Old Time Religion

Old Time Religion Stories. Some like 'em, some don't. Lot's of talk lately about religion and manners and the lack thereof. Went to see the movie "The Apostle" a while back. Nice sound track. Some nice gospel music and some pretty good instrumental acoustic blues as background music. Good acting too. Brought back some old memories.

If you are the sensitive type, you may want to drop out here. My family migrated west from Virginia (1715), through Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma to California. My grandpa was born in Arkansas in 1878. One of his older brothers was named La Fayette after the French patriot. Their grandfather William Pedigo Tanner, who's father Jacob was the first to marry outside their German heritage, marrying a French woman, was half French. Now there wasn't much of the French language in our family and La Fayette was known simply as "Fayett," by his family and friends. Most of the Tanner men were stone masons and worked long difficult hours doing various construction projects. Fayett and his wife were Holiness preachers like the ones in the movie.

Fayett had several children but three of his sons, like many preacher's children, lived lives in direct contrast to their parents. One son, Buster, was a cowboy, who broke horses and lived for bar fights on Saturday night. Another, Elwood was a loner with odd personal habits that most people avoided. This story is about Kilmer,...the mean one. Last call for the easily offended to sign off.

When my dad (Pappy) was eight or nine years old Kilmer visited them at a place his family was living in rural Oklahoma. Kilmer asked Pappy and his younger brother Morris to walk the two or three miles down to the country store to buy him a package of cigarettes. He knew Pappy could buy the cigarettes because he was one of those eight year olds you used to see years ago, walkin' along the railroad tracks indulging himself in a good smoke. The boys advised Kilmer they were willing to make the trip down the road to the store but there was a problem. It seemed the neighbors had a vicious bulldog that had attacked several people in the area. The boys were experienced with getting past the dog to the store, but when they did, the dog would wait for their return and try to bite them. To avoid the dog they had to walk an additional three miles to skirt the property where the dog lived.

Kilmer told the boys to go on down to the store and he would protect them from the bulldog when they came back. Kilmer was about ten years older than Pappy, who didn't question his judgment or authority. After the boys had purchased the cigarettes and were returning home, they nervously checked the neighbor's property for signs of the bulldog. When no attack was forthcoming, they rushed past hurriedly, wasting no time to return home. As they were passing the last section of fence on the other side of the road, Pappy glanced over to the property across from the dog owner's and saw the bulldog. Impaled on a fence post. Like some bizarre Halloween demon.

Shaken and out of breath, they entered their house to give Kilmer his cigarettes. "You didn't have any trouble with that bulldog did you boys?" Kilmer asked. "Naw" they said in unison "We didn't see him this time." Kilmer's girlfriend decided she had had enough of his coarse ways and told him she didn't want to see him anymore. Kilmer was walking by her house one day and her dog recognized him and sensing he was no longer a welcome guest, ran to challenge him. Kilmer cut the dog's head off and threw it on her porch. When the woman went with her new gentleman friend on a picnic with another couple, Kilmer followed them out into the country, accosted them at gunpoint and robbed them of their money and jewelry. He then took their car, drove it to Tulsa and sold it.

No charges were ever filed.

One time he stole a telephone company truck while the workmen were working on the telephone lines. Drove it to Tulsa and sold it. Probably through his parents, Kilmer became a friend with a Holiness preacher that was planning a series of tent revivals in California. The preacher invited Kilmer to accompany him. Kilmer told Pappy years later that throughout the three or four months they were in California that after the revival services and the counting of the collection money, he and the preacher armed themselves with pistols and robbed gas stations and liquor stores. One of the problems the local citizenry had dealing with Kilmer, was that his uncle was the chief of police of the town they lived in.

When Kilmer returned home after an extended absence, he came in drunk to the local pool hall. He ate, played pool and purchased several incidental items and paid for them with fifty-cent pieces he carried in an old bank bag. When the proprietor was counting his receipts the next morning he noticed that the coins Kilmer had given him were counterfeit. Knowing Kilmer was staying at the hotel adjacent to his business, he paid him a visit, hoping to be reimbursed for the worthless coins. When he woke Kilmer up from his drunken stupor he was told: "Get out of here you son of a bitch, 'fore I cut ya. There ain't nothin' wrong with them coins. If you don't like 'em, just pass 'em on to some of your customers. Them ignert (sic) bastards wouldn't know the difference anyway."

The man visited Kilmer's Uncle Elmer, the chief of police and was told: "Hell, I can't do anything. That's a treasury matter. Why you'd have to go all the way to Tulsa to find someone to tell that story to." Now we're only talking about four or five fifty-cent pieces here. And there were only a couple of dozen total. Kilmer had run on to someone who had them and somehow ended up with them. He didn't think it was any big deal to pass them on to people he knew. They'd always been afraid of him and he didn't expect to be challenged. But the man was so irritated by Kilmer's and then Elmer's arrogance that he decided to make the trip to Tulsa and try and recover his two dollars.

A couple of weeks later a couple of Treasury agents arrested Kilmer, charged him with counterfeiting and after a few more weeks he was sentenced to fifteen years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. He served eleven years and was released sometime in the early forties during World War ll.

I met Kilmer as a young boy in 1952 or 53. He was passing through our town Modesto, CA) with a Pentecostal tent revival and had stopped at my grandpa's house for an extended visit. His job was to get up during the services and testify how the Lord had led him from his evil ways back to the flock. He was about fifty years old at that time, very quiet and reserved and looked to be about seventy years old. He died a few years later.

One of my distant cousins visited the Oklahoma town where all this happened and where a large segment of our family still resides. She was doing a genealogy history for our family and was gathering information on the various members. She spent several days there and interviewed dozens of family members. Until I related these events to her several years later, she had never once heard mention of Fayett's boys, Buster, Elwood and the mean one, Kilmer.

Fayett's Boys
by Gary Rex Tanner
Copyright © 1998 Reckless Rex Music, BMI

(Sung to the tune "Sweet Betsy From Pike," traditional)

When Buster and Elwood and Kilmer were boys
They raised holy hell and they made lots of noise
Their pa was a preacher who tended his flock
But his three sons were never chips off the old block