THE EXAMPLE

by Randy Reynolds

I hereby apologize to all the kids I grew up with—or, at least, to the ones who turned out bad. As the preacher’s son, I was supposed to be their example. If I was, Heaven help 'em!

(Photo: Randy, Ricky, Ronda, Renda, Ramonda & Renee Reynolds with Pastor & Mrs. Reynolds,

who had a thing for "R's" --the horse was Ranger, the cat was Ruff, and dogs, over the years, included Rusty, Raleigh, Ringo, Reagan, Racquel and--his latest--Raven.)

WHY I DIDN'T BECOME A BABLISS PREACHER: My daddy preached in churches with no air-conditioning, where insects of various denominations flew straight through the open windows and congregated to worship the bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling above the pulpit. On summer nights in those churches, the humidity was so thick that people had to fan the air toward their faces to help themselves breathe. The cardboard fans they used were promotional items from the local funeral home--reminders, if any more were needed, that death was nigh.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-i-didnt-become-babliss-preacher.html

LAND OF INNOCENCE: We knew a girl who would take her clothes off and turn around in front of us for a quarter. But a quarter would buy a comic book, a Three Musketeers bar, some bubble-gum and a Coke, so the girl didn't make much money that summer.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2007/12/land-of-innocence.html

BOOKWORM: I limped after him, thinking, What a cool guy. A grown man who talks to me and wants to show me something in his garage. I'd never been in his garage before. I couldn't wait to see what he wanted to show me.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2010/12/bookworm.html

MR. BILL: While church members got acquainted with their new pastor (my dad,) two of my future friends greeted me not by telling me their names and asking for mine, but by taunting that I didn't look so tough and declaring they had a cousin who could beat me up. They left to fetch him and soon returned with a boy my size whom I had to fight in order to establish my place in the pecking order in their little world.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2007/10/mr-bill.html

I'D CHOOSE HORSES: 1960, Covington, Louisiana. A huge baby-faced man named Alex Jenkins stops by to get acquainted with his new pastor (my dad) and sees me riding a stick horse in the yard, playing cowboy with my younger brother. "Would you like to have a real horse?" he asks. My heart almost leaps out of my throat.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2008/01/id-choose-horses.html

MAKING THE BARKER GIRLS BEHAVE: The choir director in front of Dad set the pace for the singers behind him by jerking her hand rapidly from side to side like slapping a child. Off to the pastor’s right, Sister Catherine made the piano do everything but sit up and beg. The congregation joined in the clapping. Some folks raised their hands and shouted (which, today, would be called ‘praise.’) One man felt the Spirit and danced in the aisle. I whispered to a friend. Dad saw it and motioned for me to come forward. I panicked and tapped my brother. “Daddy wants you to go up there.” Poor little Ricky went to the rostrum, got bent over Daddy’s knees and took my spanking, his yowls of pain blending with the shouting.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2009/09/making-barker-girls-behave.html

WHEN KENNEDY WAS MY HERO: Kennedy's election and our house burning down were how the 60’s started for us, but I don’t think the two things were related unless the fire was God’s punishment for how I felt about Kennedy. For it was in that soon-to-burn bedroom, watching the flickering image of the young senator on a black-and-white TV with a coat-hanger for rabbit ears, that I betrayed my faith and started hoping he would win.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2009/04/when-kennedy-was-my-hero.html

AUDACIOUS: I sat on Alex’ grave and studied my spelling words for as long as it took me to eat the lemon, then thought ‘The heck with it’ and went to bridle my one-eyed horse Ranger to ride up the road to Johnny Johnson’s house to play with his monkey.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2011/01/audacious.html

DOODLEBUGS: If that last old house of ours on blocks is still there, a boy of a certain size could crawl under it today, way past where the cur dogs used to sleep, past the stray bricks, broken bottles and rusted plow parts, back to the soft, gray dirt of the doodlebug villages and find a plastic hero astride a plastic horse where I left them on the last day of my childhood, surrounded by attackers. The one on the white horse was me. When I placed me there, I owned the world.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2007/10/doodlebugs.html

BLOWING UP THE BOARDWALK: Why we were digging behind the shed, I don't recall. Motives were forgotten in the excitement of discovering a dark green metal box filled with hundreds of beautiful brass bullets. A box of gold bullion could not have excited us more. We did with the bullets what anyone would do. We used a hammer and pliers to break them apart, poured the gunpowder from each casing into a jar and went looking for something to blow up.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2007/12/blowing-up-boardwalk-how-not-to-make.html

THE END OF THE WORLD: The sweet, gentle lady who taught the Junior Boys Sunday School class convinced us that she knew the exact year the world would end. And when that year arrived, I developed the nervous habit of snorting air—sucking three or four breaths loudly through my nose before exhaling, a sound that drove away all my friends. I couldn’t blame them for avoiding me, but the snorting was beyond my control. It was the only way I could breathe that year. When the year ended but the world didn’t, I realized that I had a lot of catching up to do. A lot of catching up.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2009/01/sneak-preview-of-elvis-syndrome.html

MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK WAS A BIBLE: Jesus was probably not too happy about my secret hobby of grading girls in church, giving them a score on their physical appearance and writing the results in my Little Black Book, which happened to be a Bible, but He never said anything about it…

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-little-black-book-was-bible.html

PREACHER'S KID: The first time my future wife ever noticed me, I was in 6th grade at Lee Road School, she in 5th and she was in love with one of the triplets I was fighting. The fight was a rite of passage: the triplets jumped me because I was a preacher’s kid. Only if I fought back hard enough would they and others leave me alone in the future. So it was no-holds-barred. We fought with fists, feet, elbows, teeth, fingernails--everything we had. Almost everyone on the playground, including my future wife, yelled encouragement to the triplets. My little brother, who could have been a big help, stayed neutral.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2008/07/preachers-kid.html

