Guest post by my friend Harvey Hughett. Please vist his facebook site Musing Appalachia

I first heard of Jethro when I read a classified advertisement in The Roanoke Virginia Times newspaper in 1969.

“Wanted, Circus or Gospel Tent. Call JJ Hughett at (703) XXX XXXX.” Curious, I called, and our friendship began. He explained that he was a minister and desired to buy a large tent in which to hold church revivals. I told him that I didn’t have a tent for sale but that both he and I spelled our last name the unusual H-U-G-H-E-T-T way and that I was confident that we were related. At that time, I was teaching at Virginia Tech and had an interest in genealogy and where my people came from. I learned that most Hughett ancestors in the USA, at one time or another, had lived in nearby Floyd County. My wife and I had spent considerable time roaming the county looking for the gravesites of my relatives and we found many.

Jethro invited us to visit with him and his wife the following week. He lived in a modest but comfortable home and promptly greeted us at the door. Immediately, I knew that we were related. He asked how I knew, and I said, “Because we both inherited the Hughett ugly genes.” At the time, I was in my mid-twenties and still awkward with my words, and he was in his forties.

He laughed, blew off the back-handed compliment, and invited us to sit a spell. While it is not debatable that Hughetts often had some homely-looking men, Hughett women that I know of frequently more than made up for it by being beautiful, in both looks and personality. Why the Hughett genes split up this way by the sexes, I can’t explain, but at any rate, Jethro and I resembled each other with some minor differences. We established that our relationship was tied to a common ancestor, FIVE GENERATIONS BACK! In nearby Indian Valley.

Jethro had an interesting and unique face. I had trouble looking him in the eyes because his right eye would look straight at you, and the other just floated around. I’ll guaran-dang-tee you that when faced with that, one has to look away. Being young and dumb in social graces (another Hughett man trait), I asked what had happened to his eye. He kept talking as if he’d not heard me and never answered that question. We chatted a bit more, and I asked him again and he still ignored the question. I finally gave up and we moved on to another topic of conversation…the circus tent.

He explained that he pastored a small church and wanted to expand the congregation and get God’s word to more people and that a big gospel tent would be perfect. He could fold it up and move it from community to community for frequent revivals. He had the backing for a loan for enough money to buy a used tent and a few more chairs. He would use a pickup truck, trailer, and portable pulpit with a stage he already owned. He also had a sequined “preaching suit” on layaway in Roanoke. With a big tent, he could be up and spreading God’s word more broadly in no time.

About a year later, he called and invited my wife and me to a revival on the outskirts of Pulaski in his new tent. We assured him we’d be there and put it on our calendar.

It was an evening event with close to a hundred people in attendance. And it was impressive! He had a choir singing and a nice sound system that even passing cars could hear as they drove by on the rural community highway.

It turns out that Jethro was not a laid-back preacher but an old-time pulpit stomper who could make the tent shutter when he got on top of his game. I wasn’t prepared for either the volume or variety of words that blessed the congregation that evening. At one point he did “the stomp.” It startled me when he stomped the wooden floor and made a loud sound that caused the portable pulpit to rattle and dust to rise. This was symbolic of stomping the serpent devil’s influence out of our lives. He challenged the “old debbil” himself throughout the sermon and, as a finale, called a few members forward to be healed by the laying on of hands. Luckily, the offering plates were filled with enough money to make a good dent in paying off the tent and accessories. Obviously, he was in his element and glad that he’d repented his earlier indiscretions as a young man and was now leading other lost souls to the path of righteousness.

Then, he did something else that caught me off-guard (I declare this is true). He held up two photographs, one of his wife and one of his daughter, and said that he felt something terrible would happen to them unless someone made an offering to the Lord on their behalf. Two old ladies on the front row eagerly opened their purses, pulled out fifty-dollar bills, and gave them to the preacher. He gave each of them a photograph, and the meeting continued with hallelujahs.

