Free Naked Came the Stranger by Penelope Ashe, Mike McGrady Page B

was an instantaneous success, and some in the audience saw a
twinge of irony in the fact that Rabbi Joshua Turnbull could not be
there to savor his most hard-fought victory. The second song,
"Kneelin' and Feelin' and Prayin' and Sayin'," was launched in
splendid fashion, with flash bulbs providing punctuation, when the
spectre appeared.
    Rabbi Turnbull, mantled in a potato sack, his eyes red and wild,
marched upon Jonah and the Wails, commanded them to stop. They did.
Turnbull mounted the lectern and, foaming with rage, denounced Jonah
as a false prophet. He turned to his horrified board of directors and
accused them of the sin of the biblical Jonah, ignoring the will of
God.
    "We are in mortal peril!" he shouted.
    Turnbull, holding onto the lectern like a forecastle, felled three
Temple vice presidents and was holding his own with a fourth when the
police arrived.
    "Philistines," he cried, "I'll take the jawbone from this ass and
lay your thousand low."
    Jonah gave up his bone and fled into the crowd. Turnbull,
discovering that it was rubber, threw it at the last of the
retreating Wails. Finally, hemmed in by superior forces, Turnbull was
overpowered and carted off. The remainder of the service was
canceled. And, though the Temple did not press charges against its
rabbi, he disappeared forever from King's Neck.
    It was rumored in later years that he had changed his name to
Brodsky and had found employment as a beadle in a deteriorating
Orthodox synagogue in East New York, where he remained, penitent,
recluse, who flagellated himself ritualistically. But that was only a
rumor, of course.
EXCERPT FROM "THE BILLY & GILLY SHOW," NOVEMBER 28TH
    Billy: Yes, Gilly, with Thanksgiving gone, can
Christmas be far behind?
    Gilly: And don't forget Chanukah. Equal time, you know. Anyway,
that comes first, doesn't it?
    Billy: I think so. By the way, Gilly, I think we should express
our regret at what happened to Rabbi Joshua Turnbull, who was on the
show with us not long ago. I'm sure everybody read about his
unfortunate breakdown.
    Gilly: Yes, the papers certainly had a picnic with it. Billy:
The man must have been under fantastic pressure.
    Gilly: You can't imagine how sorry I felt. That good, saintly
man. It just proves what a strain religious leaders are under today.
It's the world we live in.
    Billy: Right. I'll tell you, Rabbi Turnbull was especially
interested in reaching young people, and that could have done
it.
    Gilly: I'm not sure I follow you, dear.
    Billy: Well, these kids today, they don't care about anything.
They don't identify with anything.
    Gilly: Wait a minute, dear. Certainly today's young people show
a great deal of alienation, but I think you're being extreme. I'm
sure youth has its important values.
    Billy: Yeah, marijuana and LSD. Look, how about the kids you
see walking around the Village?
    Gilly: Those are hippies. Or they want you to think they are.
And anyway, 1 don't think they're representative of all young
people.
    Billy: Maybe not, but there are an awful lot of them. Listen,
you even see them in the suburbs nowadays. Gilly: That's true. But
even then, you can't always judge a book by its cover.
    Billy: Well, all I can say is that some of them, the ones with
super-long hair and sandals, have some pretty unappealing
covers.
    Gilly: Perhaps, but I can remember what it was like when I was
in college. We weren't all angels.
    Billy: You were, dear. I'm sure you've always been an
angel.
    Gilly: Well, it's nice of you to think so.
    Billy: Seriously, sweetheart, some of these kids today are
frightening. Take sexual promiscuity, for instance.
    Gilly: Yes, I know what you mean. But I think you're
generalizing.
    Billy: I'm not so sure.
    Gilly: 1 still think most young people are terribly
stimulating.
ARTHUR FRANHOP
    Raina Franhop slipped the amphetamine tablet into
Cat's water bowl with the sincere hope that it would compensate for
his waning sex life. (Domestic animals, of course, were not permitted
to run free in the