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 For
the past month we have been in central Kentucky, near the scene
of my first "meetin's" in the long ago. I was
twenty-one when it happened. I can remember, because I had had
seven-year-itch three times. (Those are the kind of remarks
tossed back and forth among back-country friends.)
We
got to talking about this wicked generation, and how evil men
wax worse and worse; and it reminded one man of the time some
boys swapped the babies left sleeping in wagons while their
parents were in the church building. In the dark, parents went
home without knowing the difference; and then, wagons rumbled up
and down the country all night as they sought and traded for
their heir-apparent.
That
brought out the story about picking up a T-model and setting the
rear wheels in two watermelon halves. (Works best at the edge of
the church yard, where grass is tall, and it is very dark.) The
owner thinks he has stripped his gears.
And
that led me to tell how an old brother had instructed me to
"stay up close to the stand, put your books there by the
lamp, and speak to us.” Being twenty-one, and having
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preached in one other meeting, I
thought this was insulting instructions, but I let it pass —
until he repeated it. Then I told him I knew how to stand up
before an audience. He apologized, saying he should have
explained it all. "You see," he said, "during our
last meeting the preacher backed up to the window, and some boys
stuck a rail between his legs and raised him off the
floor." Yes sir, brother, I'll stay up close to the
speaker's stand!
Perhaps
a more rugged generation looked at things a bit differently it
earlier days, but some pranks were as destructive then as they
would be now. Have we laughed at crudeness and making a
"game" of challenging the law, until our sense of
propriety and moral right is seared?
I
believe there were "good ol’ boys” in earlier times who
played rough for a while, then "grew up" to be some of
our best citizens. But they had to change, drastically, and
succeed in spite of, not because of, wild oats, The drunkards,
and other failures do not join us in our laughter.
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