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everything that was going on.
    At assembly one day during a magazine sales drive to raise money for the school (no, I didn’t sell any magazines), he got on stage and announced that he was not going to wash his feet until we met our sales quota. Everyone laughed uproariously. Great stuff. Unfortunately, he was also what we called “country strong”—something I learned the first time he paddled my rear end and lifted me off the ground. The man had leverage. I never could figure out how such a nice guy could hit so hard. But I knew I didn’t have much to complain about. They say that the professional criminal is caught only about one out of eight times he commits an offense. I figured that was about right.
    Boyhood is a series of second chances. In Lawrenceburg it was not based on social or economic standing. It was basedon who your parents were, which determined whether you were basically a “good kid” even when you gave every indication that you were not. One preteen night while our parents were visiting at my house, a buddy and I walked down the street and behind Dudley Brewer’s café. There was a big window fan in the back that cooled the café’s kitchen area. We thought it would be a great idea to fill a bottle with water and fling the water into the fan, causing those inside to get a shower. I was the gunner on this mission. I slung the water from the bottle and started running. I heard breaking glass but assumed that it was the water bottle breaking. We ran home, laughing about the now-wet café patrons. We sat down in my yard and were talking when Mr. Brewer walked up. The sound I heard of glass breaking was not the bottle, as I had supposed, but the window that the bottle had gone through. We explained and apologized, but Mr. Brewer was not amused. He gave us a lecture, and as he walked away my heart sank.
    Over the next few days, I waited for the guy who owned and ran the restaurant where Dad had coffee every day to spill the beans. It never happened. Finally, my conscience got the best of me and I told Dad. He went to Mr. Brewer to make amends, and I never knew exactly how it was resolved, but since Dad never mentioned it again, my guess is that Mr. Brewer refused payment for the window.
    Fifteen years later, Mr. Brewer still owned and operatedthe Blue Ribbon Café and was still the respected titular head of the Republican Party in the county. When I came back to practice law, he took me under his wing and gave me calm guidance and support. He didn’t remember that incident with the scared little boy to whom he had decided to give a break several years earlier. But I did.

 

    I GUESS I WAS a “strict constructionist” at an early age. Of course, this term, when applied to the Constitution, means that the Constitution means what it says. It should be interpreted as much as possible according to the plain meaning of the document and the original intent of its framers.
    In the Church of Christ, we wholeheartedly agreed with this concept. Except it was the Bible that was to be strictly construed. And the original intent was that of God Himself. It was pretty simple, really. You did what the Bible told you, and you followed the example of the early Christians. The scriptures told us to believe, repent, and be baptized. As a kid, while I had considerable difficulties with the English language in school, I learned at least one word of Greek—
baptizo
, which means “immersion.” When you got baptized, you were immersed in the water. The scriptures definitely did not refer to being “sprinkled,” a risky if not damnableshortcut. So, at the age of thirteen, without notice to my parents, I walked down the aisle one Wednesday night and was baptized.
    By the same token, the early Christians were told to sing and make melody in their hearts. There was no mention of instrumental music. So we had none. Neither did we have a choir. Referring to the invidious creeping in of modern technology that preachers often