When I was still an infant we moved to Norphlet, about 500 feet from the refinery which Daddy was helping to build. My parents had found a solid little house in need of some fixing up. Daddy could envision what the finished product would be, so he started working on it as he found time. It wasn't long until even the yard was looking like a little garden of Eden with evergreen shrubs, flowering bushes, and on the side next to the street, a lovely petrified wood and cactus display curving around a tiny, elegant goldfish pond. He kept me close beside him during all my waking hours. He sometimes worked "graveyard" shift, but when he worked days he would have Mother drive him to work just so I would be with him every possible minute. Life was pretty good. Our little family was financially sound because Daddy had a secure job as head chemist of McMillan Oil Refinery. Mother saw to it that we went to church regularly. She was Missionary Baptist and he had been raised Methodist, from a long line of Methodists which included a circuit-riding preacher grandfather.
However, he had thought of baptism by immersion for a long time, so now that he was married to a Baptist, he was immersed and accompanied her to church, uniting the family. Daddy was always singing or whistling. Mother didn't agree with the words to "Funiculi, funicula!" that he used to sing a lot: "Some think this world was made for fun and frolic, and so do I!" He enjoyed ballroom dancing, and Mother went with him for awhile, but reluctantly, as she was afraid Jesus would come while she was there and she would be lost. As with many Fundamentalist religions, most things that were fun were wrong. Answer me this: If it's right and moral for a man and his wife to disrobe and make love together, how could it be wrong for the two of them, fully clothed, to dance together?
