As promised (to T-Clog), some details about my own grandparents that I learnt fairly recently & have not related (to him, anyway).
In talking with with dad after the death of my grandma this last summer, I found out some things I had never known before that were pretty wild. My granddad ran afoul of the Southern Methodists in Kansas.
It was post-prohibition, but smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression's dust bowl. My grandparents were so poor at the time that my grandad, who was running a gas station at the time, had to fur-trap all night, driving my dad (who was around 5 at the time) & grandma around and checking the traps one by one, in order to eke out a living. He also applied for and received the first liquor license in Kansas, and began to operate a profitible and popular beer parlor, while running a bookie business on the side. Aside from the "first liquor license" part, all this I knew. But what I didn't know previously was how this business got them shunned, disapproved-of, and basically booted out of the church community. You can imagine how important of a role churches played in the goings-on of various communities in those years, especially in that part of the country. My grandma, who I never thought of as involved in particularly strenuous philosophical examinations of herself, had always been curiously secular in her lifestyle. I had always wondered why, and now all the pieces fit together. My dad explained how she sort of took on an "I don't want to belong to a church that doesn't want me to feed my child" sort of attitude, and she carried it to her death, which (perhaps standing nearly alone amidst 90+year-olds' burials in Kansas), had no funeral service.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
That's pretty wild.
Religious prohibitions of alcohol, along with societies' similar attempts have pretty much failed every time. We humans simply love our demon rum.
Like all things, some people act like dicks, and give the whole concept a bad name. The fact that moderate alcohol consumption is good for you should make the whole thing just go away.
And if not that, the fact that the consumption of huge quantities from time to time is great fun!
My grandma passed on the ability to bristle at feeling like you're being told how to live your life, I think. And some of the Hylton/church wedge issues we have may not be entirely unrelated.
Who you callin' a dick? You wanna step outside?
Read more carefully. He just said you ACT like a dick. You look like a dick too, I might add.
Sorry, I was drunk.
Hey, wait a minute!!!
Post a Comment