Storyteller: Uncle Charnel and Aunt Versa

My family is populated with moonshiners, preachers, politicians, businessmen, and salesmen. All sides have a lot in common; they are each…possessed by their own kind of spirits.

My Uncle Charnel was a big, burly man, given to speaking and doing as he saw fit. Big-hearted, he would be the first to lend a helping hand to someone in need, and on more than one occasion, a family down on their luck would find a basket full of food on their front porch, but he was a moonshiner.

My Aunt Versa was the love of Charnel’s life. Sweet as a Georgia peach, they had been married for 30 years. She was 100% tee-totaling; in church every time the doors were open. She belonged to the BTU, WTU, and the WWF—that’s right, the WWF. Every Saturday night, she was in front of her little wood-boxed, 9” round, black-and-white TV screen, with her white hanky waving, cheering on her favorite wrestler, Gorgeous George.

Uncle Charnel’s “special” was 150 proof. He made it so smooth you would swallow half a jug before you could choke it off and so clear you could read tomorrow’s newspaper through the fruit jar… if you drank enough of it.

Once a month, crinkled $5 and $10 bills serendipitously appeared in the offering. It wasn’t long until the ushers spotted Aunt Versa dropping a thick manila envelope in the plate. When our pastor was told and asked what he was going to do about it, Brother Jones, way ahead of his time, was eco-friendly and green. He said, “Boys, don’t see no harm; all we are doing is recycling.”

Our pastor, a “Spirit Called” preacher, didn’t have a formal degree in theology but certainly had one in kneeology. He would preach Hell so hot in July you would still be warming by it in January, Heaven so sweet that you wanted to go right then and right there. Our troubles began when Brother Jones, who had been pastor all my life, passed away.

Our new preacher, the Reverend Dr. Charles Wilson III, started making changes the Sunday he arrived. Where Brother Jones wore his overalls with a crisp white shirt and a black, clip-on tie, Rev Wilson wore a threepiece suit for every service, including the fifth Sunday, dinner on the ground. Each sermon he preached was better than the next. The old timers said he was one of those “mama called, and poppa sent preachers, momma called him to preach, and poppa sent him off to cemetery….. er…seminary” (then they’d laugh.)

Rev Wilson had all kinds of degrees, DDD, PHD and an LTD., which he got in and drove out to Uncle Charnel’s and Aunt Versa’s farm. Late on a Sat afternoon, he pulled down the farm lane and waited his turn to get through the cattle gate to the gravel driveway leading up to the house. He parked his car to one side; he didn’t want to be seen as part of their nefarious activity. Stepping up on the front porch, he knocked on the door; my cousin Leilus answered and went to get his momma. Aunt Versa wiped her flour-coated hands on her ever-present white apron and invited him in. Rev. Wilson said he had rather not. In a condescending voice, he told her, “I have decided the church can no longer take the money you have been placing in the offering plate because it would appear unseemly.”

Aunt Versa didn’t say another word, nodded her head, turned on her heel, and went back inside. A tight hair bun, rotund woman built more for comfort than speed, but she was a bulldozer when she got to moving.

She called her nephew, Buddy Jr., and bought his bean field directly across from the church. She built the largest fellowship hall in St. Clair County. Next to our church it looked like a German Shepherd’s tail on a Chihuahua. The fellowship hall stood cheek to jowl with our little church, nothing separating them but my aunt’s determination and a dirt road. Across the front of the fellowship hall, in bright