in the “young ladies student handbook” strapped to her seemed to have been made out of wire “O” rings connected to yet more wire around the sides with thick fabric forming shapeless covers.
“If the bus drops a transmission that would work as a strap to get it back up where it belongs,” I quipped, deluded into believing such banter might pass for humor.
“Auto parts,” she sniffed.
“Good thing there aren't any storms for today...Lightning...” She rolled her eyes.
That sly, devilish glint in Susan's eyes grew and grew. She moved her head in the magical way of young women, her hair moving in that way time, social customs and, most likely, brain chemistry have a sad history of sending into memory.
We sat in the same seat on the bus and, for the first time, we held hands. She sat up straight, square-shouldered, giving “the children” something to talk about. Susan was announcing her arrival that day.
She put her head against my right shoulder the way lovers do, closed her eyes, soaking up the sunlight during the bus ride down from Six Forks Road to Lassiter Mill Road, Oberlin Road, passing by Cameron Village, crossing Hillsborough Street, then into the North Carolina State University campus basketball arena parking lot.
“The pool is over there,” she pointed off at a right angle to the arena, “It's one of the better ones.”
“Is that because there aren't any dead bugs floating in it?” I asked, dead-pan.
“Very funny.”
We got herded once again off the pavement and toward the arena. Bullhorn voice of authority: “Stay in a close group.” There were some other barking noises.
To this day I can only remain in amazement at Susan's combination of brains, wit, beauty and poise. We happened upon a group of the self-appointed “popular” kids and the girls didn't quite know how to make Susan and, er, “him” fit into their little worlds of Bible study, cheerleading and gossip. British people might call these young ladies “proto-WAGS”, but with fundamentalist Protestant and very Southern pretensions. Their football player “boyfriends” were all the more confused after getting a look at unfamiliar beauty unpackaged.
We got into Reynolds Coliseum and quickly broke ranks with the organized plan for we “young people in distress”, as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Inc., had taken to labeling those present. Susan used the excuse of needing to use the women's room in speaking with one of the teachers and I took the hint, using a similar, if gender appropriate, excuse to make a break for the area of the arena where Susan's map indicated that the VIPs and press would be, and, conveniently enough, nearby to the restroom facilities. This was the place, no question. The velvet ropes and the unformed, armed Raleigh police officers posted by a side door were something a giveaway. The women's and men's pissers were just to the right of the doorway leading up to the dais and only at a slight angle from the side door adorned by armed police officers and purple velvet ropes.
All was lining up far better than anticipated.
I emerged from the men's pisser. Susan took a bit longer, but not for the reasons so many men make jokes about.
Her medieval wire torture device had vanished. Instead there was Susan in her nearly sheer body shirt, unbuttoned as far as there were buttons. She was standing even taller than tall, standing free with that fringed “hippie” shoulder bag and her flairs lowered below her pelvic structure. She had the image: her nipples full, no cosmetics and making the statement of being “one of those bra-burning women's libbers”. We maneuvered our way up to the front of the line, mingling with press photographers and TV crews.
As we got to the front of the press area, the Cadillac stretch limos pulled up and disgorged cargo. First out was the Humble Christian Preacher From Montreat himself, Billy Graham and, on his arm, looking for all the world like a formerly pretty small town high school cheerleader school with an IQ below 100 spellbound by her husband's charisma, was the ever-loyal Ruth Graham, feature of so many articles in Decision, the magazine published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Inc. Billy himself, of flawlessly modified pompadour and $1000.00 plus custom tailored suit, had an unwavering narcissistic faith found as a primary component of star power. Billy & Ruth (we were on a first name basis by this juncture) both gave what would be immediately recognizable as “the royal wave”, that is, until Ruth Graham spotted Susan not more than three feet in front the Great Pastor and her Ruthly self. Susan made eye contact with a shocked Ruth Graham and Billy, while still affecting the royal wave glanced over at the two of us with a tightly wound, stern countenance. Ruth Graham's eyes slid to a very rattled review of Susan. A scowl ensued. Susan continued standing tall and smiling as a liberated women, free of cosmetics, wire contraptions and prim dresses. All around us, the starmaker machinery of TV cameras and news reporters ignored us, although one woman reporter from a local TV station smiled and nodded approvingly of Susan's very physical statement. After Billy and Ruth moved on to the back stage area of the dais, another limo pulled up and four couples, occupants of a lower caste, entered through the doorway.
Susan stood a bit apart from me, enjoying all of festivities. Not for narcissistic reasons, but for the contravention of social norms, the simple act of being a woman in full on feminist symbolism of independence in the face of a firestorm of concern for “today's young people”.
The the next group on the Ladder To Salvation entered the building. The first two couples were unknown to us, although later we were to discover that these people sat on the board of directors of a local Bible college, with the men being well-known real estate developers in addition to their humble service in private sector education.
The third couple proved far greater interest than Billy and Ruth.
Seeing this couple exiting the limo, there was no mistaking who it was. In the light of day he looked for all the world like just another exhausted, unfit 50-something blond guy with slicked back thinning sidewall hair in a polyester double-knit leisure suit purchased off the rack at J.C. Penney. His wife was a doughy sort with swollen wrists and bloated hands. She used several layers of make-up to paint over the gin blossoms on her cheeks and her dress could be most charitably described as a dowdy flower print job. Her brown hair had been paved over with some type of chemical compound so as to resemble a standard issue police riot gear head protection covering. King James spotted me immediately upon entering the building. By this time Susan was back on my arm, enjoying every minute of silently taunting those so desperately engaged in spiritual warfare for the souls of “our young people tempted by Satan in ways unimaginable only a few short years ago,” or so said the propaganda mill. Suit slowed his pace to stare at the two of us, although most unreservedly at Susan's distinctly liberated breast tissue. A Very Important Man was going through the process of “worlds in collision” in practical application. Susan smiled at The Personage, her perfect teeth, eyes on fire with open rebellion and hips thrusts slightly forward. I stood up straight at near military attention smirking at him. He would have preferred me dead and Susan servicing him.
As the Humble Preacher and his party of equally humble guests filed out of the entry area and into the back stage holding pen, Susan and I made our way back up in the basketball arena's seating areas, finally finding seats on the mezzanine up above the set of seats reserved for those from our school.
“Who was that creepy old guy with the dump truck in a dress?” Susan asked.
“King James. Long story.”
We ended up sitting by a group of high school students from a public school out in the county. No one seemed to mind, or even care, until one of the teachers noticed Susan.
“You don't belong here, young lady,” said the woman in a dark blue dress. Susan stood up, in no mood to be corrected by what Susan later told me was, “a really twisted chemistry teacher”.
“Great,. So where do you want us to sit?” I asked in what I recall as being a restrained tone of voice.
“Where are your name tags?” Twisted Case was rolling now.
Meanwhile Billy Graham's warm-up act, a gospel baritone named George Beverly Shea, was inspiring the crowd with short selections from the Methodist hymnal accompanied by a truly skilled pianist. Shea, who's baritone voice could cause large buildings, including the one we were in, to shake loose from their foundations was warmly received by much of the crowd.
Dark Blue Dress teacher from this other school kept eying Susan, glancing over at me, manifesting unvarnished contempt. “We'll have to get y'all back to your group. We can't have this level of disorder. We're here to learn.” Dark Blue Dress teacher was no longer simply eying Susan. Dark Blue Dress was starting to boil with hate. “Who do y'all two think you are, anyway?” this teacher drawled in a way that way so Southern that one might be excused for thinking that she might be her own parents. A bra-less hippie in low-slung flairs and hiking boots on the arm of blue jean long hair low-life. Disgusting. Dirty.
“Stay right here. We'll find a way to deal wif ya'lls,” the teacher snarled, language constructs revealing her true social class heritage as she steamed.
Dark Blue Dress huffed, then click-clacking high-heels easily distinguished above the music, stomped off. George Beverly Shea had gotten the crowd into a sing-a long of some hymn I'd never heard before. Susan and I wandered around the seats in the mezzanine until we found ourselves one row up above our schoolmates, at a right angle.
“Who's is that woman?” I asked Susan.
“Her names is Miss Darla Jane Wright, formerly Mrs. Darla Jean Baxter,” Susan said. “Were we supposed to get name tags?”
You've met?” gaining entry into someone's life has it's hazards, I knew that early on from my first girlfriend who would prove useless if tossed into a volcano. See “Deliverance” by James Dickey for further details, albeit within a heterosexual context.
“Darla Jane has a lot of secrets.”
“Like?”
“She was my after school swimming coach at the 'Y' when I was in the 5th grade. She got fired.”
Curious in entering into Susan's life in this way, I probed further: “Why did she get fired?”
“Darla Jane was full of valium when she got into a car wreck. Two other swimming coaches were in the car with her. She was driving them to a Fellowship Of Christian Athletes convention in Greensboro. She's not allowed to teach PE any more.”
“Anyone get hurt?”
“One of the coaches lost an eye, “ Susan said this at an near whisper.
“So now she's all concerned about order?”
“Darla Jane is a lot stranger than that. She speaks in tongues. I saw her go into whatever that is they do...you know, those throat sounds...she did that up at the Winn-Dixie in front of everybody. Her husband left her after the wreck He got the children AND the house in the divorce. She lives in a little apartment over a garage out on Millbrook Road.”
“Did she go to jail for, I dunno what it's called with pills, but, like drunk driving when people get hurt?”
“She had to pay a huge fine, lost her teacher's license and her driver's license for a long time. I heard she was in some kind of home for people...” The language of going to rehab had not yet entered regular vocabulary for 14 year olds as of 1971, said no, no, no.
“I'm surprised that she didn't recognize you.” Greg raised his eyebrows.
“There have been a few changes since the 5th grade, thank you,” she straightened up her posture.
Finally it was time for our featured presentation, the Humble Messenger Of The Lord Jesus Christ and bearer of the Holy Spirit in the face of a world full of sins, mentionable and otherwise. Star time at the Personal Salvation Theatre. Time for the hardest working man in Religions, Inc. to take the stage.
The Simple Pastor didn't just take the stage. He consumed it from the podium. Billy Graham ranted on and on. Flailing about with a Bible in his right hand, expertly flipping through the pages to read quotes in support one or another element of salvation by the grace of accepting Jesus rather than: the temptations of Playboy Magazine. The temptations of cheap morals tempting young people in print, on radio, on TV and especially tempting in the movies and particularly tempting in “the popular music of our day”. And the temptations of fast cars combined with temptations of liquor and temptations offered by the rejection of salvation by the temptations of sin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyZhhohdPnw
Billy thence succumbed himself unto temptation, taking a short break to introduce his guests, “great Christian examples for our troubled and tempted young people to follow as Christian role models as they negotiate through that sea of materialist sin all around in this modern life.”
“...and as a very special guest today, I would like to introduce the director of Salvation Christian Academy, Dr. James Hargett...” King James and his gin blossom faced wife stood up and took a bow as the crowd let go with a thunderous round of applause...
Lenny Bruce died for somebody's sins but not mine.
Following on Message after the guests on the dais got to bask in Eternal Light for a few moments, Billy spoke about Jesus delivering True Happiness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPjS4FRSY6c
Then our Humble Anointed Messenger Of The Word Of God did his finale: The Altar Call. “I'm asking those of you here today who wish to dedicate your lives to Jesus Christ to come forward and accept Jesus Christ as your very own personal Savior. We have many fine youth pastors and ministers here today waiting to pray with you as you make the single most important decisions of your lives, right here, today....” Big drama afoot. Billy seemed to be breaking out in a sweat as he held his Bible out in front of him at the podium. While the gravity of the moment was clearly taking it's toll on God's Ambassador, he showed that he had the Inner Strength to bear Extraordinary Weight, the Responsibility, handed to him this day at, in this very Palace Of Basketball, oh yes!
Susan pointed down at the throng lining up. “It's Darla Jean!”
Sure enough, there was the Dark Blue Dress Darla marshaling three entire rows of “today's youth” up to the stage to “accept Jesus” as their very own personal Invisible Friend.
Figuring that this would be a good time to use the crowd milling toward the stage with a low-volume piano playing “Jesus Is the Rock Of Salvation” over the sound system, we made a break for where we saw a few familiar faces from school and found seats.
“You stay here,” Superior Officer in town, on time with a dose of irony.
So I sat down. A few minutes later Susan returned.
“You didn't,” I sighed.
“Had to put it on for the return trip,.” Her displeasure was not hidden in a return to entrapment..
“Sell out,” I joked. She made a face as if she'd just chewed on an aspirin, “At least you didn't use any make-up.”
“We get cut loose when we get back, remember?” Electric eyes as she moved her head back and forth, mane tossing, “I'll fix some lunch back at the house if you'd like, “ another smile, “My mom doesn't get in from work until five,” she looked at her watch, “It's quarter to one...”
We joined the children in the line up for the return bus ride Susan nuzzled up next me, as lovers will do at rare moments we take refuge in arise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YHECdNLFtg