the company which manufactured Aurora Dawn toilet products
and easily the most peculiar curmudgeon of all Van Wirt’s whimsical clients, conceived the brilliant notion of putting Father
Calvin Stanfield on a commercial program. Stanfield was just then acquiring notoriety in professional radio circles by dint
of having cut down the popularity of the colossal Ziff Soup Jamboree four and five-tenths percent in the West Virginia area.
The Jamboree, including among its stars a movie hero, a stage heroine, a Metropolitan opera singer, and a burlesque comedian,
as well as two miscellaneous guest stars each week, had so blanketed the hour from nine to ten on Saturday night for USBS,
that the rival RBC had been unable to sell the time to any sponsor, and had given the hour back to its chain stations to fill
in as best they could with cultural sustainers. Many of these local broadcasters, obliged to maintain a steady flow of intelligible
sound during the hour at their own expense, had turned in their difficulty to religion, enhancing their credit in the community
and padding the hour full of talk and music fairly cheaply–not very sparkling stuff, to be sure, but then they were reasonably
certain that nobody was listening.
Father Stanfield had surprised everyone in the radio business. The managers of the RBC station in Wheeling knew little about
him except that he was a lay preacher who ran a sort of community farm in the back hills of West Virginia and held revival
meetings every Saturday night. After a brief survey of the field they offered him the time, and he accepted it willingly.
They counted on an innocuous hour of revival singing and preaching, but they were unaware of the main feature of Father Stanfield’s
personal brand of religion, which was regular public confession by the sinners of the community. These were not necessarily
members of the Fold: anybody who felt the need of cleansing his soul could come to Father Stanfield, tell his story, and request
the privilege of standing up at his revival meeting to unburden his sins. A colorful ceremony attended the confession period
which took up the last half hour of Stanfield’s broadcast. On the left side of the raised platform of the Tabernacle sat the
penitent sinners on low wooden stools, clad in gray sackcloth robes. One by one they came to the microphone and narrated their
transgressions, and when they had concluded with the proper words of repentance Father Stanfield pronounced them pardoned
and exchanged the sackcloth robes for snowy silken ones, whereupon they seated themselves on the right side of the stage on
a gilt, plush-upholstered pew, while the congregation burst into a hymn of praise and joy.
The lively quality of these confessions, which laid once for all the sentimental notion that sin is confined to the great
steaming cities, gained for Father Stanfield’s hour, in two months, a popularity unequaled in the annals of religious broadcasting.
The Father himself was no small asset to the program. After a twenty-minute opening of hymn singing and prayer he usually
launched into a brief talk on some topic of the day in a style of rustic good humor and Godliness that occasionally took on
a sharp edge of satire.
As Andrew trudged with his bag across the wide, dark, dewy lawn between the Tabernacle and the building known as the Old House,
he was aware of a tingling across his shoulders and down his arms, signs of tension and excitement which his easy disposition
showed rarely. The prospect of meeting the fabled Stanfield was partly the cause; much more than that, however, was the consciousness
of what these next hours might mean for him. Van Wirt was about to be promoted to a vice-presidency, and there were five assistant
sales managers available for his place, among whom Andy was junior both in years and service. Van Wirt had deliberately given
him this weighty mission with the intention of
and easily the most peculiar curmudgeon of all Van Wirt’s whimsical clients, conceived the brilliant notion of putting Father
Calvin Stanfield on a commercial program. Stanfield was just then acquiring notoriety in professional radio circles by dint
of having cut down the popularity of the colossal Ziff Soup Jamboree four and five-tenths percent in the West Virginia area.
The Jamboree, including among its stars a movie hero, a stage heroine, a Metropolitan opera singer, and a burlesque comedian,
as well as two miscellaneous guest stars each week, had so blanketed the hour from nine to ten on Saturday night for USBS,
that the rival RBC had been unable to sell the time to any sponsor, and had given the hour back to its chain stations to fill
in as best they could with cultural sustainers. Many of these local broadcasters, obliged to maintain a steady flow of intelligible
sound during the hour at their own expense, had turned in their difficulty to religion, enhancing their credit in the community
and padding the hour full of talk and music fairly cheaply–not very sparkling stuff, to be sure, but then they were reasonably
certain that nobody was listening.
Father Stanfield had surprised everyone in the radio business. The managers of the RBC station in Wheeling knew little about
him except that he was a lay preacher who ran a sort of community farm in the back hills of West Virginia and held revival
meetings every Saturday night. After a brief survey of the field they offered him the time, and he accepted it willingly.
They counted on an innocuous hour of revival singing and preaching, but they were unaware of the main feature of Father Stanfield’s
personal brand of religion, which was regular public confession by the sinners of the community. These were not necessarily
members of the Fold: anybody who felt the need of cleansing his soul could come to Father Stanfield, tell his story, and request
the privilege of standing up at his revival meeting to unburden his sins. A colorful ceremony attended the confession period
which took up the last half hour of Stanfield’s broadcast. On the left side of the raised platform of the Tabernacle sat the
penitent sinners on low wooden stools, clad in gray sackcloth robes. One by one they came to the microphone and narrated their
transgressions, and when they had concluded with the proper words of repentance Father Stanfield pronounced them pardoned
and exchanged the sackcloth robes for snowy silken ones, whereupon they seated themselves on the right side of the stage on
a gilt, plush-upholstered pew, while the congregation burst into a hymn of praise and joy.
The lively quality of these confessions, which laid once for all the sentimental notion that sin is confined to the great
steaming cities, gained for Father Stanfield’s hour, in two months, a popularity unequaled in the annals of religious broadcasting.
The Father himself was no small asset to the program. After a twenty-minute opening of hymn singing and prayer he usually
launched into a brief talk on some topic of the day in a style of rustic good humor and Godliness that occasionally took on
a sharp edge of satire.
As Andrew trudged with his bag across the wide, dark, dewy lawn between the Tabernacle and the building known as the Old House,
he was aware of a tingling across his shoulders and down his arms, signs of tension and excitement which his easy disposition
showed rarely. The prospect of meeting the fabled Stanfield was partly the cause; much more than that, however, was the consciousness
of what these next hours might mean for him. Van Wirt was about to be promoted to a vice-presidency, and there were five assistant
sales managers available for his place, among whom Andy was junior both in years and service. Van Wirt had deliberately given
him this weighty mission with the intention of
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