An Unlikely (and unwilling) Exorcist

 It's hard to imagine just what an impact the movie "The Exorcist" had on us in the dark ages of the 1970s.

For those of you too young to remember, "The Exorcist" was a movie about a 12-year old girl who is possessed by demons, and a young priest who takes it upon himself to selflessly save her. It was pretty terrifying stuff, with what were considered pretty complicated special effects for that time period. According to Wikipedia, "The Exorcist" was voted scariest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly in 1999, by Movies.com in 2010, by viewers of AMC in 2006, and by the editors of Time Out in 2014. In addition, a scene from the film was ranked #3 on Bravo's The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. In 2010, the Library of Congress selected the film to be preserved as part of its National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

I was in college when it came out. I wouldn't go see it, because quite frankly the whole idea scared the be-jeebers out of me. As a kid, my family regularly hosted missionaries from around the world, and I remember hearing these stories of demons and demonic events in far-off lands.

However, almost everyone in my dorm did go see it. And they came back looking as if they'd seen a ... well, a demon. One guy was so shook up I remember he told me he didn't go to sleep at all that night but lay in bed reading a Bible.

Many of them actually went back a second time, and like most things, the more they saw it the less scary it became, and soon it became a running gag in the dorm, complete with attempts to re-enact many of the grosser (more gross? grossiest?) scenes.

And then, a few years later, I was asked to participate in an exorcism.

This was around 1976, one summer while I was working a summer job for a billboard company outside of Athens, Ga. It was a summer filled with crazy stories, working with some really good guys who were just hard-working country boys who took pride in what they did, groused about the boss (whom they called "Grump"), and slowly included me in whatever they were doing, which in once case included attending a true Southern country old-fashioned Pentecostal church.

They guys knew I was a church-going guy, that I'd gotten the job because the owner of the company was on the board of a Christian campus organization of which I had someone gotten elected president. They were also smart enough to know that just because I said I was a church-going guy, that didn't necessarily mean I measured up to Pentecostal standards of what it means to be a Christian. Fortunately, at the company picnic, I inadvertently "proved" my faith.

While I'd like to say I "proved" my faith to them with my deep knowledge and understanding of Scripture, or incredible acts of self-sacrifice and kindness, or a piousness which reflected in my every word and deed, remember these were good ol' country Pentecostals. What happened was that, at the company picnic, after I went through the barbecue line and got loaded my plate with ribs, corn on the cob, bread, beans, potato salad, and banana pudding, I went to the drink cooler to get something to wash it all down with. I reached deep into the ice, and the first thing I pulled up with a beer (probably PBR, or Falstaff).

Now, anyone that knows me knows I don't drink alcohol (but I do have a serious Diet Coke). It's nothing religious; I just have never liked the taste of alcohol. I've tried, but it's just not worth the effort. I've never had an alcoholic beverage that comes anywhere close to being as satisfying as sweet tea or a Coke (Diet Coke, these days). So, when I pulled up the can of beer, I dropped it and went fishing until I pulled up an ice-cold can of Coke. (We didn't have Diet Coke back then, only something called "Tab," of which my then-college roommate declared "the only difference between Coke and Tab is that Tab tastes bad!").

Later that day, the old man of our crew - a man we called Phillipi - came up to me and said, "Ray, I know you're a Christian. I saw you pick up that beer, and the way you dropped it and went for a Coke told me everything I need to know."

If I had known what was coming, I might have gone back for the beer.

Phillipi was the sign painter. While billboards in those days were mostly paper, they did have some that were custom painted, and Phillipi would free hand the most amazing signs. He was the only one who didn't leave the shop during the day. While the rest of us were out on trucks, going from billboard to billboard to change signs or cut grass or do repairs, he had a stool in front of a billboard on which he'd paint whatever the customer wanted. He had a radio that played Gospel, and sang along in this high, nasally tenor voice that rang out like one of the Happy Goodmans (google it; but in their day the Happy Goodmans were Southern Gospel music).

