Well, when I was a
kid I'd take a trip
Every summer, down
to Mississip'
To visit my Granny
and her antebellum world
I'd run barefooted
all day long
Climbin' trees,
free as a song
One day I happened
to catch myself a squirrel
Well I stuffed him down in an old shoe box
And punched a
couple holes in the top
When Sunday came, I
snuck him into church
I's sittin' way
back in the very last pew
Showin' him to my
good buddy Hugh
When that squirrel
got loose
and went totally
berserk
Well, what happened
next is hard to tell
Some thought it was
Heaven,
others thought it
was Hell
But the fact that
somethin'
was among us was
plain to see
As the choir sang
"I surrender all"
The squirrel run up
Harv Newman's coveralls
Harv leaped to his
feet and said
"Somethin's got
ahold of me! Yow!"
The day the squirrel went berserk
In the First
Self-Righteous Church
In that sleepy
little town
of Pascagoula,
Mississippi
It was a fight for
survival
That broke out in
revival
They were jumpin'
pews and
shoutin' Halelujah,
Halelujah
Well, Harv hit the
aisles
dancin' and
screamin'
Some thought he had
religion,
others thought he
had a demon
And Harv thought he
had a
Weed Eater loose in
his Fruit of the Looms
He fell to his
knees to plead and beg
And the squirrel
ran out of his britches' leg
Unobserved, to the
other side of the room
All the way down to the Amen Pew
Where sat sister
Bertha Better-Than-You
Who'd been watching
all the
commotion with
sadistic glee
But you shoulda
seen the look in her eyes
When that squirrel
jumped her
garters and crossed
her thighs
And she jumped to
her feet and said
"Lord, have mercy
on me!"
As the squirrel
made laps inside her dress
She began to cry
and then to confess
To sins that would
make a sailor blush with shame
She told of gossip
and church dissention
But the thing that
got the most attention
Was when she talked
about her
love life, and then
she started naming names
Well, seven deacons and the Pastor got saved
And twenty five
thousand dollars got raised
And fifty
volunteered for
missions in the
Congo on the spot
And even without an
invitation
There were at least
five hundred rededications
And we all got
rebaptized, whether we needed it or not
Now you've heard the Bible story, I guess
How He parted the
waters for Moses to pass
O, the miracles God
has wrought in this old world
But the one I'll
remember 'til my dying day
Is how He put that
church back on the narrow way
With a half-crazed
Mississippi squirrel
RAY STEVENS
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SOUND: RAY
STEVENS |
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