Werewolves, Roy Rogers & the Church of All Y'all

By William Carter

Compilation of newspaper columns based his on life as a husband, father, blue collar worker, and suburban warrior.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483587936

Book preview

Nettie

The Church of All Y’all©

I really and truly had no idea all of the arguments it was about to start and all of the trouble it was going to cause when I sent my credit card info and my home address through the internet tubes then clicked on that Confirm button as I sat alone in the living room late that night, bathed in the glow of my laptop screen.

If I HAD known, I would’ve clicked that Confirm button a long time ago, because it was the best eleven dollars and ninety-nine cents I’ve ever spent.

It all started a when Luke, one of my many nephews, called and asked if I would perform the wedding ceremony for him and his bride-to-be - a beautiful young lady named Megan - this spring. I told him that I was honored he’d asked and that of course I’d be happy to do whatever he wanted me to do.

I’ve married couples before with no problems, in other states, but wasn’t sure about Georgia, so I went on-line and checked and discovered I had to be an ordained minister to perform the ceremony.

So, naturally, I did what any uncle would do and spent $11.99 to become a registered ordained minister so I could perform the wedding ceremony.

Then I pretty much forgot about it until my suitable-for-framing certificate and laminated wallet card arrived in the mail about a week later.

Then the fun began.

If you’ve ever wondered how many of the people you know think they’re morally superior to you, show them your official, ordained minister i.d. card.

You…you can’t do that! sputtered a friend.

Why not?

You’re not a Christian! he declares. You don’t even go to church!

He’s right about me not going to church, I have my reasons, but he’s wrong about me not being a Christian…I’m just not the type of Christian he thinks I should be.

Another friend looked at my card then snorted in disgust and walked away. He hasn’t spoken to me since.

The way I see it, I’m just as qualified to spread the Word as anybody else, and here’s why:

I read the Bible, cover to cover, at least once a year and always get something different out of it. In the past forty-five years or so, I’ve prayed twice a day, every day, which equals to…uh…a whole lot of prayin’ (math is not one of my God-given talents). In my little office I have two statues of Jesus and one of His Mama holding court over my Edgar Allen Poe action figure, my Barack Obama bobble-head doll, my limited edition G.I. Joe Action Astronaut, and my wind-up chicken that lays jellybean eggs. In my pocket, always, there’s a coin engraved with the Lord’s Prayer on one side and the Serenity Prayer on the other and I know all of the words to Me and Jesus by Tom T. Hall. One time, something amazing I won’t talk about happened to me that can’t be explained any other way than by intervention by a Higher Power. Also, I’m nice to animals and give all of my old clothes to Goodwill.

Because of all that, as well as the fact I now possess a suitable-for-framing certificate as well as a laminated wallet card affirming the fact I am an ordained minister, I have decided to create The Church of All Y’all©, of which I am The Shepherd.

All are welcome, and there are no rules other than you must be a big fan of Jesus, be nice to animals, open doors for old people, not give tiny boxes of raisins to trick-or-treaters on Halloween, and not infringe upon my copyright of the name The Church of All Y’all©, as I fully intend to apply for tax-exempt status and market a line of The Church of All Y’all© energy drinks and The Church of All Y’all© t-shirts.

And, by the way, let me know if you need to be married, buried, or baptized…I’ll cut you a deal.

So sayeth The Shepherd.

Woo-Hoo!

In just a few days from now Love-Weasel and I will have been married for thirty-four years.

This scares the hell out of me for a variety of reasons; first and foremost among those reasons being I am not old enough to have been married thirty-four years. This is a fact and I refuse to accept any evidence contrary to what I believe. It is just not possible – no way, no how – that Love-Weasel and I are getting old. So, whoever’s out there manipulating the time/space continuum, just stop it…stop it right now.

It seems it was only a week or so ago I saw her from afar and was mightily impressed with the way she walked. She was wearing tight, white jeans and I sped up to get a closer look and maybe yell out something urbane and sophisticated like: WOOOOO-HOOOOO!

This is a time-tested and proven part of the courting ritual where I come from and I know many, many couples whose years of wedded bliss began with those two long, drawn-out syllables.

WOOOOO! is also acceptable and works just as well.

Anyway, I got closer, drew a deep breath and then…then I saw her face.

Up to this point in my life I can honestly say I’d been stricken speechless only once before when a hoodlum buddy of mine proved to the rest of us - in the Tri-County High School locker-room - that it was undeniably possible for the human body to produce three-foot flames of fire using only gastrointestinal forces and a Bic lighter.

There is awesome on the scale of my friend demonstrating one of the more horrifying aspects of nature and then there is AWESOME, as in perfect sunsets and babies smiling and flowers blooming and harvest moons.

Love-Weasel was AWESOME.

Choking and near strangling on an uncompleted WOOOOO-HOOOOO!, I drove slowly past her, scrunched down behind the wheel and with my eyes averted, absolutely convinced my chances with such a creature were exactly zero and a little bit less than zero.

The volatile mix of hormones, testosterone, and insanity juices marinating my brain was not to be denied, though, and I did what any self-respecting male would do.

I stalked her.

After the restraining orders were lifted we were married and moved down to Florida where we lived in a two room apartment with only a bed, a coffee table, 137 house plants, and no money. With that lack of money and neither of us being big coffee drinkers, we spent a lot of time running around in our jungle of house plants playing Me Tarzan, You Jane. Know what I mean? Wink, wink.

Somewhere along the way we have managed to accumulate a little more furniture. We don’t have much more money, really, but that’s never seemed to matter. We argue mightily every once in a while but then we make up and forget what all the fuss was about to begin with. Love-Weasel laughs at my stupid jokes and I support her need to feed and care for every living stray critter within a five-mile radius. We still dream a lot about things that will probably never come to pass, but that’s okay…everybody needs to dream.

