The Cheaters

Note: By the time I was nine, or 10 years old, I could tell that hypocrisy and cheating were ubiquitous factors in the world being run by the bossiest grownups. Nonetheless, playing sports with other kids offered me an escape from that false-face realm. 

In baseball, you either hit the ball or you missed it. You were either safe, or you were out. The truth was there for all to see. At that age, for me, playing baseball was living in a dimension where the boundaries were set and understood. 

When we chose up sides, before the game, we all knew the best players would be picked first. We accepted that system. Maybe the boys who were routinely selected last weren't so crazy about that, but mostly they were glad to be playing. At that age, I lived across the road from a schoolyard baseball field with a backstop. 

At nine, it was my habit to read the sports section and funny page every morning. About that same age I started creating a series of hand-drawn, newspaper-like sports sections. I invented six teams in an imaginary baseball league, made up of cartoon animals -- monkeys, bears, dogs, etc. The home team, Animaltown, had a roster filled with characters based on the stuffed animals I had played with when I was younger. 

Sitting off by myself, on a rainy day, I acted out the animals' baseball games in my head and wrote stories about them. I kept batting averages for each of the players and drew illustrations of the action. 

However, I showed those make-believe sports sections to no one. At the time, I didn't think of any of that stuff as art, or writing, created to earn praise. It was just playing, independently, in a better world of baseball and cartoons. 

*

Frank W. Owen is on the right (1916).

When it came to sports and games in general, my grandfather, Frank W. Owen, had zero tolerance for cheating. Period. He envisioned a clear code of honor for games like baseball or poker. Not only must you never cheat, you had to always give the game your best effort until it's over. Thus, good sportsmanship was essential. 

 

Of course, when it came to the real world, of course he knew the ready supply of cheaters, chiselers and weasels has never been exhausted. The way he saw it, we can choose for ourselves to make the sports realm a better place than everyday life, honor-wise. After all, we make the rules.

  

In 1916 the fit members of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues were dispatched to Brownsville, Texas, to watch over the border and chase Mexican bandit/revolutionary Pancho Villa, who had crossed the border to stage a few raids on American soil ... or, so people said. To do the job the young Richmonders were converted into a cavalry unit. My grandfather, seen at the age of 23 in the 1916 photo, was one of those local boys in that Richmond Blues outfit.

Following that campaign, in 1917 the Blues were sent to Fort McClellan in the Alabama foothills, near the town of Anniston, for additional training. Then it was across the pond to France to finish off the Great War -- the war to end all wars.

The way I remember him, my grandfather depended completely on his own view of life. If he had doubts he hid them well. The stories I remember him telling from his years as a soldier were about his singing gigs, playing football and poker, and various other colorful adventures. He apparently saw no benefit in talking about the actual horrors he'd seen. At least I never heard such stories. 

 

My grandson's middle name is Owen. The story below about my grandfather was published in Style Weekly in 1999. 

 

The Cheaters

by F.T. Rea

Having devoted countless hours to competitive sports and games of all sorts, nothing in that realm is quite as galling to this grizzled scribbler as the cheater’s averted eye of denial, or the practiced tones of his shameless spiel.

In the middle of a pick-up basketball game, or a friendly Frisbee-golf round, too often, my barbed outspokenness over what I have perceived as deliberate cheating has ruffled feathers. The words won't stay in my mouth. I can't resist noticing a cheater in action any more than a watchful blue jay can resist dive-bombing an alley cat.

The reader might wonder about whether I'm overcompensating for dishonest aspects of myself, or if I could be dwelling on memories of feeling cheated out of something dear.

OK, fair enough, I don't deny any of that. Still, truth be told, to this day I believe a lot of it goes back to one particular afternoon's mischievous diversion, gone wrong.

A blue-collar architect with the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway for decades, my maternal grandfather, Frank Wingo Owen was a natural entertainer. Blessed with a resonant baritone/bass voice, he began singing professionally in his teens and continued performing, as a soloist and with barbershop quartets, into his mid-60s. He was comfortable in the role of an emcee. 

Shortly after his retirement, at 65, the lifelong grip on good health he had enjoyed failed; an infection he picked up during a routine hernia surgery at a VA hospital nearly killed him. It left him with no sense of touch in his extremities.

Once he got some of his strength back, he found comfort in returning to his role as umpire of the games played in his yard by the neighborhood's boys. He couldn't stand up behind home plate, anymore, but he did alright sitting in the shade of the plum tree, some 25 feet away.

This was the summer he taught me, along with a few of my friends, the fundamentals of poker. To learn the game we didn’t play for real money. Each player got so many poker chips. If his chips ran out, he became a spectator.

The poker professor said he’d never let us beat him, claiming he owed it to the game to win, if he could, which he always did. Woven throughout his lessons on betting strategy were stories about poker hands and football games from his cavalry days, serving with the Richmond Blues during World War I.

As likely as not, the stories he told would end up underlining points he saw as standards: He challenged us to expose the true coward at the heart of every bully. "Punch him in the nose," he'd chuckle, "and even if you get whipped he'll never bother you again." In team sports, the success of the team trumped all else. Moreover, withholding one’s best effort, no matter the score, was beyond the pale.

Such lazy afternoons came and went so easily that summer there was no way then, at 11, I could have appreciated how precious they would seem looking back on them. 

On the other hand, there were occasions he would make it tough on me. Especially when he spotted a boy breaking the yard's rules or playing dirty. It was more than a little embarrassing when he would wave his cane and bellow his rulings. For flagrant violations, or protesting one of his umpire calls too much, he barred the guilty boy from the yard for a day or two. 

F.W. Owen’s hard-edged opinions about fair play, and looking directly in the eye at whatever comes along, were not particularly modern. Nor were they always easy for know-it-all adolescent boys to swallow.

Predictably, the day came when a plot was hatched. We decided to see if artful subterfuge could beat him at poker just once. The conspirators practiced in secret for hours, passing cards under the table with bare feet and developing signals to ask for particular cards. Within the group, it was accepted that we wouldn't get away with it for long ... but to pull it off for a few hands would be pure fun.

Following baseball, with the post-game watermelon consumed, while the table was cleaned up I fetched the cards and chips. Then the four card sharks moved in to put the caper in play. To our amazement, the plan went off smoothly.