One day, for some reason, I was in the shop when Phillipi told me to get in the truck with him. This was unusual because, as I said, Phillipi didn't leave the shop. I could tell this was important to him, so I climbed in with him and off we went, heading out across hill and dale, river and woods, to a place I had no idea about.

I said, "Philippi, where are we going?"

He said, "To cast out a demon, son."

Hmmmm, I thought. Is he serious? And if he is, do I really want to be part of this?

He said, "I want you with me, because I know you're a Christian and a God-fearing man. I want someone who can pray with me when we confront this demon."

I said, "Wait a minute. How do you know about this demon we're going to confront?"

He said, "I got a call. Bobby Tom's wife called and said Bobby Tom was sweating and screaming and cursing and thrashing around and she needs help. He's possessed by a demon."

I don't know that "Bobby Tom" was the real name, by the way. I wasn't really paying that much attention.

We got to Bobby Tom's house. His wife had left and taken the kids. Bobby Tom was indeed lying in his sweat-soaked bed, thrashing and moaning and letting out these crazy yelps and calling for Phillipi (once he realized Phillipi was there) to help him. He'd been throwing up, and the room indeed looked like something out of The Exorcist. The stench was awful; the room needed a good hosing down. All that was missing, it seemed to me, was “Tubular Bells” (the theme from The Exorcist).

Phillipi - who was a Deacon or Elder or something big in the local Pentecostal church - walked over and sat Bobby Tom up on the side of the bed, laid his hands on his head, and said, "Ray, get in the corner and start praying."

He didn't need to say it twice. As for praying - I'd been doing that ever since he said the words, "We're going to cast out a demon."

"DEMON!" yelled Phillipi, bouncing Bobby Tom up and down on the bed. "COME OUT! I ORDER YOU IN THE NAME OF JESUS! COME OUT! SPEAK TO ME, DEMON, I AIN'T AFRAID OF YOU! SPEAK TO ME AND PREPARE TO LEAVE THIS GOOD MAN!"

Meanwhile, I was in the corner, petrified, but I was praying. However, while Phillipi was praying for the Demon to speak and be recognized, I was praying, "Oh, please, Demon, if you're really in there, don't say anything! Just leave! Please don't do anything or say anything!"

I might have been working at cross-purposes with Phillipi.

Anyway, Phillipi went on like this for a while, calling out to the Demon, ordering him, demanding, bouncing poor Bobby Tom up and down on the side of the bed, slapping his hands on Bobby Tom's forehead and temple, while Bobby Tom groaned and moaned and sweated and started shivering violently, which only encouraged Phillipi even more.

"I SEE YOU SHIVERING, DEMON!" he yelled. "YOU CAN'T RESIST THE NAME OF JESUS! COME OUT! COME OUT!"

And I was in the corner silently praying, "Resist, Demon! Don't say a word! Just go away!"

This went on for what felt like a half hour but was probably ... well, maybe a half hour. Finally, Bobby Tom let out this loud groan and collapsed back on his bed. Phillipi mopped his brow and stood back, looking at him.

"Get me some water," Phillipi said.

I went to the kitchen where, in the trash can, I noticed a bag full of crushed beer cans. Dozens of them. On the corner was a case of beer, half gone. There were various empty bottles of liquor and maybe even some cheap wine scattered around the counters.

I got the water and went back to Phillipi.

"Phillipi?" I said, quietly. "You need to come see this. I think I know the Demon's name - Falstaff."

For those of you of a younger generation, Falstaff was a popular and relatively inexpensive beer of the time.

I took Phillipi into the kitchen, where he looked around. "Demon Alcohol!" he roared, nonplussed.

We went through all the cabinets looking for alcohol and loaded up everything we could find in the back of the truck. Bobby Tom was passed out on his bed, and we left him there.

"You know, Phillipi," I said. "I don't think it was a demon. I think it was the DT's (Delirium tremens)."

Phillipi pulled over on a bridge that ran over the Ocoee River and got out of the truck.

"You call it what you want," he said, as he proceeded to dump all the alcohol into the river. "It's a demon either way."

We got back to the shop, and the other guys had come back. I told them about what we'd been doing, including dumping the beer over the bridge into the Ocoee.