We’ve hatched out two boys who have grown up to be real human beings we’re proud of. Fortunately, they look like their mother. Unfortunately, they seem to have my sense of humor.

There was one point seventeen years ago when my world stopped turning and I couldn’t breathe. It was all because of one word and that word was…cancer. Love-Weasel had it and it was bad and I couldn’t stand it and I was scared. But then she taught all of us what being a fighter was all about and she pulled through the pain and the surgery and the months and months of treatment and the hair loss and the minute-by-minute uncertainty and she came through the other side and I could breathe again. And now all of the things that seemed to matter before don’t as much anymore and, as hokey as it may seem, perfect sunsets and babies smiling and flowers blooming and harvest moons are more important now than they ever were before.

Love-Weasel can’t seem to keep her hands off of me even thirty-four years later and still insists on chasing me around the house nekkid three or four times a week. I try to help out by letting her catch me.

But I still owe her something, having been rendered speechless all those years ago.

This one’s for you, Babe.

WOOOOO-HOOOOO!

Squirrels

The sum total of my life has been revealed to me: I am not above matching wits with squirrels.

Funny thing is, before the recent occurrences, I don’t ever remember giving much thought at all to the furry little tree-demons from Hell. In fact, the only time I ever really noticed them is if they were presented to me deep-fried on a platter along with grits, gravy, and cat-head biscuits. Calm down…I never ate feline-flavored bread. The term refers to the size, as in: My Lord…this biscuit’s bigger’n a cat’s head!!!

That’s right, y’all, we had abnormally large biscuits back in those days.

Back to squirrels: As I was saying, I never paid much attention to them until we began feeding the birds in our yard. Since then we’ve filled feeders with more seeds and grains than the U.S.A. sends to third world countries. At first, the squirrels provided comic relief and we’d sit for hours laughing at their struggles to reach the feeders.

Then amazement came at their ingenuity; only to be followed by irritation at what gluttons they were. Big holes were gnawed into the feeders and the perches were chewed off. Sometimes, I’d find the feeders in pieces, destroyed, on the ground. Then the munchkin-like snickering began every time I walked out into the yard and there they’d be, great herds of squirrels, laughing at me from the safety of the tree-tops and staring with their beady little squirrel eyes.

It got worse.

The birdseed was kept in a small, galvanized metal trash can with a lid, as the plastic ones had been gnawed through and destroyed. I went out to the shed to fill the (new) feeders one day and when I lifted the lid, what appeared to be a fur-covered chainsaw exploded out of the can. As I flailed about - screaming like a second-grade school girl and maybe, well, probably wetting my pants - the squirrel attempted to create an opening through the plywood roof. Then an eerie silence fell as we faced each other; me frozen in a defensive kung-fu stance in the middle of the shed and trying to recall if there was such a thing as self-administered CPR and the squirrel clinging to the side of an old tool box, trembling and - I am positive of this - making plans to eat me. I blinked first, and then backed away very slowly before making a damp run for the house.

Word of my shame spread among the squirrels and crowds of them gathered to mock me. The period of time that followed found me helpless to do anything but watch from the window as insolent, double-chinned squirrels waddled around the yard as I stood glaring out and grinding my teeth. Thugs, they were, all of them. They took to wearing little, leather jackets with things like Satan’s Squirrels embroidered on the back and smoking tiny cigarettes while sipping from bottles sheathed in little, brown paper bags and texting LMAO about me to each other on miniscule smart phones. They gambled and stayed out late and talked rudely to their mothers. Their grades suffered.

My trips from the house became carefully planned events. I had to create diversions like throwing handfuls of peanuts out the front door while exclaiming loudly, Wow! Look at all those delicious peanuts! The resulting thunder of hundreds, no, thousands, of squirrel feet still haunts my sleep to this day. As they smacked their lips and drooled over the peanuts, I’d creep out the back door and flee in the car. Howls of rage could be heard as I sped out of the driveway. Squirrels don’t take kindly to being duped.

But then there came a glimmer of hope when someone suggested live traps. I was skeptical at first but desperate enough to try anything. And it worked. Within a couple of hours after baiting and setting the trap, I’d captured one of the obnoxious little creatures. He growled at me as I picked up the cage. I laughed at him. Then I laughed some more, but stopped short of poking it with a stick…not wanting to stoop to the ethical level of a squirrel. I released it a couple of miles from home then went back for another…then another…then another. Soon, there was an obvious decrease in the hoodlum squirrel population around our home.

Now, there is an uneasy truce between the remaining squirrels and me. But I still can’t take too many steps around my yard without looking over my shoulder. And, occasionally, a tiny cigarette butt will be flipped in my direction somewhere from the tops of the trees, followed by a high-pitched, obnoxious giggle.

So this is not over.

Oh, no…this is not over.

My Office

My little ‘home office’ is 8’ by 10’ and here’s what’s in it:

On the wall behind me, looking over my shoulder, there are a framed, pen-and-ink drawing of Jesus praying in the wilderness and an oil painting of Abraham Lincoln. Both are very old and I don’t know who the artists are, or where they came from, even, but I like them. They also keep me from looking at porn on the computer. Below the pictures, slightly to the left, is a medium-sized American flag I found all wadded up and wet beside the road as I was running along the by-pass only a few weeks after 9/11. It is dry now and moves a bit when I have the ceiling fan on. Next to the flag, is my framed Credentials of Ministry that I bought off the internet when I decided to found - and become the Shepherd of - The Church of All Y’all© a year or so ago. I also have a plastic ‘Ministry’ card I can put on my dashboard when I go to visit sick people at the hospital, but I’m highly suspicious of