After hands of what we saw as sly tricks we went blatant, expecting/needing to get caught, so we could gloat over having tricked the great master. Later, as he told the boys' favorite story -- the one about a Spanish women who bit him on the arm at a train station in France -- one-eyed jacks tucked between dirty toes were being passed under the table. Then, gradually, the joy began to drain out of the adventure.

With semi-secret gestures I called the ruse off. A couple of hands were played with no shenanigans. But he ran out of chips, anyway.

Head bowed, he sighed, “Today I can’t win; you boys are just too good for me.”

Utterly dependent on his cane for balance he slowly walked into the shadows toward the back porch. It was agonizing. The game was over; we were no longer pranksters. We were cheaters.

As he carefully negotiated the steps, my last chance to save the day came and went without a syllable out of me to set the record straight. It was hard to believe that he hadn’t seen what we were doing, but my guilt burned so deeply I didn't wonder enough about that, then.

Well, my grandfather didn’t play poker with us again. He went on umpiring, and telling his salty stories afterwards over watermelon feasts. We tried playing poker the same way without him, but it just didn’t work; the value the chips had magically represented was gone. Summer was ending and the boys had outgrown poker without real money on the line.

Although I thought about that afternoon's shame many times before my grandfather died nine years later, I don't think either of us ever mentioned it. For my part, when I tried to bring it up the words always stuck in my throat.

As the years passed I grew to become as intolerant of petty cheating as F.W. Owen was in his day, maybe even more so. And, as it was for him, the blue jay has always been my favorite bird.

-- 30 --

The Night the Earth Stood Still

In December of 1999 the editor at Richmond.com, Richard Foster, asked me to do something with the much-in-the-news Y2K scare. He was happy to let me play with it. 

The gig had me filing the story a few days before New Year’s Day, to be published on January 3rd. What follows is what I came up with back in the old millennium. 

The Night the Earth Stood Still
F. T. Rea
Richmond.com
Monday, January 03, 2000

To Whom It May Concern: Greetings from the waning hours of 1999 in Richmond, Virginia, USA. And, in case it matters, on Earth.

Sitting at a table outside of Puddn'Heads Coffee House on an Indian Summer morning in November, I read a Y2K paranoia article with smug satisfaction as I consumed my daily dose of black coffee.

When I noticed a woman walk by with a mischievous Jack Russell Terrier at her side, I paused to think - who actually believed that anything significant was going to happen just because another page of the Christian calendar was about to be removed and tossed into the cosmic trash bin of time?

The woman looked a bit like Patricia Neal, which brought to mind "The Day the Earth Stood Still," the 1951 sci-fi classic that anticipated a modern society's panic from the sudden loss of all electricity.

Alas, that was only a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, when I felt so unconcerned about Y2K bugs.

Now my nonchalance about this Y2K business has evolved into something else. Tonight, sitting at my keyboard on Dec. 16, I've started to get spooked by contemplating what's actually going to go down when zillions of pulsing gizmos sense that we have crossed the border between 1999 and 2000.

While I am anything but knowledgeable about matters pertaining to computers and the Internet, the fact is I use them both all the time. Frankly, I don't like to think about a world without word processing and e-mail.

At this point, I don't even know whether my computer will be of any use to me once we cross the great divide. I've been told on some good authority, there is a chance my old 486 may just seize up.

Of course that's a practical fear. Being a writer, I'm naturally concerned about my livelihood.

What is this I'm reading? You ask.

It's days after Y2K. We all know by now that (pick one) a) the Earth has been reduced to a still-glowing fireball; or b) it was all a big bore and we'll never fall victim to mass-hysteria again.

Well, reader, you're one up on me. The real problem looming as I type these words is that I have no idea that modern civilization isn't going to melt down over this splendidly ironic glitch in the system. I'm still weeks behind you, still left to wonder if the lights really will go out at midnight, Jan. 1, 2000. Still left to wonder if it's possible that our whole deal could go down the drain.

So think of this piece as a quaint time capsule beamed into the future - January, 2000.

Despite my Y2K blues, however, I believe that this article will almost certainly appear online as scheduled. I fully expect that you are sitting in front of your monitor reading this on richmond.com.

Then the laugh will be on all the people who admitted they were preparing for all manner of catastrophe. And, I suppose to some extent that will mean me. Fine. I'll be laughing then too.

I hope.

Nonetheless as I sit here, sipping on a bitter Pale Ale, I have no trouble imagining that roving bands of thugs could be out the first night without electricity. Looters could come out of the woodwork. If our toilets won't flush, our phones don't work, and all forms of mass communication are kaput, people could wig out big time.

Then, anything from the familiar post-apocalyptic menu could happen. Yes, I admit it - I'm getting a little worried.

In fact, I'm not at all sure when, or even if, anyone is actually going to read this. It has already occurred to me that maybe the only real point to my writing these paragraphs is to keep my squirmy consciousness occupied.

For that matter, every time a wordsmith plies his trade there is some leap of faith involved: Yes, it will be published. And yes, someone will read it.

Fetching yet another perfectly chilled ale, it just struck me that, for all I know, the entire power grid has gone down hard by the time you're supposed to be reading this.

And you, my dear reader, you could be someone who has stumbled across this material decades into the future. You could be an archeologist studying the artifacts of what remains of civilization circa 1999.

Or, perhaps you are reading this less than a month into the new millennium.

You are huddled in a icy bunker. Your generator-powered PC's monitor is providing the only light for you to pry open the precious can of beans you found in a pile of rubble.

And, with good reason you are reading this little essay with one eye peeled on the only doorway. Your revolver, as always, is at your side. You still have three bullets left.

You could even be the last human being alive. On the other hand, maybe you are not human at all. You could be from ...

Maybe everything is still, frozen timelessly in place.

OK, calm down.

If that is the case, there still could be one last chance. I know it sounds silly, but try saying the following phrase aloud: "Klaatu Barada Nikto."*

How could it hurt?

"Klaatu Barada Nikto!"

From 1999, this is F. T. Rea, over and out ...

Note: *The key line from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" that commanded the all-powerful robot, Gort to switch the world's machines back on.

-- 30 -- 

BIOGRAPH TIMES: 'Rock 'n' Roll High School' (1979)

Comment by Rebus: 

To promote "Rock 'n' Roll High School" (1979), Rea used an old gimmick he borrowed from his stint in the radio business. The movie, itself, is a frothy, kids-vs-authority-figures comedy featuring The Ramones. 

