asfoxseesit
About Me
- Name: foxofbama
Born May 18, 1953; got saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville, NC 1959. On rigged ballot which I did not rig got Most Intellectual class of 71, Gaffney High School. Furman Grad, Sociology major but it was little tougher than Auburn football players had Had three dates with beautiful women the summer of 1978. Did not marry any of em. Never married anybody cause what was available was undesirable and what was desirable was unaffordable. Unlucky in love as they say and even still it is sometimes heartbreaking. Had a Pakistani Jr. Davis Cupper on the Ropes the summer of 84, City Courts, Rome Georgia I've a baby sitter, watched peoples homes while they were away on Vacation. Freelance writer, local consultant, screenwriter, and the best damn substitute teacher of Floyd County Georgia in mid 80's according to an anonymous kid passed me on main street a few years later when I went back to get a sandwich at Schroeders. Had some good moments in Collinsville as well. Ask Casey Mattox at www.clsnet.org if he will be honest about it. I try my best to make it to Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC at least four times a year.
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Criswell Redux, His trombone and John Phillip Sousa
This is a followup on Criswell and the Hagiography of his suck up, patronizing disciple O S Hawkins. Come back to this as I am posting the rough draft but plan to refine and do some add ons and perspective
I have read the bio since my first take. Got the book on Friday and pretty much devoured it over the weekend. History will record Criswell as a demagogue bastard Baptist in the big scheme of things, but Hawkins hagiography embellishes the humanity of the rascal and some of those tales are charming.
Its like one of my Dad's Stories of My Grandmother's oldest brother Bill Helton born in the 1890s outside Pigeon Forge Tennessee where he lived all his life, the oldest of nine brother and another sister. He Told my Dad that in the thirties a visiting preacher came through the hollers for a ten day revival and stayed with a family. The wife was devout but the husband a well known moonshiner. The preacher spent one day making shine with the husband. The preacher left the steal early for the services and the shiner on the way home stopped by the open window church during mid service. He later told Uncle Bill " knowing what that rascal had been up to all day making shine with me, he was preaching in such a way, it brought tears to my eyes."
Such was the gift of W A Criswell. I was charmed by the story last night of his mother taking him from Tex Line Texas over to Amarillo in the Panhandle because the accreditation of the public school in TEXLINE was in Question where as Amarillo High had strong credibility.
Criswell as incoming Junior soon was first chair in the trombone section of the High School and city wide civic band. John Phillips Sousa himself came to town circa 1915 and directed the band in Stars and Stripes forever which evoked a five minute standing ovation.
It was just a few months before that George W. Truett, likely the greatest Baptist of the first half of the 20th Century visited the FBC of Amarillo one Sunday morning and shook hands with a sixteen year old Criswell and said God Bless You.
In Baptist circles that was as big as the famous handshake of JFK and Bill Clinton when Clinton was 17
More later
Thursday, April 04, 2024
W A Criswell and the "Nigger Nigger Nigger" strategy
I got the book today April 12. Will write a Criswell Redux soon. Hawkins does address Criswell 1956 race baiting speech and says it was one of WA top three regrets. Talks about Criswell sermon the Sunday after the JKF assassination, Nov 24 1963 where he dismissed it as result of atheistic communism. Cursory reading does not talk about Criswell and Bill Moyers. It does turn up some interesting stories about predecessor George W. Truett where the Truett legacy is diminished somewhat on the race issue.
O S Hawkins has written a biography of the mid 20th Century demagogue and influential Southern Baptist Preacher WA Criswell. An in house effort there is an exhaustive review at Baptist News Global
Criswell gave a scorching address at the 1956 statewide Baptist preacher's conference in Columbia SC where he said among other things "I wouldnt let my daughter within two city blocks of a big Black Buck"; and "You wouldnt call a chigger a chiggerow, now would ya."
