When I was growing up, I remember the preacher saying all the things we should avoid in the world of sinners to keep us out of temptation. Besides the typical bad things such as the evils of drink and the demon tobacco, which is strangely pronounced as toe-back-caw, we weren’t supposed to go to the movies either.

In a rural small town, since there was only one cinema and no live theater, we called it the “show” and knew we should be ashamed if any fellow church member saw us waiting in line to buy a ticket. Dancing was another no-no since it might entail swapping partners at some point besides the sexually suggestive gyrations it induced.

Some churchgoers avoided TVs too, especially cable television, which was like having a wire in your house connected directly to hell in their minds. Although sometimes there would be one or two that got cable or satellite, claiming it was for all the special religious programming you couldn’t get on the standard networks.

I always wondered if it was really for the televangelism or the unedited full-length movies they never got to see since they wouldn’t go to the movies. They could happily watch the carnal delights produced by Hollywood in dark basement rec rooms without fear of being caught outside the “show” by nosey churchgoing neighbors.

Anyway, recently making the news according to the AP (09/20/06) is the lifting of a 56-year-old ban on tattoo parlors in Norfolk, Virginia the home of the world’s largest naval base. About six odd decades ago, the East Main Street of Norfolk was infamous for its racy nature, lined with taverns, naughty burlesque shows and about a dozen tattoo parlors.

Anxious to clean up the town’s image, the city council banned all tattoo parlors in the downtown core in the year 1950. It branded tattooing as unsanitary, vulgar and even as “cannibalistic.”

Now that it will be legal again, we’ll soon see if they all go to hell in a hand basket and according to the disapproving judgment of those folks from the fifties, start eating each other’s flesh!