Dialects

Click here to read about an introduction to memoir: Journey through Memoir: Introduction .
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I shall write.  If it comes out as fragments, then it's fragments.  If it comes out as avalanches, then it's avalanches.

I have written many avalanches, in journals and on online forums.  I've written much on forums in the past three-plus years.  Only three-plus?  Yes.  It will be four years the end of December; that was my first post on a forum which was on GreasespotCafe.  I had lurked there for maybe two years.

In the beginning when I first found the Cafe, which I found on a google search after I witnessed to a guy at Borders inviting him to a Way fellowship who, upon invitation, said he was going to go look up The Way on the web; when I found GreaseSpot I thought that people who posted there were nuts. The guy I witnessed to never did call me; after my google searching I learned why.  There was so much bad stuff on the net about The Way.  I'd never googled The Way because as followers, we were told to stay away from those kind of places on the net, the kind of places critical of The Way that spread lies about us. But now, I'd found one and was reading some crazy stuff.  These people were nuts; crazy freaking nuts!

One of the most bizarre things I read in my first few visits to GreaseSpot was that Rosalie Rivenbark, the third and current President of The Way, and Donna Martindale, the now ex-wife of the second President of The Way, were lesbians.  It was so absurd I had to laugh; Rev. Rivenbark and Donna?  Rev. Rivenbark, the retired school teacher from eastern North Carolina, with that east North Carolina southern accent, a lesbian? Not a country accent, but the sweet southern drawl-type accent.

Ahh, North Carolina dialects. I love this state of North Carolina; it's in my blood. I don't think I'll ever want to move.  I love the mountains especially.  Yet the Outerbanks are a magical and almost foreign place.  The native accent there is a Scottish brogue which I learned when I visited the Pioneer Movie Theater in Manteo and met the owner in May of 2004; I think it was 2004.  The Pioneer Theater where all seating is on one level, one long sloping level, and where we bought the old-time candy cigarettes. Only in North Carolina maybe, where tobacco had for so long brought wealth which recently was turning into lawsuits. 

The gentleman who owned the theater had a thick Scottish accent and I asked where he was from; his age was mid-70s.  He answered, "He-eah!  I'm from he-eah!  This is the native speech of tha Outa-banks!"  His speech was alive and enthusiastic.  He spoke of how his grandfather,or perhaps it was his great-grandfather, had come across the Atlantic to live here, at the Outerbanks, and settled.  His family patriarchs had been fishermen.  I enjoyed his accent and his story.

I wasn't quite sure I believed him until a few weeks later I was watching PBS on which aired a documentary-type feature about dialects in North Carolina.  By golly, the kind elderly gentleman, the owner of the Pioneer Theater in Manteo, this rugged man for he came across as a rugged yet with a genteel quality, wasn't pulling my leg at all.

Rev. Rivenbark doesn't have the kind of accent that the man from Manteo had.  Yet her accent is genteel and school-marmish.  But a lesbian?  The Way had taught harshly through the years regarding homosexuality.  How could the current president and the wife of the previous president be lesbians?  Craig Martindale, the second President of The Way, had headed up a witch hunt for homos, queers, back in the 90's. But even before that, when Dr.Wierwille the founder had been around, we were taught the lowest of the low of humanity was when a person chose to be a homo.

Back in the early '80s Drew, who was a Way Corps Grad and ordained clergy by The Way, had told me how at The Rock of Ages Festival he had found two queers in one of the bathrooms engaging in a blow job.  Drew told me he busted their ass.  I don't think he told me details, but I still have a picture in my mind about Drew's judgment toward those sinners, Drew's cowboy boots kicking the guys he'd caught in the act in one of those blue bathrooms with about 4 stalls.  I don't think the bathrooms were permanent structures on Way Headquarters grounds; I think they were erected only for festivals like the Rock of Ages when thousands of believers came "home," to the Way Headquarters, what had once been the Wierwille family farm. I don't know if my memory graphic is what Drew told me, or what I conjured up when he told me. At the time, I figured Drew was carrying out God's judgment toward the lowest of the low.

Rev. Rivenbark and Donna as lesbians?  I had to laugh.

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