Ever Get the Feeling That the Whole World is a Formal Dinner, and You are Ernest T Bass?

“Ever Get the Feeling That the Whole World is a Formal Dinner,

and You are Ernest T. Bass?”

            I have been to New York City . . .  or to put it in the vernacular of the “Andy Griffith Show,” Gomer has gone to Raleigh. It was the most eye-opening, tension-filled, knuckle- whitening, brain-draining, mind-numbing, ear-piercing experience of my life . . . and that was just the bus ride with our senior adults several years ago. Once we got to New York everything was fine, except for the traffic.

            Truth really is stranger than fiction. No one in New York City drives a car. They ride a bus, the subway, or one of the jet cabs. As a child I heard stories about the boogie man and how he might get me. I was scared. As an adult I have now seen New York City cab drivers. They have defined evil. The red flashing “Don’t Walk” pedestrian sign does not mean “Don’t Walk.” It means “Do not ever try to cross this street, but if you do run as if your life depends on it, because it does.” That’s what the sign should say.  If there is a jet cab within one block you have exactly five seconds to live.

            The other bizarre part of the trip was observing the people . . . mostly those on the outside of our bus. I saw one man wearing a long-sleeved gray sweatshirt, gray shorts, black socks, and red plaid tennis shoes. He had four rings in each ear, three in each eyebrow, and four in his lips. I think he was a stock broker. He looked like he was standing too close to a box of pushpins when  it exploded. 

            No one spoke English and of course everyone had a cell phone. It was like listening to Alvin the Chipmunk giving instructions to a speed talker on a caffeine high. The second and third most common languages were honking and hand gesturing. Hands and fingers were arranged in many colorful and not all together uplifting positions. The most popular language was foreign, and every souvenir store had five clerks, none of whom had a name I could pronounce.

            We saw Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. An inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty contains these lines: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses . . . send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me.” It was a reminder that our country has a place for everyone, including Ernest T. Bass, an occasional character on the “Andy Griffith Show.” Ernest T. was a little lacking in social skills and had a difficult time finding his place in Mayberry society.

            It is like that in the church. People who may not fit in somewhere else are all welcome in the church . . . at least they are supposed to be. There is an understood inscription from Matthew 11:28 on the door of every church that reads, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (NLT). Huddled masses, wretched refuse, homeless, and tempest-tossed . . . God’s kind of people . . . Gomer, Ernest T., and me.