DRINKIN'. SMOKIN' & CUSSIN': POST #26

Boy, doesn't this sound exciting? Well, to some of you it may sound exciting and some of you may be thinking that I am full of baloney, but these are the things that this post is about.

I ran with a pretty good bunch of guys when I lived at Herman Junction. I mean to some it may seem that we were a pretty boring flock and maybe we were, but it didn't seem that way to me. I guess I had lived in a sheltered family in a sense. I have been told that anyway. My Dad once said that he loved the taste of whiskey more than anything that he had ever tasted, but I never heard of him taking a drink of any alcoholic drink in my life. I never heard him say a curse word in my life. So, I guess maybe I was pretty weird to some folks.

One time I was with some other guys and one of them was older than the rest of us and he was known to drink sometimes. He bought a six pack of beer and offered all of us one. I took one of those cans, popped it open, and never took a taste of it! I pretended to and then threw it out the window but so help me I didn't take a swallow of it. My first taste of an alcoholic beverage came at church in observance of the Lord's Supper in Pitesti, Romania in July 1995. They passed that tray around and I took the cup and thought, "Somebody sure left that grape juice out too long or something!" That was the worst tasting stuff that I had ever had in my mouth. I told someone about it and they all laughed at Barbara and me and told us that we had just tasted some very, very, good wine. If there is any wine on this earth that tastes worse than that, I sure wouldn't want it in my mouth. I mean, I have walked in stuff when I fed the hogs and milked the cow that probably would have tasted worse than that but I have never eaten or drunk anything that awful.

I never got the habit of smoking. I suppose that if all the cigarettes that I smoked were put together I might have two packages or so. I tried to chew once or twice but the experience was about as bad as my drinking spree in the communion service. I even tried to dip some of Aunt Mollies Rooster snuff and I tell you now I'd be ashamed to admit that I put that in my mouth.

But, I did try cussin'. It wasn't cursing that I had heard about, it was cussin'. I don't know if there is a difference but either one is not a smart thing to do. I remember going out in the field a good ways from the house and trying to learn how to say, 'Damn' or 'hell' and it was hard to do. I had never heard that language at home in Herman Junction and I was mighty careful to practice it a long ways from the house. I never did feel comfortable talking like that and my engaging in the practice didn't last too long.

There was a girl in my class whom I respected a great deal and we were very good friends. We went to school and church together and participated in a lot of youth activities at church. One day I was talking to somebody and in the conversation I used the word, 'damn'. I turned around, probably out of guilt, and standing right behind me with the most disappointed look on her face was Kathleen Chester. I knew that she was hurt and that hurt me a lot. Here I was leading singing at church and now I'm out here cussin'. What a mess! Well, it didn't take me long to unlearn all the cussin' that I had learned, which wasn't much and I never did that again.

The language that we hear on TV and at other times and places is far worse than the cussin' that I remember. It is shameful and there needs to be a lot of mouth washing done today. I'm glad that this Herman Junction boy never did cuss much and today if I could keep Barbara from cussin' so much, everything would be just fine in Herman Junction today!