Elizabeth Emerson Hancock - Trespassers Will Be Baptized: The Unordained Memoir of a Preachers Daughter

Copyright 2008 by Elizabeth Hancock

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN

1970 Nash Notes. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203.

All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Center Street

Hachette Book Group USA

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New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.centerstreet.com.

First eBook Edition: June 2008

ISBN: 978-1-59995-141-6

For Dad, Mom, and Meg.

Preach on.

G etting this book ready for publication was a bit like pulling the lead Christmas pageant angel off the church playground, muddy and ornery, minutes before her show, and making her into something remotely praiseworthy.

To Chris Min Park and Sarah Sper, backed by the wonderful team at Center Street, who were every inch the inspirational backstage mommas for this work. Thank you for the careful grooming, the occasional hair-pulling, and for coaxing my voice out of me without breaking a smile.

To Byrd Leavell, the Job of literary agents, who is aptly named for giving me, and so many others, wings. John 20:29.

To my family, who taught me the art of trespassing and forgiveness, and without whom there are no stories. Whoever first said that there is power in the blood didnt know the half of it.

To Mr. Munson and my junior year advanced placement English class, where this memoir was first conceived as a short personal narrative, and for the teacher who showed us our own small-town experiences could have impacts of biblical proportion.

Every little angel needs a halo, but in this case that belongs to my wonderful husband, Sean. Without his ethereal patience and strength, my heart would never have made it into print.

And finally, to all those who ever trespassed against me. You may or may not know who you are, but Jesus does. Wink and Amen to that.

T his work is a point of view, recalled through the great stained glass of time and memory. Such points of view are as varied and unique as religious experiences themselves. My intent in writing this book was not to defame or devalue any person, church, or faith. Names and characteristics of individuals have been changed or composited, and certain events have been altered, compressed, and presented out of sequence to protect the integrity and privacy of the believers, and of the belief acts, portrayed in this book.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Galatians 5:2223. The legendary Fruits of the Spirit Bible verse, and the theme of three-quarters of the Vacation Bible Schools I ever attended. The Southern Baptists who raised me were not always known for being original. The same could not be said for the ways in which I learned my lessons.

I n east-central Kentucky, where I grew up, yard sales were spiritual affairs. People laid the holiest parts of their pasts on the altar: china patterns in small, paltry sets, for which incompleteness was a mark of shame (the marriage clearly hadnt lasted long enough for the set to be finished); self-help books (not deemed subversive until after theyd spent at least two weeks on the best-seller list); wine and cordial sets (reason for purging them: self-explanatory).

On the first Saturday in July 1982, when my grandmother Mimis new street held its annual Public Cleansing of the Sinful, the Embarrassing, the Tacky, and the Used-Up (officially known as the Town-Wide Community Yard Sale), Momma and Aunt Kit turned Mimis front yard into a veritable mecca of the Bluegrass. Their own daddy had passed away some ten years before, and Mimi had finally remarried. Her new husbands house was smaller, so lots of old had to pass away, for pennies on the dollar, before the new could come.

My sister, cousins, and I sat on the edge of the driveway, in awe of Momma and Kit. Wearing their signature yard sale day uniformsBermudas over bathing suits and halos of giant aluminum rollersthey gave off an aura that made piles of warped Tupperware seem magnetic. No other yard on the block was doing as much business. But it wasnt our mothers entrepreneurship that had us concerned.

All up and down the block, kids our age were cashing in on the yard sales, too. Each time a grown-up entered a driveway, she had to practically trip over a teetering, scrap-wood refreshment stand staffed by some barefoot child who looked like a pitiful, melting toad out in the sun. A pitiful, melting, moneymaking little toad. My sister and I knew we could do better.

Meg and I took a few of Mimis empty moving cartons from the garage and set to work on our own stand. We set it up right at the driveways edgealmost in the roadwhere it couldnt be missed. And sure enough, no one passing by missed a glance at what we were offering, spelled out in blood-red tempera paint:

Baptisms: 25 Cents.

And below it, in tiny print:

But if you do not have any money, it is free.

Kindness

F or a true Kentucky girl, it is possible to baptize out the sin, but not the Blue. And for that reason, no worse punishment can be devised for her than imprisonment in a televisionless guest bedroom in the middle of March Madness.

Cold-turkey withdrawal from basketball is the most cruel and unusual penance that can be inflicted upon anyone in the Bluegrass. Age doesnt matter, were all like those crack-cocaine babiesaddicted from the first jump ball. In fact, when I was a kid, Wildcat basketball was the only such addiction respectedno, encouragedby the Southern Baptist Church, where being in attendance at services was held in greater esteem than being in Gods graces. If your house burned to the ground on a Saturday, well, youd better get your rear end in the pew on Sunday morning and thank the Lord for sparing your life. Your wife died? Sorry, but youd best show up immediately and let the Womens League fuss over you, or else theyd take offense.

But if it was Sunday and the Game was on, well, that was different. God made the Wildcats, and the Wildcats glorified Him through their goal-shattering, soul-shattering play. If your church held a Kentucky Wildcat basketball playercurrent or formeron its membership roll, and you managed to secure his autographed jersey for your trophy case (typically signed with the citation to the athletes favorite Bible verse), then you had officially acquired the Holy Grail of missions tools. Who knew how many stadiumfuls of souls that jersey might draw to the Lords side?

And yet my mother refused to respect the almighty force of Kentucky Basketball. It was for that reason that I silently prayed for her soul, even as I wrote in my Bible notebook and cursed her name during that one afternoon of cruelest isolation. I was almost nine years old and I was in trouble. But more than that, I was worried. I really hoped God would forgive my mother for making me miss the game.