Chapters 3 and 4

              Growing Up Christian - - - Or Not!

                            Chapter 3

It was the second Tuesday night of the month which meant the Board of the Church of the Most Holy Named Saint was in session. As usual, ‘The Most Reverent Bishop’ Albert Stanley was presiding and sitting at the head table, which was raised a few feet above the table where the rest of the members of the board were seated.

The lesser members of the board were in a heated discussion about who was responsible for allowing the land, which adjoined the Bishop's holdings, to slip through their fingers before the Bishop had a chance to buy it. Bishop Stanley had gone to ‘great lengths’ to force his former neighbor to the north to sell his land and now the land was out of the Bishop's reach once again. After half an hour of this wrangling, Bishop Stanley stood up and called an end to the bickering.

"Come to order! With colleagues like you, I don't feel like I need any enemies! If I didn't know how much all of you need me, I'd think you were working against me!
As you all know, the property in question butts up against my land on the north-west section. This is in the vicinity of where we hold our special activities and some of our underground storage areas also extend under that property.  I don't believe there's any danger of the new owners snooping around into our business but I would feel a lot better if I owned the property. Old man Myers put the property on the market at such a low price that someone snapped it up before I had a chance to get it. He did it just to spite me! I'm sure of it! With all the mistakes and losses that have been going on lately, I would almost think there's a ringer in our midst."

"Now, let's get down to old business. The end of this week is when we put on the bash for the ‘Big Boys’ from New York. We have to get the accommodations ready and tighten up security around the valley. We wouldn't want any uninvited guests coming in and shooting up our paying guests or our prize fighting stock, now would we!
Brother Butler, I believe you have the intelligence report on our new neighbor. Please give us that information now."

A tall, thin man rose from his chair and began to address the Bishop and the rest of the board.
"Our investigators tell us the person who bought the property is a ‘Jess Whitson’, thirty five years old and wife ‘Carol’, thirty four. They have two male children, ages eight and ten. He has worked in the electronics repair field for the last fifteen years and he earns a pitiful twenty thousand dollars a year. Some how, the family has saved enough to able to pay cash for the property. That's why they were able to take over the property so quickly. The family is moving from the metropolitan area because they profess to be Christians and they object to the moral climate in the city."

"My best guess is, the family should pose no problem to our enterprises. If they do cause us any problems, we can seal them off and take care of them at a later date after our guests have left the valley."
The thin man sat down and closed his case file.

"O. K. Brother Butler, Thank you for the report."

The Bishop continued the meeting with other kinds of old business, a few items of new business and closed the meeting by giving his generals the assignments that had to be completed before the Mafia came to the valley.

"Now, each of you has been given orders. Get your people together and get organized so you can all be ready to get started in the morning." The meeting broke up and the Bishop's trusted commanders dispersed in all directions to carry out the orders of the Great Man. The Bishop was feeling very confident about the up coming festivities, and he felt sure the mob would feel they were getting their money's worth. He had some very special events planned, as well as the usual male and female prostitutes ready for service. He was sure this would be one of his greatest events ever and also one of the most profitable for himself.


              Growing Up Christian - - - Or Not!

                          Chapter 4

The Bishop was sitting in the largest and most luxurious of the accommodations which were available on his property, along with the head of the New York Mafia. (It's called ‘Mingling with the paying guests to keep them happy.’)

The two men were joking and feeling exceptionally well because they had been sampling a very high grade of heroine. This particular heroine was a sample from the shipment which the Bishop was supplying to the various Mafia outlets around the country. (Just one of the ways the Bishop made a little pocket change.)

Mr. Alfonso Bambino was asking the Bishop "How did you come to have the great position which you now hold?  You have more money, power and respect than anyone I know. When you ask someone to do you a favor, not one person dares to tell you ‘No’. That's the kind of power that I love myself. I have that kind of power in my own organization but your power extends so much farther than does mine."

"Well, let me tell you - now don't spread this around, I don't tell my story to just anyone you know."

"In 1864 my Great Granddaddy was a big hero - - in the civil war I mean. They say he was responsible for winning a great battle single handed but it was all a big lie.
The way it happened was this; he came along after the battle was all over and came upon this man who was the real hero, who had actually won the battle single handed. The man was wounded and nearly dead, so Great Granddaddy shot him and took the credit for the victory for himself. Because of his great ‘heroism’ Great Granddaddy was given a land grant of one thousand acres, right here, where we are right now. As soon as he got out of the army, he started a moonshine business and was able to make a little money. He started to buy up more land in this valley and he began to make some contacts among some of the ‘hard cases’ in some of the big cities on the east coast. About the time his moonshine business was taking off, Great Granddaddy thought it would be good to introduce my Granddaddy around to all his contacts so Granddaddy could share some of the load of running the business. Great Granddaddy had been sampling his own product pretty heavily and didn't want to take care of all the details of the business as they should have been handled."

"Why not let the boy do the work and I can reap the profits, ’was his motto.’

"After a while, Granddaddy got a little tired of doing all the work (without any of the profits) so one day, when he found Great Granddaddy laying drunk near the edge of the top of a cliff he pushed the old man over the edge. He told everyone that he and his father had gone out for a walk and the old man had stumbled off the edge of the cliff while urinating. He said that he had tried to grab the old man before he toppled over the edge but he just wasn't fast enough to reach him in time. Granddaddy told everyone that the old man had a fetish - that since he was the most important person alive, he should be able to pee the farthest. He always went up on a high cliff to urinate when possible."

"There was a big funeral and people came from miles away. Many of those big city contacts, which I mentioned, were at the funeral and each one told how great the old man had been but there wasn't a word of truth in any of it.  They just wanted to spread it on thick and get on Granddaddy's good side, since he had inherited the old man's business."

