Recently, while driving together, My friend, Buddy, who’d been occupied with his phone for a while, looked up from it and said, “So, you are a Mason.”
“I am.”
“What is it, exactly, that Masons do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do y’all do, really? There are some crazy things out there, you know? I want to understand what Masonry really is.”
“Crazy things?”
“You know what I mean. In the shallow end of the pool, its movies and television shows about treasure if its American media or evil plots if its out of the UK. In the deep end, on the internet, there are some really weird ideas out there.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I’ve seen some of that.” Then asked, “Have you ever read anything by Kipling?”
“The guy that wrote the, ‘Jungle Book?’”
“The same. He wrote a lot more than that. You should read some of it.”
We were in heavy traffic. Another driver signaled her desire to get in line ahead of me. I slowed, let her in, looked for a wave, which was not forthcoming, and sighed.
“C’mon, not so much as a wave?”
“The only wave you are going to get around here is a one finger salute,” Buddy laughed and he was right.
“Back in, Beautiful, East Texas, if you didn’t wave, someone was calling your mom, granddad, or talking trash about you at the cafe, the bank, and in church too,” I said.
“Whatever Toto, you ain’t in, Beautiful, anymore.”
“You’ve got that right,” I said.
“You also aren’t answering my question. Should I have avoided asking it?”
“Not at all and, I am answering your question, or beginning to.”
“How is a reference to Kipling the beginning of an answer?”
“Like me, Rudyard Kipling was a Mason.”
“That isn’t an answer, or the beginning of one, that I can see.”
“Be patient. I promise this is going somewhere. Kipling was a Mason. He was a lot of things. There are people who think well of him. There are other people who think poorly of him.”
“Okay, that is true for everyone.”
“It is,” I agreed.
My friend asked, “Isn’t pretty much every President of the United States a Mason?”
I laughed, “I wish they all were. We’d live in a better world but, no. We are able to claim a few though and particularly good ones too. George Washington to start with. I think Gerald Ford was the most recent.”
“How long have you been a Mason?” my friend asked.
“A quarter century.”
“Did you know any Masons before you joined?”
“I did. Good men. Our local retired pharmacist, the county attorney, a judge, a farmer, at least two of my great grandfathers, several others.”
“What about your dad or grandfathers?”
“Nope.”
“So it skips a generation or two sometimes?”
…
To enjoy the rest of this episode, click on the link above to play it in its entirety.
Much Love,
Hank
You’ve Been Hanked!
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