A "Modern Spiritual" for your Sunday

Yes, DO watch it all the way to the end to hear Lawrence Welk describe it in those words. This reminds me of something that happened in this same timeframe (around 1971). I've had more than my share of really goofy aunts, uncles and cousins.

One uncle (call him "E") was quite a strong religious fanatic of the Pentecostal variety and married a woman named Carol who was made of the same stuff. She was a real corker. There she is, on the left, and don't you worry, her hair is not cut off, it's wrapped up in a bun like the Lord commanded. She went around tongue-wagging and bad-mouthing a woman, one of her cousins-in-law, for shaming herself and being indecent. The way she had shamed herself was by wearing a pantsuit - Pentecostal women were only permitted to wear dresses (and obviously this cousin was not of that strain of Christianity and was therefore of the devil). This complaint didn't sit well with much of anybody, so one day Carol was sitting in the front yard in a dress that was a little short - and my mother (who loved to stir the shit) and a kindred spirit of a neighbor across the street started hollering as loud as possible, "I see England, I see France, I see Carol's underpants!!" The other thing Carol was famous for was showing up at potluck dinners with no food - only empty containers to take food home - that, and showing up uninvited right at dinnertime with husband and 3 kids in tow. I guess Uncle E was just as much to blame for that one, but he was never quite right so we forgave him.

Some funny things from Uncle E

Once he was stopped by a policeman for running a stop sign. He told the officer that he knew good and well that he could not have committed that offense, and the reason he knew was because he was a Christian!! As the officer wrote out the ticket, Uncle E started to pray out loud "Oh Jesus!! Come right now!!"

Another time he was looking for work and had filled out some forms with an employment agency. One of the questions asked had to do with driving experience and he was supposed to estimate about how many miles he had driven. He put down "a million miles." When he got tired of having no luck in the job hunting department, he called up the woman at the agency to yell at her, and told her that maybe she should be looking for him a job on the moon because she wasn't doing him any good down here on earth!

Uncle E once showed up at our door with a religious tabloid magazine claiming that Richard Nixon was being falsely persecuted... JUST LIKE JESUS WAS! My mother had some real giggles over that one. Neither of us could stand Nixon, and my mother liked to say "He thinks his shit smells like pineapples!" (meaning Nixon, not her brother).

One day, the phone rang. I picked it up and said hello, but all I heard was that song playing, "One Toke Over the Line" by Brewer and Shipley. I held the receiver up in the air so she could hear too, and we were both very aware of the definition of 'toke' and were giggling like mad and rolling our eyes. When the song ended, Uncle E finally spoke up on the other end. He said he wanted to make sure we got to hear that song because it was about Jesus!

I still think about that and laugh when I hear that song, and apparently Uncle E wasn't the only one who was taken in by that Modern Spiritual!