Once again, Rea brought in WGOE as a promotion partner. The scheme involved high schools and signatures on petitions. The school that gathered the most signatures won the contest to be declared Richmond's Rock 'n' Roll High School by the radio station. 

The winning students who participated won a free midnight screening of the movie, just for them, on opening night. They also got Biograph/Ramones T-shirts that Rea designed (see art above), bumper stickers and some other souvenirs.   

Anyway, the smallest school in the game, Open High, won the contest, easily. 

*

The movie premiered on September 21, 1979, and ran for 15 weekends at midnight. The kids at that opening night screening had a good time.

The "Rock 'n' Roll High School" promotion happened a year or two after Joey Ramone passed out on the stairway in the Biograph's lobby. That happened during a rootin'-tootin' Halloween costume party that evolved into a Ramones performance afterparty. 

The Ramones had played live earlier that night at the VCU gym, located less than two blocks from the theater. Long-legged Joey was sprawled out on the steps in such a way that made getting past him more difficult than it ought to have been. I don't remember how many other Ramones were at the party, or not. 

But I do vaguely remember that it was one of those late parties that got a little too crowded for its own good. 

Bumper sticker designed and printed by Chuck Wrenn.  

-- 30 --

BIOGRAPH TIMES: The Birth of the Blockbuster; Or How Margot Kidder Made My Day

Comment by Rebus:

During the summer of 1975 the American movie exhibition business shifted its gears. Consequently, a new style in the strategies for creating, promoting and exhibiting feature films appeared. On June 20th, the greatest fish monster flick of all-time opened on 465 screens, coast-to-coast. 

It was Rea's fourth summertime serving as the Biograph's manager.  When “Jaws” became an unprecedented box office smash, Hollywood's era of the blockbuster was underway.   

The Birth of the Blockbuster

by F.T. Rea

Before the unprecedented success of "Jaws," it was standard practice for top of the line first run product to premiere in the most popular movie houses in a selected handful of large cities. The next day reviews written by the well-known critics for daily newspapers were published. 

It was tradition. And, among other things, it meant most of the advertising buys were made locally. So, the space for distributors' daily newspaper ads, the time for local radio spots, etc., were usually bought by local ad agencies for their theater-owning clients, or directly from the theaters. 

Then "Jaws" boldly ushered in the new era, with national ad campaigns and simultaneous opening days, coast-to-coast. Everything to do with the project to produce that film and market "Jaws" was bold. It was said the producers had the ad campaign designed before they even started shooting the movie. 

The sleeker marketing strategy for “Jaws” required enormous confidence. Its distributor, Universal, not only had to spend zillions on national advertising, it also had to strike enough prints of the film -- right off the bat -- to serve all of the theaters playing the film in simultaneous runs. That, instead of staggered runs, starting with the best markets getting the best new movies first. 

Yet, before the summer was over, "Jaws” was toppling all-time box office records and every cocaine-snorting dealmaker in LA wanted to do the same thing and create the next blockbuster -- the next money machine.  

In this time, Washington D.C. was a regional hub for film distribution. Ordinarily, a feature about to be released would be shown a few times in a small screening room downtown. Run by the National Association of Theater Owners, it probably seated about 50 people. Bookers for theater chains in the D.C. region would watch the new releases to help them weigh its potential. That way they could decide how much money should be bid, if any, for the exclusive exhibition to rights in a given market. One booker would typically represent hundreds of screens. 

*

Comment from Rebus: Security on admission to that screening room wasn't tight. Which meant any industry insider, entertainment writer, etc. might have been in the audience on a given day. In the 1970s on most weekdays at least a couple of films were screened. So, Rea watched a few movies there during his movie theater manager days. 

*

However, for "Jaws," Universal chose not to preview its monster movie at the screening room. "Jaws" was shown to theater owners, bookers and their guests in selected cinemas in maybe a dozen cities. As I remember it, those invitation-only screenings were all done on the same night, nationally. 

Maybe it was two consecutive nights. Anyway, as a treat, my bosses gave me four tickets from their allotment of tickets to the special screening of “Jaws” at the old Ontario in D.C. 

My ex, Valerie, and I were part of a full house turnout, and wow! I have to say the movie went over like gangbusters. That insiders audience made up of jaded show business people shrieked at all the appropriate times. They applauded madly as the closing credits were lighting up the screen.

Not only was I knocked out by the presentation, I came back to Richmond absolutely convinced “Jaws” would be a gold mine. It was the slickest monster movie I’d ever seen. On the way home to Richmond, I probably talked my wife's ear off about it.

The next day, still caught up in that mania, I tried to convince my bosses to borrow a lot of money to support a serious bid on “Jaws.” A bid that would call for a substantial cash advance. I wanted to bet everything we could borrow to out-bid Neighborhood Theatres for the Richmond market. Toward that end, I even convinced a Fan District branch bank manager to try to help us get the dough. 

Well, we didn’t get the money. But it was privately satisfying when “Jaws” went on to set new box office records. Records that put its director, Steven Spielberg, on the map. 

Another thing “Jaws” did that summer was to make some young men, who were occasionally too self-absorbed, feel intimidated by Spielberg’s outrageous success at such a tender age. I can still remember reading that he was younger than me. Although I had a great job for a 27-year-old movie-lover who liked to work without a lot of supervision, it offered no direct connection to filmmaking and that was starting to bother me.

At this time I had one nine-minute film and one animated sequence in a 30-second television commercial, both shot in 16mm, to my credit. The monumental success of Spielberg, 1975’s Boy Wonder, made me think for the first time about how and when I ought to leave the job at the Biograph. 

Having recently turned down a good job offer, I couldn't help but wonder if that had been a mistake. Still, for what it's worth, that bank branch manager and I shared a few laughs over how right we were about gambling on "Jaws." 

*

Fast-forward 34 years, to when I watched a BBC-produced documentary, “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood.” It's about filmmaking in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Directors and other players from that time were interviewed. Made in 2003, it was thoroughly entertaining. I saw it on Turner Classic Movies in 2009.

Among those who made comments in the documentary were Tony Bill, Karen Black, Peter Bogdanovich, Roger Corman, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, László Kovács, Kris Kristofferson, Arthur Penn and Cybill Shepherd.