"Which bridge?" was the question.

There was a second run that afternoon. I didn't go on this one. But I think it had something to do with a truck parked on the side of the road, and a bunch of good ol' boys clambering down the hillside into a local river.

Sometimes, one man's demon is another man's blessing.

Or something like that.

(This was first published on God n' Me at raymelick.substack.com. I am duplicating because, what this heck - it's mine). 

Lamentations and Irritations

Maybe this happens to you.

I'm driving. I do a lot of driving. The car in front of me is slow, as if unsure of where it is going, but the road is such that I can't get around it. I get irritated.

I'm reading. I do a lot of reading. My phone rings and it breaks my concentration. I get irritated.

I'm trying to get somewhere. I do that a lot, too. But the person or people I'm going with are not ready to go because they are talking or checking something or just being slow. I get irritated.

I don't feel well. Fortunately, that doesn't happen very often. But when it does, and I can't find any relief ... I get irritated.

Now, I don't think I get irritated a lot. But I do get irritated.

The comedian Whoopi Goldberg once said, "I don't have pet peeves. I have whole kennels of irritation."

I can blame a lot of things for my irritation: that goofball driver who doesn't know where they are going; that person who calls me for some inane reason when I'm enjoying a good book; those people who are lollygagging when they should be ready to go; getting sick through no fault of my own.

But at the end of the day, being irritated is my problem.

Or maybe, it's my sin.

It comes out of my own selfishness. I'm not irritated for any noble reason, for lack of justice or righteousness or mercy being displayed to someone who needs it; I'm irritated because I'm not getting what I want, when my desires are being denied, delayed, or disrupted.

What I want to do may not be a bad thing. Certainly there is nothing wrong with travel, or reading, or being on time for an appointment, or being sick.

But, like most sin, it's not the thing that is bad, but my action (or reaction) to get what that thing is.

It's putting my own wants, desires, self - first.

Hebrews 12:1 says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us ..." We're being watched by those witnesses who exists across that great gulf between this world and the spiritual world, those folks who now have a true understanding of time and what matters. Since we're living our lives before those witnesses, we should not get hindered and entangled in things that don't really matter, and run the race that is before us not with great speed but with patience and endurance, since we don't know where the finish line is anyway or how soon we may reach it.

Proverbs 15:1 says "A gentle word turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." I wonder how many people I provoke in a given day by my irritability. I'm very aware that how I act affects other people. If I'm harsh with people in my office, they can become harsh in how they deal with the people we're here to help. If I'm rude to the person in the drive-thru window, they may take it out on the next person in line. If, while driving, I get right up on the bumper of the person who doesn't seem to know where they are going or just isn't comfortable driving fast, I may cause them anxiety then fear then anger over feeling pushed or intimidated. I know if I come home in the evening and yell my family, they learn to mimic my behavior - maybe not right then, but they will at some point down the road because I am their example.

"Love," writes the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 13, is not "rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful." In other words, we're not to live with a short fuse, demanding to be treated "fairly" (by my standards of "fair," of course). I heard someone once say, "Don't live by the Golden Rule - 'Treat others as you want to be treated.' No, live by the Platinum Rule - 'Treat others the way they deserve and want to be treated.'

I don't know about the 'Platinum Rule,' but I think there is something to what he was saying.

God gets angry. But I don't think He gets irritated.

Why do I think that? Because it seems that when God gets angry, He takes a long time to get there (Exodus 34:6 says God is slow to anger). Throughout the Old Testament, the children of Israel seem to be crying out for God to act on their behalf, but God seems to be taking his own sweet time. See, God only gets angry when it's time to get angry, when it is the last resort and his Righteousness and Justice have been ignored and even despised.

And then, when God does get angry, it's always with just the right measure. Oh, it may be devastating, but it makes His point and is rarely forgotten.

I need to be more like that. I need to summon my anger judiciously, and only when absolutely necessary and only for the absolutely right reasons. James 1:19 says we are to be "slow to anger." Ephesians 4:26 says there are times when we should be angry, but not to let that anger cause us to sin.

