BEG YOUR PARDON?

I talked to my Dad today. 

Ancestry.com had another offer involving access to war records, and I wanted to look up information about my grandfather. I knew his middle initial was "E", but I never knew what it stood for. "Ernest", Daddy said. "Joseph Ernest Williams". 

He was a minister, and he operated a bulldozer. He was a pretty good hunter and fisherman, too.

Somehow the conversation turned to the elderly people in my Dad's life when he was a youth. "Old folks decided when you were supposed to start or quit doing anything. Never mind if THEY were doing it, you weren't supposed to. Everything to them was considered 'worldly affairs'--playing ball, going to the show, dancing”.

My Dad said Mr. Minor Jones got a bit part driving a mule in the Clark Gable film, "Band of Angels". Mister Minor Jones also told my Dad he had to beg the church's pardon for going to the movies. 

Dad said he asked him, "How come you can be IN the picture show, but I can't go TO the picture show? Mister Minor Jones told him, "I was working". 

I just cracked up laughing. 
Then, he told me how old Rev. Dorsey would preach 30 minutes about Joe Louis, and how proud everyone should be of him--but young boys in the church had to stand in front of the congregation and beg pardon for boxing.

Funny how rules govern our lives, shape our ideas, and catapult, or stop our progress. It's also funny how they change depending on who's playing the game. Sometimes it's malicious. Sometimes it's well meaning. Sometimes it's because people just don't know any better, or are just going by what they were taught. 

Practices and traditions are carried over from generation to generation, until someone is bold enough to question them.