This has been a hard year financially.
Normally I wouldn't talk my finances here - it's supposed to be lighthearted fun about bad books/films/TV adaptations - but this last week (and year) have been so horrible for my cash flow and finances that it's either vent here or scream hysterically until my vocal cords go on strike for a week. My apologies in advance for whining, and my thanks for letting me blow.
Like many of us here in the Land o'Lakes of Liberty, I basically live paycheck to paycheck. Thanks to an inheritance from my aunt, my 401(k), Social Security, and the equity in the Last Homely Shack East of the Manhan, I should be able to retire without resorting to eating truit a la Fancy Feast or inhabiting the fine and spacious Dumpster behind Tandem Bagels, but that's a decade away. Right now I survive on what I earn, with occasional hits on the credit card to cover what cash can't.
Normally this means travel costs to conventions and conferences, minor car repairs, and the like. It's not great but it's doable, and until recently I was indeed doing it.
Then the following happened:
- The winter of '14-15 left potholes roughly the size of the Quabbin on my usual route to work. An alternate route is not practical because I work on the other side of the Connecticut River and have no choice but to use the Calvin Coolidge Bridge unless I equip my car with pontoons, which ain't happening in this lifetime unless one of you sends me a government surplus James Bond car.
- I drove through the said Enormous Potholes twice a day for about four months. This basically wrecked the struts and ball joints on both front wheels of my car, and of course I had to have this repaired to get my inspection sticker last month.
- The tax bill came due, and thanks to the necessary but expensive new high school, it had gone up enough that I had to devote my entire tax refund AND some cash on hand AND my third paycheck in July to making sure the Last Homely Shack wasn't sold at auction.
- New glasses since I am both very nearsighted and need bifocals whacks you young whippersnappers with my cane.
- Dental work and x-rays, only part of which was covered by insurance since evidently having good teeth is not essential to one's health.
- Eversource, formerly WMECO, aka National Grid, aka the electric company, raised my rates 30% thanks to a combination of lost electricity from the now-closed Vermont Yankee power plant and Kinder Morgan holding the entire region hostage so they'll get their precious pipeline through the Berkshires and Franklin County. Of course my house is heated by electricity, so even though I was keeping the thermostat at 58 degrees and had a budget plan in place, my bill still went way, way up.
None of this was cheap, and every time, every single time, I was starting to drag myself out of the hole, another expense that I could not put off would rear up and whack me upside the head. I was still making the payments on the credit card and paying the extra electric payments, and I waiting for Eversource (which has dialed back the rate increase, or so rumor has it) to send me my new and (God willing) cheaper budget rate in September.
Then this week happened.
I noticed a strong smell of mildew in the front hallway a couple of days ago. I wasn't sure where it was coming from since I'm not in a flood plain and the roof is intact, so I decided to check downstairs. The smell seemed to be coming from there, so I wondered if the toilet had overflowed.
If only.
The first clue that something had gone horribly wrong was when I stepped on the basement rug and it squelched. I gasped, dashed into the utility closet off the bathroom, and found that the hot water heater was leaking its entire 80 gallons into the wall to wall carpet, the legs of the furniture (most of it wood), and, of course, the baseboards and then into the insulation and drywall.
I know I used what Captain Kirk would call "colorful metaphors" as I fled upstairs and called the office to tell them I wouldn't be in. I used even more colorful metaphors when it took me until early afternoon to get in touch with a plumber to turn off the hot water (the old valve semi-rusted in place and was so tight the plumber had trouble working it, so it wasn't simply that I'm but a weak and feeble woman). Needless to say, I was in a rare state when the nice men from the flood restoration company arrived to start vacuuming the carpet and drying out the mess.
Fortunately my insurance will take care of the basement damage, lost furniture, books, clothing and flooring, and all the necessary work to make the basement usable again. If it weren't for that, I might well have screamed, and screamed, and screamed until I dropped drop a-dead from what a family telegram called "a stroke of apoplexy." So thank God for Arbella Insurance for saving my voice, my life, and what so many of you think of as "Saturday night entertainment" here on Daily Kos.