I read an article from a pastor named Jon Bloom who wrote, "Jesus didn’t die for our punctuality, earthly reputation, convenience, or our leisure. But he did die for souls. It is likely that the worth of the soul(s) we’re irritable with is infinitely more precious to God than the thing we desire. We must not dishonor God, whose image that person bears, by being irritable with them. There are necessary times for considered, thoughtful, measured, righteous, loving anger at priceless but sinful souls. But there is never a right time for irritability."

"Never a right time for irritability."

Clearly, this guy has never driven in my lane, or read the book I'm reading, or tried to go someplace with the people I am supposed to go places with, or ...

No. He probably has. My guess is, we all have.

I don't like to think of my irritability as sin. I like to think of it as more of an inconvenience, something that can be justified and excused because of the actions of things beyond my control.

My control.

But guess what? Most of life is beyond my control. And until I recognize whose control my life is under, I'm going to be irritated.

I have the answers, so please don't vote

We had an election yesterday in my home state of Alabama, a run-off for Senate between two candidates that were largely unpopular, but for (I believe) different reasons.

One candidate was a good person who a lot of people know and like, but he had a lot of support from "the Swamp" (as Washington DC insiders are known), and how he got into his position in the first place bothered a lot of people (he was appointed by a governor that, as attorney general, he was supposed to be investigating; a governor that, after the appointment, was forced to resign by the next AG). He also ran a very negative campaign, and believe it or not that doesn't go over well here in Alabama. We're still people who prefer you tell us what you have done and believe you can do rather than how bad the other guy is.

The other candidate was a man who had been elected to the state Supreme Court twice and been forced to step aside twice for, basically, not carrying out the rulings of the highest court in the land. This made him a hero to a lot of people, who saw a guy who was willing to 'stand up' against creeping (or galloping) liberalism. But to many others, he was seen as a guy who put himself above the law, in addition to being inarticulate when he wasn't giving a prepared speech.

In some ways, it was a lot like the last Presidential election, which for many of us came down to two unlikeable candidates with serious flaws.

So some of my friends decided their only choice was to not vote.

I appreciate their stand. They felt they couldn't, in good conscious, vote for either candidate, and I can understand that sentiment. Many of these people, in the last presidential election, took a similar approach by either not voting or writing in the name of somebody who had no chance of winning but allowed them to be at peace with their conscious.

I get that.

A lot of people in my home state apparently felt that way in this Senate run-off. Participation was low, where I heard numbers as low as 12 to 15 percent of the potential voters actually turned out to vote.

So between all the people who just didn't get motivated to get out and vote, and those who felt they couldn't vote in good conscious, that means my single vote carried the value of about 10 people (roughly 300,000 people voted out of over 3 million eligible voters). My vote had the strength of 10!

That's not exactly right, of course. Some of those 3 million voters are Democrats in this heavily Republican state, so the actual number of eligible Republican voters would be less than 3 million, but not by much (by the way, the total turnout of Democratic voters in the Democratic primary equaled less than the total number received by the leading Republican in the primary, which doesn't bode well for the Democrat in the December election).

But you can see how I, flush with power, am excited to say that at least nine of my fellow citizens have given me their ballot; maybe not actually given it to me, but abdicated their power by not showing up.

I appreciate that.

Bad candidates or not, we still are involved in a process whereby "We the People" elect our leaders. If we get bad candidates, maybe that's because so few of us actually get involved in the process, or care enough to vote. Something like fewer than 5 percent of the eligible voters in the United States have ever given to a political candidate - not that giving money is the only way to be involved, but it certainly is a pretty good sign of a person's commitment.

So by choosing to not participate, those people have given those of us who do vote power over their very lives, their laws, their rights, their citizenship.

To which I say, thank you.

I take that power willingly. If I can only get more of you to not vote, my individual power will grow to - who knows? - maybe one day I'll be the king-maker (or Governor-maker, Senator-maker, President-maker)! Maybe even one day I'll write myself in and hold all those offices together!

