Greg Brown, Libba Cotten, Peter Ostroushko, Mike Seeger, Stoney Lonesome.
[undocumented]
Father Emil
Sunday was the first warm day of spring. You could sit out in your back yard drinking coffee in your shirt sleeves. The first little green buds are showing. Higher life forms such as Catholics and Lutherans can survive in this kind of planet. In a planet with nothing but snow, it would be different and people might worship wood piles. both churches. Some people believe that they can worship nature outdoors. Fr. Emil calls this the Protestant fallacy. Fr. Emil went for a walk and found some of his wayward parishioners raking their front lawns. Mrs. Schwab is putting in her garden of big dramatic Las Vegas floor show flowers. She carries on the old show lawn tradition in the back yard. Mr. Schwab does the grass and she does the flowers. He has dug up all of the bricks and straightened them out. There are only two lawn chairs. There is a shrine to the BVM. The shell is half of a bath tub. Pretty soon their floor show will come to life and they will sit in the back yard with a pitcher of grape nectar. Gertrude will be in her print dress and Rudy will be in his Hawaiian luau shirt. The theme of the Junior Senior prom is "A Night in the Gardens of Spain." The gym will be all decorated and the kids will be all intense. They can look forward to having a garden like Gertrude and Rudy's.
Orlando Sentinel Apr 24 1983
1983.04.25 Lafayette Journal / 1983.04.29 Orlando Sentinel
Archival contributors: Frank Berto