Sun­day Good Times

Sun­day morn­ing, Mom stood at the bed­room door all dressed up for church. “Time to put on your Sun­day suit, Ken­ny.”

Still in my Roy Rogers paja­mas, I lay in bed beside Dad, who was asleep, or pre­tend­ing to be asleep. “I want to stay home with Dad.”

“Tom­my?” Mom said.

Dad didn’t stir.

My Lit­tle Suit

Mom gave us a wor­ried look, then walked away. When I heard our Hud­son Hor­net pull out of the dri­ve­way and head up Route 60 toward the church, I got dressed and ran out­side, glo­ri­ous­ly free to do what­ev­er I want­ed.

I wasn’t born a preacher’s son. Dad was a car deal­er when I was a lit­tle boy, and he refused to go to church. He was my get-out-of-church free card, and I played it every week until the sum­mer of 1954 when I turned sev­en years old.

That sum­mer, Dad want­ed to move to Hager­stown, Mary­land.  Mom didn’t want to go. She agreed to the move only after Dad promised to go to church.

The Church of the Light­ed Win­dow

In Hager­stown, Dad got out of bed bright and ear­ly every Sun­day, put on a blue suit and a starched white shirt, helped Mom stuff me into a tor­tur­ous­ly uncom­fort­able minia­ture ver­sion of his out­fit, shoved me into the Hudson’s back seat, and drove us all to The Church of the Light­ed Win­dow.

I hat­ed my lit­tle suit. Hat­ed church. Hat­ed Sun­day School. I whined, cried hys­ter­i­cal­ly, and threw fits. Noth­ing worked. After a long strug­gle, I gave up and zom­bie-trudged my way through the Sun­day morn­ing ordeals.

Mean­while, Dad warmed up to the church, and our fam­i­ly com­mit­ment to it deep­ened. Dad served as an ush­er; Mom became a Sun­day School teacher; they vol­un­teered me to be an acolyte; and the Church chose Dad to be its trea­sur­er and then its lay leader.

The Acolyte

In 1956, any lin­ger­ing hope of return­ing to the Sun­day morn­ing good times died for good when Dad attend­ed a Chris­t­ian retreat, found Jesus, and decid­ed to become a preach­er. I was upset because I didn’t want to be a preacher’s kid, but when I learned what the Methodist Church would require Dad to do, I calmed down. With no for­mal edu­ca­tion beyond high school, he had to take years of col­lege cours­es. Even if he stuck with it, which I doubt­ed, his ordi­na­tion was so far in the future it didn’t seem real.

Time passed. We moved back to Vir­ginia and joined a big church in Hamp­ton. Dad dogged­ly plowed through scores of cours­es, but the Church kept pil­ing on new require­ments.

In June, 1961, I thought he was still years away from attain­ing his goal when he came home from the Methodist Annu­al Con­fer­ence with shock­ing news. Although the Church still wouldn’t accept him as a full-fledged min­is­ter, they had des­ig­nat­ed him a “sup­ply pas­tor” and had assigned him to the Albe­mar­le Cir­cuit, four church­es locat­ed in the moun­tains 175 miles away.

Mount Mori­ah Methodist Church

The appoint­ment was effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly. We had one week to relo­cate. We loaded our belong­ings in a truck. Tears blurred my view of our home as we drove away. I had just fin­ished the eighth grade. All my school friends lived in town. I didn’t get to say good­bye, and I nev­er saw any of them again.

The par­son­age, an old two-sto­ry white frame house with a tin roof, sat down the road from Mount Mori­ah Methodist Church in White Hall, Vir­ginia, a rur­al farm town. About fifty peo­ple stood in the yard to greet us when we pulled up in the mov­ing van.

Dad led us through the crowd, and we end­ed up stand­ing on the front porch over­look­ing a sea of uplift­ed faces. As he spoke to them, I pan­icked. Emo­tion­al­ly, I was still the sev­en year old who want­ed to stay home with Dad Sun­day morn­ings, but Dad’s appoint­ment had turned me into some­one dif­fer­ent, some­one I didn’t know. I was now the preacher’s son, a role I didn’t choose or want.

Stand­ing on the porch in front of that crowd, I felt like all eyes were on me. I assumed they expect­ed me to be a par­a­digm of Chris­t­ian virtue. I didn’t know how a devout teenag­er was sup­posed to act, so I did my best to fake it. I stood stiffly with my hands clasped togeth­er in front of me, strain­ing to main­tain a beatif­ic, angel­ic smile. On the out­side I was try­ing to imper­son­ate a preacher’s kid sat­u­rat­ed with the Holy Spir­it. On the inside I was so scared and mis­er­able I could bare­ly breathe.

Rev. Thom Rain­er

The anx­i­ety that con­sumed me that day plagues most preacher’s kids. Thom Rain­er, a pas­tor, wrote a blog post in 2013, ask­ing church mem­bers to be more under­stand­ing of his chil­dren. To his sur­prise, the post went viral and he received more than 500 com­ments, most of them from preacher’s kids. They com­plained about liv­ing in a glass house where they thought church mem­bers watched their every move and expect­ed them to be per­fect. They believed they couldn’t ques­tion Chris­t­ian doc­trine or express doubts with­out being labeled rebel­lious. They wor­ried that their slight­est trans­gres­sion might destroy their par­ents’ image in the church. And most of them were des­per­ate­ly lone­ly.