In the doc, Dreyfuss, who was one of the stars of "Jaws," speaks of attending one of those pre-release screenings. He said he got caught up in the experience of seeing it for the first time in a crowded theater; there were moments when he forgot himself as the actor on the screen. 

Actress Margot Kidder, best known for her Lois Lane portrayals in the Superman series of movies, appeared on camera several times. She made a joke out of how Spielberg had begun to fib about his age, once he became famous. 

What!

Kidder had known him before his sudden notoriety, so she noticed it when he went from being older than her to being younger. Kidder claimed Spielberg was fudging his birth date by a couple of years. 

Well, flashing back on my absurd jealousy to do with Spielberg’s rise to stardom, when he was supposedly younger than me, I had to laugh out loud. Then I looked up Spielberg’s age on the Internet. He’s older than both Margot (who died in 2018) and me.

So, I searched for more on the age-change and found some old articles about “Jaws” and Spielberg. Yes, it looks like Kidder was right. Back in the ‘70s, perhaps to play up the Boy Wonder aspect of the story, Spielberg’s birth date was being massaged. Somewhere along the line, since then, it looks like it got straightened out.

The point? 

Laughing at one’s own foolishness is usually a healthy exercise. What a schlemiel I was! And when the laugh has been aging for over three decades, yes, it can be all the sweeter. 

After all, before "Jaws," or after, what's ever been more integral to Tinsel Town’s special way of projecting its image than making up harmless fibs about the backgrounds of its celebrities. Especially about their age. 

Same as it ever was. 

All rights reserved by the writer, F.T. Rea.

-- 30 --

Why be so damn obstreperous?

The Questions: Since its likely to create more opponents than members and allies, why is the MAGA cult so happy to reveal its greed and amorality? Why would opportunists hoping to expand their ranks, by pushing for political change, flaunt such repulsive traits? And, please, why must the bullies be so damn obstreperous?

The Answers: All of it hoping to cow liberals by instilling enough fear to provoke a reaction. Exhibitions of unbridled cruelty naturally prompt reactions. A desire to flee is certainly one of them. 

Moreover, when disgust eats its way past our defensive nonchalance, it seems our sense of revulsion magnifies the ambient fear that's already in the air. Obviously, as a tool, fear is a pleasure for the meanest cultists to wield. Which, of course, most of us find to be disgusting. 

Most of the time, Trumpists don't appear to believe solutions are possible. Like, it's just too late for solutions. 

Bottom line: For the MAGA crowd, it looks to me like the daily agenda is to concoct a cruel, twisted version of the truth that suits their master ... that day. 

BIOGRAPH TIMES: Fan District Softball League

Rebus (circa 2015)

Comment by Rebus:

As a little kid, Rea felt he was living in a better world when he was playing baseball or watching cartoons on television. And, it was his routine to read the sports section and the funnies every day.  

At about nine years old, Rea started creating a series of hand-drawn, newspaper-like sports sections. He invented six teams in an imaginary baseball league, made up of cartoon animals -- monkeys, bears, dogs, etc. The home team, Animaltown, had a roster filled with characters based on the stuffed animals he had played with when he was younger. 

Rea acted out the animals' baseball games in his head and wrote stories about the highlights, pretending to be a sportswriter. He kept batting averages for the players. And, he drew illustrations of the action, but he showed those make-believe sports sections to no one. 

At the time, Rea didn't think of any of that material as art or writing to show off to earn praise. It was just playing in his pretend world.

At 11, Rea played outfield on a Little League team sponsored by a drug store. Then, at 12, he was a pitcher/outfielder on his elementary school's team. In both cases, at home after the games he made drawings of key plays.     

Following the Beatles appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964, at 16, Rea drew caricatures of the band performing and cartoonish portraits of the Fab Four. He claims girls at Thomas Jefferson High School lined up in the cafeteria during lunchtime to watch him draw them. Then they bought the sketches for a dollar each. That episode was when he started signing his at artwork. 

Fan District Softball League

by F.T. Rea

The Fan District Softball League had its own style. It was referred to as the “hippie league” by softball players who played in the area's polyester-clad softball realm governed by recreation and parks departments. The FDSL leaned toward cotton, silk-screened T-shirts and its games were staged on schoolyards with open fields. That, rather than in charmless softball complexes with fenced-in fields. 

Among other things that meant the Fan League's throwback style of play put more emphasis on defense. Which meant its games were not simply home-run derbies, with beer-bellied Bubbas jogging around the base-paths. Softball was quite popular in the metro Richmond area in the 1970s, '80s and into the '90s. 

The decidedly unorthodox Fan District Softball League bubbled up out of the pop culture ooze of the summer of 1973, which was the heyday of WGOE's popularity. WGOE was the daytime AM radio station that dominated the Fan District in a way that's never been equaled. 

In the early-to-mid-1970s WGOE's sound could be heard in the shops and on the sidewalks of the bohemian commercial strip of West Grace Street, adjacent to Virginia Commonwealth University. In this time WGOE-AM set in motion what eventually became the Fan League. That happened when its promotional softball team of DJs and a few ringers -- the ‘Nads -- played a few games against impromptu squads that represented a few regular advertisers on the station.

By the next summer, teams began to jell into rosters, but there still was no formal schedule. And ball fields were still being commandeered, rather than secured by arrangement with any proper authority.

In 1975 the name, Fan District Softball League, came into use and the six-team organization had its first commissioner — Van “Hook” Shepherd. The team representing Cassell’s Upholstery beat the Bamboo Cafe in a one-game playoff for the first season’s championship finale. The four other teams in the league that inaugural season were the Back Door, Sea Dream Leather, Uptop Sub Shop and WGOE.

In 1976, in addition to the regular season the league staged two tournaments. Teams representing the Biograph Theatre, deTreville, Hababa's, J.W. Rayle, the Pinheads (the VCU sculpture department and friends) and the Rainbow Inn were formed in that year. 

During the first six or seven years of the league’s existence, next to the burgeoning music and bar scene softball-related activities were at the heart of the baby boomer-driven social life in the Fan District. As the years wore on more teams sponsored by bars, and whatnot, came along. Each team was like its own little fiefdom. 

*

That first summer of organized softball at the Biograph we called our team the Swordfish, after a joke in a Marx Brothers movie. That season the Swordfish played a schedule that was not set in advance. Instead, our practice was to challenge established teams to play us with a keg of beer on the line. Of course, the keg was already on hand during the games. The losing team had to pay for the beer. Most of our opponents were Fan League teams. 

