I had to laugh when I saw this. I remember when I was little that we traveled to the feast in Jekyll Island, Georgia from Ohio. We took with us this absolutely nut-job member and her son.
This women had buttons missing on her clothes and I remember my mother telling her that she would sew some new buttons on as we drove along. The woman refused. She said God did not look at the outer person, but only the inward person.
Then we stopped to eat and the woman asked this question.
Crazy as hell!
A good answer would be,
ReplyDelete"Yes! You must be referring to our part-time janitor Herbert Dubya. He has a heck of a time finding sneakers to fit those cloven hoofs of his!"
Yet still we have the Philadelphia Church of Cud, the Restored Church of Cud, the Living Church of Cud and of course, the United Church of Cud
ReplyDeleteM.T.Stalls
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
ReplyDeleteGary, I won’t fill in the details, but I remember that woman and her kid. She was a little weak upstairs and her kid had never seen a flushing toilet. They had a motel room next to us and the kid kept stopping up the toilet with paper. The motel final quit unstopping it and it was agreed that she would come to our room to use the toilet the rest of the time we were at that motel.
If my memory serves me right that woman wasn’t with the church very long.
I had to chuckle when I read your comment. That trip to Jekyll Island had a lot of drama associated with it, but you were little and may not have seen all that we went through.
A, Boocher
I remember picking her up at their home and it was a tar-paper shack in one of the hallows in the hills. My mother was pretty patient with people, but this one pushed her to the limits.
ReplyDeleteI thought we only had people like that in the Appalachian Mountains! Apparently quite a number who fit that profile must have been "called" into Armstrongism! Us kids hated it when farmers brought their first fruits and upon drinking their milk we discovered that they had let their cows graze in the garlic patch, It did nothing for the milk, or cottage cheese, but we liked the flavor it added to their butter.
ReplyDeleteBB
I remember a lady from West Virginia who took the Church’s ban against the use of cosmetics one step further. Apparently, she didn’t believe women should be attractive at all – so she didn’t believe in shaving her legs! Grossly protruding out from under her dresses were the hairiest legs you’ve ever seen rivaling any of the ape characters in the movie Planet of the Apes.
ReplyDeleteRichard
Having pastored in the eastern Kentucky hills of London, Somerset and Middlesboro, coal country, I found the membership there to be ingenious folk and good at survival and creating their own work and incomes. They did indeed live, or many did, in less than stellar homes and places. "Up the hollar" was very true for many. One family moved their "home" which was boards and ONE light bulb hanging in the classic style down the road a few hundred feet because they liked the rocks and look of it better.
ReplyDeleteWhen the church collapsed, there was not a more hurt and disillusioned folk. Church was everything to them. It gave them hope of a better everything. It gave them friends they never had and they got to go to places they never would have gone to see and do and even eat things they never would have.
Aside from the amazing and ever present Native American artifacts Kentucky held in her soils and caves, that was the emotionally best place I ever lived and some of the nices "salt of the earth" as they say, folk I ever met.
The demise of WCG hurt them the most of any group I ever knew.
I did have to ask a couple to leave their guns at home during church and had concerns about the man who gave a disinterested audience speech by speaking while a ten foot fuse was burning in the building attached to a real stick of dynamite lol
He passed the speech!
I'd go back to KY in a heartbeat if I had a good reason.
OMG a hairy woman?!?! Idk if I'd find THAT attractive, but then again there are some wimpy looking blokes out there who are attracted to masculine looking women who are pumped up with testosterone so to each their own I say...
ReplyDeleteDennis, I wonder why you didn't stick around and help those folks after the collapse of the greedy empire.
ReplyDeleteWhen you are young and plugged into suburban stuff like the Beach Boys and girls and hot rods, it's difficult to be open to a "Dances with Wolves"" Kevin Costner type experience with country folk, Dennis. I'm sure your friends in Kentucky had a basic purity that we all could learn from, but a teenager aspiring to be "cool" can't see past what appears to be idiosyncrasies.
ReplyDeleteBB
Dennis, this may be my only opportunity to say that your comments are DYN-O-MITE!
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, that's very interesting about the COG folks who lived in the hills and hollars of Kentucky.