Holiness or Hell

I have a memory that may be half fiction. This much is true: I was in a Wal-Mart with my father during the Seventies. This was back when Wal-Mart was more of a regional chain. I remember seeing a blacklight poster of a devil with a pitchfork, in what I presume to be Hell. I was there with my father, and was probably six or seven years old—I gauge this by remembering where the store was located at the time in our little town, since I do remember the building, and that the Wal-Mart moved to a much larger location in the early 80s, that this must have been the late 70s.

The possibly fictional part---I recall my father pointing to the poster and saying, “That’s where you’ll go if you’re bad.” This isn’t too unlike my father, who occasionally took great joy in frightening us as children, but it seems a bit out there for him, so probably not. Hell was something I spent a great deal of time thinking about as a child. I was raised in the Pentecostal church, and Hell was a great motivator. Pentecostals were, as a group, far more interested in the stick than in the carrot, and especially in the idea that said stick would be applied to those who believed differently. I think the idea of love and the hope of Heaven seemed meaningless compared to the relish of non-believers roasting for all Eternity. It was a hard faith in which to grow up.

Baptists had it relatively easy in comparison. We found their theology questionable since they believed in “once saved, always saved.” We believed you could live a Christian life, say “Oh Shit” before dying in a car accident and end up in “the Devil’s Hell,’ as our pastor often called it. Being saved wasn’t really enough either, it was important to “get the Holy Ghost,” and to start speaking in tongues. It wasn’t required, but strongly encouraged, and you were considered spiritually immature and weak if you didn’t get it. Almost all of my family members who attended the church had “gotten it.” When I was around 11 or 12, it seemed like there was somewhat more pressure for those of us in junior high to “get the Spirit.” One summer, my cousin and I went to church camp for a week. That was my first attempt at it….

The camp was terrible, and looking back I see a lot of similarities in what people say about cults when they try to break people down. Instead of normal outdoor activities, we were in church sessions almost all day, so it was like non stop church. They gave us a break during the afternoon where we would just hang out in our bunks, then after dinner we’d be back to church. Eventually, you got worn down, and towards the last couple of nights there was a push to try to get all the kids to get the Holy Ghost. We sang and stood for what seemed like a long time. I had my eyes closed, praying. One of the counselors came up to me and said, “Raise your arms and listen to Jesus!” The pastor at one point tapped my head like he was trying to dislodge the contents of a stubborn bottle of ketchup and commanded me to speak in tongues. Nothing was working. I eventually tired and was lowered to the floor.

I was there for what felt like hours, though it most likely just seemed that way. I tried repeating things I’d heard, I tried praying, I tried everything, but nothing seemed to work and I wasn’t acting or feeling anything like what I’d seen from my fellow campers, not to mention what I routinely saw at my own church on Sunday night. Back home, people routinely spoke in tongues, occasionally interpreted the uttering of others, jumped pews, and ran laps around the sanctuary. As we went home from camp, I figured something must have been wrong with me.

Post Office Characters, Collect Them All #2

I should save this for later, but I’ll probably ditch the character profiles after this anyway. This is about the strangest person I ever met at the Post Office, and possibly the strangest coworker and person I’ve ever dealt with.

I called him Camo Guy. Wearing camo gear was not that unusual at the Post Office. Most guys [and it was always guys] had a jacket or shirt in the traditional pattern. Some might have a hat or pants. Camo Guy took it to another dimension, never mind level. He had berets, desert clothing, and attire from countries that probably hadn’t existed since the end of the Cold War. He had attire suited to seemingly almost any terrain. The only thing I never saw him in was winter gear and I’m surprised he didn’t have some kind of all-white outfit for when it snowed.

His attire was the least strange thing about him.

Camo Guy’s two main interests were karate and Jesus, and he displayed both of his passions throughout the workday. On the flat sorter machine, you would occasionally have to “sweep,” that is, place the full tubs of mail on the conveyor belt and replace them with new ones. It was a good chance to move around a little bit, and boy did he ever. He spent his sweeping time practicing his karate forms, singing hymns, and yelling out his favorite Bible verses. Often, one of his fellow religious comrades who worked at a neighboring machine would shout out verses in response, all evening long. I still remember one hymn he sang, “Jesus on the Mainline,” which is one that the older people used to sing at the church where I grew up. I had never heard it anywhere else until hearing him sing it one night. “Jesus on the mainline, tell Him what you want, Jesus on the mainline, tell Him what you want, Jesus on the mainline, tell Him what you want, Jesus on the mainline now….” I was told later that he went to a smaller Pentecostal church that didn’t have a lot of younger people. Since there were so many televangelists operating out of our city, we had to run a lot of mail from them, and he would often point out ones with whom he had doctrinal disagreements.

Camo Guy was married, I think to someone he’d met while stationed in Germany. She was odd herself, and always wore this awful perfume that smelled like a sour pina colada. She was one of those people where you know something is off, and I disliked working with her. One night she got into it with one of the older regulars, this grey haired biker guy and I think she got walked out of the building after that. I believe they may have split up sometime while I was there.

Most people just worked around him, since although he did his basic job duties he wasn’t all there. People generally didn’t give him a hard time, even in a workforce where most people had anger issues. I don’t know if it was the karate or his childlike behavior softened people or at least made them less inclined to get impatient with him. I rarely saw him cross with anyone. Supervisors would try to get him to pay more attention but they usually just gave up. I sometimes thought he was playing a long con with everyone, convincing them he was too dumb to bother with and so he was left alone. One of the union stewards said they once saw three supervisors all yelling at him once and all he did was sit there and grin. He may have been the smartest guy in the entire building.

I sometimes look up former coworkers in this federal database just to see if they’re still working there, and I see that he’s been driving a truck for the Post Office for some time. This frightens me greatly.