A few months later, I got another call from Jethro, wherein he invited me to a prayer meeting at his home. My father, Harvey Sr., was visiting us, and he and I were honored by the invitation.

When we showed up at his house, there was a circle of eight chairs in his small living room, all filled with women except for him, my dad, and me. The meeting started with a short sermon by Preacher Jethro, followed by an invitation to all in attendance to share things they needed to pray for.

The first one to speak up was a lady in her forties who complained about her husband’s drinking habit. From there, they went around the circle. The next lady explained that her married son had run off with a “cheap, hussy woman” from Christiansburg and was living in sin with her down in Shawsville. The next woman described how her husband came home drunk and beat her regularly and she wanted God to do something about it. And they kept going around the circle until they came to my father. My daddy was a devout Hardshell Baptist who was raised attending the small Mountain Valley Church in Mohawk, Tennessee.

I still shake my head, but the following totally blindsided me. My father didn’t hesitate to point his finger at me and said, “This is my son. He is a heathen, and he don’t believe in the same God that we do. He tolerates churches what believes in baptism by sprinklin’, woman preachers, and churches that accept queers into their congregation!”

Note: I do not belong to such a church as he described and I don’t know what got into him to say that. I try not to be critical, but it is true that I tolerate people and their right to believe what they want. This was always a point of contention between me and my father, and he obviously used that occasion to take a jab at me.

Apparently, his assertion struck a sensitive nerve with everyone, and all (but me) quickly got down on their knees, folded their hands, and started earnestly praying for my soul…out loud! Simultaneously! And forcefully! I remained seated on my chair and watched in disbelief as this was happening. It was surreal. I remember thinking I’d give anything to have a videotape of that event because no one would ever believe me. It was apparent to me that each person tried to out-pray the person kneeling next to them, both in loudness and biting criticism of such a sinner as me. Forget the philanderers and the drunkards; their attention was focused on me.

After about ten minutes of praying, louder by the minute, each person essentially preaching a sermon of repentance targeted directly at me, they said “amen,” and without a good-bye, put on their coats, and, one by one, everyone went home. The next day, my dad returned to East Tennessee, and I was glad to see him go.

Preacher James Jethro Hughett cut off communication with me from that day forward.

Later, in comparing notes with my wife from our first meeting, while Jethro was ignoring my question about how his eye came to be the way it was, she was getting the “straight scoop” from his wife. She explained that back in Jethro’s sinning days, his first wife had shot him in the eye with a .22 revolver, rendering the controlling muscles useless. She went on to describe how his wife had divorced him and, after he became a preacher, he once interrupted his sermon in a church service, pointed at her in the congregation, and proclaimed that God had told him that she was to be his wife. She took him at his word, and they were married. He was in his forties. My wife remembers her saying she was just over sixteen at the time of the inspired sermon. As I inferred earlier, he had a face that would stop an eight-day clock, and she was very attractive. I kept track of Jethro and learned that probably because of the age difference, he died much earlier than she did. But I am pleased to tell you that their marriage was a happy one and, literally “Made in Heaven.”

I once reminded my wife of the technique that Preacher Jethro had used to obtain a young wife and my usually mild-mannered spouse told me that if I even seriously thought of doing such a thing remotely like that, she’d shoot me in the face too, then proceed to shoot me several times below the belt. My wife never lies so I took her at her word.

Our differences notwithstanding, I liked Jethro and remember putting fifteen dollars in the revival collection plate, a lot of money for my young family in the mid-sixties. The closing of that tent revival meeting was memorable, too. He said, “Thank you all, thank you, thank you everyone, and I thank you even more than you know. I look forward to someday meeting you on God’s shining shore…and I hope that we all make it.”

One can’t make this stuff up. This story is true. I changed some names to keep kinfolks from getting irritated with me. And I’m not being critical of the folks who torched me. They were sincere and I was…well, in the wrong place at the wrong time. That happens to me pretty often.

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