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his observations. Mrs. Johns, who took delight in her husband’s crusades but was as serene as he was volatile, was playing the piano. She decided to let him know that he was being repetitious by ignoring the third or fourth invitation to discuss the same point. This annoyed Johns, who began to shout, and Mrs. Johns showed her displeasure over the shouting by continuing to ignore him. Johns went berserk, shouting louder and louder, and finally, to the horror of his niece and daughters, ripping the sleeve off his wife’s dress in a rage. The children would never forget how Mrs. Johns kept playing the Bach, never missing a note, saying nothing. Vernon Johns held the torn piece of dress in his hand for a few seconds, then dropped it and walked silently out the door. He returned a few minutes later with some steaks and a bubbly new mood, as though the fit had never occurred.
    Johns cultivated a garden in the yard behind the parsonage on South Jackson Street and set many worshippers’ teeth on edge with a running description of the cultivation process. Then one Sunday, “just to show you what can be done on a tiny patch of land,” he pulled a huge cabbage and a plump onion from behind the pulpit and held them up for the congregation to inspect. “I left the roots on them just to prove they weren’t bought in the store,” he announced mischievously. Another Sunday he arrived for the service without shoelaces, probably because he had misplaced them, but when he noticed the stares of the congregation, Johns casually told them, “I’ll wear shoestrings when Negroes start making them.”
    But it was the fish that first got him hauled before the board of deacons. One Sunday he had a load of fish iced down on the back of a truck, and the odor, together with the traditionally low estate of the fishmonger, created a rebellion within the church. Johns complied with a formal letter requesting his presence before the deacons. When he learned the nature of their complaint, he intimidated them with a fully annotated lecture on the importance of fish and fishermen to the Christian religion, world history, and nutrition. He paid them a backhanded compliment by remarking on the summons as a sign that he was finally getting the church’s attention. And he defended himself. “Gentlemen, I have a duty to provide you with the Gospel,” he said, “and I have a right to provide you with food. As far as I’m concerned, I will sell anything except whiskey and contraceptives. Besides, I get forty calls about fish for every one about religion.” When the deacons failed to endorse this license, Johns abruptly resigned and walked out the door. Nesbitt was detailed to seek him out and arrange a truce.
    He succeeded, but the net result was to worsen positions all around. Nesbitt himself was further compromised. As a deacon known to be personally sympathetic to Johns, and as a member of the minority “non-teacher clique” that was less hostile toward the preacher, Nesbitt found himself under attack for failing to control Johns, who went on selling produce. Some members wanted to get rid of the pastor and had been heartened by his resignation. This stiffened their resistance to his wishes, which in turn made Johns pound on the big Bible in the pulpit. He never opened the pulpit Bibles during his tenure at Dexter, but he wore out at least three of them with his fists. On several occasions, the organist’s continued refusal to play anything but the most conservative hymns made Johns walk out of the church in anger. Nesbitt was obliged to chase him several blocks down Dexter Avenue, begging him to return to the service.
    Had it not been for the fact that visitors were still coming to Montgomery from great distances to listen to Johns and to praise him afterward, church opinion might have solidified against him sooner. As it was, the membership was divided over an exasperating problem: