A SHORT STORY

 

MEMORIES OF A COUNTRY CHURCH

By Jimmie von Tungeln

Mama used to say us girls picked on Eula Faye or else egged her on, but I can tell you that she gave about as good as she got. Like the time we stole her Bible verse. We all had a good laugh out of it at the time but we didn’t get ahead of her. No sir. Not at all.

Now there are those who wouldn’t think this little episode was important. They have never lived out at the end of the world where everybody you knew was either direct-kin or step-kin, or sometimes both. It didn’t take much to create a story that would last forever. Particularly if you were as poor as we were.

After Daddy died, Mama raised us as best she could. While she didn’t hold out much for preaching, or churches in general, I think it had something to do with the hardness of her life, she did send us off to church when we got to aggravating her.

Ever third Sunday Brother Elmer Tisdale would ride out from Caldron with his old mare pulling his wagon and hold services in Pleasant Grove Church. I guess this must have been about 1930. I couldn’t have been over twelve or thirteen, I reckon since I was married and gone by the time I was sixteen.

The church was nothing but a little frame building set off from a cemetery that went way back almost to the civil war. My granddaddy had been a charter member but he had died young so Mama could barely remember him. The church building rested under the shade of three enormous oak trees. We kids called them “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” but not around any grown-ups for they had no sense of humor whatsoever about religion.

We would gather up around nine-thirty in the morning and have an hour of Sunday School before the services began. Mama made us leave early to get there to serve the complete sentence. Naturally she didn’t trust us as far as she could spit and I can still see her on the porch as we took off, threatening to cut a switch and wear us out if we didn’t get there in time.

The older ones were gone by then and it was just Sister and Jim and me had to go. Mama made us because she said it wouldn’t do us any harm and might do us some good. She was welcome to her opinion. We had our own, but we went just like she told us to.

We dawdled around as much as we could. Jim would usually cut us off some grapevines to smoke on the way and we would make up all sorts of imaginary trips that we were really going on. None of them included a church house. Hog Eye Bend Creek would be the River Nile and a clump of oak trees would be a pyramid. We used clouds for the Alps and the road we were on was the main street through Paris. For a bunch of country kids, we weren’t bad at making things up.

Anyway, Hattie Ruth Turner taught school up at Armistead so they had her teach Sunday School to the girls on preaching day. There were about seven or eight of us. Eula Faye was distant kin and her daddy had a pension from World War One. They also owned a grocery store out on the state highway, so they was about the richest family in the community. She was a round-faced thing with freckles ever place they had a spot to be in. Her mamma kept her hair done up in curls to tight I bet you could have played music on them. She kind of had this little bounce when she walked and we would giggle that someday she might just bounce off like a rubber ball. She would hear us and say that rich women in the city walked like that. We liked her okay, I reckon. We didn’t mistreat her. It was just that she would sometimes create the opportunity for a laugh or just create one on her own.

All the girls had to have a Bible verse memorized to recite first thing in Sunday School. This was supposed to help us into Heaven in some way, but it wasn’t real clear to us how and we didn’t care much for it. It might have been due to the lack of scriptural resources available to a bunch of little country kids. Some of those girls were from families that couldn’t even afford a Bible. We had one but our step-daddy wouldn’t hardly let us touch it. So we were in a constant of agitation about it. It sure wasn’t our favorite part of this whole salvation thing.

Miss Hattie, since she was a regular school teacher too, had to remember what side her bread was buttered on so she would always let Eula Faye go first. We would start to snicker even before she stood up. We met in the back of the church house and the boys in front. Eula Faye would make sure the boys were watching her and then when the room got real quiet, she would brush a hand across her hair and say it just like some movie actress.

“Jesus wept, John 11:35”

She got away with it ever Sunday.

Then we would have to stand up and quote some regular verse. And you weren’t allowed to repeat someone else’s choice. It got to where it played on our nerves.

Well this one Sunday, we fixed it up so Sister held Eula Faye up outside the door on some pretense and she hadn’t come in when we started. So Eloise Covington jumped up and asked if she could go first. What could Miss Hattie say?

