Post by murphee on Mar 14, 2004 3:00:50 GMT -5
No-Satan Zone
Saturday, March 13, 2004
By TODD LEWAN
The Associated Press
INGLIS, Fla. -- It truly was an ambitious undertaking: But Carolyn Risher, mayor of this coastal hamlet of shrimp fishermen and God-fearing folk, believed the hour had come to cleanse her town of the giver of evil.
His grip on the community, she noticed, had become disturbingly apparent: a father had molested a child, teens were dressing in black and powdering their faces white, pot and crystal-meth use was on the uptick.
So, she sat at her kitchen table on Halloween night two years ago and drafted a proclamation. The words flowed from her pen almost, as she recalled later, as though God was guiding her hand.
"Be it known from this day forward, she began, "that Satan, ruler of darkness, giver of evil, destroyer of what is good and just, is not now, nor ever again will be, a part of this town of Inglis... In the past, Satan has caused division, animosity, hate, confusion, ungodly acts on our youth, and discord among our friends and loved ones. NO LONGER!"
The mayor printed her proclamation on official stationery. She stamped it with a gold seal. She signed it, and along with Sally McCranie, the town clerk, made copies and stuffed them into four, hollowed-out wooden posts on which were painted "repent," "request," "resist."
Then, together with a local pastor, a town commissioner and the chief of police, the 62-year-old mayor went to each of Inglis' four entrances and, in the name of the town's 1,421 residents, fixed those messages of banishment into the ground.
"If the proclamation could get people to wake up and realize that they need God, then it would be a success -- then Inglis would be saved," Risher told a visitor recently.
Would it, though? Would banning the Prince of Darkness from the town's three square miles deliver Inglis from drugs, thieves and drunk drivers? Would it ease the fears of a small, isolated community-- frustrated by joblessness and uneasy about war overseas and terrorism at home -- and attract an angel of light?
To an outsider cruising in fifth gear along U.S. 19, the towns along Florida's Gulf Coast do not look like Satan's stomping grounds. They look sedate as they always have, slow and swampy, places where the globes of the streetlights are almost hidden by live oaks and palms, where herons jut from the marshes and shallow, brown creeks that cut the Florida scrub.
Inglis is no different. There's not a lot going on economically: a towing business or two, a couple of real estate agencies, a few fruit stands, some bait-and tackle shops, a couple of no-tell motels and a handful of pawnshops, pubs and grills.
It's a town with a 50's feel, perhaps because of the big, bent sign on Highway 40 West reminding people that Elvis Presley came to Inglis to film "Follow That Dream," perhaps because many of the homes and businesses still standing on the main drag went up then, too.
On Risher's wall is a map of the United States, chocked with multi-colored pins. Each locates a newspaper, TV or radio station that sent a correspondent to Inglis to write about her anti-Satan campaign. "We got the world's attention," Risher says.
And how.
No fewer than 217 news organizations descended on Inglis in the months following the mayor's act, as did members of the American Civil Liberties Union, whose Florida chief described the proclamation as 'the most extreme intrusion into religion by a public official that I have ever seen in my 27 years as a director of the ACLU."
Soon, Risher was fielding calls from Dan Rather, Gov. Jeb Bush, Saturday Night Live and The New York Times and squinting under the lighting of CNN, NBC and BBC cameras.
Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" sent a correspondent from New York, dressed him in a red devil's costume, and had him stand out front of the L'ill Champs convenience store and slip passers-by $20 bills to chase him out of town for the camera.
And there were loads of pranksters. "Carolyn?" a deep gravely voice said on the phone one day when Risher answered. "This is Satan. I want you, baby."
Not everyone found the proclamation funny. Risher filled five binders with letters from Christians around the world, all in support of her stand against Satan. Ian and Jean Schodder wrote to tell her they'd been so inspired that they were selling their home in Canada and relocating to Inglis.
Then, the unthinkable: Someone stole one of the posts and the messages rolled-up inside. All four were replaced, this time sunk into the ground with reinforced concrete. For good measure, metal caps were installed and a local Pentacostal pastor anointed the posts with oil and a blessing.
Shortly thereafter, a town meeting was held. Things got heated. A number of citizens shouted that ACLU lawyers were unfairly pushing their community around. One non-Christian woman who was critical of the mayor's actions got shouted down.
The majority of the residents did agree to move them onto private property. Risher also agreed to reimburse Inglis in the amount of $13 for stationery, copying and telephone calls related to the proclamation.
In the end, the ACLU dropped its suit. (Town commissioners said the proclamation was not an official act because it hadn't been formally approved by a commission vote.)
Gradually, the flood of reporters, lawyers, comedians and religious advocates receded. But as the attention dried up and months passed, it became obvious that not all of the dark forces had left Inglis.
Bobbi Walker slides a quarter and three pennies across the counter beside the six-pack of Coke and gives the customer with the Brillo-pad beard, earring and Coors stomach a so-long nod.
