Whoa! My Granny told me that. My paternal grandmother was born in 1904 and I spent a lot of time with her. She only went through 8th grade in school because they couldn’t afford glasses for her, and she was legally blind. She had a hard life as a farmer’s wife (especially with her Dust Bowl, Great Depression, and the rationing of the WWII years) and raised 6 children with an unfaithful husband. She never read anything but the Bible after she got glasses as an adult, and her main interests were her Pentecostal church, quilting, gardening, and listening in on party telephone lines.

Her son, my dad, was born in 1937 and graduated from high school 2 years late with four Ds and an F. He became a journeyman electrician, read absolutely nothing because he was functionally illiterate from a childhood spent in government camps like Weedpatch during the Dust Bowl.

He had the good fortune to knock up my mom in 1969. My mom was also born in 1937 in TN with grandparents with a prosperous farm. Mom went to an all county high school, graduated a year early, was on of seven valedictorians and won the American Legion Award in scholarship.

My parents raised me in my dad’s hometown of in rural 600 in rural Oklahoma. My parents had a successful store, so I had every luxury as a kid, especially books and music.

By the time my granny started telling me about Kings in Satan’s service when I was 8, I was already doing 6th grade work in school and understood that several of the things that Granny and Dad told me that just made no sense (Black people were the sons of Ham — Noah’s son — and their skin color was his curse; forced vomiting cured most illnesses — it does not; putting butter or fresh cream on every injury — causes infection) was a result of the poor educational opportunities (this understanding aided, of course, by my educated mother.

So it didn’t take much for me to nod at them respectfully when they made bizarre religious claims about media. I just listened to my KISS Double Platinum 8-track in mom’s car.