Eloise was in on it, see? She stumbled around until she saw Eula Faye come in then Eloise shouted out loud enough for the whole church to hear: “Jesus wept, John 11:35”

You could just about see the color drain out of Eula Faye’s face when she took her seat. We swallowed our giggles until our stomachs started to swell, expecting to see Eula Faye have a nervous breakdown. But she didn’t miss a beat when Miss Hattie called on her. She stood up and took a deep breath. The boys knew something was up and had all stopped talking and were watching like a bunch of hounds at hog dressing time. She nodded to them as if they were her audience and then gave us her best “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet” look. Then she announced to the world, as if she might be telling the Red Sea to part.

“Moses crept, John 3:15.”

She said it real loud and then just set back and smiled the same as if she had just recited some long-winded psalm. We all broke up laughing until Miss Hattie stared it out of us. The boys didn’t know a Bible verse from a horse-collar so they mostly just stared with their mouths all open. Then it was all over and we re-commenced our recitation period. Miss Hattie never let on like anything unusual happened at all.

That was the day we knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get something by Eula Faye. But Sister and I laughed all the way home over it anyway. Jim just smoked a grapevine and looked puzzled over the whole thing.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Been much talk lately about how such a frightening percentage of Americans accept buffoonery and debauchery from so many of our political leaders. I'm not too smart nor well educated but I have my thoughts. I think an appropriate analogy for the American psyche at present aligns with the old sci-fi films of the 1950s.

I think the evil is always there within us. It's tribal and genetic. Distrust and violence are embedded in our genes. Tendencies for warfare with strangers are natural.

We haven't subdued them through religion or philosophy. Rather, what we call morality is a result of social contracts, agreements, and barters. I won't kill you or steal from you if you won't kill or steal from me. Let our villages trade with each other, not raid each other. Let us see how peace and harmony works to our benefit. Let us develop a monetary system so we don't have to steal animals for survival. Let us talk, not fight. Peace results from rational thought.

So evil becomes subdued like the 1950s monsters, deep underground.

Then an explosion opens a path for evil to rise, a path to destruction. It isn't from a bomb, but from evil-minded politicians who use our distrust as a detonator. We become engulfed by the results of evil. We need a John Agar to develop a plan of survival that, "Just might work.

With apologies to Steven Pinker.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 A synopsis of the 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis:

"In 1936, American Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip enters the presidential election campaign on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and promising each citizen US$5,000 per year (equivalent to $113,000 in 2024). Portraying himself as a champion of "the forgotten man" and "traditional" American values, Windrip defeats incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination, and then beats his Republican opponent, Senator Walt Trowbridge, in the November election.

 Having previously foreshadowed some authoritarian measures to reorganize the government, Windrip outlaws dissent, incarcerates political enemies in concentration camps, and trains and arms a paramilitary force called the "Minute Men" (named after the Revolutionary War militias of the same name), who terrorize citizens and enforce the policies of a corporatist regime. One of Windrip's first acts as president is to eliminate the influence of Congress, which draws the ire of many citizens as well as the legislators themselves. The Minute Men respond to protests harshly, attacking demonstrators with bayonets. In addition to these actions, Windrip's administration, known as the Corpo government, curtails women's and minority rights, and eliminates individual states by subdividing the country into administrative sectors. The government of these sectors is managed by Corpo authorities, usually prominent businessmen or Minute Men officers. Those accused of crimes against the government appear before kangaroo courts presided over by military judges. A majority of Americans approve of these dictatorial measures, seeing them as painful but necessary steps to restore American power." - Wikipedia

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Reading “Murder Among Friends” by Candace Fleming. It’s the latest recounting of the murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by teenagers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. All lived in Chicago near one another and the murder shocked the world, created new standards in criminal law, and caused generations of concern about mental capabilities.

The two murderers were from wealthy families and well educated. They lived under the Nietzschean idea that some individuals were superhuman and marched to a different moral drum than mere mortals. They chose their victim because he was walking home from school. They simply wanted to experience the thrill of murder.

Disclaimer. I’m no psychiatrist. Nor am I a psychologist. I’m not overly educated. Both degrees originated from state-supported public universities. I do claim the right, however, to be fascinated. I am.
Some analysts suggest that two people acting together will participate in horrific actions that neither would consider when acting alone.

Some increasingly accepted scholarship suggests that interactions with peer groups largely determine our adult proclivities and that parental upbringing contributes little. See “The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do” by the psychologist Judith Rich Harris. (Don’t yell at me.)

