This is not a word-for-word excerpt but more of a summary of a chapter.

Whether or not you say “damn” when you stub your toe is trivial, even silly on the surface, but it has a complex history and even philosophical implications.

I grew up in the Bible Belt of Tennessee’s Appalachian landscape. A sociology professor at the nearby East Tennessee State University, where I got my first degree, was an expert on the snake handlers whose shouts of glory could be heard echoing down our hollers on a given Sunday morning. This professor, who was from somewhere up north in Yankee land like Maryland or Michigan, claimed that we were not just in the Bible Belt but the buckle of that belt.

Growing up in the small community of Fall Branch, we were sharply divided into two classes. It wasn’t about economic status, as it was almost monolithic, white, heterosexual, and middle-class. Yeah, there were a few impoverished families who lived on the flanks of the local mountains, but they were more of an enigmatic novelty. For example, Willy. He would occasionally walk barefoot off our local mountain now and then to buy staples or just to bullshit with the locals. Without even a radio in his small cabin, walking into town was his only contact with the rest of the cosmos, save his girlfriend, Sophronia, who lived in her own cabin on an adjacent ridge.

One of the places he would settle in town when he came to visit was the social center, my aunt Helen’s beauty shop. If Helen had a specialty, it was doing the grayish-blue hair of the older church ladies in town. She knew how to get the color tone exactly right, not punk blue, but not pure white either. More of a silver with a blueish aura. But Helen, having experienced more personal trauma in her life than anyone I knew, except for a holocaust survivor, had an incredible sense of humor. If SNL knew of her, I think they could have created a character around her.

Willy, having never darkened the doors of a school of any kind, had little input as far as his socialization; therefore, he had no filter… none. I had mentioned that I grew up with a mother without a filter, but at least she would not talk openly about her sex life in front of strangers, or in church… most of the time.

But the most exciting thing in Willy’s life was Sophronia. My aunt would egg him on, asking such questions as, “So how’s your love life going, Willy?”

“Lawd oh mydie, woo weee!” he would start in his mountain language that only the locals could understand, and quickly give play-by-play of their last sexual encounter, in graphic detail. The  blue-haired church ladies would pretend not to be listening, fumbling through the People or Look magazines, sometimes even holding them upside down, but their faces would turn crimson at points in Willy’s story, and snickers would break out when he described Sophronia’s private parts smelling like “ratten kabbage.” Even the prime and proper women, with their blue bonnets in the dryer hoods, would slowly push those hoods higher and higher to hear what Willy was saying.

But the only real class divisions in Appalachia were between those who had religion and those who didn’t. It wasn’t just any religion, the Southern Baptist religion. Having religion had clear social markers. It starts at age twelve, walking up the aisle at church, placing your hand in the preacher’s hand, and “asking Jesus to come into your heart.” Then getting baptized by immersion… Just like Jesus was baptized in the Jordan by his cousin John.

But then, to prove that the “getting saved” event had really taken hold, there had to be proof. That proof was carried in the external, observable traits of not drinking any alcohol, not even Nyquil, not smoking, unless you were a war veteran, going to church every Sunday, and not saying a list of specific words, called “swear words.”

These so-called swear words were about damning someone or bodily functions involving any orifice other than the mouth when eating. There was an additional requirement for the girls that they had to remain virgins until marriage. It was understood that God looked the other way when the saved boys had sex, because God knew, having given only boys an irresistible lust, it had to be the little tramp’s fault if a boy had caved and lost his virginity. After all, it was Eve who had eaten the forbidden fruit, wasn’t it?

There was also a higher level of rules to determine, among those who were truly saved, who the strongest Christians were. Those were the ones with perfect attendance badges for never missing Sunday school, who never even used swear substitutes such as “darn” or “sugar,” who followed a litany of Baptist doctrines, such as the Earth is only six thousand years old, church pews shouldn’t have cushions (if going to church was an act of penitence, then the suffering must be maximized), only hymns from the nineteenth century should be sung, and once really saved, always saved. So, if a preacher was caught in a whorehouse, which happened more than one would think, we would say that he was never really saved. Oh, one last requirement for the strong Christian was that, of course, the man is the master of the house, the woman belongs in the kitchen… and bedroom.

Mike