Church Usher's Run

This story is old, but it's funny. Because of the identities of those involved and the need for discretion, the pages of Alabama Confidential are the best place to tell the tale.

If you are from Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, or any other place in the South, you know the conflicts and attitudes about drinking booze of any kind. I call it the "Baptist Influence." Really, that is being unfair to the Baptists, because many denominations in the South have the same prejudices against partaking alcoholic beverages. The story I'm going to relate is a tale of four young men who boldly defied the prevailing attitude of the time - right in their own church. Well - maybe not exactly "in" the church.

It's okay to mention the town in this story because there are enough churches there that it would be impossible to figure out where the deed took place. The Episcopal and Catholic churches - because of their more liberal attitudes towards booze - are excluded from this tale...

Brewton, Alabama is the town and the church shall go nameless except to say it's a good place to be seen by the connected.

Like all churches, seating the congregation and collecting their money falls on the shoulders of the ushers. These men and women perform a critical function for any church. Leading the elderly to their pews, controlling the lines to the communion rail, making sure everyone has an opportunity to put their donation in the collection plate, and being on standby for the needs of the pastor are just a few of the functions of the usher. Each church does it different. Sometimes the designated ushers are rotated each Sunday and sometimes the same ones do the job every Sunday.

According to my corroborated sources, these,young, fairly good looking men did the task so often that they were familiar with the length of the service and all of its variances down to the minute. All the young men were below the age of 18 and were students at the local high school.

The largest gap in time during any church service is the time from the beginning of the sermon until the dismissal. Usually this takes from 30 minutes to an hour, depending upon the church. In this church the time was approximately 45 minutes for no other reason than to give the congregation a good head start in racing a larger congregation from down the street to Brewton's favorite buffet line. The young ushers had the time down.

We will never know which of the four teenagers started the tradition that contributed to their fame or better said, infamy, but here's how it went:

In Century, Florida near the point of the Alabama line, there was a beer joint. Not an ordinary beer joint, but one that had package sales through a drive-in window and sold beer on Sundays. At the time there was no such establishment in Brewton due to blue laws. The proprietor of the establishment didn't care about the ages of his customers and had no ethical problem with selling beer to underage young men.

Depending on the route, from Brewton to said beer joint in Century, a person driving a good fast car could be there in fifteen minutes. Breaking the speed limit, one could be there much faster. A round trip would take at least 30 minutes depending on legal speed.

So this became the game of the four ushers: Leaving the church at the beginning of the sermon and being back before they were needed at the dismissal, as well as chug-a-lugging, Lord knows how many beers.

Two of the ushers have turned out well as adults and two not so well. How long the usher's run lasted no one could tell me, but it leaves one question. Did the departing congregation think the "beery" smell in their church at the end of the sermon was a new type of shave lotion?

Drivers be careful when you're driving in the late morning hours of a Sunday on U.S. 29. You might be blown off the road by four young men on an "usher's run"