The lucky Swordfish won 15 games of the 17 we played with umpires that initial season. (We played a handful of practice games, no umps or kegs, but I don't know what the record was for them.) We only had a few experienced softball players on our roster, made up of theater employees, old friends and a few film buffs. We also had two French guys on the team who'd never seen a baseball or softball game.  

Typically, our opponents saw themselves as more experienced/athletically superior, which only made it more fun when they bumbled their way into handing us the victory. That first year, it was uncanny how often those supposedly better teams seemed willing to overplay their hands and lose to a Biograph team they saw as clownish. 

Now, having played and observed a lot of organized softball, I know that virgin Swordfish squad was absolutely charmed. In any sport, it was the loosest organized team with which I’ve ever been associated. Both of the Swordfish’s 1976 losses came in unusual situations. The first was the championship game of one of the two tournaments we entered. Yes, we won the other one.

The second was played inside the walls of the old state penitentiary. Located at Belvidere and Spring Streets, the fortress prison loomed over the rocky falls of the James River for nearly 200 years (it was demolished in the early-1990s).

As it happened, the guy in charge of recreation at the pen frequented J.W. Rayle, a popular bar of the era, located at Pine and Cary. During a conversation there he asked me if the Biograph team — I played outfield and served as the coach — would consider taking on the prison’s softball team on a Saturday afternoon. My friend, Chuck Wrenn, the bar manager at Rayle, had already told the guy the restaurant's team would do it. So I went along with it, too.

As it turned out, the first date the prison's recreation guy set up was canceled, due to something about a small riot.

OK.

A couple of weeks later the Swordfish entered the Big House wearing our baby-blue Biograph T-shirts with images of Groucho Marx and Carmen Miranda printed on them. To get into the prison yard we had to go through a process, which included a cursory search. We had been told to bring nothing in our pockets.

As we worked our way through the ancient passageways, sets of bars were unlocked and then locked behind us. Each of us got a stamp on our hands that could only be seen under a special light. Someone asked what would happen if the ink got wiped off, inadvertently, during the game. He was told that was not a good idea.

OK.

Rayle played the prison team first, then the Biograph. The umpire for the games came in with us. He was Dennis “Dr. Death” Johnson, a rather high-profile Fan District character, at the time, who played on yet another of the league's teams. Among other things, Johnson did some professional wrestling, so he was adept at hamming up the umpire's role.

The fence in left field was the same high brick wall that ran along Belvidere Street. It was only about 230 to 240 feet from home plate. Because of its height, maybe 30 feet, hard-hit balls frequently caromed off of it. What would have been a routine fly ball to left on most fields was a home run there. It was like a red brick version of Fenway Park’s Green Monster.

The prison team, known as the Raiders, was quite good at launching softballs over that towering brick wall. They appeared to have an unlimited budget for softballs, too. Under the supervision of watchful guards, some 60 or 70 prisoners sat in stands to pull for  the home team. Actually, they cheered the loudest for good plays in the field and flying dirt collisions on the base paths.

During a conversation with a couple of my teammates behind the backstop, I referred to our opponents as the "prisoners.” Their coach, who was within earshot, immediately stepped toward me. Like his teammates, he was wearing a red and gray softball uniform, typical of that era, with “Raiders” printed across the chest in a script.

“Call us the Raiders,” he advised, somewhat sternly, as he pointed to an awkward-looking mural on the high wall that said, “Home of the Raiders.” It looked like a creepy jailhouse tattoo, blown up large.

OK.  

“While we are on this ballfield, we’re not the prisoners,” he said with, ahem, conviction. “We’re the Raiders.”

“Yes, Raiders,” I said, acknowledging my faux pas with a friendly tone. 

“And, all our games ... are home games,” he deadpanned.

We all laughed, grateful the tension had been broken. The Raiders coach slapped me on the back and thanked us for being there, for agreeing to play the game. Apparently it wasn't easy for them to round up Saturday afternoon opponents. 

In a tight, high-scoring affair the Raiders prevailed. Afterward, I was glad the Swordfish had met the Raiders. And, I was glad to leave them, too. Located smack dab in the middle of Richmond that prison was a perpetual nightmarish sight in Richmonders' collective periphery. 

In terms of winning and losing, the Biograph teams that played in the FDSL through its last season never found anything close to the success that first year's team knew. Still, popups and bad hops aside, I'll wager most of the guys on that original 1976 roster remember more little details about our meeting with the Raiders than any of the games we won or lost at Chandler Ballfield, the home of the FDSL for 18 (1977-'94) years.

The freewheeling FDSL was also the only organized-yet-independent softball league in the Richmond area.  Thus, the Fan League governed itself, made its own schedule and rules, cut its own deal with the umpires, etc. It remained so through its last season. 

Unlike most softball leagues in the 1970s, the FDSL usually had lots of fans on hand at its games. Of course, those kegs of beer that were around — which meant free beer — probably had something to do with that. 

That independence also meant the league received way less scrutiny by authorities outside of itself. Which, no doubt, was a good thing. 

*

Comment by Rebus:

  FDSL Commissioners Rea and Wrenn (1977) 

In 1977, Rea became one of three commissioners of the FDSL, along with Chuck Wrenn (of J.W. Rayle)and Durwood Usry (of the Back Door Bombers). In that role, Rea published a newsletter for the league he called The Sports Fan; the name was suggested by John Richardson, of Back Door and Big Daddy's BBQ fame. 

 

Rea wrote the stories about the league's games and activities He also drew cartoon illustrations and even sold ads. The publication, itself, looked more or less like an underground comic book from the late-1960s.

*

Every year since 1980, on the first Saturday of May, a Biograph softball reunion has been held (except for 2020, due to COVID 19). Anyone who ever played on one of the Biograph softball teams has been welcome, families, friends, etc., included.

Serendipitously, that first reunion/old timers game in 1980 was staged on the afternoon in which the Kentucky Derby was run. The special game was played at Thomas Jefferson HS. Afterward, some of the players went to the Chris Liles' Track Restaurant, to join a Derby-watching party already underway.

The reunion subsequently became an institution and it’s been Derby Day ever since. Over the years, the game has moved around to various locations. 

Then the old timers got too old to play a game, so they just gathered and partied on Derby Day, anyway. Of course, the fabulous Track Restaurant is long gone.  

