New Year’s Day is right around the corner, and I have to start thinking again about resolutions to help me eliminate bad habits like playing cards and watching western movies on television.
My brother and I were apprehensive when we were dropped off at our grandparents’ house in Bogalusa. We were going to spend a couple of nights while our parents visited sick kinfolks.
We had been there for brief visits a few times but had never stayed overnight. Our grandmother was a sweet lady who seemed glad to see us. Our granddad had forgotten how to smile.
As soon as our parents drove off, my brother and I sat on the floor in a corner of the front porch to finish the Battle card game we started on the long drive from Springhill to South Louisiana.
Our granddad walked out to the porch and became a little crazed when he saw us playing cards. He ranted about cards being the work of the devil and raked them up with his hands.
Mamaw apologized and invited us into the living room to watch television. TV had not been around long. The little black and white set we had at home would pick up two Shreveport stations when the weather was good and the antenna was turned right.
There must have been stronger stations around Bogalusa. We could see all the horses and people in the western movie with just a little snow and static mixed in.
A cowboy sauntered into a saloon and ordered a whiskey about the time my granddad came in the room. He came unglued again and started raving about the evil of alcoholic beverages.
He told me and my brother that we needed to make a New Year’s resolution to not touch playing cards again or watch people drink whiskey on television.
That seemed a little strange to me since my parents loved to play rook and canasta with the neighbors and my dad liked to have a few drinks at the Friendly Bar.
But the really unusual thing was that it was summertime and my granddad was talking about New Year’s resolutions.
My grandmother mentioned the word “religious” when she tried to explain his abnormal behavior.
I thought I understood religious because my mother had us at Calvary Baptist Church every Sunday morning and Sunday evening for music and preaching and on Wednesday nights for prayer meetings.
All I could think of was that my granddad must have been a Methodist, Episcopalian or something like that because the Baptists I knew didn’t act that way.
But we discovered the next morning when he told us to get ready for church that he was a Baptist through and through and a pillar of the Union Avenue Baptist Church a few blocks away.
After taking our cards and turning off our western movies the day before, he brought me a worn black Bible and told me to read a specific verse. I don’t remember which one, but he was surprised that I turned right to it.
I told him we did Bible drills at Calvary Baptist and I would have won if Larry Phillips had not cheated. We were told some of the verses ahead of time and Larry wrote page numbers on his palm. I agreed with my granddad that people who cheat in Bible drills go to hell.
The Union Avenue Baptist Church was filled with stern-faced men in black suits and narrow black ties and ladies with powdered, painted faces. It reminded me of the wax museum at the State Fair.
I went to the wax museum after being disappointed at the tent that had pictures of women in swimsuits and the wording, “The Facts of Life.” Inside were tables with jars of things I didn’t recognize and cards explaining things I didn’t want to know.
Our granddad was a deacon and a member of the finance and personnel committees. The preacher came to his house and had lunch with us after church.
My grandmother fried two chickens fresh out of the back yard, and the preacher ate both of the white meat pulley bones. They said he did that every Sunday.
I thought my granddad should have told him that he needed to make a New Year’s resolution about not being greedy and letting somebody else have the pulley bone once in a while.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES