Every summer when I was a little kid we traveled to Daytona Beach, Florida for our big family vacation. After an always late start from home, we would arrive at the glorious Summit Motor Inn well after nightfall. The next morning, our mom would take us to the beach where we swam, played, and baked (Coppertone lotion SPF 4) all day until the sun went down. When we returned to the room, our father was gone. We asked our mom, “Where’s Daddy?”
My mother took a long drag off of her Winston and drawled, “Your father’s gone to jai-alai.”
Now, if you’re not familiar with jai-alai, let me tell you that it’s a fast game played on a court with curved wicker-basket racquets strapped to the players’ wrists. In Florida, it’s a pari-mutuel betting sport, but the most important thing I need you to know is that Americans pronounce the word, “hi-lie.” So when my mama said, “Your father’s gone to jai-alai,” my five-year-old ears and brain heard, “Your father’s gone to High Life,” as sung in the commercial jingle that played during baseball games:
“Miller High Life,
the champagne
of bottled beer.”®
Therefore, I thought my dad was out doing what they showed in those commercials.
Then, I got older and realized my mistake.
Then I got older still, and I realized that I was right the first time.
But every minute of those vacations was giddy fun, especially for my sister Squiffy and me. (My eldest sister Sally had just turned 10 the summer that I was 5 and Squiffy was 6, so she was much too mature for the hijinks Squiffy and I were up to.)
Squiffy and I were feral children and we had the run of the entire motor lodge. We’d get up early to go down to breakfast in the restaurant by ourselves (we put the bill on our room), but not before we had ridden the elevator up and down a few times. We got to know the staff by name, and they knew us. But y’all, in the lobby we saw something we had never seen before: a COLOR TELEVISION! We stopped dead in our tracks, jumped up and down and squealed, and plopped down right then and there and watched Top Cat.
Even the room was an adventure. We had a balcony that overlooked the Ocean. We could jump on the beds. And we pyrooted the drawers – there were magazines with pictures of beautiful people and places to go and things to do. (This was in the good-old-days of inferior printing when you could use a pencil eraser to remove the eyeballs of the magazine people and draw in your own.) There was fancy stationery with a drawing of the motor lodge at the top (we tried to find our room), and there was a book. I pulled the book out and showed it to my mother. She was always reading, so I knew she would love this. “Look, Mama, a book.”
Squiffy recognized it. “A Bible. That’s The Bible.”
Our mother said, “Well, there it is.” I trotted over to Mama who was propped up on the bed with a different book. She took me under her arm. Squiffy came over to the bed, too. (Sally was on a towel on the floor lying very still, glistening in Solarcaine; she had sunbathed while slathered in Coppertone OIL, SPS 2 that she had fortified with iodine).
Squiffy pointed to the words on the cover of the book and said, “Holy Bible. Place…Place...du....by…”
Mama took over. “Placed by the Gideons.”
I asked, “Did Gideons put this Bible in the drawer?”
My mama said, “They sure did, Dahlin. That’s what Gideons do.”
Squiffy pointed at the emblem in the circle. “What’s that?”
Our mama said, “That’s a torch in a clay pot.”
And that’s what I came to understand. Santa Claus comes in the night to bring toys on Christmas morning; the Easter Bunny comes in the night to bring candy and eggs on Easter morning; the Tooth Fairy comes in the night to do a cash transaction for the tooth you put under your pillow; and Gideons come in the night to put Bibles in motel drawers. I imagined the tiny elf-like Gideons happily scurrying through the motor lodge hallways with Bibles aloft, lighting their way with torches in pots.
Years later while in college, I learned that my dear friend Ron Balthazor’s father was a Gideon! Imagine my disappointment when I met Mr. Balthazor only to discover that he was not an elf-like being. He was just a Methodist.
Ron’s father, Bernie Balthazor, had also worked for a bookbinding business. One night when we were visiting Ron’s folks, Bernie said, “Do you know why all Gideon Bibles are the King James Version?”
I tried to think of a scholarly theological answer delving into how the KJV drew from Switzerland’s Protestant Reformers’ Geneva Bible and its original Hebrew and Greek sources. I was taking a breath to say as much when Bernie said, “It’s free. We don’t have to fool with any copyright.”
Ron said, “Yeah. It was compiled in sixteen-ten-or-eleven-something, a comfortable amount if time to establish public domain.”
• • •
Now, just for argument’s sake, let’s say I’m a politician (defined simply as one who runs for office) and I’m behind in my campaign financing and I need to raise money to pay various settlements and legal bills. I’ve probably sold all the golden calf…*ahem,* I mean golden sneakers for the gilded feet of my political base that I can. Now, I need something else to sell, something classy and timeless. Hmmm...*snap* I GOT IT! I’ll hawk KJV Bibles with my name on ‘em! It’s a book I don’t actually have to write. And I don’t have to fool with any copyright or pay any royalties. Sweet.
And to stir up some nationalistic fervor, I’ll toss in The Declaration of Independence (public domain), The United States Constitution (public domain), and The Pledge of Allegiance (you guessed it).
• • •
Regarding The Declaration of Independence and The United States Constitution
It’s notable that the two Founding Fathers most responsible for those documents, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, were passionate proponents of the separation of religion and state.
In 1785, James Madison — known as The Father of the Constitution — wrote a treatise delivered to The Virginia General Assembly against governmental support of any religion called,
Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments.
Within that 2766-word document, Madison wrote:
“In some instances they [certain churches] have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people.”
Political tyranny. Yikes.
And below, in that same document, Madison speaks of how a state religion might squelch “that generous policy” — what I grew up calling, our good ol’ American melting pot.
“Because the proposed establishment [of a state religion] is a departure from that generous policy, which, offering an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion, promised a lustre to our country, and an accession to the number of its citizens. What a melancholy mark is the Bill [to establish a state church] of sudden degeneracy? Instead of holding forth an Asylum to the persecuted, it is itself a signal of persecution.”
As for Thomas Jefferson, the writer of The Declaration of Independence, in his Statute for Religious Freedom, he wrote,
“...that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than on our opinions in physics or geometry...”
In his autobiography, Jefferson wrote that religious freedom was
“...meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan [Muslim], the Hindoo [Hindu] and infidel of every denomination.”
SOME SAY that during Holy Week of 2024, there was seismic activity in Northern Virginia. The unusual activity had twin epicenters at Monticello and Montpelier. Obviously, it was caused by Jefferson and Madison rolling in their graves knowing that their writings were included in this newest and laziest of biblical publications.
As for the Bible itself, on the very last page, it reads,
“For I testify unto every man that heareth the
words of the prophecy of this book,
If any man shall add unto these things,
God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.”
Rev. 22:18
KJV, of course.
Andy Offutt Irwin is a humorist, songwriter, and storyteller from Covington, GA. He can be reached at andy@andyirwin.com.