See, I keep participating in the system, no matter how bad it is, because it's the system we have and if I don't vote, then I'm leaving my future in the hands of people who may not have my best interest at heart. And while one simple abstention may not seem to affect much in the big picture, some day it will.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like the choices that my fellow citizens seem to be giving me either. The candidate I support seems to rarely get out of the primary; and the one I vote for in the final election, even if I simply dislike that person less than I dislike the other, very often loses.

But you can't win if you don't play the game; you can't have a say in self-governing if you're not willing to suck it up sometimes and make a tough choice.

As I told a good friend, who decided to write in a candidate for President because he couldn't in good conscious vote for either of the two major party candidates, by not voting or by voting for someone you know can't win, you are essentially allowing someone else to make the most important decision of your civic life for you.

And for that, once again I have to say, "Thank you."

Unfortunately, the person I voted for doesn't always win. But if enough of you stop voting, maybe one day soon my vote will be the only one that counts!

United by the Friendly Skies

Remember how much fun it was to come off an airplane, make that walk up the “jet way”, and find some smiling face waiting for you at the top?

I think about that every time I come off an airplane these days. It used to be that when someone went to the airport to pick you up, they parked the car, came inside, and went down to the terminal gate to wait for you to come off the plane.

Now, of course, when you go to pick someone up at the airport, it’s like going through a drive-thru at a fast food place – you drive slowly in a long line of cars, looking for the person you’re there to pick up, knowing you can’t stop unless you see them. If you don’t see them, you have to keep going, circle the airport, and come through the line again. If you do see them, you get to stop but you better be quick and get that door open for them while throwing their luggage into the trunk before airport security comes over to tell you to move along.

I used to fly a lot. Most of the time it was for work, so there was rarely anyone waiting for me at the top of the ramp at the jetway. I’d walk through the access door and see those hopeful, expectant faces look at me for the briefest of seconds, then quickly move on to see who came through the door next because I wasn’t the one they were looking for. But it was kind of fun to see all the smiling faces, hear the squeals of excitement from wives or husbands waiting to hug their loved one, the kids running to greet grandma or grandpa who were coming for a visit.

Now, of course, you just come off hoping to get the attention of an airline attendant who can tell you your connecting flight is not at the gate it says on your ticket but is now two terminals – a 10 minute train ride and 15 minute walk – away, but they’re already boarding that flight so you probably won’t make it.

Recently I came off a flight and suddenly thought, “What was the captain’s name?” Do airline pilots – captains – even introduce themselves anymore? I can remember a time when the flight always started with “this is your captain, Ted Stryker, welcoming you aboard …” or ending with “on behalf of Captain Ted Stryker and the entire Chicago-based flight crew, welcome to Orlando and thank you for flying Pan American…”

Maybe they still introduce themselves and I’ve gotten so used to it that I no longer listen.

Not that it really matters. In all the times I’ve begun to ascend into the friendly skies, I never had the speaker come on and hear “This is your captain, Ted Stryker …” and the guy next to me say, “Oh, he’s really good! I always try to fly with Captain Stryker!” It’s not like you go buy a ticket to fly and the reservation agent says, “Where are you going?” and you say, “Well, tell me what route Captain Ted Stryker is flying. I always fly with Captain Ted.”

My parents used to live across the street from a Delta airline pilot. He was a great guy, and a good neighbor. One time he asked me to deposit his paycheck because I was going to the bank. I’m not sure why he asked me to do that; I’d never ask someone to deposit my paycheck for me. Although, come to think of it, he certainly had nothing to be ashamed of. This was the 1970s, when being a pilot was still pretty glamorous, and I don’t know if he was paid weekly, twice a month, or monthly, but I do know that paycheck I deposited for him was about half to a third of what I was making in a year in my first newspaper job (of course, I started out at $150 a week).

But as a sportswriter, I flew quite a bit. And being in Atlanta at the time, I flew Delta a lot. Every time I flew, I listened for the pilot to make his introduction just in case it was my neighbor. It never was. I’m not sure what difference it would have made if it had been, although I guess I could turn to the person sitting next to me and say, “Oh, I know this guy. He’s really good. And you’ll never guess how much money he makes!”

