I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: DAR WILLIAMS-“Teen for God” (2005).

Dar Wiliams has a new disc in which she revisits her old songs (by herself and with guests) and which includes a bonus Greatest Hits disc.  I have listened only once to the disc, but it includes this song which fits perfectly with this story.

Williams has always been an excellent lyricist.  Her rhymes are strong and her descriptions and ideas are first-rate.  Normally, her songs are emotional and intimate, although this one is less so.  It’s serious and funny at the same time.

It begins with a teen at the Peach Branch Horse and Bible Camp where she’ll “pray for the sinners and their drunken car wrecks and vow that I’ll never get high or have sex.”  It’s interesting to compare this song and the implications of the teens for God circa 2005 vs what Franzen is talking about circa the early 1970s.  And it’s fascinating, and rather depressing frankly, how much more conservative times have gotten since then.

What really sells “Teen for God” are the final few verses, where we realize that we shouldn’t take too much of what the teens pledge to be long-lasting (like so many things that teens believe). “You gotta help me, God. Help me know four years from now I won’t believe in you anyhow and I’ll mope around the campus and I’ll feel betrayed all those guilty summers I stayed”

And all of this existential religiousness is set to a perky folk rock song.  The “Teen for God” chorus hits a perfect delayed chord, and is a wonderful singalong.  Perhaps even at a campfire.  On a retreat.

[READ: November 18, 2010] “The Retreat”

This essay is about Franzen’s childhood (always a good source for his stories) when he joined the hippie “Fellowship” at First Congregational Church.  Franzen is older than I am by a  few years, so a lot of things that he writes about from his childhood are things that I knew a little about or caught the tail end of.  So, in this case, I recall my church having Saturday night folk masses, where everyone played acoustic guitars.  I loved it and my parents hated it; when I recently asked a neighbor if they still do that she laughed at me and said they’d stopped it like 25 years ago.  Which explains a lot.

Anyhow, the article discusses an upcoming retreat that the ninth graders would be taking with the other older Fellowship students.  Franzen was a big fish in the 8th grade Fellowship but was a little nervous about the older group.  He loved retreats and wanted to go but didn’t think his parents would approve.  Luckily for him, his parents were in Europe at the time.  [This seems to be some kind of thing that parents did in the 70s–go to Europe for an extended period while the kids stayed home.  My parents never did, mind you, but some seemed to.]

Franzen tries to avoid the Social Death car, the group of outright losers, because although he is not quite in their league he could easily get lumped in with them.  Especially when a couple of “bad kids” steal his lunch bag and read the note from his mother (barf) addressed Dearest Jonathan (double barf).  The kids start shouting “Dearest Jonathan” in a girlie voice, but luckily for him they don’t know that he is the Jonathan in question.

As with every lengthy Franzen article, he jumps to other topics as well.  This one concerns the town that the Fellowship was based: Webster Groves, MI.  In 1966 CBS aired a documentary about Webster Groves called 16 in Webster Groves.  Wikipedia says this was an award-winning documentary, but Franzen remembers it as superficial and somewhat dispiriting (which is the way it portrayed its residents); he says it wasn’t entirely inaccurate (and the quotes from it are amazing), but it edited reality to fit its needs.  And thereafter, whenever he said he was from Webster Groves people always got a sympathetic look on their face.

Nevertheless, it works as a backdrop for the minister of Fellowship.  Bob Mutton was a troublemaker turned seminary student (he had long hair and side burns).  But the love of a girl persuaded him to go whole hog into this pursuit of seminary studies.  After some time in the church, he volunteer as the Youth leader.  And so it turns out Mutton was Fellowship’s hippie (but still kind of scary) leader.

And the kids loved him, for even though he talked of Jesus and spirituality he also loved rock and roll and basketball and he was fun.  Parents worried about the number of kids going to Fellowship and how into it they were.  A ST. Louise paper fretted: “Parents complaining because their high school youngster spends too much time at church.”  Yet for all of his transgressive ways, he was also strict (and had a bit of a temper) and he didn’t take guff from bad kids.  And on the retreat, there was to be no drugs or alcohol (smoking was totally cool though).

Franzen didn’t know what weed smelled like back then (I loved the bit where he wasn’t even really sure what to call it–“pot” sounded like something his parents would say, so he tried “dope” but he was unsure if that was correct so he pronounced it “duip”-ha!  And there’s a wonderful payoff to that later in the article).  But when the bad kids smuggled dope into the retreat, they were eventually caught and faced consequences.

But consequences were also given to those who knew about the weed.  And the girl who brought the bad kids along (thinking they might get something out of it) confessed and was so sad wanted nothing so much as to stay on the retreat because it meant so much to her.  And Franzen was amazed at her passion for something that he thought he was passionate about.  His drive paled compared to hers.  And yet for all of that, Franzen stayed with Fellowship.  And the ending is a satisfying conclusion to his time with the group.