THE GHOSTS OF MAD WHITE PREACHERS

I know, I know, that's the wrong preacher. That spout shit's all Oral Roberts propaganda. 

My old man, Pastor Jimmy White, an independent non-conformist protestant street preacher was intensely jealous of the ecumenical popularity of Dr Billy Graham when he swept through the football stadia of Australia with baritone George Beverly Shea in 1959. 

The campaigning US faith colonist Dr Billy had media tug unlike even Rome had then understood. Television was just beginning to flicker. Hillbillies like us called the TV the Devils' Box.

But Billy understood. He worked it.

He knew that once the tens of thousands of indolent modernist backsliding Methos, Pressies, Salvos, Cooneyites, Brethos and whatever he could pull had hit his sawdust trail to redemption the identities of many of those independent protestant cabals had forever blurred. Therein lies the eternal power of Satan.

Anyway, Pastor Jimmy went all the way down to Melbourne and helped a mob of em burn Oral Roberts' tent down when he come through.

Enough's enough. 

And now Billy's found out whether eternal life is fair dinkum. Like my old man, who's in the cold hard on the easier-to-dig slope at the bottom of Callington Boot Hill.

Mick Wordley photograph