However...insurance will not cover the cost of the hot water heater. I'm responsible for that. And not only will the plumber only take cash, the same applies to the electrician I had to hire to connect the hot water heater since the wiring protocols have changed and the plumber can't do it himself.
And so, even though I got paid on Thursday, between all these extra expenses AND the normal bills, I am so strapped for cash that I briefly contemplated eating the Double Felinoid for in lieu of yummy Snowpiercer-quality protein blocksto stay alive until my next paycheck.
Yes. Really.
Fortunately a woman I will refer to only as the Angel of Vermont stepped in to help tide me over. She expects no payment, wishes no fawning gratitude, and may or may not accept a gift box of chocolates as a token of my esteem and profound thanks. I am truly, truly lucky, and I have every intention of paying it forward to someone else when I'm in a position to do so.
For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of "paying it forward," it states that the recipient of a favor should, in lieu of doing something nice for the donor, do a favor to someone else in need. The concept seems to have begun with the ancient Greeks, but one of the best-known depictions of paying it forward is in Robert Heinlein's novel Between Planets, where a young man down on his luck has the following encounter:
The banker reached into the folds of his gown, pulled out a single credit note. "But eat first—a full belly steadies the judgment. Do me the honor of accepting this as our welcome to the newcomer."
His pride said no; his stomach said YES! Don took it and said, "Uh, thanks! That's awfully kind of you. I'll pay it back, first chance."
"Instead, pay it forward to some other brother who needs it."
Helping someone else in need, with no expectation of repayment except a request to pass along the gift at some point, has shown up in countless books, films, comics, and other bits of popular culture in the last fifty years. It's a profoundly humanitarian concept, and I've practiced it myself when I've been in a position to do so. As I said above, the Angel of Vermont has helped me (and saved the lives of the Double Felinoid), so it's my turn to pay the debt forward to someone else.
Paying it forward is not simply a concept beloved of science fiction fans and other secularists, of course. It's also part of many (if not most) religions as part of teachings about charity and kindness toward others, from the Golden Rule of Christianity to the Five Pillars of Islam to the Analects of Confucius. Compassion, generosity, and doing good simply because it is good may seem old-fashioned, but a society without these things is a hollow and ugly place indeed.
This may be why religion is such a mainstay of life in urban areas, especially ones with working class and poor populations. Marx may well have been on to something when he called religion "the opiate of the people," for hope of treasures in heaven is a fine way to placate the disadvantaged and keep them from questioning why they have so little when others have so much. But a beloved community that pools its resources, that feeds the hungry and tends the sick and has rent parties when money is short and has spaghetti suppers to buy books and school supplies that are needed right now instead of during the revolution that may or may not come - that's part of it, too, and arguably the stronger and better part. Religion, faith, even charity and kindness themselves - they're double-edged swords depending on circumstances and intent, which is why absolutists on both sides might wish to rethink their positions.
Tonight I bring you a well known book that shows how one good deed can result in other good deeds, then in a strange pop culture trope and a legendary theatrical failure:
The Cross and the Switchblade, by David Wilkerson, with John and Elizabeth Sherrill - David Wilkerson, like so many of the authors we meet on our weekly forays into Badbookistan, did not come from a literary background. Born into a large, close-knit, and gospel-believing family of Pentecostal ministers in 1931, he studied at a Bible college in Missouri, then followed his father and grandfather into the godly business of saving souls.
Ordained in 1952, straight out of school, he was called to a pulpit in central Pennsylvania. There he labored in the vineyards of the Lord, and there he might well have stayed if he hadn’t happened to read a story in Life magazine in 1958 about a murder trial in the evil, glittering metropolis that was the greatest and least godly city in the United States: New York.