*

In 1978 the league expanded to 12 teams. That's the year the FDSL began throwing a party draped around its All-Star Game, in the middle of each season. Each mid-summer the stars of the Mars Division played the stars of the Jupiter Division. As I remember it, perennial all-star, Buddy Noble, came up with the notion of using planets for the names of the two six-team divisions.

The method for selecting the all-stars varied with the year. Occasionally votes decided the issue. Sometimes there were caucuses of the circuit's bossiest guys; the best teams always put more men on those squads. Other times, each manger just named three players from his team. No matter how it was done, popularity, or the lack of it, influenced the results. 

In 1980, blonde bombshell Donna Parker and the aforementioned Dennis Johnson made a memorable appearance at the All-Star Game at Chandler Ballfield. The ever-outrageous Johnson was wearing his wrestling costume, which included a mask. Donna was outfitted in a black leather bikini. Johnson left town soon afterward.

In 1982, the Bamboo Cafe went through the regular season undefeated, 33-0, but lost to its bitter rival, Hababa's, in the finals of the playoffs. Throughout the decade of the '80s one of those two outfits won the post-season playoffs every time.  

For several years during the ‘80s the all-star exhibition/party was staged at the Columbian Center in Henrico County. That era had the largest turnouts for the annual event, as between 200 and 250 people paid five bucks each to attend. The beer was free and the food was plentiful.

 In the foreground: Artie Probst, Fitz Marston 

and Paul Sobel at the 1985 All-Star Game at 

the Columbian Center.  

One particularly hot day for the party, according to the Budweiser truck guy, the attendees went through 22 kegs of beer. Figuring 200 beer drinkers, do the math.

For music, a couple of years Chuck Wrenn DJ-ed the parties. The softball games were played on what was a field always in rough shape -- rocks in the infield and overgrown clumps of weeds in the outfield. We enforced a rule against sliding on the base paths, to prevent injuries. The late Pudy Stallard was once called out, when, out of habit, he slid into second to beat a throw from the outfield.   

In 1987 and ’88 the food contest was at the center of festivities. Each team put out a spread to share and the consumers voted for the best of them. Some teams went to great lengths to coordinate their overall entry, others simply had people bring out covered dishes and whatnot.

The most talked about of all the efforts was the 3rd Street Diner’s 100 pound hamburger in ‘88. The beef was packed into a giant patty at The Diner. It was hauled around with great care, so as not to break it apart. The huge bun was put together at the Tobacco Company and baked in one of its large ovens.

Cooking the burger on an open grill at the picnic site turned out to be the best part of the ordeal. There must have been 20 experts and assistant experts standing around that grill, opining on how to go about doing the job. The burger itself was a good ten inches thick at the center. 

The flipping of the thing, to cook it all the way through -- without having it fall to pieces -- turned out to be quite an engineering feat. After all the kibitzing, it was done without mishap, much to the delight of one and all. A spontaneous celebration ensued. 

*

The FDSL also established its Hall of Fame in 1986. The first class was elected by the 12-team outfit’s designated franchise representatives. To be eligible then one had to have retired from play and considered to be among the league's founders. Ten names were tapped for the first class of Hall-of-Famers. The same rule held true in 1987, when six new names were put on the plaque. 

However, by 1988, a few of those who had been inducted into the Hall of Fame had un-retired ... more power to them. So, that year, eligibility to the Hall was opened up to anyone who seemed deserving. Those already in the HoF got to vote, as well. Nine new members were selected. 

The meetings to select new inductees were always quite lively, as were most FDSL meetings. The voting process was probably no more twisted than any hall of fame’s way of choosing new names and not choosing other names.

For 1989 six additional names were picked. The class of ‘90 added seven new names, and in ‘92 the last five names were tacked on. In all, 41 players and two umpires were selected. As for what bias may have existed, well, the list does appear to tilt somewhat in favor of guys who made significant contributions to the league's lore in its early years.

Those men who were inducted into the FDSL’s Hall from 1986 through 1992 are as follows: Ricardo Adams, Herbie Atkinson, Howard Awad, Boogie Bailey, Yogi Bair, Jay Barrows, Otto Brauer, Ernie Brooks, Hank Brown, Bobby Cassell, Jack Colan, Willie Collins, Dickie deTreville, Jack deTreville, Henry Ford, Danny Gammon, Donald Greshham, James Jackson, Dennis Johnson, Mike Kittle, Leo Koury, Jim Letizia, Junie Loving, Tony Martin, Kenny Meyer, Cliff Mowells, Buddy Noble, Randy Noble, Henry Pollard, Artie Probst, Terry Rea, John Richardson, Jerry Robinson, Larry Rohr, Billy Snead, Jim Story, Hook Shepherd, Pudy Stallard, Durwood Usry, Jumpy White, Barry Winn, Chuck Wrenn.

 

We have to assume all of them deserved it. One thing is for sure: If you put all 43 of them in the open grassy field across Woodrow Street from the ballfield -- no-man's-land -- let's say in June of 1980 or '81, at twilight, as your time machine floats in toward it, the sound you'd hear would be laughter. 

*

Comment by Rebus:

As an organization, the Fan District Softball League lasted 20 years, which was a wonder in itself. There are plenty of true stories from those years that are almost unbelievable.

-- 30 --

Blood Isn’t Just Red

Each time we ask basically the same questions: Did the mayhem stem from a humiliating rejection? Why is it almost always a young white male? Was it television or video games that made an already disturbed man into a crazy shooter? The Internet? What role did his family life play in bending his mind? Were there some words of celebrities also rattling around in the shooter's head? Did a dog tell him to do it?

Sorry, I can't offer a conclusive answer. But pretending that people do things, even strange things, for a single reason doesn't usually get us closer to the truth. Searching for an overriding motive for spraying bullets into a schoolroom or a movie theater -- some clue to make sense of it -- doesn't usually lead to any sort of satisfaction. Yet, to ease our pain we always look, anyway.

We will never really understand how someone could do such a thing. But our common sense tells us there's something in America's culture that has been contributing to these massacres. Certainly, the availability of the rapid-fire weapons facilitates the slaughter. Still, what else combines with that factor and should also be seen as a common denominator? 

The piece that follows was published by the Richmond Times-Dispatch on its May 1, 1999 OpEd Page (thanks to the OpEd editor at that time, Robert G. Holland). The point the piece makes about the long-term effects of repeated images on television still seems apt to me, because the lesson about the power of repetition I learned at WRNL, 52 years ago, is surely as true as ever.

