Get on the Road to Glory
I’m fixing to get on the road to glory.
That’s what I had to do to avoid the path to destruction. That’s what my Aunt Cleo told me back during the summer of 1951 after I had let her pet squirrel out of his cage on her back porch. The porch was screened-in, but that feisty squirrel found a hole in it right up where the handle was on the back door.
The hole wasn’t any bigger than a good sized plum, but the chattering gray rascal was slithering through it when I grabbed him by his furry tail and pulled him back in. Then he bit me on my hand and darted through that hole quicker than you could say jack-rabbit.
It wasn’t my fault that hole was in the screen door. Uncle Elmer had punched the hole in it a while back after my aunt had hooked it from the inside and then dozed off while he was hoeing out his two rows of peas in the garden.
When he wanted to come inside and get himself a glass of water the door was hooked from the inside and he had used the blade of his pocket knife to slice through the screen so he could lift up the little hook on the door. The hole had gotten bigger and bigger because she was always locking him outside and he was always poking something through it to get back in.
Aunt Cleo had found that squirrel when it was a little bitty thing and had fallen out of its nest. She had Uncle Elmer build him a cage after she nursed him along. Then she started feeding him peanut brittle candy all the time until he got big and fat. She’d make that candy just for that squirrel and never give me a bite of it.
It happened on one dull and listless Sunday afternoon when I was staying with them for a few days. I was just sitting in the swing out there on the back porch, bored with nothing to do except listen to that squirrel chatter, when I decided to see if he would come out of his cage if I opened the little door. He came out all right.
As soon as I lifted the door he hit the opening like a scalded dog, and before I knew it he was ricocheting off the screen walls, darting around like a wild thing. Try as I might, I couldn’t get close to the furry little devil, that is until he found that hole in the screen door. Try as I might, I was unable to convince Aunt Cleo that it was not my fault, but rather Uncle Elmer’s for making that hole in the door.
My aunt was a sweet woman and didn’t give me a switching, or anything like that. No, she devised a more diabolic punishment. It seems there was a tent revival going on down the road and she advised me that I was going to have to attend it with her that evening and pray to the Lord for forgiveness of my evil ways.
Uncle Elmer weaseled out of going by saying he didn’t want no part of Bible thumpers and foot-washers. Just before we left he pulled me aside and told me if they started handling snakes to crawl underneath the edge of the tent and run like the dickens.
They had a light string down the middle of the tent with several bare light bulbs lighting the inside of it. The floor was sawdust and the pews were wide boards laid on blocks of wood. They sung hymns for a while and then sure enough the preacher started washing somebody else’s feet.
When I poked Aunt Cleo to ask her what that was all about, she poked me back real hard and I knew to shut my mouth. Then that preacher started preaching real hard and got everyone so excited they were shouting out “amens” and “hallelujahs.” Some of them were even talking in unknown tongues.
I could stand all that, but when the preacher pulled that copperhead rattler out of a bag and began letting it coil all around in his hands, I got little fear-shivers all over me. He was acting like he thought that snake wouldn’t bite him, and about that time it did bite him. There was a collective gasp from the congregation when he dropped the snake and it slithered off the makeshift pulpit and plopped down on the sawdust floor.
That’s when bedlam broke out and that’s when I took Uncle Elmer’s advice and darted underneath the side of the tent.
When I got outside and saw the dirt road in the moonlight, I knew I was fixing to be running down the road to glory!