This trial, which involved several members of the colorfully named “Egyptian Dragons” gang, convinced Wilkerson that he was wasting his time ministering to the already saved. Folk who already knew the Bible and had been washed clean by the fires of the Holy Spirit didn’t need him. They already knew what to do, and were striving to do it. The Egyptian Dragons, though, seemed lost and bereft and in need of sustenance beyond the merely physical.
Thus it was that David Wilkerson, not yet thirty, packed his bags and set out for Babylon-on-the Hudson to see what he could do to help the gang members and bring them to salvation before it was too late.
This gallant attempt at fulfilling the Gospel charge to visit those in prison failed – Wilkerson marched into the courtroom during a trial session to talk to the Egyptian Dragons in person and was promptly thrown out by an unamused (and presumably unsaved) judge – but Wilkerson was undeterred. Soon he had moved to New York, accompanied by his brother Donald, and began working with the human flotsam and jetsam of the mean streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.
Among these unfortunate (and unsaved) souls were not only hardened young men in gangs with names like the Apaches (not Native Americans), the Mau Maus (not Kenyan revolutionaries), the Chaplains (not ministers, military or otherwise), the Bishops (not bishops), the Mau Mau Chaplains (neither), and the Sand Street Angels (not heavenly beings, although they were associated with Sand Street). A shocking number of these juvenile delinquents were also heroin addicts, and an appalled Wilkerson knew he had his work cut out for him.
This he did through his preaching, his teaching, and a residential treatment program and ministry he called Teen Challenge International. There were successes and failures, but Wilkerson had truly found his calling.
One spectacular success involved a youngster named Nicky Cruz. This twenty year old son of two Puerto Rican brujeros, or practitioners of a Latin form of spiritism, had long since dismissed their child as a “son of Satan” and sent him to live with relatives in New York. Cruz promptly fled to the streets, joined the Mau Maus (not the Mau Mau Chaplains), and quickly became first their Warlord, then their overall leader.
A little while later he met David Wilkerson. The meeting did not go well – Wilkerson’s assertion that Jesus loved Cruz, murderous gangster that he was, enraged Cruz to the point that he slapped the young preacher – and a second meeting was equally unsuccessful. The third time they met, though, was another matter. Wilkerson had organized a revival with the express intent of converting the Mau Maus, and this time Cruz listened. He helped with the collection plate, joined the altar call alongside many of his gang brothers, and before the night was over the former Mau Mau had given his life to Jesus. Not only that, Cruz and the other converted Mau Maus went to the nearest police station, handed over their weapons to the very surprised cops, and began to live godly lives.
It was truly a miracle.
Such a glorious fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation needed to be shared with the world. This Wilkerson did in 1962, in a little book called The Cross and the Switchblade. An exciting, fervent, gospel-compliant account of Wilkerson’s first few years in New York, The Cross and the Switchblade hit the bestseller lists and never left. The book, which sold sixteen million copies in nearly three dozen languages, has never been out of print, and allowed Wilkerson the financial freedom not only to bring Teen Challenge International to nearly 200 other cities, but to buy the old Mark Hellinger Theater in Times Square and convert it into a five thousand member church in the very heart of the wickedest city in America.
Not only that, Wilkerson’s prize pupil, Nicky Cruz, followed his mentor not only into the ministry but into the literary world. Cruz, who’d gone to Bible college and become a street preacher thanks to David Wilkerson, had come home and promptly converted what was left of the Mau Maus, including their new leadership. He then wrote an autobiography, Run Baby Run, which soon appeared on newsstands and revolving wire racks at drugstores and doughnut shops across our great land.
So far, none of this is particularly So Bad It’s Good. David Wilkerson did some genuinely good work ministering to the poor and the addicted, and Nicky Cruz continues his legacy. Their books aren’t literary masterpieces, but then again they aren’t supposed to be; both seem more intent on bringing souls to the Lord than anything else, and there are worse ways to help the world than by trying to help addicts, gang members, and the dispossessed of our great cities.