The Preach­er, Wife & Son

I expe­ri­enced all of those emo­tions my first few weeks in White Hall, but my life changed for the bet­ter as sud­den­ly and deci­sive­ly as my first day as a preacher’s son had turned sour. One of the church women asked Mom if I could spend the day with her son. Mom knew I was lone­ly and shoved me for­ward. With a big smile and a sun­ny per­son­al­i­ty, my new pal was easy to like. We spent the day run­ning all over his family’s farm. It was close to the most fun I’d ever had. I went back the next day. And the next.

When school start­ed in the fall, most of the kids I met didn’t know I was a preacher’s son, and those who did know didn’t seem to care. As it turned out in the end, no one cared except me.

The Preach­er

I was for­tu­nate Dad was assigned to the Albe­mar­le Cir­cuit. White Hall was a spe­cial place. The peo­ple who went to Mount Mori­ah were thought­ful and kind. They accept­ed me for who I was and didn’t crit­i­cize me or judge me. That’s how they approached every­one, preacher’s sons includ­ed. It was the best place I and my broth­ers could have grown up.

Fifty years after we left White Hall, I sat by Dad’s deathbed and held his hand while he slept. After a long while, he stirred; his eyes opened; and he saw me there. He shift­ed in the bed and knit­ted his brow. “Was it hard for you?” he said. “Being the preacher’s boy?”

I was sur­prised by the ques­tion. We’d nev­er spo­ken about this. In the begin­ning of his min­istry, he had worked so hard just to sur­vive that I thought he hadn’t noticed my strug­gle.

I con­sid­ered my answer for a good while before I spoke. “It wasn’t hard,” I final­ly said, mean­ing it. “It was one of the best things that ever hap­pened to me.”

He looked at me for a few moments, then put a trem­bling hand over his eyes. “Good peo­ple at Mount Mori­ah.” He took a deep breath. “Wish we could go back to White Hall one more time.”

“Me, too, Dad. Me, too.”

Post Script: Appar­ent­ly, there was an advan­tage to being a preacher’s son that some­how elud­ed me. In 1969, Dusty Spring­field won a Gram­my, singing in a sexy, brassy voice about a preacher’s son named Bil­ly Ray.  “The only one who could ever reach me/ Was the son of a preach­er man/ The only boy who could ever teach me/ Was the son of a preach­er man/ Yes he was, he was, oooh, yes he was.”

Suf­fice it to say, Ken­ny Bill was no Bil­ly Ray.

Mule Kick Moon­shine

Carl drove a flatbed truck through the woods to the dump on a Sat­ur­day after­noon. I rode shot­gun. He was the trash col­lec­tor for Acme Vis­i­ble Records. I was his assis­tant, work­ing a sum­mer job before return­ing to UVA.

We had already clocked four hours of over­time that morn­ing when Carl said we had to make the trip to the dump. Strange­ly, he insist­ed that we punch our time cards before we climbed in the truck.

“Why clock out?” I said. “We’re still work­ing.”

In his six­ties, black hair swirled with gray, smile lines crin­kling around his crys­tal blue eyes, he pat­ted me on the shoul­der. “Just do like I say,” he said. I fol­lowed Carl’s direc­tion, but I wasn’t hap­py about it.

At the dump, Carl backed the truck up to a pit and we wres­tled bar­rels of trash to the rear of the flatbed to emp­ty them out. When we got back inside the cab, he reached under the seat and lift­ed a mason jar into his lap.

“You ever had shine?” he asked me.

Look­ing at the jar war­i­ly, I under­stood then why we were off the clock. “No,” I said.

“Fig­ured as much, you bein a preacher’s boy.” He unscrewed the lid, took a sip, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and hand­ed me the jar. “Mule Kick,” he said.

Clear as water, it gave off a faint sweet scent. I hes­i­tat­ed, wor­ried it wasn’t safe to drink.

“Go ahead,” Carl said. “I made it. It’s good shine.”

I trust­ed Carl. I lift­ed the jar to my lips.

“Go easy,” he said. “It’s pow­er­ful strong.”

I swal­lowed a tea­spoon­ful. It scorched my throat like hot can­dle wax and splashed fire in my bel­ly. At the cen­ter of my chin I felt a sting­ing sen­sa­tion. It divid­ed in two, rolled up the sides of both jaws, and explod­ed above my ears like twin mal­let blows to my tem­ples. I saw stars. When I could breathe again, I blew out hard.

Carl chuck­led. “That’s why I call it Mule Kick, boy.”

We each took anoth­er sip. It went down eas­i­er the sec­ond time, but not by much.

“The trick with shine,” Carl said, “is to know when to stop. Best set her down now.” He screwed the lid on the jar and slid it under the seat.

“You be care­ful next time you drink shine,” Carl said, as he drove us back to the plant. “A bad batch can kill you. Watch the man who made it. Make sure he sips it before you have a taste. He don’t drink it, you don’t drink it.”