"About that time, in 1914, prohibition came in and Granddaddy really DID start making money. Almost every speak-easy in the country sold his product and if they tried to buy liquor from some other source, that speak-easy was soon burnt to the ground. Granddaddy also planted informants, who told the Feds where other illegal breweries were located. Soon his competition was shut down by Uncle Sam.”

“Things went very well for Granddaddy for the duration of prohibition. There was the occasional gun battle with the Police or a rival brewery but all in all, it was a very good time for him. In 1933, the law was repealed and competition in the liquor industry became hot and heavy.  There was no longer any way to make the great profits which Granddaddy had enjoyed and he wasn't about to run a legitimate business with those mediocre profits."

"Granddaddy had the foresight to see that as soon as liquor could be obtained everywhere, it would no longer satisfy people's needs. They would have to have something stronger to take away their pain to make them forget their problems and to give them the high which they needed to make their life worth living. Granddaddy was the first to distribute drugs from the Orient, with a world wide network to ship them everywhere without detection."

"About 1937, my Daddy decided it was time for him to take over the reigns of the business so he hired a young tough who wanted to make a name for him self. He was hired to shoot Granddaddy. One night the young tough came in to where Granddaddy and his body guards were ‘high on coke’ and before they knew what he was doing, he killed them all.  (Daddy was the one who had let the young tough into the building so he knew what was going on.) After it was over, Daddy shot and killed the assassin. Daddy claimed ‘self defense’ and he was not even arrested for what he had done.  There was Daddy, in control of a vast crime network with no one he could trust and not much education. He felt like a ‘lost ball in high weeds’. He decided to send me to one of the big eastern universities to get an education, since I had just graduated from high school. He thought I could help him run the business.”


“At the University, I got my Masters Degree in Business Administration and in the process, I learned about the ‘strong-hold’ which religion has on many people. I learned, by experience, that a good con-man could tell people just about anything in the name of religion and not many people would check out the facts for themselves, especially if the message was the very thing the people wanted to hear.”

“When I came back to this valley I knew exactly what needed to be done to make a lot more money but Daddy wouldn't allow it. You know how some people can be when they've had their own way for a long time. He had a misguided idea that it would be morally wrong to get into the religion business. Some kind of sacrilege or something.  Well anyway, one night I slipped into his bedroom and quietly slipped a plastic bag over his head while he slept.  After about five minutes of flopping around, as I held the bag securely in place, he finally lay still. I always was a big kid and I out weighed Daddy by a hundred pounds. Daddy was a little weasel looking man, never weighing more than 125 pounds. I left the bag over his head for twenty minutes more just to be sure I had done the job correctly. When I was absolutely sure he was dead I dragged the body down the stairs to the kitchen, sat him up at the table and shoved a chicken bone down his throat. I called the Coroner and as I waited for him I ate a big bowl of corn flakes."

"The Coroner looked at me a little funny when I told him Daddy had choked to death on a chicken bone but the Coroner was afraid to challenge me because of the money and influence I would have as ‘Heir to the Throne."

"At this point, Dad had accumulated ten million in various banks around the country and ninety million in Swiss banks. I used five million to build the cathedral here on the hill and one million to start a seminary to train con-artists to preach in the various churches, which I planned to establish in all the major cities around the country.
But guess what - - unsuspecting students signed up for religious education at my seminary. Go figure!"

"I clear a million a month in my religious division. It's one of my more lucrative side lines and its all tax free. You know as well as I that some accountants aren't averse to setting down a few wrong numbers while they're keeping the books and because of the constitution, (separation of church and state you know), it's easy to hide moneys.”
“The founding fathers who wrote the constitution didn't have any idea that a religion would be anything but good and honest. I guess I and a lot of other people have fooled them!"

"I'm now the richest man in the world but not many people know about it. I own property around the world which is worth nine hundred billion. I have five hundred billion in foreign banks and one billion in banks in this country, all of which can not be traced to me. Some of my holdings include weapons and missile factories in third world countries and I have weapons hidden all around the world, just in case I need them in one place or another. I can raise a one hundred thousand man army in three days, if I have to, and I can get this army to any part of the world in twenty four hours."

"Now, you've got to admit that I'm the most important man in the world and that no one can overcome me. No one is more deserving of praise than I."

Mr. Bambino responded "Wow! I didn't know the half of it. I've heard some things about you but this is almost beyond belief. By the way, do you have any children?"

"I don't have any children which I claim. There are probably five hundred of the little buggers running around the countryside somewhere, from my college days.  You know how those college girls are! Because of my family history, I can't afford to have any heirs around. They might just get smart and shuffle their old man off this mortal coil before I'm ready. And I'll never be ready"


"I have plans to have my head frozen just before I DO slip away. It's called cryogenics and it only costs a hundred thousand a year to do it. After medical science has perfected a way to allow me to live forever, my head will be thawed out and attached to a donor body. Then with this new body I can go on ruling my empire forever. I believe that if anyone deserves to live forever, it is I!  Don't you agree?"

The Leader of the mob looked a little dubiously at the fat man but he really couldn't fault him. After all, anyone with this kind of money and power couldn't be too far off his rocker - - could he?

Mr. Bambino didn't realize it but much of the story which he had just heard was a lie. It had been fabricated in order to impress the Gang Leader. (There are some people who can't tell a lie from the truth, whether they are telling it or listening to it.)

The two men drank a final toast to each other's success and parted company for the night. Tomorrow would be a big day for both these wicked men and they wanted to be at the top of their form in order to enjoy it. The leader of the Mafia wanted himself and his men to enjoy the promised spectacular events and the Bishop wanted to rake in the money from them.

next:

Chapters 5 &6  (13+) The story continues - a look at the Whitson family. #1580513 by Author00