consiglieri wrote:Madison54 wrote:
He was a complete a**hole on here and treated people horribly. Then, his story is told in General Conference and he’s suddenly their new poster boy for a saint who’s seen the light and returned to the fold. Didn’t they parade him around having him speak everywhere about his reconversion? Nauseating.
Dusty was an asshole back in the 80s as well. He offended everybody in the U.T. student ward. Nobody liked him. Then I felt like I should ask him to go do something together and get to know him better.
He was stunned. I immediately found out he is a really good guy with bad and offensive social skills.
Looks like some things haven't changed.
Holy moly. Now I wonder if I know him, too. I remember you from university ward in the late 80s when I joined the church (I don't think you remember me--I started attending in Fall '88 and moved to Denton in early '90). I've often wondered what happened to some of the folks from that ward. It was by far the most interesting ward I was ever in during my nearly two decades in the church (it gave me a false idea of the depth and breadth of faithful Mormon thought and behavior in a typical ward).
I wonder what happened to Gib Condie and Larry Smith and the Elieson siblings (well, I know one of them is now US Attorney in Las Vegas), the Sidwells (surely they did not remain in the church?), and others (in addition to the intellectual lights in that ward, there were some real oddballs whom I won't name). I do know the institute teacher I admired so much, who was so good at table tennis and calligraphy and rode his motorcycle to and from Waco every day, ended up having a fling with a student and getting booted out of CES, whereupon he moved down to the border. That was a bit of a faith-shaker for me at the time. What was his name? Schaelling or something like that.
Anyway, I had no idea this Dusty Smith Utah Texas Cowboy guy was in that ward, too. It was quite the cast of characters (and I haven't even mentioned the handsome guy with perfect teeth who was in the Bishopric and involved with Up With People, or the (I'm pretty sure closeted gay) rich guy with a house in the hills off of 360, or the lady who would stand up in F&T meeting and talk about Mother Eve and paganism and stuff, or the guy who would DJ the dances and refused to play Paula Abdul's Opposites Attract because there is a line in it that goes "I like to smoke.").
Mostly fond, but also plenty of bizarre, memories of that time. Still, if the entire church were composed of university wards like that one, I might be able to stomach attending once in a while. Sadly, such units were actually few and far between even thirty years ago, and have been almost completely wiped out under the oppressive wheels of the correlation machine.
"The Church is authoritarian, tribal, provincial, and founded on a loosely biblical racist frontier sex cult."--Juggler Vain
"The lds church is the Amway of religions. Even with all the soap they sell, they still manage to come away smelling dirty."--Some Schmo
