August 22, 2012
Memories of Masons The movie that I think best sums up the experience of a boy growing up in a Masonic neighborhood is Parents with Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt (1989)
Obviously they encouraged each other to corrupt themselves, their wives, and their children.
by Dan Brown
(henrymakow.com)
I grew up in a G.I. Bill suburb during the late 50's and 60's. Most dads were Freemasons - all school principals, coaches, and most teachers were Freemasons and Eastern Star. Two next door neighbors were Shriners. The wives chain smoked and took pills and drank, and stayed quiet a lot.
They all did.
My parents were dead so I was growing up with my father's parents - and my grandfather knew what Freemasonry was all about, and wanted nothing to do with it. I've always suspected he had been in it long before we lived in that city and got out.
The next door neighbor was a big intimidating man. The way he looked at me sometimes gave me the creeps. I didn't figure out till I grew up that his youngest daughter's behavior was explained by sexual sadist child abuse.
A neighborhood buddy's dad owned a motel and night club that specialized in catering to traveling sales reps. His house was more affluent -- bigger color television, a fancy wet bar and a den, his dad drove a new Lincoln and his mom drove a new Buick. They had a swimming pool. The kid was popular the year we were twelve because he started giving away dirty magazines he got from his dad.
The house smelled like the liquor Lounge at a hotel (a 60's hotel that is, with smoking). There were framed photos of his dad and other Shriners with bimbos in bathing suits -- his dad was a beauty pageant judge. My friend had a little sister, 2 years younger than us, who had also been in kiddie pageants.
When she turned 11, her dad took her to the state pageant - just her and him. I remember the mother was more visibly drunk and surly that week. Later the dad put a few photos up of his daughter with another girl her age posing in Playboy bunny costumes. They seemed to be having a good time in the photo, but the girl was changed after the trip. Before, she used to flirt innocently with boys who visited, but after the state pageant she became withdrawn.
I stopped going to that house anyway after the boy tried to hump my leg one afternoon while showing me a porn magazine, with the Rolling Stone song "Sympathy for the Devil" on his stereo. I don't think he knew any better.
I know what the women who are writing in now are going through, I could see what it did to the wives and daughters of Masons in my neighborhood growing up. It was directly attributable for family dysfunction in the cases I mentioned, because obviously they encouraged each other to corrupt themselves, their wives, and their children.
