This is at the house on Marigold Street. I'm fifteen or sixteen and it is October, but not quite Halloween yet, but it is dark early and I am sitting in the living room in my dad's recliner watching a spooky movie on the TV. My sisters Anne and Carla are on the couch to my left transfixed by the evil doings in a dungeon. Vincent Price is in the movie and I'm pretty sure it is "The Pit and the Pendulum" adapted from a story by Poe.
I can't remember much of the movie, but I read the short story, once, and knew there was a big pit and a clockwork pendulum with a sharp crescent blade that creeps closer, with each pass, to the victim tied to an altar, threatening to eventually cut him in two bloody pieces.
My mom is out shopping and nobody else is home except for my dad, and he announces from the kitchen doorway that he is headed down to Fred Meyers for some brass screws for the screen door hinge. I nod and go back to watching and hear the door to the garage open and close.
A man (we will call him Bob) pulls into a self-serve gas station and is filling his car when a pick-up truck arrives on the other side of the pumps and a bearded man gets out and shouts at Bob, threatening him and cussing and calling him vile names.
Bob doesn't recognize the angry man and tells him that he has made a mistake. Bob then makes a mistake of his own when he turns his back on AM to attend to his car. The stranger hits Bob on the head from behind with a sap, knocking him to his knees And then closes in to do more damage.
Here's a well-reasoned article by Gregory Koukl about the relativistic tolerance trap we've all fallen into, where all views on life and culture and morality and religion and politics and behavior are equally valid and should be accorded equal respect.....until you express a view that is contrary to the anything goes zeitgeist, in which case you are labeled intolerant, bigoted, and a hater.
I once had a person express to me the opinion that all cultures deserved equal respect, meaning one culture was not to be considered superior or inferior to any other culture. To this I asked if they thought our American culture of rights for women was equivalent to the Indian custom--before the English took over and outlawed it-- of burning alive the wife of a deceased husband on his funeral pyre? Or were there any cultures to be preferred over ones that regularly raided neighboring tribes and brought captives back to their village to be ritually sacrificed and then eaten?
J
ennifer Warnes is one of those vocal artists you wouldn't notice if she passed you on the street. She's not the striking diva-looking songstress that is going to arrest traffic, but she's a wonderful singer and has had a long career. You know her from movie and Top-40 pop hits.