The customer's fat, ringed fingers scoop up the coins. "Now that I got me the Coke, I gotta get something to go with it." He winks. Next door to the L'il Champs convenience store is Amelia's Packaged Goods, which carries things like rum, this unemployed mechanic's beverage of choice.
"See ya tomorrow, Mike," Walker says. She checks the wall clock: 10:24 a.m. "He's a little early today."
At the Mousetrap, a watering hole popular with bandana'd, tattooed bikers and truckers on weekdays and lipsticked, moussed rock-band lovers on weekends, owner Walt Deal cuts a draft beer and laughs.
"Did people stop drinking? Heck no," he says. "If anything, business got better. I mean, for a while there, people were driving INTO town to see where the devil is, or was."
Steve Morris, a captain on the five-man Inglis force, might take issue with Deal's analysis. Morris' main nemesis is crystal meth. The drug isn't hard to make, and it's sold cheaply on the street. Since the proclamation, Morris says, drug dealing and burglary are way down and busts way up.
Exactly how much?
He pauses, his regard clouding a bit. "Significantly." Morris glances upward, "And the Big Man upstairs is the reason."
Mary Jo Farnan and her husband, Bob, who own the Port Inglis Restaurant around the corner from the police station, aren't convinced. Their eatery has been broken into three times in less than a year. A few weeks ago, they fired a waitress because she and her boyfriend were getting high in the bathrooms on the evening shift.
"I see Satan all the time," Farnan, 69, says. "His name is crack, pot, coke and meth, and he roams around Inglis like he always has. Steve Morris? Shoot, he doesn't even live in this town. After 5 o'clock, he gets in his car and drives home to Homosassa, a half hour away."
Farnan grinds out his cigarette stub and frowns.
"We used to have two cops in Inglis," he said. "Now we've got five men on patrol. If that proclamation had worked, why did we need more?"
Beneath a canopy of pines and oaks at 42 Daisy Street, Gloria Adams is preparing a stew for her guests: drug addicts, ex-cons, people trying to kick the bottle.
Adams and her husband, Jim, opened "Jesus Is! Ministries, Inc.," a non-profit rehab center, in 1979. They have room for 32 boarders. Right now they have 31 guests. They're expecting lost soul No. 32 soon.
Did the proclamation slow down business?
"No, I'm sorry to say," Adams laments. "There's still a hunger out there. A hunger for faith, an empty spot in people."
Gingerly, she stirs the stew. "People are afraid a hundred times more, say, than they were 10, 15 years ago. You don't know if your neighbor is a terrorist, or where your job's going tomorrow."
Saturday, March 13, 2004
By TODD LEWAN
The Associated Press
INGLIS, Fla. -- It truly was an ambitious undertaking: But Carolyn Risher, mayor of this coastal hamlet of shrimp fishermen and God-fearing folk, believed the hour had come to cleanse her town of the giver of evil.
His grip on the community, she noticed, had become disturbingly apparent: a father had molested a child, teens were dressing in black and powdering their faces white, pot and crystal-meth use was on the uptick.
So, she sat at her kitchen table on Halloween night two years ago and drafted a proclamation. The words flowed from her pen almost, as she recalled later, as though God was guiding her hand.
"Be it known from this day forward, she began, "that Satan, ruler of darkness, giver of evil, destroyer of what is good and just, is not now, nor ever again will be, a part of this town of Inglis... In the past, Satan has caused division, animosity, hate, confusion, ungodly acts on our youth, and discord among our friends and loved ones. NO LONGER!"
The mayor printed her proclamation on official stationery. She stamped it with a gold seal. She signed it, and along with Sally McCranie, the town clerk, made copies and stuffed them into four, hollowed-out wooden posts on which were painted "repent," "request," "resist."
Then, together with a local pastor, a town commissioner and the chief of police, the 62-year-old mayor went to each of Inglis' four entrances and, in the name of the town's 1,421 residents, fixed those messages of banishment into the ground.
"If the proclamation could get people to wake up and realize that they need God, then it would be a success -- then Inglis would be saved," Risher told a visitor recently.
Would it, though? Would banning the Prince of Darkness from the town's three square miles deliver Inglis from drugs, thieves and drunk drivers? Would it ease the fears of a small, isolated community-- frustrated by joblessness and uneasy about war overseas and terrorism at home -- and attract an angel of light?
To an outsider cruising in fifth gear along U.S. 19, the towns along Florida's Gulf Coast do not look like Satan's stomping grounds. They look sedate as they always have, slow and swampy, places where the globes of the streetlights are almost hidden by live oaks and palms, where herons jut from the marshes and shallow, brown creeks that cut the Florida scrub.
Inglis is no different. There's not a lot going on economically: a towing business or two, a couple of real estate agencies, a few fruit stands, some bait-and tackle shops, a couple of no-tell motels and a handful of pawnshops, pubs and grills.
It's a town with a 50's feel, perhaps because of the big, bent sign on Highway 40 West reminding people that Elvis Presley came to Inglis to film "Follow That Dream," perhaps because many of the homes and businesses still standing on the main drag went up then, too.
