(I wrote this during Christmas of 2011 but never published it:)

I’m presently sitting by my thirty plus year old wood burning heater, listening to it crackling merrily as it sends welcome warmth my way, while watching a video of Capote’s A Christmas Memory – the 1969 version starring Geraldine Page – and sipping at a Samuel Adams Holiday Porter.

I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that last, though, because it might cause me to lose my position as poster boy for The Baptist Temperance League. Of course, the job really doesn’t pay very well – just $10 a month and a twelve-pack of Sam’s best – but it’s a status thing. Still, it’s a pain in the keester to have to pose for all of those posters while holding my bottle of Sam behind my back. Got to where people began to think that I only had one arm.

One day at Christmas time, as I was posing for the League’s Spring poster, a woman came over and shoved a twenty dollar bill into my shirt pocket as she said, “Bless you.” I gave it to the Salvation Army Santa, who didn’t seem to mind that I had the bill in one hand and my bottle of Sam in the other.

Which arm I hold behind my back depends upon which hand I happen to be holding Sam in at the time, and that could be either. Another day, as I was posing yet again, for which poster I do not recall, while holding my right arm behind my back, a man in overalls came up to me and said, “I thought it was your left arm that’s missing.”

I replied, “It is, or, rather, what I mean to say is that I am ambidextrous and can swap my arm to whichever side I want, depending upon what I need to be at the moment – right-handed or left.” He walked away scratching his head.

Then, there was the day – yes, I was poster-posing – that the man in the American Legion cap came over to me and said, “I hear that you lost your arm in the war.”

“What war?” says I.

“Don’t you know?” says he.

“No,” says I, “I wasn’t there at the time.”

So you see why it just may be best that Sam and I resign from the poster-posing business and move on to other things. Anyway, when it comes to religious denominational preferance, I sort of sympathize with, but do not necessarily subscribe to, the philosophy of my buddy, Boudro Guist. Now, Boudro is of Cajun descent, and he and his family moved here from the bayous of Louisiana when Boudro was just a boy. I could tell that Boudro was religious, since he often quoted from Bible, both Old and New Testaments, but I didn’t know his preferred denomination, because he never said. One day, I asked him what his religious persuasion was, and he replied that he was a member of that special denomination known as BSB.

“What’s that?” I asked, and then he gave me a lot more than I wanted to know.

“Back Slidin’ Baptists,” came the reply. “We’re the kind that makes the other kind look good. Our slogan is ‘As Baptists, we make good Methodists’. We say that because we go along with the Methodists’ ideas about moderation in all things.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Oh, you know – moderation in eatin’, moderation in drinkin’ spirits, moderation in lyin’, smokin’, and cussin’, moderation in cheatin’ on your income taxes, moderation in committin’ adultry, and so forth.”

“Okay,” I said, “but if you’re so high on Methodists, why don’t you just become one?”

“For a very good reason, and that reason is that the Methodists and we differ on a very important principle.”

“What principle?”

“Baptizin’.”

“How,” I wanted to know, “do you differ on that?”

“Well, first of all, there’ll be none of that sissy sprinklin’ for us. No, when it comes to baptizin’, we want to be dunked and dunked good. And not in no overgrown bathtub, neither, but in a river, or a creek, preferably during cold weather. And if the preacher doesn’t hold us under long enough so that we nearly drown and begin to see that beautiful white light while some snappin’ turtle is a-gnawin’ on our toes, then he didn’t do it right, and we make him do it again. No sir, don’t you dare sprinkle on us.”

And that’s why I don’t ask Boudro any more questions about religion. As for me, I was brought up a Baptist and intend to remain one, but, considering my relationship with brother Sam, let’s just say that I’m a Baptist with Methodist tendencies. Anyway, it’s not like Sam and I spend a lot of time together. We don’t, but that’s not his fault. It’s mine. You see, these days I can afford Sam’s company only occasionally, and that may be a good thing, because it means that I will never be a sot. Can’t afford to be. I’m not saying that being a sot would necessarily be bad. It may well be, but I’m making no judgement on that. What I am saying is that I will never get to find out. It seems that, since brother George Washington and I are such infrequent companions, so must brother Sam and I be as well.

Anyway, that’s where we stand today, me and Sam.