I always thought of pilots as these real adventurous guys, the old “daring young men in their flying machines” kind of image. When you think about it, they are really just glorified cabbies. Their job is to pick you up at point A and get you to point B safely. Unlike cabbies however, you can’t say something like “there’s an extra 20 in it if you can get me there in 15 minutes!”

Pilots do what they are told. They fly at the elevation they are told to fly, and mindlessly follow the directions given them by “the tower.” You know, as in , “the tower tells us we’re No. 19 for takeoff, so settle back for a few minutes and we’ll get you airborne just as soon as it’s our turn on the run way.”

You know what I’d like? A pilot who had been a cabbie, who didn’t care about stop signs or speed limits and could dodge cars, bikes, pedestrians, garbage cans, baby carriages, and knew all the shortcuts to get you where you wanted to go.

Just once, I’d like a pilot say, “the tower tells us we’re No. 19 in line for takeoff, but you know what? To heck with them – we’re not waiting,’’ and the next thing you know he pulls out on the grass between runways and starts accelerating past all the other planes who are waiting in line, making a run for the open run way. We’d all be looking out the window, terrified at first, but then seeing all the other schmucks sitting in the long line of planes being forced to wait their turn. We’d all starting yelling, “Go, Captain Ted! Go!” And at the last minute he swerves back on the paved part of the runway at the front of the line and the next thing you know we’ve got lift off!

I mean, what are they going to do? We’re getting ready to take off into the wild blue yonder, and if he gets us to Point B on time or even early … well, that’s the kind of guy I’d want to book my next flight with, regardless of where he was going. It’s the kind of guy that when he came on and said, “This is Captain Ted Stryker…” you can bet I’d turn to the guy next to me and say, “Oh, this guy’s good. Fasten your seatbelt. You’re not going to believe what we’re about to do …”

Celtic Woman, not to be confused with Laker Girls

I am going to make a somewhat embarrassing admission here: I have this thing for Celtic Women.

I came by it honestly enough. One day I was flipping channels and came across a title on the cable guide that said “Celtic Women,” and I clicked “OK” because I thought it was going to be a show about the Boston Celtics cheerleaders; you know, like the “Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” show.

Instead I found that it’s not the NBA Celtics at all; it was PBS. And they don't pronounce "Celtic" like "Seltic" but rather "Keltic." It was a pretty over-produced concert of some kind, featuring this full orchestra led by a guy who looks like the geek sidekick to Flo on those Progressive Insurance commercials, three women singers who continually change into elaborate gowns, and this one blond woman who is equally dressed up but just shows up at random moments to run around stage, twirling and skipping and smiling, all the while playing a fiddle – except on PBS it’s called a “violin.” However, the way she plays it is like some of the guys I’ve seen in Cajun’ bands, who can play holding the fiddle at their waist, behind their heads, or even one guy I saw who got bandmates to hold him upside down while he knocked out some Doug Kershaw tune.

Here’s the thing: when I tuned into the “Celtic Woman” – despite there being at least four of them, they go by the singular title ‘woman’ rather than ‘women’ – I thought I’d tuned in for the end of the show. The song, whatever it was, sounded like a grand finale, like the third encore, and everyone was clapping and carrying on and the ladies were smiling and bowing as if whatever they’d just sung made Whitney Houston’s “Star Spangled Banner” seem like a third grade recital of “Mary Had A Little Lamb.”

Only it wasn’t the finale, or the encore, or even close to being the last song of the concert. Turns out, every song these people do is staged like it’s a grand finale. Given that I was only vaguely familiar with most of the songs they were performing – to say they were ‘singing’ doesn’t do it justice – I wasn’t sure if this was like a ‘greatest hits’ concert or this group was like a highbrow Slim Whitman (who, if you were remember the late night TV ads from the 1980s, reportedly sold more albums that Elvis Presley and the Beatles in England). But you never saw an audience so enraptured, so mesmerized, so enthralled, so old and white (except for the occasional small child – usually a little girl – that came along for a night out with grandma and grandpa while mom and dad went to the casino).

