Otto said the whole town shook like there’d been an earthquake.  The board of deacons fired him, of course, even though Preacher Morgan swore he was only down there to be isolated from the flesh of the world so he could uplift that poor woman’s soul toward the righteous road to Heaven.  Mrs. Morgan fired him, too, Otto said.

According to Otto, the First Church of the Assigned Brotherhood had other preacher problems.  It wasn’t moneyed enough to hire a full-time pulpit man so they got one out of Cincinnati to come preach every other Sunday and take whatever was put in the collection plate that day.  Ott said one time a new young feller just out of divinity school came to preach and after the sermon he went to the Swegman’s place for Sunday dinner.  That was one of the perks.  Church ladies would take turns feeding the preacher and his wife ‘cept in this case there wasn’t no wife.  Well this young man ate his dessert and then took out some snapshots of himself swimming in a big concrete pool with a bunch of black folks.  Otto said he never returned to Crooked Springs to preach again.  Crooked Springs was a Christian town, don’t you know.

He said it wasn’t much later that Reverend Marvin Thackers showed up.  Well, this feller one Sunday in late April wanted to know what was being planned for the after-prom dance at the high school.  OH, MY GOD!  You could have heard a pin drop all the way to Indianapolis.  Otto said fathers in Crooked Springs would whole lot rather catch their daughter jaybird naked down in the stone quarry with one of them Swinson boys than to ever catch her dancing that first step.  Dancing leads to sex.