Tuesday, April 02, 2024
MAGA Underbelly, guest blog
David Strain teaches college in Arkansas. He goes by the Family Dollar Fuhrer. Some of this is a little strong but written with affection and frustration with many dear to us all who got caught up in MAGA. But God Damn the venal folks who are playing them in Jesus name, like Fox at Five, Yellowhammer News in Bama, Jeffress at FBC Dallas and the staff at FBC Spartanburg who ought to know better. And their theologian in residence at NGU Tony Beam . And the Heritage Foundation
AT THE PIFFLE HOUR . . . .
Thursday, February 29, 2024
In the Blood with the Jordans of North Alabama and the Silent Cavalry of the Civil War
Like a lot of the country I was not familiar with Sacred Harp singing till I saw the Oscar award winning movie Cold Mountain. Mark Morgan had read the book by Charles Frazier in which Lucas Black of Moulton Alabama Starred. He had key scenes around the Battle of Petersburg in the Civil War where the voices of the Ivey Family of Henegar come in strong on the soundtrack with the Idumea ( 47 on the bottom) which boisterously raises the existential question "And Am I Born to die, to lay this body down."
I was near perfect attendance at Pine Grove and the July 4 singing in Henegar for 15 years after. At one point as my Grandfather Jordan taught school at Pine Grove about a crow fly of a mile and a half from the house, I asked the legendary Bud Oliver if any of my grandfather or Mother's generation were singers. He said yes your Grandfather Jordan brother Roscoe, Uncle Rock , came to a lot of singings but like you, Fox, he couldn't sing worth a darn. We called him "Cake' cause he came for the food.
My Mother's cousin Eulene Reed of Lookout Mtn and the Sacred Harp community told me a fascinating tale about seven years ago about a near lynching and almost murder on Lookout Mountain Mtn . You can see the place where it almost all went down from the porch of the House I lived in for thirty years on land that was in the family since the 1930s. My Grandfather was born in the vicinity in 1881 and his father John Sanders Jordan and brother and JS brother Henry Rufus both fought for the Union during the Civil war.
Eulene's great Grandfather didn't believe in Slavery. The Home Guard in South DeKalb County came to his house down around the curve if you take a right at the ST Reed Place top of Lookout Mtn looking for him. He got word and wandered out into a cornfield. The HG got his wife and took her to the barn and threw a rope over an eave and noosed her hangin. She told em they could hang her till she died but she wasn't gonna help em in the least.
They did discover somehow he had ran into the cornfield and they shot it up pretty good but never saw him. I guess they ran out of ammo. Story was later he got to the brow and hollered to kin he made it alive.
Eulene is one of his direct descendants.
She said a retarded son was born soon after the incident. Her ggrandfather went to the neighbor in the confederate and told him if he didn't apologize for noosing up his wife and the resulting injury to his newborn he was gonna kill him if he didn't get on his knees and pray for forgiveness.
They both had a salvation moment in that ordeal and Eulene's Great Grandfather became a Baptist Preacher.
This story told to Eulene by Barrett Ashley is extra mustard for me at least in Augusts when I sing at Pine Grove, especially the verse of my friend Sam Hodges Great great great Grandfather Fitzpatrick, a Rebel of Crawford County Georgia, whose dying words from injuries in the Battle of Petersburg Va near the end of the war, were from the Sacred Harp hymn Jesus can make a dying bed, soft as downy pillows are.
"such are the chips through which defining traits marinate across generations of families that don't quite buy into the commanding culture. It's a mysterious process, difficult to calibrate, and especially daunting when it comes to rescuing unheralded difference makers from the scrap bin of history."
Ed Bridges, a graduate of Marshall Frady and my Furman University, was the state archivist for Thirty years in Montgomery. He wrote the Bicentennial history of the state and has thrity grand pages on the Civil War and Reconstruction in his book. He has a great summation of the claims of groups like the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy which were taught in the public schools of Alabama and across the nation up until just a few years ago. I think the following quote should be memorized by all honors students across the state. Bridges lists four errant claims taught by the sophomoric he says: " Although specific historical examples could be produced to support each of these claims , taken as a whole they amounted to a rewriting of history that distorted it fundamental ways. Ed Bridges page 159