The Religious Con

When I was a little kid our church attendance was fairly infrequent, maybe a couple of times a year. That was fine by me since didn’t much care for it. At dinner we would skip grace and Daddy would announce the commencement of eating with the single word: “begin”. With that, he would spear the choicest piece of meat for himself and for the rest of us it was like a cage match of consumption. This is probably the reason why, without even trying, I can still easily finish a full dinner in under 5 minutes. 

Ike Godsey cuts my hair
for a nickle.

At some point in the early 70’s, Daddy went from "no religion", past the midway point of “some religion”, to the full-throttle “born again”. I’m sure this was as puzzling to other folks as it was to me. He had had no life event to cause the change…no near-death experience to contemplate or new business partner to woo. He was still as ornery as ever and still drank enough to get periodic thank-you notes from the distillery. From my view back stage, this was just a new pair of shoes on an old pair of feet. But with it we gained a new way to judge people. Hmmm…were they Christian or not? There was mandatory church attendance. And we also acquired our very own blessing for use at suppertime. We all closed our eyes, and held hands with the person next to us, and chanted in all our piousness “Come Lord Jesus, our guest to be, and bless these gifts, bestowed by thee. Ah-men.” This sickly sweet pseudo-sincerity drove me crazy. Awww….aren’t we just like an episode of The Waltons…goodnight John Boy…promise me you’ll get that mole looked at. Once my younger sister was back-handed when giggled at the phoniness of it all. But in my father’s defense, no kid ever begged for a smiting like Leslie.

Unknown Mugshot from Harold's Era

Choosing a career not presented by his guidance counselor, Harold Thompson decided on the life path of compulsive gambler. In 1949 he added armed robbery to his resume when he began knocking over banks to support the habit. This eventually earned him a coveted spot on the FBI’s most wanted list. That's right, he was playing in the big leagues. But as all good things must come to an end, he was eventually caught. His prison sentence of 105 years was to be served in Alcatraz, but when the place closed 1963 he was moved to the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta.  Through his good works of ministering to fellow inmates, and the fact that the gun wasn’t even loaded in the first place, he earned an unconditional pardon by Richard Nixon in 1974.

I met him in 1976. 

Caffeine and Sugar
are OK

When I came home from school one day, Harold was sitting at the kitchen table with my dad, talking about Jesus, and knocking back six ounce co-coalers like they were potato chips. Names were exchanged, pleasantries swapped, and then I went to my room to pretend I was doing homework. It was shortly after this that I was to be pitched on turning my life over to the service of The Lord. And not pitched by just anybody, but by the minister to murderers…the converter of cons…none other than Harold Thompson himself. That guy. 

There was a knock at my door followed by a question in a Texas drawl: “Jay-ub, may a tawk wid ya a minnit?” Sure, come on in. He asked for a piece of paper and proceeded to draw to a couple of simple schematics. He explained what everything represented as he went along. It was a bit like a teacher diagramming a sentence. 

In the first pictogram, "self" was in control and life was a chaotic mess. I was shown a list of teenager's typical problems and told that I surely had some them, or maybe even all of them. In fact, it pretty much sucked to be me. (That’s paraphrased.)

In the second, Christ was calling the shots and everything was much, much better. In this model, whenever I had a problem I would just turn it over to Jesus and He’d take care of it. Easy peasy. (I'm still unsure of how the mechanics of this would actually work, but, whatever.)

This was brilliant in its simplicity. All of life’s pros and the cons right there in one place, conveniently distilled to fit on one side of a single sheet of notebook paper. At the completion of these cartoons I was asked a simple question that had an obvious answer: “What would you rather have: problems or no problems?” With a heavy sigh I said, “I guess I’d rather have no problems.”

Like totally no problems, Dude.

Harold’s eyes lit up like a pinball machine! AHA! That was it! I had been perfectly positioned into the place where he could use his sure-fire closing line. Its logic was as incontrovertible as a roundhouse kick to the face. In one quick exhale, without any pauses, sort of like all the words following a hash tag, he blurted: “Then would you lack ta git down on yer knees wid me rat now to pray for Jesus Christ to come inta yer life to be yer personal Lord and Savior?!”

No.

He was already into a genuflect on his way to a full kneel for what he assumed would be my answer. His expression was incredulous, as if he had never been given this response before. It actually seemed totally beyond his comprehension that anyone COULD give it. “But why, Jay-ub? Why would you say no? You said you didn’t want any problems.”

I told him that even though I didn’t want problems I also didn’t want pressure, and he was giving me alot of it. He said OK, but if I changed my mind to please give him a call because he would like to pray with me. That was the end of it.

Even though I didn’t care for the simple-mindedness of this presentation (I mean, really, what sort of dolt would fall for that crap anyway?) I thought Harold was a nice guy and sincere and all that, but I never did make that call.