Days of Wine and Roses, and Vasectomies

This is another hard question, again because I have few memories not washed out by church stuff.  But I don’t really mind that — there are lots of ways ordinary memories can be overborne by really bad experiences, and I don’t have that to recover from, as many do.

So, I have the usual Brothers Grimm catalog in my head, but I can’t remember ever being read to out of secular books, although I’m sure I was.  I have audio memories for the most part, and my brother Stephen has the same.  We had a series of vinyl LPs by Ethel Barrett, who told Bible stories and non-Bible both.  It’s been close to 60 years since we last listened to any of that, and this morning I performed a test to see how good Steve’s memory was:

One of my favorites in that oeuvre was of the prophet Elijah in a mountaintop smackdown with the priests of Baal — for dramatic value, it rivals Joseph revealing his identity to his brothers in Egypt when they came begging during a famine.  Ms. Barrett describes the heavenly fire memorably — “and licked up the water in the ditch!” — although I guess we cannot fault her for leaving out what happened to the Baalites afterward.

You can read the canonical version of the story in the 18th chapter of the first book of Kings, but it’s well known.  It had dimmed in my memory until it came back in a very amusing way about 12 years ago.  

I was at that time a member of our local oratorio society, and for our winter concert we were rehearsing Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” oratorio, the climax of which was this showdown on Mt. Carmel.  Elijah, on his own, and 400 Baalite priests had squared off, each with a sacrificed bull on a stone altar, each side to call on Yahweh or Baal to demonstrate divine power by sending down fire to consume the sacrifices.

Team Baal goes first, and the music has a carnival-like feel to it.  The priests are happy-happy, calling on Baal to hear and answer, while Elijah stands grimly by. But Baal doesn’t answer in this first round, and the priests try again.  The music is then more urgent, more minor, and Elijah mocks them, voiced by our beefy baritone soloist: “Call him louder — perhaps he sleepeth!  Perhaps he walketh about.”

Third round: the Baalites are really ticked off, and desperate.  “Baal!  Mark how the scorner [Elijah] derideth us!  Hear and answer!”  The music grows more frantic, and they make one final full-chorus appeal:  “Baal!”  [then two measures of silence, enforced with a vertical line all the way down the score].  Then: “BAAL!!” [more silence of death].  The final word, with a grinding organ accompaniment and in a hopeless tone by us singers: “Baal …….”.

But it was October, and the windows of the rehearsal hall were open.  We loved this oratorio, and were giving it our all, and when we had bellowed for Baal three times, we fell dramatically silent.  Within the hall was then clearly heard — crickets from outside.

The effect of a modern trope on this old music was profound, and I must report that many laughed (glad it was only a rehearsal).  We begged our director to instruct our talented organist to simulate crickets after the final call to Baal for the concert, but she dismissed our pleas with dignified scorn.

You should know that in his turn Elijah soaked his altar with gallons of precious water and dug a moat to hold more.  When he then called upon Yahweh, fire came blasting down, burned up the sacrifice, the altar, the water, and all the Baalite priests.  How’s that for “deriding us”?

Who knows what actually happened up there on Mt. Carmel, if anything.  Elijah and the priests were historical personages, that we know.  But, anyway, great story, I say, with or without crickets (unless you were a Baalite).