And, I have to admit, I got hooked. The staging, the drama, the costumes, the absolutely adoring way the women looked at each other every time one came on the stage as if it was Michael Jordan coming back for one last title run with the Bulls – it was shear PBS genius.

But it was PBS.

Which means, of course, that the orchestra would start up and one of the women would start to sing “Oh Danny Boy” and then a second woman would suddenly come out and the first one would look as if she were so glad to see her, then the blond fiddle player would come skipping around all of them, twirling and bowing and bowing (that’s “bowing” as in bending from the waist and “bowing” as in using a bow to play the violin; aren’t I clever?), and you’d really get caught up in the absolutely swell of orchestration as they got ready to go into the final verse when …

When suddenly these two old crones appeared on the screen, saying, “Aren’t you enjoying this performance of ‘Celtic Woman?’ Aren’t they marvelous? Wouldn’t you like to hear the rest of the song? Well, we’re about $672 dollars short of our pledge amount, so if you pull out your credit card right now and call this number, we’ll get off the screen and let you see the climactic finish of ‘Oh Danny Boy!’ Operators are standing by!’’

I have no idea what the Celtic Woman do for an actual finale or encore. I’ve always heard you don’t pay the kidnappers in a hostage situation because it only encourages them to do it again.

Now, if instead of “Celtic Woman’’ it was “Laker Girls” ….

Christmas tradition

It's the Christmas season.

My youngest son is supposed to be coming back from Tennessee, where he has gone to see a friend, with a Christmas Tree.

I'm not going to ask him where he got it.

Or how.

Getting Christmas trees is a family tradition. We have done it many different ways. Typically, especially when the kids were younger, we all went as a family to one of those Christmas Tree farms where you would drive up, they'd hand you a saw, you could walk around an look at some sad looking animals in pens - a couple cows, maybe a pig or two, and always a sad-looking deer that never had a red nose or answered to the name "Rudolph" despite what the sign might say - and then wander out in a field to find the 'perfect' tree.

Finding the perfect tree was always a challenge. I'm a terrible shopper. No matter what it is, I always feel there is a better option right around the corner. And no matter what I pay, I feel I'm getting ripped off. (Except shopping in Belk, where on certain days they practically give stuff away. You go in when they are having a sale and it's like Mrs. Russell's algebra class all over again - 60 percent off, plus another 10 percent, and if you have a coupon it's 30 more percent, and if you open a credit card you get another 25 percent off. Who can figure that out? And then you walk up to the register and somehow it comes out even cheaper then you figured. But that's another story).

Anyway, at the tree farm, I'd find a tree and everyone would agree it was fine - "fine," not perfect - and I'd say well, remember where this is and let's keep looking. Only how do you remember where a tree is in a field full of trees that are all roughly the same shape and size?

Yet once we got it home, whatever it was, it was always perfect.

Sometimes we'd go to the local tree lots, run by Boy Scouts or whomever. One year, back when the Trophy Wife and I were first married and poor, we got a tree at a local lot. Now understand, the Trophy Wife loves Christmas. Absolutely loves it. I swear there were years where she'd put a tree up on October 1st if I'd agree to it. So this year, we got this tree from a local Boy Scout lot on Thanksgiving weekend. Two weeks later, it was bare - every needle had fallen off. So she took it back and they gave her another one. two weeks later, it was bare. She took it back again. I think we got the last one on Christmas Eve.

And while that is a great story and the guys who ran that lot were extremely nice, you realize this means we had to decorate and undecorated three trees in the span of less than a month. That includes stringing and unstringing lights three times. There was a decided lack of Christmas Cheer in my heart that year - until Christmas morning when, once again, we agreed we had the 'perfect' Christmas tree.

But there are other ways to get Christmas trees.

Sometimes, you just take one. Or two. Or ...

I think the statute of limitations has run out, because I haven't been part of a Christmas tree theft in a long, long time. A long time. I mean it - a really, really long time.

But there was a time ...

