"Oklahoma Radio Ministry"
"This is Southwest Radio Church Ministries, broadcasting to you out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, spreading the life in the word" the old man's voice creaked. Why, it was Alvin Alda, overalled apostle of the dust bowl with his mega-wattage station that played clear from Colorado, to Texas, to Illinois every Saturday night at 8 PM sharp. The message never changed, in anti-Roosevelt fervor or fundamentalist rigidity. "The Jew Deal", it was-- "Bolshevism" pure & simple-- and ol' Alvin would swear it upon the Holy Bible as the signal fed into passive listener's radio sets.
"Now what kind of name is Roosevelt anyhow? I don't know no Roosevelt's out here, do you? He's put up there by all those 'Jew' York City bankers! Next thing you're going to tell me is that the world is round, circular-like!" Alvin Alda was also a member of the "Flat-Earth Society" and used the Bible as his sole authority on all questions.
"Why, I can whip any man to smitherweens in an intellectual battle! I'll pay $10 to anyone who can prove to me that the world isn't flat!". The reward went uncollected. . . . .
So it was, dust and waste and apocalypse on the airwaves.
"It's the tribulation", raising his index finger, "seven trumpets and seven seals!". His voice rung hollow with strong conviction in the radio booth he owned, the microphone hanging in front of his aged and fissured and vinegary face. In his mind, there were certainly signs that the end times were near. . . . . that King Jesus with his crown and flowing white robes would come riding in on a horse with his conquering armies any day now.
"America first! Stay out of all foreign wars!". The storm clouds were gathering in Europe, but Hitler had a stake in Oklahoma. Some German fellers in blue business suits bought up some land. That helped make up Alvin's mind right then and there. Hitler was no enemy of America.
Earlier, he railed against unions-- recounting the parable of the vineyards of the men who agreed to work all day for a gold coin and the same owner paying some old men a gold coin too for an hour's work.
"Don't question the Lord's blessing!" he crowed.
Yessiree, Alvin Alda knew his politics. . . . .
"What's this? Another $5000 check from a Texas cattle rancher? After that second $1000 in cash from the German-American bund? We must really be reachin' the people, hee-hee!".
Southwest Radio Church Ministries always appealed for donations, and usually got a healthy stream in small amounts. But since Roosevelt came to office, the financially-blessed ears' really began to pick up. By 1938, that's how Alvin Alda could afford the station, and his diploma mill university on the same vast acerage of land. Bible college, it was. . . . . steeped in fundamentalist theology. No Jews, foreigners, or Catholics need apply. Ditto for niggers, "the sons of Ham". Or girls, because Alvin believed that intellectual stimulation in females led to "frigidity and insanity".
Alvin Alda read his mail in the house after lunch, his wife quietly washing the dishes, then it was back to teaching biblical science to young men preparing for the ministry. He had to remove the blanket from below the door to keep the dust from billowing in. It collected on the doorsteps of everybody. . . . . pauper or holy radio preacher alike.
Through the halls of his miniscule college, where dust collected and flew like whirlwind genies as he closed the double-doors. To the science lab, meant to debunk evolutionary theory, where his students sat in starched white shirts. A few test tubes, Bunsen burners, and a friendly dog that panted in a cage. They sat ram-rod straight, as Alvin Alda went into his lecture about how man and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time, sharing the Garden of Eden together since 4004 B.C.
"Now y'see, just because the Good Book don't mention them don't mean they don't exist! There was the Brontasaurus, eatin' off the trees in the Garden, and the Tyrannasaur livin' in harmony with all the other animals, and the Peradactyl flyin' through the sky! Death only came into the world through man's sinful nature! The serpent tempted Eve, Eve tempted Adam with the fruit! It's the woman's fault!".
The students took down notes.
"That thar' 'Scopes Monkey Trial' didn't prove nothin'! That Clarence Darrow didn't fight fair! You could bet your horses, that I'da whupped that atheist lawyer to smithereens! It's absolutely impossible that a man evolved from a monkey!"
His students stared on with silent, rapt attention.
