I remember when one of the letters fell off the sign out front, and it took the church a long time to fix it.

For years, the sign read CHURCH OF CHRIS .

Posted January 27, 2003 10:33 AM by Tim Frayser

Scud prayers? I mean, do we then end up with 'dirty prayers', 'smart prayers', 'nuclear prayers'? I mean, that's weird!

Posted January 27, 2003 10:52 AM by some unknown loser

(Everyone else: He's referring to a prayer that appears on the Church of Christ in Tulsa site.)

I think they're using "scud" in a loosely metaphoric sense, and that whomever wrote that knows more about prayer than about missiles. As wartime prayers go, it's pretty darn innocuous: confusion to enemy leaders, defeat for those who intend harm, and may they all miraculously awaken to the knowledge that God loves them. That's okay by me.

I liked the humility of "in God's wildest ways": an acknowledgement that if God is God, God is beyond our understanding. That's a big improvement on prayers that tacitly assume that God is an agent of American foreign policy.

Posted January 27, 2003 1:21 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

The Saints have been around for awhile (the ones in St. Paul, I mean, who play minor-league ball, not, uh, any other Saints past or present, with or without the lower-tract windlass), and they always had loyal fans.

But a few years back "real baseball"] had a strike, over, well, yes, money, this being "real baseball," and if you wanted to go see the sport practiced around here it was pretty much the Saints or the sandlot.

And a lot of people found out that they liked watching the game played that way, without the, you know, or that, or those, or the unavoidable etcetera.

And so it came to pass that those who had come in their weretchedness and desolation, and others as it may be to scoff, and some few just -for- the beer and brats, had a vision of the Kingdom, and faith as in the time of Satchel Paige returned unto them.

Selah, which is being translated, Play ball.

Posted January 27, 2003 2:11 PM by John M. Ford

"Weretchedness" sounds like an unhappy lycanthrope, or at the very least a very poorly groomed one, probably with mange. Apologies.

Posted January 27, 2003 3:30 PM by John M. Ford

I love my country, too:

1.) There is a small town near where I live that has a beautiful old graveyard with stones in it dating back to the late 1800's. There is a wrought iron fence, with gate, around it. And a street number on the gate.

2.) The Millers Mills Ice Cream Festival/Ice Festival. This is a town with a church, a grange, and a population that doubles on the day of the Ice Cream Festival.

3.) The Saranac Lake Ice Castle. The townspeople in Saranac Lake have built one of these every winter for the past 100 years. You can walk through them; and there's fireworks. They don't charge admission; people just get out and stare and laugh.

Posted January 27, 2003 4:07 PM by Cassandra P-S

The Saranac Ice Castle is really beautiful. Thanks for that.

Posted January 27, 2003 5:31 PM by Xopher

Mike, that's what the Twins get for trading Mickey Hatcher to the Dodgers. I hear it's harder to get a ticket to see the Brooklyn Cyclones play than to get into one of the city's major-league games.

Which reminds me of another piece of all-American weirdness: the annual midsummer-or-so Coney Island Mermaid Parade. It's faintly sleazy and lots of fun, which is just about right for Coney Island. You get into the parade by showing up in costume. Claire Eddy's son Benjamin has marched in it dressed as some kind of seafood.

It's a genuine piece of folk custom. Along with dressing up as marine biota, the most traditional costumes are women dressed as mermaids (with little or nothing on their upper torsos, which accounts for some of the parade's popularity), and men dressed as drowned sailors, draped in seaweed, with their faces made up to look ghastly pale.

There's something placatory about that last aspect of it, but I'll know less about it if I think about it too hard.

Posted January 28, 2003 7:26 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

CHURCH OF CHRIS reminds me, I've got a picture up in the Statesboro stereo slides on my web site of a storefront church with one of those portable signboards. At the time of the photo, it read "EW TEST ME." (It was a B ptist church.) It seemed appropriate. I guess the letters just fell off, unless someone else had a signboard and wanted to write "AN ANT" on it.

There's also a photo of mine somewhere in the Muffler Men area of Roadside America. The Muffler King on Jefferson Avenue (here in Newport News) isn't unusual in itself, but the building it's with has an ironwork grille on a side window in the shape of the Muffler King.

Posted January 29, 2003 11:30 AM by Kip

Shell gas stations used to have a slogan, "Service is our business."

I once saw one which had lost the first letter of the name and the first three letters of the slogan.

"HELL: vice is our business."

And the conspiracy-minded found evil meaning in the Proctor & Gamble seal? Why didn't they ever latch on to this?

Posted January 29, 2003 1:30 PM by Simon Shoedecker

...Also, I was at the Jazz Museum that day. Those kids cracked me up, too: "Charrrrrr-leeeeeee Parrrrr-kerrrrrrr...."

Posted January 30, 2003 11:24 PM by Tim Frayser

Ah. This entry filled me with delight, and had a soundtrack, too. Did you know about Billy Bragg's song, "England, Half English"?

http://www.billybragg.co.uk/releases/albums/england_half_english/england_half_english.html

All the way through, as I was enjoying what you wrote, I was singing,

"Le-li Umma le-li-ya, le-li Umma le-li-ya,
Le-li Umma le-li-ya, bledi gedesh aHlaali-ya
Oh my country, oh my country,
Oh my country, what a beautiful country you are."

Posted January 31, 2003 12:51 AM by Elise Matthesen

See? See? It isn't the system of government; it's the land, the people who live on it, and the way they live and the things they build. I told you so!!!

Posted February 2, 2003 7:31 PM by Alan Bostick