The Summons Read Online Free PDF Page B

In 1970, the powers up North decided to pollute the South once again by sending down dirty movies.
    Like most things good and bad, pornography arrived late in Mississippi. When the marquee listed The Cheerleaders it went unnoticed by the passing traffic. When XXX was added the next day, traffic stopped and tempers rose in the coffee shops around the square. It opened on a Monday night to a small, curious, and somewhat enthusiastic crowd. The reviews at school were favorable, and by Tuesday packs of young teenagers were hiding in the woods, many with binoculars, watching in disbelief. After Wednesday night prayer meeting, the preachers got things organized and launched a counterattack, one that relied more on bullying than on shrewd tactics.
    Taking a lesson from the civil rights protestors, a group they had had absolutely no sympathy for, they led their flocks to the highway in front of the drive-in, where they carried posters and prayed and sang hymns and hurriedly scribbled down the license plate numbers of those cars trying to enter.
    Business was cut off like a faucet. The corporate guys up North filed a quick lawsuit, seeking injunctive relief. The preachers put together one of their own, and it was no surprise that all of this landed in the courtroom of the Honorable Reuben V. Atlee, a lifelongmember of the First Presbyterian Church, a descendant of the Atlees who’d built the original sanctuary, and for the past thirty years the teacher of a Sunday school class of old goats who met in the church’s basement kitchen.
    The hearings lasted for three days. Since no Clanton lawyer would defend The Cheerleaders , the owners were represented by a big firm from Jackson. A dozen locals argued against the movie and on behalf of the preachers.
    Ten years later, when he was in law school at Tulane, Ray studied his father’s opinion in the case. Following the most current federal cases, Judge Atlee’s ruling protected the rights of the protestors, with certain restrictions. And, citing a recent obscenity case ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, he allowed the show to go on.
    Judicially, the opinion could not have been more perfect. Politically, it could not have been uglier. No one was pleased. The phone rang at night with anonymous threats. The preachers denounced Reuben Atlee as a traitor. Wait till the next election, they promised from their pulpits.
    Letters flooded the Clanton Chronicle and The Ford County Times , all castigating Judge Atlee for allowing such filth in their unblemished community. When the Judge was finally fed up with the criticism, he decided to speak. He chose a Sunday at the First Presbyterian Church as his time and place, and word spread quickly, as it always did in Clanton. Before a packed house, Judge Atlee strode confidently down the aisle,up the carpeted steps and to the pulpit. He was over six feet tall and thick, and his black suit gave him an aura of dominance. “A judge who counts votes before the trial should burn his robe and run for the county line,” he began sternly.
    Ray and Forrest were sitting as far away as possible, in a corner of the balcony, both near tears. They had begged their father to allow them to skip the service, but missing church was not permissible under any circumstances.
    He explained to the less informed that legal precedents have to be followed, regardless of personal views or opinions, and that good judges follow the law. Weak judges follow the crowd. Weak judges play for the votes and then cry foul when their cowardly rulings are appealed to higher courts.
    “Call me what you want,” he said to a silent crowd, “but I am no coward.”
    Ray could still hear the words, still see his father down there in the distance, standing alone like a giant.
    After a week or so the protestors grew weary, and the porno ran its course. Kung fu returned with a vengeance and everybody was happy. Two years later, Judge Atlee received his usual eighty percent of the vote in Ford