An
On-Line Publication of the Anonymous Anything Society
SNAKE OIL SALESMEN (And Women)
CHAPTER ONE
The most popular of the “Faith Healers” of my youth was “Sister”
Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), founder of a church in Los Angeles. As
her fame grew, so did the stack of canes, crutches and wheelchairs left near
the pulpit by the once blind, lame and halt; those miraculously cured while
under “Sister’s” Pentecostal vision of salvation and the afterlife. The fact
that she had deserted her husband, a missionary in Asia, did not deter her
followers in the least.
Angelus
Temple, Los Angeles ca 1920's
founded by Sister Aimee
Following one Sunday service, Aimee went swimming in the warming
California waters and failed to come waterboarding back on the rising tide.
Congregants told the press that she had sworn that she meant to swim,
without the slightest assistance, to Hawaii. After a few weeks, a few of
those without sufficient faith decided that “Sister” had drowned. An
exhaustive search of the shoreline never produced a corpse, at least not one
wearing the bathing suit she had worn the day she entered the waters. Then,
one Sunday after five weeks of only the Lord knowing where Sister had been,
she proved her ability to return to the pulpit, claiming she had been
kidnapped and held for ransom. No amount of cajoling by the press could
further unseal her lips – not even the rumor that she had married during the
hiatus; a holy matrimony, so to speak.
Soon. The Story of the Goat-Gland Man and his sure cure for Male
Dysfunction
-Phil Richardson, Storyteller and Observer of the Human Condition
Tommy Ross follows his older brothers to be an apprentice in the
hazardous trade of mining coal. It is doubly dangerous, for his
father has been sent to organize a local union in a "company
owned" coal camp. "The Prosperity Coal Company" is a novel based
on actual events that occurred all across the coal belt, when
America was on the cusp of the great depression, and union wars
raged.
