The Transformation Of Jedidiah Donne-With Singer-Songwriter Greg Brown’s Phrase “…our prayers was in English, but we was all just speaking in tongues” in Mind    

SPEAKING IN TONGUES LYRICS

A wild high cry flew up out of our brother
He was moaning and shaking, shining like the sun
He fell down like a dead man, Some people helped him up
He was all right, He was just speaking in tongues

When someone was sick we gathered all around them
And lay our hands upon them, all of us, old and young
We prayed that God Almighty would heal them
Our prayer was in English, but we was all just speaking in tongues

When I really feel my way back to that church and them people
The little hairs stand up all over me
And I hope that this nation like that congregation
Will give it up and pray for our soul, which is in misery

And that one day we may lay our hands on one another
And seek the healing for ourselves, this earth and our young
And sing that old song of many colors, many rhythms
And listen with our hearts to the speaking in tongues

By Bradley Davis

Jedidiah Donne made it out of the hills and hollows around Hazard, Kentucky, you know down in Appalachia, down in old time coal country by the skin of his teeth. Got his ass, go his “hinny,” his expression reflecting something of the old time religion he got bathed in and that stuck with him when words like ass, hell, bitch, fuck got thrown around in his presence. Not that he was a prude, or rather he did not know that for guys, rough-hewn guys from the cities, from farms, hell, probably from anywhere except down in the “burned over” hills and hollows around Hazard, Kentucky and a few other places such talk was everyday guy talk so that maybe he did not know that such objections were, hell, prudish.            

Let me get to Jed’s story and maybe it will make sense that in the year 1998 that a perfectly good and sane guy would be fretting about words like ass, damn, fuck, and hell, hell. See I met Jed, by the way it is okay, okay at least for me to call him Jed although everybody who knew him when we first met called him “hick” and ‘hayseed” right in front of him when we were in basic training down in Fort Dix in New Jersey, a place where they still train Army recruits in the basics of Army life. My reason, hey by the way my name is Fred Kelly in case anybody is asking, Frederick on the birth certificate but nobody called me Frederick since that would immediately refer to my father, Frederick Kelly, Senior, for being down in Dix was that I had been caught stealing about ten automobiles for a guy running a “hot car” ring and the judge in the Stoughton, Massachusetts gave me the “choice”-three to five at the state pen at Cedar Junction where he assured me that I would be somebody’s “bitch” from day one, assured me right in open court, or “volunteer” for the military. He didn’t give a tinker’s damn, his term, which branch just that I got my young ass in there, ass also his term. I checked it out and my best deal what with my education and time to serve so I headed to the Army Recruitment station on I think it was Tremont Street in Boston to sign up.

That was how I got to Dix. How Jed got there is quite another story. See his family since about the 1800s, since they found coal in the hills and hollows down in Appalachia, rich veins from what Jed said, had been coalminers one way or another all the way back to Jed’s great-great grandfather, also a Jedidiah. But back in his father’s generation the mines were beginning to play out and the coal companies started closing the mines and heading west, or someplace where they could mine coal on the cheap and avoid union wages and benefits. (Actually from one night when we were talking the mines had begun to play out in Jed’s father’s generation so any number of Donnes, including his grandfather Prescott were more than happy to sign up for the military the day after the Japs dropped the shit on Pearl Harbor. Jed said Grandfather Prescott had told him before he passed away that between the cancerous “black lung” mines and the Nips, Japanese, he would take his chances in the Pacific). So all Jed had going for him since he had as most of the male members of the family had going back generations dropped out of school at sixteen to work at something. That something never really materialized and so one day Jed just up and left to head to Lexington (Kentucky) to sign on the dotted line at the Army Recruitment Station there.

