HOW WE GOT HERE

VOLUME 4

And so it went. We were Christian kids. We were good kids (for the most part). We were at church every Sunday morning and evening and every Wednesday night. If the doors were open, we were there. Darren’s dad became an elder and he was very tough on Darren. Heck, he was tough on all of us. If you spent the night at Darren’s house, you might get roped into a family Bible study around the fireplace. It wasn’t that bad though.

The McEntire household was nice. Classic 70’s. Sunken living room, brick floor, built-in desks and bookshelves. Joanne McEntire was a good cook and friendly enough, though she wouldn’t let you get away with much. The house was decorated with yard sale finds, including, but not limited to a collection of bowling trophies. This was odd, because the McEntire's didn't bowl. We (Darren and I) spent most weekends at his house (he had two twin beds in his room) playing Atari all night and doing yard work and kicking around the neighborhood during the day.

As I mentioned before, Jared lived next door, he had a trampoline, and there was another boy, Robert, who lived at the bottom of the street. His parents would later be the third and fourth people I knew to get a divorce (the first and second being my best friend, Lee Pearson’s parents, Walter and Jo). Darren and I went to church together and we were all in the same Boy Scout Troop. We were all-American goody goodies and we were bored out of our minds.

As we got older our interests turned more and more toward the worldly things we were being protected from. I remember Robert’s parents let him have a sixth grade dance in his garage. Robert’s dad hated when Lee and I got together “something always gets broken” he would say, and he made us spend the whole party at least ten feet away from each other. This backfired on him though, because we thought it was hilarious and caused twice as much destruction trying to stay apart.

I remember now that I was in charge of music so I borrowed my older brother’s 8-track player and his Ted Nugent Double Live Gonzo tape. All the sixth-graders danced as “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” played through a single 8-inch Realistic speaker. Best dance ever.

Darren’s dad wouldn’t let him come inside the garage though. He sat on his bike out on the street and watched us have a good time. He was crying, hard. Some of us came out to check on him, he said his dad had told him that he didn’t want him dancing with girls because it would cause him to lust in his heart. I wasn’t sure what lusting was, but I knew that it was odd that D.L. McEntire wouldn’t let his son go to the sixth grade dance, but he had no problem with him sitting on the street on his crappy imitation BMX bike watching all of his friends dance their way into hell.

The funny thing was that shortly after that, the McEntires got cable. Talk about lust. HBO was showing “The Best Little Whore House in Texas” what seemed like every second of every day and we had to see it. One night I was at Darren’s and he knew that “Whore House” was coming on and we were going to watch it no matter what. As it started, Darren’s dad came in. He expressed his disapproval. I was nervous. Darren just stared at the screen. D.L. tried another way to get us to turn the T.V. off. I was scared now. A Church of Christ elder was ordering us to do something and his own son was not following orders. He tried one more time to steer us clear of sin, but Darren refused to move toward the television’s dials.

D.L. suddenly gave up. Muttered something about us keeping in mind that the behavior we were about to see was unGodly or sinful, or something (it was much more eloquent when he said it). This meant two things to me 1) D.L. McEntire had watched “Best Little Whore House in Texas” and 2) I was about to watch “Best Little Whore House in Texas.”

It was a rare moment of understanding between D.L. and Darren. I guess D.L. figured we were going to find out about this stuff one way or another, and this movie starring Dolly Parton was probably a semi-harmless way to go about it. This meant two things to me 1) Even Church of Christ elders probably remember what it was like to be a young man and 2) that this Church of Christ elder was completely unaware of the stockpile of nudie mags we had amassed in his son’s three-story treehouse.