On Risher's wall is a map of the United States, chocked with multi-colored pins. Each locates a newspaper, TV or radio station that sent a correspondent to Inglis to write about her anti-Satan campaign. "We got the world's attention," Risher says.
And how.
No fewer than 217 news organizations descended on Inglis in the months following the mayor's act, as did members of the American Civil Liberties Union, whose Florida chief described the proclamation as 'the most extreme intrusion into religion by a public official that I have ever seen in my 27 years as a director of the ACLU."
Soon, Risher was fielding calls from Dan Rather, Gov. Jeb Bush, Saturday Night Live and The New York Times and squinting under the lighting of CNN, NBC and BBC cameras.
Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" sent a correspondent from New York, dressed him in a red devil's costume, and had him stand out front of the L'ill Champs convenience store and slip passers-by $20 bills to chase him out of town for the camera.
And there were loads of pranksters. "Carolyn?" a deep gravely voice said on the phone one day when Risher answered. "This is Satan. I want you, baby."
Not everyone found the proclamation funny. Risher filled five binders with letters from Christians around the world, all in support of her stand against Satan. Ian and Jean Schodder wrote to tell her they'd been so inspired that they were selling their home in Canada and relocating to Inglis.
Then, the unthinkable: Someone stole one of the posts and the messages rolled-up inside. All four were replaced, this time sunk into the ground with reinforced concrete. For good measure, metal caps were installed and a local Pentacostal pastor anointed the posts with oil and a blessing.
Shortly thereafter, a town meeting was held. Things got heated. A number of citizens shouted that ACLU lawyers were unfairly pushing their community around. One non-Christian woman who was critical of the mayor's actions got shouted down.
The majority of the residents did agree to move them onto private property. Risher also agreed to reimburse Inglis in the amount of $13 for stationery, copying and telephone calls related to the proclamation.
In the end, the ACLU dropped its suit. (Town commissioners said the proclamation was not an official act because it hadn't been formally approved by a commission vote.)
Gradually, the flood of reporters, lawyers, comedians and religious advocates receded. But as the attention dried up and months passed, it became obvious that not all of the dark forces had left Inglis.
Bobbi Walker slides a quarter and three pennies across the counter beside the six-pack of Coke and gives the customer with the Brillo-pad beard, earring and Coors stomach a so-long nod.
The customer's fat, ringed fingers scoop up the coins. "Now that I got me the Coke, I gotta get something to go with it." He winks. Next door to the L'il Champs convenience store is Amelia's Packaged Goods, which carries things like rum, this unemployed mechanic's beverage of choice.
"See ya tomorrow, Mike," Walker says. She checks the wall clock: 10:24 a.m. "He's a little early today."
At the Mousetrap, a watering hole popular with bandana'd, tattooed bikers and truckers on weekdays and lipsticked, moussed rock-band lovers on weekends, owner Walt Deal cuts a draft beer and laughs.
"Did people stop drinking? Heck no," he says. "If anything, business got better. I mean, for a while there, people were driving INTO town to see where the devil is, or was."
Steve Morris, a captain on the five-man Inglis force, might take issue with Deal's analysis. Morris' main nemesis is crystal meth. The drug isn't hard to make, and it's sold cheaply on the street. Since the proclamation, Morris says, drug dealing and burglary are way down and busts way up.
Exactly how much?
He pauses, his regard clouding a bit. "Significantly." Morris glances upward, "And the Big Man upstairs is the reason."
Mary Jo Farnan and her husband, Bob, who own the Port Inglis Restaurant around the corner from the police station, aren't convinced. Their eatery has been broken into three times in less than a year. A few weeks ago, they fired a waitress because she and her boyfriend were getting high in the bathrooms on the evening shift.
"I see Satan all the time," Farnan, 69, says. "His name is crack, pot, coke and meth, and he roams around Inglis like he always has. Steve Morris? Shoot, he doesn't even live in this town. After 5 o'clock, he gets in his car and drives home to Homosassa, a half hour away."
Farnan grinds out his cigarette stub and frowns.
"We used to have two cops in Inglis," he said. "Now we've got five men on patrol. If that proclamation had worked, why did we need more?"
Beneath a canopy of pines and oaks at 42 Daisy Street, Gloria Adams is preparing a stew for her guests: drug addicts, ex-cons, people trying to kick the bottle.
Adams and her husband, Jim, opened "Jesus Is! Ministries, Inc.," a non-profit rehab center, in 1979. They have room for 32 boarders. Right now they have 31 guests. They're expecting lost soul No. 32 soon.
Did the proclamation slow down business?
"No, I'm sorry to say," Adams laments. "There's still a hunger out there. A hunger for faith, an empty spot in people."
Gingerly, she stirs the stew. "People are afraid a hundred times more, say, than they were 10, 15 years ago. You don't know if your neighbor is a terrorist, or where your job's going tomorrow."