It was hard for me, a city boy and maybe too wise to the ways of the world, maybe better to say the underworld to see such a naïve and backward guy. Hell, according to the drill sergeant who met us from the transports at the Basic Training Center at Dix later after he had put us through hell and back Jed didn’t even had shoes, store bought shoes anyway when he got off the bus. Didn’t know squat about much except that he would get clothes and three square meals a day. Wasn’t looking for much more than that. My own father when I told him that was shocked to hear that information because back in the 1960s, back in Vietnam War days, his war, he would also run into guys from places like Hazard (and places even more down at the mouth like Bridgeton also in Kentucky) who were getting their first pair of serious shoes and who thought they had died and gone to heaven when they saw the “delights” of three square meals a day for the first times in their lives in the mess hall. Jesus.                 

While we are on the subject of Jesus, the subject of what I want to tell you about Jed you should know that he came from a very strange church background, one that baffled me, still does, when I think about the matter as I am doing now. He was a rock solid member of a church called the Church of the Everlasting Brethren, an old time religion church which Jed said went back to the old country, to England in the 1600s and was still going strong in places like Hazard. My own church background was sort of a formal Catholic but I didn’t think about it much once stealing fast cars for some serious money, serious money to me became my religion. That and getting into my girlfriend Jenny Martin’s pants (or having her give me a blow job which she was more amenable to doing since she was always fretting about getting pregnant so she pieced me off by “playing the flute” she called it having gotten that expression from her older brother). So I didn’t think anything of it after he told me his basic story.

Then one night, maybe after midnight so one morning

I “learned” first-hand about his religion, about his mania is a better way to say it. I had been up late having a few brews with some other trainees at the Enlisted Men’s Club the first time we were allowed to do after six weeks in Basic so it must have been a Saturday night, early Sunday morning. The way the barracks were set up was that four men would sleep to a room, two sets of bunk beds one on one side of the room and one on the other. I had the bottom bunk on the left hand side of the room as you entered which meant all I really had to do was almost fall down into bed. Eventually I dozed off without realizing that Jed was in his bunk above me.

After a while, don’t ask me how long, maybe half an hour I began to hear what sounded to me like gibberish in a semi-musical kind of voice. The words sounded like no words I had heard before and while I never learned any other language but English I had a feeling when I heard Spain, French or one of those languages even though I would not have been able to tell you word one about what the speaker was talking about. It was then that I noticed that it was Jed speaking that foreign language, speaking it in very soft flowing almost religious way, the way in my Roman Church the choir would sing on some special holy day like during Lent. Was doing this act with only his trousers on, bare-chested and with what looked like his eyes closed like he was singing to some unknown space. I kept thinking that maybe I would pick up what he was talking about if I listened enough. The only phrase I was able to pick up was “aloo, aloo, oni sacke aloo”, something like that when I mentioned it to Jed about fifteen minutes later after he stopped (and done with what he called his trance state later when he told me what he had been up to).         

Once Jed stopped, opened his eyes and smiled at me as I was sitting upon my bunk perplexed and awestruck I asked him what the “fuck” was going on, was he a crazy man. Calmly he answered, “I was just speaking in tongues, speaking to my people back home in our little Brethren church.” I asked what language he was speaking in and how did a kid who dropped out of school in rural Kentucky learn some foreign language when he could barely pass the English literary test (that according to Jed’s own testimony since he told me he was scared that he would flunk the entrance exam). Still with a smile he said he did not know any foreign language, any heathen language he might have called it, I forget, Jed said “I was singing to the angel choir when I heard the noise of wings as they approached my bed and called me to their own.”

What did it all mean, what did “aloo, aloo, oni sacke aloo” mean. His answer was in the negative, he was clueless about what any of it meant. Except to say that Preacher Roe, the leader of that little Brethren congregation, said they might be speaking in English but the Lord in his wisdom allowed them angelic speech in tongues. I roomed with Jed for the rest of Basic and later in Advanced Infantry Training for a few weeks before they shipped him out to parts unknown but I stayed as far away from him as possible. Jesus, speaking in tongues.