THE ACORN TRICK: The thing that made me special at LeeRoad School was my ability to put an acorn in my nose and make it come out my mouth. My fame spread near and far and I found myself performing this trick at every recess and lunch break and after school and church. Girls said “Ewww!” and“Yuck!” and other gratifying things and I smiled and reversed the trick: putting one acorn into my nose, pretending to swallow, spitting a second acorn out of my mouth. Other boys, not realizing that I was using two acorns, tried to imitate my trick, but all they did was hurt themselves.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2009/01/acorn-trick.html

ROCKET SCIENTIST: When the nurses came to Lee RoadSchool to give polio shots the last year before we started getting our vaccine on sugar cubes, I got lucky: they didn't call my name. I was sitting in Mr. McKee's History class reflecting on my good fortune when Beverly McClain (who was always so theatrical) came back from the nurse's station rubbing her arm. I fainted dead away and fell out of my desk. Mr. McKee picked me up and carried me to the teacher's lounge where the smoke gradually brought me back to consciousness..

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2008/07/rocket-scientist.html

KAWLIGA: The next thing I remember, I was lying on Lee Roadand I must have been there a while because traffic was backed up in both directions. A stranger was kneeling beside me asking if I was all right. Another man was holding Kawliga’s reins and the horse was bleeding from scratches on the side that he had fallen on. One of my shoes was twenty feet down the road…

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2010/12/kawliga.html

SADDLING KAWLIGA: I argued that my sister couldn’t handle our liveliest horse, Kawliga, but daddy thought I was just being selfish. He forced me to saddle the horse for her, and Ronda rode out of sight down the twisting gravel road. Minutes later, as Dad was lecturing me about 'talking back,' we heard the thunder of hoofbeats and turned to see Kawliga headed our way, bucking and kicking at the saddle that dangled beneath his stomach. For all we knew, Ronda was lying dead on the road, but the search for her would have to wait. Daddy picked up a tree limb…

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2010/12/saddling-kawliga.html

RUNAWAY: Mr. Bill walked right under the tree. “Hey, Rusty! Where’s Randy? Where’s Randy, boy?” I expected Rusty to look straight up at me and bark, but he bounded away and Mr. Bill followed, possibly thinking they were having a Lassie moment and that Rusty was going to show him which well I had fallen into.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2010/12/runaway.html

CARAVAN TO COVINGTON: On a Sunday night during a fire-and-brimstone sermon, my dad suddenly stopped preaching and pointed at the whispering, snickering boys sitting close to me on the back pew. He called them out—not directly, but by proxy:“Brother Randy, come up here and sit on this front bench!” I decided to defy him. The devil made me do it.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2010/12/caravan-to-covington.html

THE BIRD: To hear him tell it, this simple trick was helping him grow underarm, chest and pubic hair like Sasquatch…

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2011/01/bird.html

HIT BY A CAR: I had heard that preacher’s daughters were “fast” –which sounded ominous—and I would never have gone into the woods with one, but Diane was not, technically, a preacher’s daughter. Her granddad was preaching a revival for us …

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2010/12/hit-by-car.html

FORTY CONDOMS: I caught a glimpse, through the bathroom door, of the condom machine. Which made the back of my neck heat up. My skin tingled, my heart felt weird. As did the pit of my stomach. I let go the 40 quarters in my pockets and they jingled embarrassingly as I rushed into Holden’s bathroom and locked the door behind me.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2009/03/forty-condoms.html

GRAND THEFT AUTO: The evangelist told everyone in the tabernacle to stand and lift their hands to Heaven and when my mother did so, I lifted the car keys from her purse. Then I invited a girl on a date.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2011/01/grand-theft-auto.html

DAREDEVIL: While a church service was going on, I used a pocket knife to carve scratches into my arm—scratches shaped like letters of the alphabet, letters that comprised a girl’s initials. It made a bloody mess, but after scabbing over it was a lovely tribute to a girl.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2010/12/daredevil.html

THE SHIMMY-SHE-WOBBLE: The only thing for good little boys and girls to do on a date night, other than go to church orsit in the living room with her parents, was to go park by the river and "watch the submarine races." This was obviously a horrible sin, but I figured it would get overturned someday like so many of the others and I wanted to be ahead of the curve.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2009/01/hokey-pokey-shimmy-she-wobble-and-other.html

HOW I WAS RUN OUT OF COVINGTON: I don’t know what a long, deep kiss sounds like on the radio, but WARB’s audience heard one that day when, in the middle of my newscast, I turned off the wrong mic--the one that was never on in the first place--and kissed Sherry. The live mic was just inches from our lips.Poor Bobby Bradley, who was running the control board, squeezed his head between his hands and grimaced—I could see him through the soundproof window. But I thought he was just trying to crack me up.

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-i-was-run-out-of-covington.html

SIX MONTHS AT MOST: After an emotionally draining worship service, our members seemed to dread crossing the threshold into the outer world, and so they moved up the aisle at the slowest possible pace, everyone trying to find something to say to everyone else. “I guess you heard that Brother Reynolds’ son is going to marry that little Jenkins girl.”“Isn’t she a little young?” “They both are.” “I give 'em six months at most.”

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2010/12/six-months-at-most.html

PERMISSION TO MARRY A FAMOUS WRITER: Me, suddenly chicken-hearted, "Honest, ya'll, I never touched her."Sherry held my hand and wrinkled her cute nose at me. "Yes, you did, you big liar!"

http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2008/01/permission-to-marry-famous-writer.html