TOPEKA, 1973

Something happened in Kansas.

We lived in a first-phase subdivision, one of the early housing developments still close in, near parks and the city infrastructure, full of ranch homes and split levels. What I remember most were the vacant lots. It didn’t make sense: mature neighborhoods with untended piles of dirt on empty lots. I didn’t think to question it then—when I was ten—but reflecting on it, I know that the lots were vacant because potential buyers had lost interest when space suddenly became available in rapidly sprawling suburbia. Why build infill among ten-year-old homes when you can be part of one fell swoop in a brand new cul de sac?

All I remember is that those vacant lots were heaven for a boy on a bike. We didn’t plan after-school activities in those days. No playdates, carpooling, or adult supervision. We just showed up on our bikes with a bucketful of mischief. It was in the lot across the street from my house that Chris Wiggins asked me if I worshiped Satan.

“You must be a Satan-worshiper if you talk like that,” he said. I had just lobbed a “Goddamn you” at Chris for side-swiping my new Schwinn Stingray. Sure, I used the Lord’s name in vain, and I was expecting a lightning bolt, or at the very least a bar of soap in my mouth, but he had just dented the chain guard and scuffed my shiny banana seat. Pissant (I learned that one from Mary Ellen on The Waltons).

“My dad says the only people that say g.d. are Satan-worshippers and Jaycees,” Chris continued.

I wasn’t even a practiced swearer. I had only learned the word the year before from a Baptist deacon’s son in Sedalia. He taught me the word as we played catch and dropped the ball on purpose. “Goddamn it,” he’d say. We’d giggle, then he’d pick it up and toss it to me. I’d drop it and repeat the deliciously forbidden profanity. There was something powerful about biting into that word. Until that night I hadn’t dreamed of using such language. But there was something strangely liberating about it. I had just recently been released from a life of serious constraint; to be able to utter the most egregious of curse words and survive was a testament to my immortality. In reality, I think I felt like God just wasn’t looking right then. Sort of like a surveillance satellite that loses contact with certain points in its orbit for a few hours at a time. This was my time.

Before we were done with our cussfest, God had returned to a position of perfect triangulation, directly over the Missouri State Fair and its surrounding neighborhoods. My hubris found me prancing and pointing at the ground, performing my curse on the errant baseball. I didn’t know the storm window was up and my mom could hear me.

It was like my transgressions had been beamed from above. She was NORAD. She was Strategic Air Command. She was on the red phone. Sitting at the table, talking with the deacon’s wife, the call came. She sat up and shot out the door faster than gunfire.

My friend was a deacon’s son. My daddy was the pastor. A Southern Baptist pastor. Satellite God was not amused.

Yessir, I tasted some Ivory that night. For real. She twisted a bar around in my piehole and sent me to bed early. Man, that soap tasted bad. It worked, though. I didn’t say that particular curse word too much after that.

Except for that day in Topeka.

So, when Chris started in on me, all the old guilt and fear started to creep in. But, there was more to it than my language. Chris’ dad was a deacon too. And there had been some trouble at the church.

It was the early 1970s, so if you looked past the mutton chops and leisure suits, you might have noticed the tail end of the Jesus Movement. Since the late '60s, teenagers and college students had been getting into Jesus as the original hippie, the righteous flower child; and "one way," with the forefinger extended, was replacing "peace" as the greeting of the day. Topeka was no San Francisco, but we had our share of Jesus Freaks.

It seemed that the entire population of Topeka Jesus People started coming to our church. I'm not sure why, but they did. They were coming to prayer groups and Bible studies at first. Then they started coming to Sunday morning worship services. They were long-haired, barefooted, and liberated from the regimen of daily bathing. The church members were excited, to say the least. You could just hear them exclaiming their joy, "This is so great. Now they will bathe, cut their hair, wear some decent clothes, and get jobs."

It didn't happen. The hippies didn't clean up and they didn't start playing along with the status quo. They did start coming to church and making a scene. My dad would be bringing it from the pulpit, and they would jump and shout, "preach it, brother!" or "right on" at strategic points in the sermon.

My dad was diggin' it, but people like Chris' dad were not. They told him to have those kids get their act together. Dad told them to shove it. Those kids were children of God, and they were a lot more real in their faith than anything he was seeing from the members who were fat and tenured. I'm not sure about all the details during that period. I just remember peeking through the door of the sanctuary when they voted to fire him.

He changed after that. There was a bitterness and an anger that entered his life that never really disappeared. He was okay, though. The hippies all left the church, with half the original members. They started a new church and asked Dad to be their pastor. He said yes. A couple of years later, when the hippies had all gotten jobs and families, they started to become the thing they had once hated, and he decided it was time to leave. Wounded and a little less hopeful, he moved on.

Thankfully, we had a mom in our home who believed in prayer. We still struggle with our demons, but her faith caused Grace to keep filling us and eventually start mending the broken parts.

But, before we left Topeka, I was sitting in a vacant lot, having just said, "Goddamn you" to Chris Wiggins. I don't know, maybe it was about the chainguard and the banana seat. Maybe I was just pissed at this kid for running into me. Or, maybe I was remembering the nights I had heard my parents crying. Maybe the weight of their pain had begun to leak into my ten-year-old heart. Maybe I had been wounded as well, and I wanted someone to pay for it.

Here's what I do know: That little prick never did fix my bike.