LOOKING BACKWARDS

When my youngest child was in high school in South Carolina, we had a daily ritual for when she came home in the afternoon. We watched Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker on their PTL television show. (Praise the Lord)

We both had been raised in the north and never had access to southern gospel preachers. We were enthralled by them from the first and hoped to hear some of that good ole fashioned prayer meeting stuff. But it never happened. Tammy Fay sang and talked. She then gushed over guests and had her own cooking segment. That part was really a hoot.

Jim for the most part spent all his time selling units in their about to be constructed Holy Housing Development, Tammy was, of course, doing the decorating. She had impeccable taste. I don’t remember the real name for it since it was so long ago. A great deal of time was also spent asking for donations and sending out Praise the Lord souvenirs as their special thanks for all the money coming in. Tammy sold her music tapes and reaped a lot of money for herself. But never once did I hear any sermon coming from Jim. It was always “thank you lord” and “praise god”, maybe a snippet of a bible verse but never anything else except a plea for money.

We spent a great deal of time trying to understand how people could be so foolish as to believe in whatever those two were doing. And I must say, we also laughed at Tammy’s makeup and her recipes.

‘Course Jim got in trouble and went to jail, their development went bankrupt and Tammy Fay, the poor soul, got cancer and died.

I really should explain that when we moved to Columbia, they had just started to install cable television, so there weren’t many other shows available to watch during the day except for soap operas. We tried to understand why people loved Jim and Tammy so much. I guess they were thought of as friends and good people, but it turned out to be all about the money.

Imagine that.