Blood Isn’t Just Red
by F.T. Rea

Television has dominated the American cultural landscape for the past 50 years. A boon to modern life in many ways, television is nonetheless transmitting an endless stream of cruel and bloody images into everyone’s head.

However, if you’re still waiting for absolute proof that a steady diet of video violence can be harmful to the viewer, forget it. We’ll all be dead before such a thing can be proven. This is a common sense call that can and should be made without benefit of dueling experts. Short of blinding denial, any serious person can see that the influence television has on young minds is among the factors playing a role in the crime statistics.

How significant that role has been/is can be debated.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m as dedicated to protecting freedom of speech as the next guy. So perish the thought that I’m calling for the government to regulate violence on television. It’s not a matter of preventing a particular scene, or act, from being aired. The problem is that the flow of virtual mayhem is constant.

Eventually splattered blood becomes ambient: just another option for the art director.

My angle here is that in the marketplace of ideas, the repeated image has a decided advantage. The significance of repetition in advertising was taught to me over 25 years ago by a man named Lee Jackoway. He was a master salesman, veteran broadcaster, and my boss at WRNL-AM. And, like many in the advertising business, he enjoyed holding court and telling war stories.

He had found me struggling with the writing of some copy for a radio commercial. At the time he asked me a few questions and let it go. But later, in front of a group of salesmen and disc jockeys, Jackoway explained to his audience what I was doing was wrong. Basically, he said that instead of stretching to write good copy, the real effort should be focused on selling the client more time, so the ad spot would get additional exposure.

Essentially, Jackoway told us to forget about trying to be the next Stan Freeberg. Forget about cute copy and far-flung schemes. What matters is results. If you know the target audience and you have the right vehicle to reach it, then all you have to do is saturate that audience. If you hit that target often enough, the results are money in the bank.

Jackoway told us most of the large money spent on production went to satisfying the ego of the client, or to promoting the ad agency’s creativity. While he might have oversimplified the way ad biz works to make his point, my experience with media has brought me to the same bottom line: When all else fails, saturation works.

Take it from me, dear reader, it doesn’t matter how much you think you’re ignoring the commercials that are beamed your way; more often than not repetition bores the message into your head. Ask the average self-absorbed consumer why he chooses a particular motor oil or breakfast cereal, and chances are he’ll claim the thousands of commercials he paid no heed had nothing to do with his choices.

Meanwhile, good old Lee Jackoway knows that same chump is pouring Pennzoil on his Frosted Flakes because he has been influenced by aggressive advertising all day long, every day.

OK, if repetition works so well in television’s advertising, why would repetition fail to sell whatever messages stem from the rest of its fare? When you consider all the murders, all the rapes, all the malevolence that television dishes out 24 hours a day, it adds up. It has to.

What to do?

I have to believe that if the sponsors of the worst, most pointless violent programs felt the sting of a boycott from time to time, they would react. Check your history; boycotts work.

It’s not as though advertisers are intrinsically evil. No, they are merely trying to reach their target audience as cheaply as possible. The company that produces a commercial has no real interest in pickling your child’s brain with violence; it just wants to reach the kid with a promotional message.

If enough consumers eschew worthless programs and stop buying the products that sponsor them, the advertiser will change its strategy. It really is that simple.

As we all know: A day passes whether anything is accomplished or not. Well, parents, a childhood passes, too, whether anything of value is learned or not.

Maybe television is blocking your child off from a lesson that needs to be learned firsthand -- in the real world where blood isn’t just red, it’s wet.

-- 30 -- 

To be a Republican

To be a Republican in 2023, one must hold, or at least be willing to countenance, some sicko beliefs that were clearly beyond the pale not long ago.    

For instance, when I first read about Holocaust deniers, my first thought was that they were pathetically ignorant, or simply fools. It didn't occur to me they were anti-Semitic extremists following a plan to rewrite history. 

To be a Republican history rewriter in good standing one must claim to believe that it's best to ban books that present text and images that accurately portray American history, to do with slavery, the Civil War, the Jim Crow Era, the Civil Rights Era, etc. One must also say they truly believe the Capitol insurrection riot on January 6, 2021, was a peaceful protest demonstration protected by the First Amendment.  

Now there seems to be so many of Holocaust deniers and insurrection deniers that calling their twisted views "extreme" suggests the speaker just doesn't know how widespread such thinking is nowadays. In today's Republican circles, it now seems that openly hating Jews is easily shrugged off by the party's leaders. And, misogyny, in general, is openly flaunted. 

Speaking of shrugging off, to be a modern Republican one must be willing to turn a blind eye on all the mass murder episodes that have become part of our way of life. So, one must pretend that catering to the desires of self-absorbed people with gun fetishes is part of "freedom." 

Moreover, when the truth, according to the current version of the GOP, is simply whatever the hell Donald Trump says it is, well, that pretty much says it all. 

Bottom line: Yes, cruelty is the thread that connects all the dots. 

-- 30 --

'Beware of False Prophets'

One way or another, the Supreme Court is much in the news these days. And speaking of the highest court in the land, I'm guessing most opinion writers have not had their work become connected to a case before The Court with weirder circumstances swirling around it than those associated with a 2010 OpEd piece I penned. It was about a tricky freedom of speech case. 

In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected the Westboro Baptist Church demonstrators in what was known as the "Snyder Case." Soon after the decision was published I learned from a couple of friends that a particular column of mine had been used to support the argument advanced by the attorneys representing the Westboro crazies. 

Yikes! 

Hey, in 2010, when I wrote "How Free Are We to Express Hate?" for Richmond.com, it never occurred to me that down the road it would be converted into a tool for the Westboro sickos. In addition to protecting the First Amendment, one of my aims in writing the piece had been to put the Phelps cult in exactly the sort of bad light it deserved. Nonetheless, they brushed aside my "warmed-over Ku Klux Klan language" characterization of their lingo -- to find a nugget they saw as useful. 

OK, see what you think; here's the aforementioned 2010 piece I'm talking about:

"How Free Are We to Express Hate?" by F.T. Rea

The Westboro Baptist Church stretches the word “church” into a shape that boggles the mind. It is best known for force-feeding its messages about hate into situations in which they are particularly offensive. According to the Westboro gospel, the list of people that God hates includes Jews, Catholics, Muslims, atheists and gays.

