I am so roly-poly with the creative juices of exhilarated existence that I can no longer sip on the drip provided by a religious system which offers me exercises in worship, while robbing me of my strength, leaving me anemic and weak.
PLUMP WITH PURPOSE
Likewise, I am plump with purpose, and can no longer sit around with the abstract questioning of politicians who only pursue the trap and the snare rather than allowing themselves to use their position to reconfigure the world.
CHUBBY WITH MERCY
I am chubby with mercy and will not constrain myself to go on a diet of selfish, judgmental decisions against those who are created in the image of the one I say is my Father.
OBESE WITH HUMILITY
Yes, I find myself obese with the humility that chokes the heartless part of me that would pridefully believe I can follow some sort of continuing, narrowing path, and never find my steps to those in need.
ROTUND WITH CAPITAL
I am rotund with capital. Yes, money sufficient to care for my own self, and still coins and dollars left over for those the Spirit of God might bring across the pathway of my humanity.
FAT WITH ABUNDANT LIFE
I am too fat with abundant life to ever starve again on the leftovers provided by those who fear death so much that they can’t live.
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They were one of three rock and roll bands in our school, although I use the term “band” loosely, to cover a multitude of whims.
They were headed by a guy named Chip Sanford. He worked with a fellow named Bob Wigglesworth. Thus, the Sanbobs.
Now, Chip did not like me, which caused Bob to follow suit in loyalty. I think the reason Chip didn’t like me very well was that he was chubby, wore glasses, and people were constantly saying that we “could be brothers,” which is a certain way to make sure that people won’t have an affinity for each other. I think another reason was that Chip played piano and so did I. I used my gifts in the gospel field, while he was drawn to the Troggs, the Beatles and the Kinks.
The Sanbobs had four members. As I already told you–Chip was on piano, Bob Wigglesworth on guitar (knowing an amazing five chords), Mark Jackson on drums, who was highly recommended for his loud playing, and Larry Mankins on bass–even though he couldn’t afford an electric one, so instead thumped on a stand-up, which left him appearing to be very vigorous, but unheard.
The biggest happening in the spring of 1967 in our school was that Chip got a new electric organ. It was so cool. So it was decided that the Sanbobs would be scheduled to play for the spring dance, and the diligent members of the quartet went out and learned six songs.
The only problem was that one of the songs they selected was Louie, Louie–which had already been banned by the state of Indiana for having obscene lyrics. Now, we lived in Ohio, but certainly did not want to seem immoral by advocating such a “loose tune.” When word got out to the principal’s office that the Sanbobs were planning to play the piece, a meeting was held and it was forbidden.
The FBI had investigated the lyrics, and had come to the conclusion that they were basically unintelligible. (The Kingsmen had made sure of that.) But just to play it safe, the song was still considered to be nefarious.
On the night of the dance, after they had played each of their five songs three times over, the Sanbobs decided to rebel against authority, and began to play Louie, Louie. The girls screamed in delight and the young men clapped their hands, peering at each other lasciviously.
It took a few minutes for the adults to figure out what was going on, but when they did, they proceeded to the stage to stop the performance. To my surprise, about twenty-five of the kids rushed the platform, locked their arms, and forbade the teachers from getting near the band, as the Sanbobs continued to croon the bewildering poetry.
(I was one of the participants who scattered to a corner of the gym in horror, like a mouse being chased by the handmaiden’s broom.)
When the teachers were unable to get through the “Red Rover, Red Rover” line-up, they decided to kill the electricity, which left the gymnasium encompassed in darkness.
At first there were some “oohs” and “aahs” and screams, which gradually became whispers and culminated in silence. The teachers, not sure what was going on in the dark, restored the juice and discovered that the students were making out with each other.
So it became a choice–which vice did you want to promote? Louie, Louie, with its garbled goodies, or a make-out session in the high school gym?
So the Sanbobs were allowed to finish their song, but an early termination of the dance was proclaimed.
Of course, as the years have gone by, it is obvious that nobody was really defiled by a single rock and roll song. It was prejudice, fear, apprehension and narrow-mindedness which did that to us.
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I had chubby legs that seemed to be made out of cotton candy, generating the gait of a circus elephant.
In one of the brief fits of verbosity that possessed his soul, Charley once shared with me that running faster and faster made him feel that his feet were leaving the ground and he was soaring into the heavens to dance with the angels.
Pretty articulate for a Midwest kid.
