Father Dale’s Drive-Thru Exorcisms
The Evangelists set the tent up somewhere near a Christian theme park called Heritage USA in Fort Mill, South Carolina. The park had been open for nearly a year, and the crowds had ballooned grotesquely, which spelled probable success for the old preacher hunting for the faithful.
To Dale, standing outside his camper and straddling the messy periphery of religion, the park’s very existence and its incredible popularity were two more pieces of evidence he could hold up to prove that the majority of middle America had too much time and too much money on their hands.
Which made him feel less bad, maybe even righteous, about being just one more person trying to take it away.
“You gonna help, or what?” Tina asked, pushing folds of sweaty hair out of her face. She was struggling to set up the camper’s awning, stretching it as far as it would go while simultaneously trying to jam the poles into the gravelly dirt below.
“Or what,” Dale teased, pushing his sunglasses up on his nose. He walked over to where his wife stood, and the two of them managed to wrangle the faded, delicate awning into the perfect position. To some veteran campers, an awning didn’t need to be perfect, just serviceable. To Dale and Tina Thrombus, anything less than perfect would mean that their car-bound customers would get trapped in the drive-thru, which was simply not an option.
They’d been following the crazy evangelists around the Southeast for the past five years, parking the camper close enough to the revival tent to attract customers, but far enough away to avoid the righteous fury of the fire-tongued pastor. He might have preached love, but Dale had heard enough to realize the man knew how to deal in hate.
The camper needed a new coat of paint and the awning needed new metal struts, but money was tight and getting tighter. The oil crisis of ‘73 was long over, but good working folk like Dale and Tina were still feeling the squeeze, and it was starting to look like another crisis was on the horizon. When Dale had retired, Tina had quit her lunch lady job, and they’d sold the tiny shack in Indiana, packed up the few belongings they thought worth keeping, and bought a used camper. Dale figured they’d want to travel around because what else was there to do anyway, especially in rural Indiana? The camper was far more freeing, not to mention economical.
Until 1973 hit. For a couple reliant on cheap gas to fuel their cross-country travels, the oil crisis gouged their savings. They spent nearly a year stuck in a trailer park in Edmond, Oklahoma, hoping to save money while remaining in a climate warm enough to be comfortable throughout the winter without running the heater. Their small jar of cash began to look emptier and emptier, so they took to washing windshields, pumping water, cleaning spidery outhouses, chopping wood for cook fires—whatever needed doing badly enough that somebody would pay them for it.
