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But it was memorable to me as to what I answered. I said he should wait 'till after the service, as too many people would be getting all upset if he did it now. He seemed agreeable to that, and apparently after the service he had a public breakdown in the church proper before the pastor. Don't know if the gun was involved but don't think he would have actually used it. Like I said, he was one of those types that needed attention.
All in all - looking back on the church experience, it was not all that bad. They were all good people if somewhat unconscious and hypocritical. They were always good to me, excepting the woman that converted me, although she thought she was saving me from the fires of hell no doubt. I definitely developed personality problems, but they had not that much to do with the church, and more to do with my extreme shyness, school, my bad memory connect, father problems and the tendency to negative interpretation. I had a pretty idyllic childhood but tended to use a comparative model that was superior and thus denigrated my own reality.
At about age twenty I had started reading the Beatniks like Kerouac, Ginsberg, Allan Watts, Burroughs, Ferlinghetti as well as Hermann Hesse, Camus, Thoreau and miscellaneous European philosophers, and was teaching myself critical thinking. As my last act with the church, think I got an invitation for a visit with the latest pastor maybe in say '61 or '62. We met in his office and I had brought along my best friend Chris who was still affiliated with the church, although his father may have retired from the janitor work by this time.
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