I decided to go out for track and field more or less because I didn’t have anything else to do. Since I could not run or jump, they asked me to try out on the shot put. I did.
I was unimpressed, so I fell back into my acquired nature of quitting. But even though I departed the team, I found myself during study hall sitting at the table with these athletes, and when the monitor left the room, Randy spoke up and gave us a juicy piece of gossip. (Randy was also a runner but never quite as fast as Charley.)
Randy explained that Charley was a “gypsy type.” Now, I do not know what the origin of that phrase was in our community, but I knew that “gypsy type” meant that Charley was–well, dangerous. The adults had other terms for Charley’s problem when they were alone and away from the children.
“Effeminate.”
“Queer.”
“Sodomite.”
Although I had no personal experience with Charley demonstrating such bizarre behavior, in 1967 just the mention of the situation caused your skin to crawl, making you want to avoid any contact with such perverted beings.
Randy knew this. In other words, it didn’t have to be true–just spoken. The gossip mill and bigotry would do the rest.
No one drew close to Charley after that.
He ate alone, he ran alone, he walked alone, he talked alone.
When he asked me why I was not sharing with him anymore, I clumsily replied, “I’ve been busy.”
One day we came to school and he was gone. No one even asked where he was or if he was coming back. Charley was soon forgotten, and the quest for other “gypsy types” was set in motion with renewed scrutiny.
It was many years later that Randy, the accuser of his running friend, came out of the closet, admitting that he was gay. (“Gypsy type” was no longer acceptable terminology.) Randy was lauded for his courage. He was embraced by his friends. Matter of fact, he was set apart as an example of someone who had endured a silent persecution and now was set free.
Mustering some boldness, I asked Randy about Charley. He said he didn’t remember much about Charley.
He paused and then added, “Oh, wasn’t Charley that good-looking kid that was really fast?”
I just smiled, and said, “Yeah. That’s him.”
I walked away from that encounter realizing that there is no such thing as a “righteous” judgment.
It’s all just crapping on people.
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity
The Sermon on the Mount in music and story. Click the mountain!
Click here to get info on the “Gospel According to Common Sense” Tour
Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.
I was never particularly fond of monsters, and dressing up like Superman, with my chubby physique, was inevitably comical.
On top of that, my hometown called trick or treat “Beggars Night.” It made me feel like I was running through the streets of Calcutta with my gunny sack, bringing provision home to my family of untouchables.
I think the worst experience was when I was seven years old, decided I wanted to be Casper the Friendly Ghost, and my mother discovered they didn’t make the costume of the gregarious apparition in any size except medium. Needless to say, I wasn’t a size medium, and the manufacturers never envisioned a 142-pound seven-year-old. Yet I was insistent, so my mother took scissors and trimmed it up so I could slide it on, but as I walked from house to house, it continued to rip where the scissors began, transforming me from a friendly ghost into a “holey ghost.”
I was grateful when I outgrew the experience.
That is, until my friends decided they wanted to go out for Halloween–soaping. It was a common practice of the time. Bored teenagers took bars of soap, snuck around town smearing messages on the windows of cars and homes, giggling and feeling rebellious to their Midwestern in-house imprisonment.
Four of my friends decided to go on such an escapade and invited me, so we bicycled to a deserted garage just outside of town to practice before we went out on the actual adventure. We bought bars of Ivory Soap (simply because it was 99.44 % pure).
I was so nervous that I pushed too hard on the window pane at the warehouse and it broke. This concerned my fellow Musketeers, so they decided to uninvite me so as not to be deemed vandals in their pursuit of cautious rebellion.
So I sat at home on Halloween pouting. Not even seven Milky Way bars could alleviate my suffering.
The next morning I discovered that my friends got caught on their ninth house, and the constable levied a punishment by placing their pictures in the newspaper, and made them wash all the windows they had desecrated.
Honestly, I didn’t know whether I felt grateful for getting out of the retribution or a little sad because I wasn’t one of the cool guys who had a story to tell.
So I guess I need to close this off with some sort of moral. And that would be, there are just some things that go together:
Salt and pepper
Love and marriage
Congress and confusion
And soap and water.
So be prepared–if you’re going to use your bar of Ivory, you might want to be aware that you’ll probably end up … washing.
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity
The Sermon on the Mount in music and story. Click the mountain!
Click here to get info on the “Gospel According to Common Sense” Tour
Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.
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