THE GOOD OLD DAYS.

An imaginary conversation between a vicar and an ordinary man.

Jethro lifted one eyebrow as only he could do and almost sneered at the vicar.

“Back in the good old days...” he began.

The vicar was quick to reply even before Jethro had made his point. “You mean when the garden flourished before the serpent came?” he drawled, his west country accent specially designed foe this kind of operation.

“No, not then...” spluttered Jethro, showing his annoyance by allowing a tiny smidgen of spittle escape from between his lips and fly at the vicar,

“There were good times...” enthused the cleric. “I’ve read about them and wish I could have lived back then! The simple lives lived by innocent people as they trudged across deserts in search of a homeland! Sitting round the camp fire, planning...”

“...Planning millennia after millennia of chaos and mayhem!” barked Jethro, “but I didn’t mean then! They weren’t my old days! No, not at all! Bob Dylan, Donovan, John Lennon, the prophets in our own lifetime, they monitored the good old days...”

“Sinners all!” barked the vicar, visibly shaking. “How could they begin to compare! But there was Noah! Think of that, a simple man with his sons breaking their backs to create an ark big enough to take breeding stock of all creatures on God’s Earth, and save them from destruction! Now there’s nobility for you! There’s a triumph of good over evil! There’s a story beyond the fanciful rhymes of your sixties pop stars!”

“They wanted nothing but peace in a decade threatened by the fear of atomic wars and mass destruction,” sighed Jethro. “I know, because I was there. I was at the rallies, thousands demanding with one voice that the armaments poised to be launched across the planet be disarmed, be decommissioned, and that a bit of sensible talking might be done to sort out differences. After all, we all want to live, don’t we, without fear and in peace...”

“There was evil in the mix!” rasped the vicar, “not the harmony of biblical times, when lions lay down with lambs, or later when the Christ-child was born and kings worshipped him! No, true evil when men and women forget their place in the Universe and freely set about fornicating! When respect died … respect for kings, respect for priests, respect for the proper order of things! I say it was an evil decade and best wiped from the pages of history.”

“No, sir,” almost whispered Jethro, “respect never died, but it flourished! I remember so well, the respect we had in our hearts for life and hope and happiness and love...”

“Love! There you go again, you who know nothing of love!” snapped the vicar. “Love, true love, is of God! For He created us and He will judge us when our time comes, and I fear for where your spirit will end up, you who speak of a love without our benevolent Lord!”

“My spirit will go where all spirits go,” sighed Jethro, “into the cauldron that is the memories of my kin and friends. What better place could there be?”

“Memories? Pah!” muttered the man of God. “What significance is there in memories when there is an eternity beyond life? And don’t forget how the men of old, the wandering nomads taking their hopes to a promised land, struggled so that the rest of us wouldn’t have to? They’re out there, you know, still, after all the centuries that have passed, with their Maker, in honour and glory, and all you can hope for is a brief memory before those who knew you still die themselves, taking memories of you with them, a brief span indeed, measured more in years than millennia!”

Jethro shrugged his shoulders and made to leave the vicar and go his own way.

“Wait,” ordered the man of God, “I must convince you… there was nothing in the sixties that could make them any way into good old days! It was the decade when true belief began to die. If we could only go back to that… The church needs a new roof, you know, and few are those who make their offerings towards so great a task. And all because true, honest belief in the mysteries of the Almighty have begun to founder on the rocks of lust and… misplace love.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jethro, firmly, “but do you know how many artisans fell to their deaths building that monstrosity you call a church?”

“I don’t off-hand...”

“It doesn’t matter, not now, not so many centuries after it was built, but back then their grieving wives and children looked for charity and starved while the edifice reached higher. And all for what? So that your people could take their stories round the world where they weren’t needed and show them images of the proud useless buildings, pretty pictures of Heaven on Earth in the land of the white gods?”

“You’re a lost soul,” snapped the vicar. “The men we saved, those we taught about Heaven and who believed, they have the promise of life everlasting, which is a darned sight more than your good old days of rock and roll and sin and sex!”

“And those you didn’t save?” asked Jethro, knowing the answer.

“They died, when their time came.” The vicar took a step away. “They might have found Heaven another way...” he mumbled, and merged with the crowds walking past his crumbling church.

“Those men of old, those who made up the stories, they’ve got a lot to answer for...” thought Jethro, “an awful lot, and maybe some time the ending of days as the world erupts, divided by faith… Then the man’s Heaven will become a mighty crowded place and all the good old days will be forever ended.”

“There’ll be no Heaven for that fool,” thought the vicar as he struggled along before accidentally staggering in front of the No. 145 bus and being squashed by its front near-side wheel beyond life and salvation, and his very last thought was “John Lennon I don’t th...” followed by that blackness that is the lot of everyone, man, woman and child, at death.

Reviews

[DrAnuradha Bele]

Wonderful story. The vicar should not have died so soon. He shouldve gone through more , to see how wrong his beliefs are. I almost felt pity for him. Sigh.

[Peter Rogerson]

Mybe his beliefs, silly as they seem to some of us, were right for him.