Now, we didn't take them from people's homes or houses. And, unlike some other friends of mine, we didn't go out to interstate right-of-ways and cut them down when nobody was looking.

It started when I was a freshman in college. And in a fraternity. The pledge class was told that we had to provide a Christmas tree for the fraternity house. Oh, and we should get enough for a few of the sororities, too.

Now, how were we going to do that? The "brothers" didn't say. They just said we had to come up with Christmas trees.

So some of the other guys - not me, of course, because I'd never do anything illegal like that - would head off in the dead of night to find a grocery store that, during regular business hours, sold Christmas trees. But of course, 1 a.m. was not regular business hours. Only a Kroger or Piggly Wiggly didn't have the space to be taking Christmas trees inside, off the sidewalk every night at closing time. So they'd leave them outside.

Now, there was a time I had this bad habit of hearing everyone talk about what they were going to do, this or that, and I'd finally just say, "let's quit talking and do it,'' and head off. It got me in trouble one time, in a rather big way. But I don't want to talk about that.

But here's the thing. The raid wasn't particularly well thought out. Nobody had a truck, and certainly not a station wagon. This was in the days before SUV's so nobody had a rack on top of their vehicle. So a bunch of the guys - remember, now, this is hearsay, because I'd certainly never take part in something like this - piled into whatever cars they had and headed for the alley that ran alongside this particular grocery store.

Right to the end, they thought that surely the trees would be tied up or chained or something, but when they got there - lo and behold - it was like a Christmas miracle! The trees were just piled up next to the alley, waiting to be put out on display again the next morning.

You ever try to stick a six-foot Christmas tree into the backseat of a car? And do it quickly and quietly, because you were right there on what was a fairly major four lane where, even at 1 in the morning, people were likely to drive by?

Then one guy got a bright idea. He had a convertible. And if you put the top down on the convertible, you could throw four or five Christmas trees into the back seat, stack them up as high as you could, and then get someone to ride on top of them, holding them down.

Did I mention this raid wasn't particularly well thought out?

Absolutely nothing unusual about seeing a caravan of cars skedaddling down a major four land road at 1 a.m., three or four college guys jammed in the front seat, all the windows down, with green tree-tops sticking out of backseat windows. And bringing up the rear, this one convertible with a driver, two guys riding shotgun, and one guy sitting up on top of a stack of Christmas trees in the back seat, hanging on for dear life, like Peter Sellers at the end of Dr. Strangelove straddling the bomb as it falls from the sky.

And then someone realized they were all riding down this major, well-lit, much-travelled four lane, so at the next light - hey, they might have been tree thieves, but they weren't going to run a red light! - somebody yelled, "We need to split up and meet back at the fraternity house,'' so everyone turned a different direction to try to get to the same place that, by this time, wasn't but a few blocks away, on the back side of a college campus.

And we - I mean "they" - made it back.

But that wasn't enough. Full of themselves, they decided to personally deliver trees to each of the sororities. In the middle of the night. The Sisters of Phi Mu and Alpha Delta Pi and Chi Omega were appalled. But they all accepted the trees, and nobody asked where they came from.

Years later, I ran into a family that had a similar tradition. It was a large family, and on Christmas Eve the oldest boys would go out to get a Christmas tree. The mom and dad never asked where they got it from, or how they got it. But I know those boys, and they didn't buy them. I don't know if they came from the right-of-way, or an alley next to a Piggly-Wiggly, or a Home Depot parking lot.

I look back on it kind of like hunting though: We never took more than we needed, and we used every thing that we took.

Now, of course, you have these pop-up tree lots where some poor sap has to live, sleeping in a trailer on site. When my kids were little, my son once asked, "Why do they sleep here, in a trailer?" I tried my best to look all serious and say, "I don't know son. I guess they are afraid people might steal the trees if they don't watch them all night."

To which my son would say, "Who would do a thing like that?"

And I'd shrug my shoulders and say, "I don't know son. But put the top down on your mom's convertible, and how'd you like to ride home, sitting on top of this fine Douglas fir? Just don't tell your momma ..."

Nah. I'm kidding, of course.