In 1955 Westboro’s founder was Fred W. Phelps; at this writing he is still the pastor of the independent church based in Topeka, Kansas. According to reports most of the church’s 70-or-so members are related to Phelps.

Members of Westboro‘s congregation were in Richmond on Mar. 2, carrying their distinctive signs about God’s hates. Since then Westboro has been in local news stories, because Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli decided against supporting a lawsuit against Westboro that was filed in Maryland by Albert Snyder.

In 2006 Snyder’s son was killed in Iraq. A Westboro contingent armed with fire and brimstone placards demonstrated outside the church at the funeral. Snyder sued Phelps for invading his privacy. Snyder prevailed and was awarded $5 million for the emotional distress he had endured.

In 2009 the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond reversed the decision, saying it violated the First Amendment’s freedom of speech protections. Furthermore, it ordered Snyder to pay Westboro’s court costs of more than $16,000. In October the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Snyder’s appeal.

Cuccinelli apparently agrees with the 4th Circuit’s decision, his office cited a concern about curtailing “valid exercises of free speech,” as its reason for choosing to make Virginia just one of two states not to file a supporting amicus brief.

Westboro grabbed the national spotlight in 1998 when some of its members appeared at the Wyoming funeral of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old man who had been brutally murdered. The Phelps contingent brandished signs announcing that because he was gay Shepard was burning in hell.

Since then Westboro has routinely targeted military funerals, to inform grieving families that their lost loved one deserves an eternity in hell. Why? Because the deceased had died serving a nation that enables homosexuality.

When the Westboro group came to Richmond three months ago, Hermitage High School, the Virginia Holocaust Museum and the Weinstein Jewish Community Center were among its targets. At each location four people stood on the sidewalk holding up signs with messages in block lettering that said “God Hates the USA” and “God Hates Jews.” Their pre-announced appearances generated sizable counter-demonstrations, so they got the full treatment from the media -- top of the news.

The Phelps technique, while outrageous, has been seen before in Richmond. In August of 1998 an anti-abortion/pro-life group of about 50 people staged a demonstration on Monument Ave.

The occasion was the funeral of Associate Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church. The demonstrators set themselves up on the grassy, tree-lined median strip in front of the church. Dozens of uniformed police officers were there to keep the peace.

Inside the church Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist delivered the eulogy, “…[Powell] was the very embodiment of judicial temperament; receptive to the ideas of his colleagues, fair to the parties to the case, but ultimately relying on his own seasoned judgment.”

Outside the church the eager TV crews had their cameras and microphones ready. The news-makers held up giant oozing fetus placards and posters citing Powell as a “murderer.” When Powell’s family, friends and Supreme Court colleagues came outside, following the service, they had no choice but to notice the demonstration before them. Lenses zoomed in to focus on their stunned reactions.

It’s difficult to imagine the demonstrators at Powell’s funeral changed any minds on the abortion issue by creating such a spectacle in the middle of the street. It didn’t seem they were there to persuade. It did seem they were there to punish Powell’s family and friends, because the sign-waving zealots still hated Powell for his Roe vs. Wade vote in 1973.

As disturbing as that demonstration on Monument Ave. was, it was also an example of American citizens standing on public property, exercising their right to speak their minds about matters political. Such expressions are usually protected.

However, Snyder has claimed that when he was attending his son’s funeral he was a captive audience, so he couldn’t just choose to ignore the Westboro signs.

Whether the Supreme Court will reverse the 4th Circuit’s decision on that basis remains to be seen. No doubt, it was good politics for attorneys general in those other 48 states to take Snyder’s side. Still, freedom of speech rights aren’t needed to shield popular speech. They never were. And, however designed-to-injure Phelps warmed-over Ku Klux Klan language may have seemed -- in the name of religious speech -- it was definitely political speech.

If the Supremes buy Snyder’s captive-audience argument, it seems that would open the door to laws prohibiting all sorts of demonstrations in public, because particular people couldn’t easily opt out of being subjected to them. So his lawyers may have a tough job on their hands.

If the 4th Circuit’s decision that threw out the damages on free speech grounds is upheld at the highest level, Cuccinelli is going to suddenly look smarter than the AGs in those other 48 states. Such a decision would suggest Cuccinelli wisely avoided jumping on what was an easy bandwagon … just to strike a pose.

*

Note: On March 2, 2011 the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the First Amendment protected the Westboro demonstrators' disgusting behavior in the Snyder case. Although the decision was widely panned, it didn't surprise me much.

In the Snyder Decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote about the signs the Westboro demonstrators carried:

While these messages may fall short of refined social or political commentary, the issues they highlight -- the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, the fate of our Nation, homosexuality in the military and scandals involving the Catholic clergy -- are matters of public import…

Among the papers Roberts and his colleagues had to consider were copies of the piece you just read. In the brief for respondent Fred W. Phelps, et al, on Page 4 there’s a footnote that cites “How Free Are We to Express Hate?”. 

Ha!

When I found out from two friends about my humble essay being in the footnote I was as surprised as it gets. Then I was delighted, because it amused me to no end that the Westboro defense team had to suck up everything else I had written about them, in order to use the part they wanted the justices to see -- the account of Justice Powell’s funeral.

In July of 2010, when I posted the unusual news at SLANTblog, about my piece being cited in the Westboro brief, Shirley Phelps-Roper -- Fred Phelps’ daughter and the Westboro lead attorney -- promptly commented under my post:

It's too bad you are compelled to work so hard to distance yourself from the Word of God! This generation hates God's commandments and will NOT have that man Christ Jesus to rule over them. You are so afraid to be aligned with anything close to God that you make a fool of yourself with all your multiplying of words. How sad.

‘Mark 8:38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

BTW, you should have done your OpEd piece as if you were speaking those words to God! ALL you do should be as if you are doing it unto God, because rebel, you are.

Here’s what I posted as my answer to her comments:

Thanks for the advice. And, I have a Bible saying for you:

Matthew 7:15: ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.’

A dozen years later and Ms Phelps-Roper still hasn't thanked me for writing the piece she used to defend her church's evil mission of spreading hate. So far, she hasn't sent me any more Bible sayings, either.

Parting shot irony: This is still the only time I can remember agreeing with Ken Cuccinelli about anything. 

 -- 30 --