Acme Vis­i­ble Records, Crozet

How to drink moon­shine wasn’t all I learned that sum­mer. Locat­ed on 60 acres along Three Notch’d Road in Crozet, Vir­ginia, Acme Vis­i­ble Records’ 600 work­ers made file cab­i­nets and print­ed busi­ness records. The Main­te­nance Depart­ment Man­ag­er was the best boss I ever had. A straight­for­ward plain-talk­er, he told me what he want­ed me to do and how he want­ed me to do it. When I screwed up, he was firm, but fair. I always knew where I stood. The exec­u­tives I worked with over the years that fol­lowed could have learned a lot from him.

He rotat­ed me through the depart­ment as a pinch hit­ter for employ­ees on vaca­tion. My last assign­ment was assist­ing the trash man, Carl. In the main room of the plant the press­es clacked away, print­ing cus­tomized busi­ness records. The press oper­a­tors dis­card­ed a lot of paper from bad runs. Carl and I had to clear it out of the way so the press­es could keep rolling. We tossed it into wheeled bins, rolled it back to a machine that scrunched it into bales, then hauled the bales out to the dock for recy­cling.

“Slow it down, boy,” Carl said to me fifty times a day. “You’re workin us out of a job, run­nin around here like a race­horse.” Carl tar­ried at every press, social­iz­ing with the oper­a­tors, josh­ing with the men, flirt­ing with the women. “Good peo­ple work here,” he told me. “Friends and neigh­bors. We got time to say a few kind words. The trash ain’t goin nowhere.”

I wasn’t good at slow. I thought we were wast­ing time, and I won­dered why man­age­ment didn’t force Carl to move along. Years lat­er, I came to under­stand it. Carl’s job was one of the few that required inter­ac­tion with every­one. His social­iz­ing was part of the glue hold­ing the net­work of employ­ees togeth­er. Work­ing with large orga­ni­za­tions over the years, I learned the val­ue of glue, espe­cial­ly when times were tough and work pres­sures mount­ed. Man­age­ment at Acme Vis­i­ble knew Carl was good for morale. Besides, despite his mean­der­ing pace, he always got every­thing done by the end of his shift.

Way before the Zen phi­los­o­phy caught hold in the U.S., Carl was big on liv­ing in the moment. I was for­ev­er look­ing for­ward to the week­end, wish­ing it was Fri­day. Carl would shake his head and smile. “You’re wishin your life away, boy. Best to get the most out of what’s goin on right here, right now. Before you know it, you’ll be old like me, and you’ll wish you was back here on a Mon­day mornin, balin paper.” I didn’t believe him then. I do now.

Carl spent a lot of time school­ing me on how to get girls. Most of what he said can’t be repeat­ed in polite com­pa­ny, but one of his G‑rated lec­tures stuck with me. “Every girl’s got some­thin spe­cial,” he said, “pret­ty eyes or silky hair, a nice smile or how smart she is. Look for that part and tell her how spe­cial it is. You’ll be sur­prised how good it makes her feel because you might be the only one who ever told her.”

I put those words in Bil­ly Kirby’s mouth in my nov­el, Old Wounds to the Heart. By then, Carl’s max­im had proved to be true count­less times, not just for girls, but for every­one. Every­one has some­thing spe­cial, and all too often it goes unrec­og­nized and unmen­tioned. It helps to hear about it once in a while, and because of Carl, some­times I made some­one feel bet­ter with a few words of well-deserved praise.

Carl and I worked togeth­er fifty years ago. He’s passed on by now. Sad­ly, Acme Vis­i­ble Records has passed on, too. The com­put­er age ren­dered its hard-copy records obso­lete.

After the com­pa­ny closed its doors, the EPA found soil and ground-water con­t­a­m­i­nants in a lagoon where the plant had rout­ed its indus­tri­al waste­water. Site reme­di­a­tion began in 2011. The clean-up was still on-going last year.

I hope the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is resolved suc­cess­ful­ly and that it doesn’t com­plete­ly over­shad­ow the company’s his­to­ry. It was a great place to work, and it pro­vid­ed a mid­dle class stan­dard of liv­ing to hun­dreds of peo­ple in the hol­lows and coves around Crozet and White Hall for a half cen­tu­ry.

Plant Demo­li­tion

Sum­mer jobs for stu­dents have all but died out now, too, I’m told. This is a shame. I learned more from sum­mer jobs than I did at UVA, invalu­able life lessons from peo­ple like Carl, one of the wis­est men I ever met.

On my last day at Acme Vis­i­ble, Carl and I walked out to the park­ing lot togeth­er. Stand­ing beside his pick­up truck, we shook hands. Those gen­tle blue eyes smiled. “Don’t ever for­get where you come from, boy.” He squeezed my shoul­der, climbed in his pick­up, and drove away.

Our paths nev­er crossed again, but Carl’s sage advice stayed with me. And I nev­er for­got.

Post Script: I changed Carl’s name for this piece, but some of my Vir­ginia friends may rec­og­nize him any­way. He was one of a kind.