Alvin Alda was also in partnership with Dr. John Brinkley and his medical practice, whose specialty was implanting goat glands into middle-aged men for the sake of sexual rejuvenation. They had to be the right breed, lest the patient get a permanently "goaty smell". Also a self-taught gynecologist, Brinkley solved the problem of young girls' "self-abuse" by drawing the curtain shut and smearing hydochorlic acid on their private parts.
"Works wonders!".
Right before Alvin Alda was "The Question Box Hour" where the good doctor read letters sent in from all across the country by sufferers describing their ailments. He would then prescribe one of fifty patent medicines, one of which turned out to be blue dye mixed with hydrochorlic acid. He planned to run for governor someday.
Believe it or not, young people would come to Alvin Alda for advice. Outside the radio station was the
square-jawed young man who worked at the filling station, an all-American type
any feller could respect, standing tall and wholesome, and his girlfriend. He scuffed his shoe in the dirt and stared on with blue-eyed dignity while she held his arm bashfully.
"We want to get married," he explained, "but her folks don't approve. . . . . thinkin' we're too young an' all".
"Well, how old are ye?" Alvin Alda asked.
"I'm 18. She's going on 17".
"She ain't with child, is she?"
"No sir!".
"Then let the Good Lord smile on you!". The book of the lamb, all the resources providently left out there by God to be put to use, simple.
They turned around and left, beaming.
Next, a young man came slinking out from behind the corner. That was his beloved, the one that all-American youth was taking off to wed, and yet the bride-to-be never knew how the poor, shy lad felt. 17 and love-shy, feelin' that he'd be alone forever. He sought out the radio preacher for advice for his predicament.
"Nonsense!" Alvin Alda began to paint a panaroma of the World War I recruiting drives, when any fellar off the street could sign up, an outpouring of American manhood to fight the Germans and make the world safe for democracy.
You're in the army now
You're not behind the plow
You're digging a ditch
You're in the army now!
Why, fight songs such as "Over There", "We're Going to Show the Kaiser the Way to Cut up Saurkraut", "When the Yanks Yank the Germ Out of Germany, and this love song crooned in a schmaltzy tenor, "I'll Kill the Kaiser for You".This generation was soft, that was the problem. They were spoiled pulp-rotten. They didn't believe in things like they used to. . . . . like that Anglo-Saxon blood carried inherently democratic properties. They didn't have heroes, a great white hope-- a young lad standing on a mountaintop with a cape! So it was, this repository of the forgotten and the hokey and the defeated that only made the young man feel worse about himself.
On a clear, gray day the circus came to Tulsa. A bejewled elephant covered with a stars n' stripes banner lumbered forward as the parade marchers played on trombones. When a circus elephant rampaged back in the 1920's, Alvin Alda led the mob-- followed closely on the heels by 5000 curiosity-seekers--
and lynched it from a railroad derrick. The steel cable snapped the first time, but the second time "justice was served". Nor did he take kindly to horses that could tap out the square roots of numbers by tapping their hooves. A crowd of fundamentalists stoned the horse in the head, and they burned the body to exhume it of evil. It was a kangaroo kourt, Ku Klux Klan style. After the national leader was involved in a blood/sex/murder scandal of a young starlet, everyone quietly hung their sheets back up on the clothesline. Alvin Alda didn't like to talk about those days.
On the fence, was the poster for Gargantua, the world's biggest gorilla.
"That monkey looks just like a nigger!", Alvin Alda remarked.
Outside the circus tent on the fairgrounds, they were showing off the bodies of badmen shot by lawmen decades ago. The leathery remains, stuffed with sawdust, instilled a shivering fear of the law.
There was a certain raunchiness in the innocence as the circus girls did the two-step. . . . .
And for the fear of starting a panic, the ring-master didn't tell the audience that Gargantua escaped from it's cage and was loose in the community. . . . .
And Alvin Alda wouldn't figure that out until the beast was dragging it's knuckles around Southwest Radio Church Ministries' studios.
"Stop in the name of Jesus H. Christ!" Alvin crowed. Gargantua picked him up, and threw him with a crash through the window. "I'm callin' the sheriff!". But by the time the police got there, the broadcasting equipment was ruined. . . . . a triumph of pitiless evolution.
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"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
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(Rheeee of Crickets)
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("I heard that, Missy!")
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