What fascinates me is this: In a younger life, I joined thousands of youth, some as young as 17 years, who learned from respected authority figures that it was perfectly acceptable to do what Loeb and Leopold did, i.e. murder a randomly selected youth from another tribe. The burden posited that it was not only okay, but our duty, to murder on demand, whether by hand, pistol, rifle, knife, artillery, or (for the more timid at heart) with bombs dropped from thousands of feet in the air. Almost all of my peer group would have complied if ordered to.

Now we ask ourselves why millions of Americans blindly follow a command to murder the American dream.

Further reading: The Milgram Experiment On Obedience to Authority.

Oh, clicking on an ad helps me fund these efforts.

DEFEAT FASCISM

A Song For The Victors 

One might consider a continuum of justice applied by the victorious to the vanquished. At one end we might find “occupy and govern.” This is a relatively benign situation in which, assuming there is order and tranquility, the defeated peoples go about their business. The Romans often used this, creating the so-called “Pax Romana." Napolean did at times. Even some of the Ottoman conquerors found it efficacious. Within this model, the victors may even contribute to the safety and reconstruction of a ravaged nation.

At the other extreme is the choice of “demolish and destroy.” The defeated are vermin who deserve no modicum of morality or shred of legal equality. The Spanish conquerors found little use for the native inhabitants of a country other than slavery and exploitation. The Nazi hierarchy had determined that Hungary would serve as a vassal state wherein its citizens existed only to serve German masters. Victors “own” the defeated under this concept.

Oddly, America offered a unique path, one hardly mentioned by history. After its Civil War ended, both sides simply went home.

It needs no saying which route America’s current victors have chosen at present. It will be interesting, though excruciatingly painful, to see how it works out.

The Russians have found on two occasions that it is hard to "own" large populations of dissatisfied people.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 A Song For The Victors

Some things make sense. Some things don’t. To a degree, i understand the genesis of what has happened to America. By this I mean that a majority has voted in a government designed to repudiate everything I feel my life has stood for.

Am I justifiably aggrieved? I don’t know. My life has been somewhat disjointed. But, and I believe this sincerely, it has exhibited seeds of goodness. I firmly believe in the views of the Galilean as presented on the Sermon on the Mount.

In short, I am on the losing side of this segment of American history.

As an amateur reader of history, I understand the attitude of the victors. I even appreciate their long-view approach to achieving their ends.

One can easily date the beginning of their war to August 14, 1935, some few days short of 90 years ago.

Yes, that’s a long time to hold a grudge. It is the day that the Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. It is fair to choose the act as mascot of the New Deal Legislation, the most hated output of laws in history to social and economic conservatives.” Key benefits included providing direct relief to the unemployed, stimulating economic recovery through public works projects, and establishing long-term social safety nets. These programs also aimed to regulate industries, strengthen labor rights, and provide relief to farmers.” (AI)

The battle to overturn these wasn’t always successful. Americans learned first to appreciate them, next to depend on them, and finally to accept them as a part of America’s greatness.

Brilliant political maneuvering reversed this view. A big step was mentally to disassociate the benefits as being a part of every American’s life and to lock it into the public sentiment of millions as simply tools of the lowest dregs of society, as defined by the ultra-conservative leaders of the opposition. Anyone with a view that government could be a positive force in their life was a sexual deviant, a criminal, an economic leach, or someone who didn’t belong in America in the first place.

It worked. It now forms the governing philosophy of a majority of our elected officials at the national and many state levels. Whether their government will be good or not remains to be seen. What is true is that Americans are about to get it good and hard, as H.L. Mencken once observed.

What is one thing that is hard to understand? They’ve won. They now rule. The battle now must shift to the underground. What is strange about it all is that those at the highest levels of command, each unknown like the mysterious “Mr. X” of old movie serials, have chosen such a dismal, decadent, depraved, and decency-challenged clown as their front man.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 As the news of a great American victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania seeped across America 162 years ago today, another, some say even more important, event occurred some 1,000 miles away at Vicksburg, Mississippi. There, after a five-month campaign and a siege of 47 days, General John C. Pemberton surrendered the city and 30,000 rebel troops to a United States Army under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant.

This opened the Mississippi River to traffic and separated the insurrectionist states of Arkansas and Texas from their eastern counterparts.

President Abraham Lincoln observed, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea"

The campaign to capture Vicksburg resulted in 48,000 killed, wounded, captured, or missing, counting both sides. The three-day battle at Gettysburg resulted in as many as 51,000. But on July 4, 1863 the dreams of two separate nations, instead of one, had faded.

Freedom isn't free. That makes it even more precious.