Back in 82’, John Cougar Mellencamp wrote a little ditty about Jack and Diane, two American kids growing up in the Heartland. It has become a classic. I like it fine, but I wish John had been from the South so he could have written an ode to Jake and Darlene.
Jake and Darlene are a couple from somewhere around Sand Mountain, Alabama. I have never had the privilege of meeting them in person, but I sure would like to. I saw them a few nights ago on some show about “Snake Handling” churches in Appalachia and the American South. Now I should say that this is a particular custom that never quite took hold in my part of the Deep South. We like our religion as much as the next sinner does, but we’ve never been all that interested in getting acquainted with the business end of a Timber Rattler just to show off our faith. According to our catechisms, that’s what potlucks are for.
But Jake and Darlene are from that contingent of believers who put a lot of stock in the long ending of Mark’s Gospel with its serpents and poisons and dangerous signs and wonders. Their religion is simple, tangible, and anything but toothless. It is also a window into the cultural soul of the backwoods and the hill countries of our native land.
I took the time to jot down a few quotes at random from their interview with the wide-eyed gentleman from up North.
The first detailed how they came to become believers in the first place. Glen, a dope-fiend-turned-evangelist came over to their house to invite Jake, his former rambling buddy, to church. Jake recounted:
“Darlene was in the kitchen chopping onions when the knife slipped and she lopped off most of her pointer fanger. Glen ran over and grabbed it, stuck it back on there and prayed in tongues, and it mounted right back up!”
Darlene was both surprised and thrilled to still have a workable index finger, so she agreed to go to church with Glen on Sunday. That weekend, she too became a believer.
“I got the Holy Ghost that mornin’. I couldn’t even go down to the corner store to buy milk cause I couldn’t speak a word of English for three whole days for talkin’ in tongues.”
Somewhere in the midst of her testimony, she started talking about Elmo, their pet coon.
“Elmo was bad to bite if you grabbed him before breakfast. Sometimes I’d just be sittin’ on the couch watching my stories when he’d crawl up behind me and just pee on my head. But I rebuked him and Jesus’s name and he quit all that. There’s power in the name.”
Jake said that his father wasn’t a fan of their newfound faith though.
“Daddy. Weren’t no atheist or nothin’, he was just a Methodist. Which in a way is kinda the same because they don’t believe God still does miracles. They just believe the Good Lord intends for everybody to sell raffle tickets and be nice to folks. Anyway, Daddy came over to the house to try to get us to stop goin’ to Glen’s church and Darlene pulled a gun on him. I told her to stop actin’ a fool but she told Daddy that she’d introduce him to God if he didn’t quit worryin’ her over her religion. Daddy, bein’ a Methodist, wasn’t to anxious to go to heaven just yet so he went on before there was any killins.”
“After a while, though,” Jake continued, “Darlene kinda got in a dark place because she’d seent others take up the serpent but she was scared to. She got all depressed and said her faith was weak. She ate a bottle of pills and liked to kilt herself, but I prayed over a glass of water and made her drank it. She ran out on the porch and thowed up a demon of depression. It looked like lumpy blue paint.”
“Come Sunday she was fine, and to everyone’s surprise, took up a serpent in Jesus name. Not long after that she became the main preacher ‘cause Glen’s faith wavered. But we buried him beside the church anyway.”
I’d like to hear what Mellencamp would write about that.