No, what’s So Bad It’s Good is the pop culture legacy of the Wilkerson/Cruz ministry, which is not nearly as bland as you might think:
- The emergence of the Crusading Young Street Preacher/Doctor/Guru as a pop culture mainstay. This figure, who usually spouts a peculiar mix of Biblical quotations, comforting platitudes, and slightly out of date slang, turns up in books, films, TV shows, comic books, and other forms of entertainment to this day. Sometimes he’s a doctor, sometimes he’s a priest or works with a priest, and once he was even Elvis Presley (in a dreadful film called Change of Habit, where he was a young street doctor who worked with a nun played by, my hand to God, Mary Tyler Moore).
- The actual movie of The Cross and the Switchblade, which starred a less than convincing Pat Boone as David Wilkerson (complete with an allegedly hip vocabulary, a nicely teased hair helmet, and an expensive and fashionable wardrobe straight out of the King Family Singers’ costume closet). This boring little waste of film stock co-stars a young Erik Estrada as Nicky Cruz, who looks about as much like a hardened gangster as he does like a John Hughes prom king.
- A Fawcett Comics book distinguished by their customary mediocre art and scripts, including a page where a girl supposedly high on heroin attempts to commit suicide but is dissuaded by faith, or something.
- Yet another “redeemed from the streets autobiography, Second Chance. This book, by Nicky Cruz’s friend and Mau Mau leader Israel Narvaez, chronicled how Narvaez had become born again at the same rally where Cruz had seen the light, fallen back into crime, participated in the murder of a member of the rival Sand Street Angels, and eventually returned to the bosom of the Lord.
- A Paul Simon musical, The Capeman, based on a 1950’s gang-related killing by members of the Vampires, a Mau Mau offshoot. This musical, which combined doo wop, gospel, and Latin themes in its score, so obsessed Simon that he ignored logic, common sense, and the advice of Broadway veterans in his quest to bring the project to fruition. The resulting mess received brutal reviews, earned Simon the enmity of most of the Broadway community, alienated Nobel Prize winner/scriptwriter Derek Walcott, and lasted only sixty-eight performances.
- David Wilkerson’s sudden transformation in his last years into an apocalyptic prophet who claimed the stock would crash, that New York in 1994 was on the brink of a race war, and that 2009 would soon see “riots and fires in cities worldwide” thanks to an “earth-shattering calamity…so frightening, we are all going to tremble – even the godliest among us.” He also predicted an invasion by Russia (????).
Wilkerson himself died in 2011 after losing control of his car and crashing head-first into a tractor-trailer, meaning that he was not around to see the ugliness of modern policing in St. Louis, New York, Cleveland, and all too many other cities with less than tolerant cops and less than harmonious race relations. He might well have found recent events a fulfillment of his prophecies, albeit not in quite the way he’d thought.
As for Nicky Cruz, he’s still alive, still ministering, and still writing. His most recent book, The Devil Has No Mother, contrasts the motherless Enemy’s hunger for power with God’s limitless ability to resist evil and triumph over all obstacles. Whether this or any of his other books are due to be filmed is not known at this time, but they certainly seem ripe for the silver screen, especially if Erik Estrada and/or Pat Boone are willing to reprise their legendary roles…..
Sat Aug 29, 2015 at 7:10 PM PT: Since writing this diary, I have learned that the minister who officiated at the Rich Celebrity Wedding of the Century (aka, the Kanye West/Kim Kardashian nuptials), one Rich Wilkerson, Jr., is David Wilkerson's first cousin, once removed. Even better, Rich Wilkerson Jr. is getting a reality show, "Rich in Faith," where he'll star with his wife, DawnChere.
I can't wait.
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Have you ever had a basement flood? Gotten help from an Angel unexpected and unawares? Paid a favor forward? Swooned over Erik Estrada? Wanted to put him in a tooth-off dance-off with Conrad Pooh? Been in a street gang? Confession is good for the soul, they say, so come to the altar and share….
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