Secrets; I Tried To Keep Us Together, You Were Busy Keeping Secrets

Not Fade Away

The bass player found God under a tent at the O'Farrell County Fair, the O'Fair!, as they billed it. Exclamation point and all. It was right after the pie eating contest. They were all pecan pies, donated by the Friends of Molly Albrecht Society, the town matriarch credited with bringing the smallpox vaccine into the county in 1899, at the height of the epidemic. A big grinning man in bib overalls won the contest. The huge red and yellow striped tent was sponsored by the Reverend A. Aaron Gildey and the Evangelical Church of Brown Springs and featured Bible readings and pamphlet dispersal and personal testimonies and free funnel cakes. And hey, it was A. Aaron Gildey, the regionally famous evangelist, healer of the sick, the infirm, and the morally, physically and spiritually bankrupt denizens of the Pre-Raptured Midwest. There was foot washing and symbolic anointing in the Spirit and three teenaged girls lip synching and doing a dance routine to a prerecorded contemporary Christian pop song. Church elder Cordell Tackett and his wife Corrine led a group of fairgoers in sermon and song. One guy testified and a lady fainted. What they told the bass player was this: Jesus was the ultimate conductor, see. He composed the soundtrack to our lives and He laid down His own life so that we could make beautiful music with ours. Will you use it to create a heavenly symphony or waste it on noise and disharmony?

Although he'd always considered himself a Christian and attended church on religious holidays and most weekends when the band wasn't working or touring, something struck a chord with him in that moment when the stars were perfectly aligned and just the right combination of words and sentiment came together to transform the life of the bass player. He was born again, as they called it. Born in the capital S Spirit. He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and cried. He grabbed the top of his bald head like his skull was trying to escape. The Tacketts hugged him and wept too, welcomed him into the fold, said he didn't have to play the part of Joe B. Mauldin any longer, didn't have to wear that fool wig. Now he was -- what was your name son? -- Now he was Brother Glenn Sumpter, Born Again Christian, Disciple of God. The pie eater in the overalls, his fingers still smelling of pecans, picked up the bass player and nearly squeezed the breath out of him.

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While the bass player's conversion certainly signaled happiness and good fortune for him, it meant The Buddy Holly Experience, the tribute band honoring the memory of the late, legendary rock and roll pioneer, would be without the services of Cricket Joe B. Mauldin, bass guitar, played for the last two decades by Glenn Sumpter, who had just renounced all things worldly and non-God-honoring in the act of being born again.

Outside the elaborate tent the smell emanating from the livestock pens mingled with the aroma of cotton candy from the concessions trailer, creating something sweetly pungent in the northeast corner of the O'Farrell County Fair. Freckle-faced kids pulled their parents' arms to the lure of the cotton candy, kettle corn, hot pretzel sticks and corndogs. Men in filthy overalls and foam baseball caps lumbered over to the enclosed livestock pens to view the judging in the porcine, bovine and ovine categories. The farmers with poor posture and tractor ass from riding their fields for too long were there for the animals and to talk shop with others agriculturists. The kids wanted to see the three-legged Guernsey cow and that much hyped two-headed steer, but mostly they were bored by the livestock display and repelled by the stink. Pee-yoo-ee! They held their noses and giggled as they approached the entrance.

The line to see the two-headed steer stretched from the livestock entrance to the middle of the fairgrounds and south to the row of sixty aqua green Porta-Potties. A gentleman with an extravagant beer gut roiling beneath his green and black flannel shirt, stiff jeans, weathered boots and frayed straw hat walked the line, a kind of rural barker, bellowing out hyperbole and two-headed come-ons to entice the fairgoers to pay the extra two bucks -- a mere one fifth of a gen-u-wine American sawbuck, two score plug nickels, sixteen bits, a handful of dimes, mere pocket change -- to see this anomaly of nature, this awe-inspiring mistake of Mother Nature. See Bullseye, the Amazing Two-Headed Super Steer! Two heads are better than one! Words can't describe the Wonder and Mystery and Strange Psychic Power of this enigmatic creature! Connected physically to each other and super-psychically to you! The Chang and Eng of the zoological world! Your life will be forever changed after you see Bullseye, the Amazing Two-Headed Super Steer! People in line wrinkled up their noses and squinted. Chang and Eng?