In 1962, while teaching in a prep school in Rome, Georgia, I went camping with a friend who was teaching at a prep school in Chattanooga where I had been graduated. We took our sleeping bags far into the woods of East Tennessee, sleeping beside a glorious waterfall in the light of a full moon. Then early one Sunday morning, heading back home, we stopped for breakfast at a small cafe opposite the court house in Dayton. While my friend finished his breakfast, I couldn't resist the temptation to walk to the back, where a group of very old-timers were talking, looking at us occasionally as if invaders, persons clearly not from these parts.
"Is it still illegal to teach evolution in the schools here?" I asked.
"What's that?! What did he say?" asked a man hard of hearing.
"Henry! He asked whether they now teach evolution in Dayton!"
"Oh," Henry said, and nodded as if about to sleep.
"Darned if I know," said another man, in great consternation. "Do you? I mean, have they gone back to doing what they fined that young man $100 for?!" he asked the man next to him.
"I was there to hear the silver-tongued orator, yes I was, but I surely don't know what they're teaching now. We boys had better find out...."
"Yes, yes," echoed several, no longer noticing me at all.
I moved back to my table feeling absolutely awful, realizing that some local biology teachers would probably have a tougher time of it for the next two weeks merely because a city slicker teacher had asked a smart-aleck question.
Imagine another outsider going to a coffee shop in Hartford, 35 years from now and spotting the janitor from Christ Church Zondervan Comics, and asking, "Is it still illegal to ordain lesbians and gays?" The old janitor will say, "Gosh, they seem to be everywhere, but I don't know whether they're legal. We don't ordain anyone now that we're a comicbook store rather than a cathedral."
One of his companions will interrupt, "Maybe we'd better find out!"
Another will be more nostalgic: "I heard that bishop that was a grandfather, and he didn't sound like no sissy to me!"
And another: "But that lawyer bishop from Wisconsin sure did try to fry him, didn't he!"
Then the outsider will ask, "What ever happened to the Episcopal church?"
"Darned if I know that either," the janitor will say. "They kinda treated me better when I was their janitor, and I didn't have all those crates to tote."
He will pause a while, and then say, "Ya know, best I can remember they just got so angry with each other that they scattered after they fried that bishop here. What was his name? 'Walter'? Yeah, that was it. Walter. I'm glad I got to see him. The cathedral put on quite a show. It seems a bit sad now though."
"Sad, schmad!" another fella will say. "We'd better go find out whether that new boss you got is one of them lesbins. I bet you she is!...."
Copyright 1995 by Louie Crew. Use freely, but only if you fully
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Louie Crew, 377 S. Harrison Street, #12D, East Orange, NJ 07018
Send mail to: lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu