Talked about sex, the same way. He wondered what you thought of the european idea that americans were passive and bad. And whether you knew the joke about the Frenchman who found a woman lying on a beach and started having sex with her and his friends pointed out that she was dead.
Oh sorry, i thought she was American He seemed ready to be guided by your judgment when he asked you what you made of certain new testament miracles like the loaves and the fishes. What did he think? Really happened there? And maybe you ventured the guests that some of the five thousand people who came to hear, jesus had had provisions hidden in their robes and jesus’s message of brotherhood, move them to share their privately, hoarded food and giving begat giving, and this was how the 5000 were fed.
So what kind of miracle of socialism mutton said? That would be miracle enough for me. Parents complaining because their high school, youngster spends too much time at church to saint louis globe. Democrat, exclaimed in a full page article about fellowship in november 1972. Parents, forbidding a high schooler to go to church as a punishment.
Some parents both inside and outside first, congregational thought, that fellowship might even be a cult mutton and poor light was mistakable for Charles Manson and it was unsettling how much the kids looked forward to sunday nights, saving their favorite. Most worn out clothes for the occasion and throwing fits.
If they missed even one meeting. Most parents recognize that given the state of intergenerational relations in the early 70s, things could have been a whole lot worse. Mutton had the trust of the church’s senior minister paul davis, and key support from several leading church elders, who had gone on early arizona trips and come home, sold on fellowship, A few conservative congregants complained to davis about mountain style, his cigars, and his obscenities, and davis listened to the complaints with active, sympathy, nodding, and amiably wincing, and repeating his extraordinarily, soothing voice that, he understood their concerns and was really grateful that they had gone to the trouble of sharing them with him.
Then he closed his office door and took no action of any kind. Button was like a bass, lure cast into a pond that hadn’t been fished in 30 years. No sooner had he taken over fellowship, then he was mobbed by troubled kids who couldn’t tolerate their parents but still needed an adult in their lives.
Kids came and told him as they’d never told anyone else that their fathers got drunk and hit them. They brought him dreams for his interpretation, they queued up outside his office, door waiting for individual, conferences suffering for not being the lucky person alone with him behind his closed door and feeling that, not even the joy of finally, getting into the office could compensate for the pain of waiting.
Everybody and his brother were doing drugs. Kids were watering the family gilby’s and dropping acid in school bathrooms smoking. Especially adulterated banana peels popping. Parental anti-histamines and grandparental. Nitroglycerin consuming nutmeg and vomitus quantities filling empty. Milk cartons with beer and drinking in public. Exhaling pots, smoke into stove, woods or the absorbent insulation of basement ceilings.
And then heading on down to church, Three boys from good families were caught toking in the first. Congregational sanctuary itself. Mutton sat for hours, trying to follow the words of a founding member of fellowship lately released from the mental hospital.