Jesse James
Jesses James. The name feared throughout the Midwest in days of yesteryear. I remember when young Jesse James, the actual descendant of the beige dustered and holstered one, first set foot on Moody's campus and one day stood to announce his name to the freshman class in 1964. Everybody howled. It was sort of like Audiie Murphy walking into a saloon without a gun and ordering up a fresh glass of milk at the bar. But they wouldn't laugh for long. I don't recall what happened to him in the early formative years at Moody, but I do remember when his direction became solidified and he started down the path toward Campus Crusade for 31 years. In those days, Jesse had a thick thatch of straight hair that enfolded his head. The men who came to Moody in those days were all using Brylcream, Vitalis, Butchwax and crap like that to make their manes stand and hold position in the Crowell Hall wind tunnel for nine months. But somewhere in those years, we segued from wet to dry, and a thing called hairspray for men began to take hold. There was this joint over on Rush Street where Dave Parker and Chuck Wright and others who had inherited wild, baboon hair would go for razor cuts, and after an hour in that place they would come out transformed because the guy who ran this fly-by-night, rock-head design house was somehow able to get clear, liquid concrete into a can and then lay a thick, invisible mist of it on top of a razor cut. I remember beholding Chuck Wright after he stepped into the dorm with his razor and concrete makeover. He looked good, but his head looked like he had clasped on some kind of medieval iron. All I remember is Chuck Wright not washing his hair for a week, and his head still looked like the Jerry Mahoney puppet whose scalp was painted on. Anyway, the hairspray started to fly in the men's dorms at Moody like a cloud of fog, and we all began to appear in prayer bands and pulpits with our heads in cast iron, unmovable hair. But for one man, the concept of hairspray for men signaled a paradigm shift. Somehow Jesse James got his hands on a large can of Aqua Net. When he painted it on his head, he must have laid down a thick carpet of it one day only to discover that he had no less than a World War I helmet. Jesse James and Dave Parker must have had the same karma and discovered the cheap cans of Aqua Net about the same time because Parker was soon seen on campus sporting what looked like a steel plate welded to his head. Parker liked it so much that he absolutely refused to wash his hair. He would bound from his bed in the morning and the helmet would still be in place like the night before. But after about a month without soap and water touching his nob, plus the ever-increasing tendency to more and more claw at his itching head board, things started to happen. You could stand behind Parker when the wind picked up, and even in early June, it would remind you of the 1967 blizzard. The dandruff would cake uder that iron-clad hair, and he would have to race back down to Rush Street like a cobra-bitten native charging into the village looking for anti-venom. But all these paled before Jesse James and his impervious steel head. He was the King of the Hair at Moody. The closest I have ever seen anyone get to Jesse was Glenn Campbell. Glenn Campbell, who is now a Christian, and Jesse James were Brothers of the Hair. Whenever I read the last verse of Hebrews 1, these two, plus Parker and Wright, always remind me of those words there, "the hairs of salvation." Jesse always dressed impeccably, but what stood out was that hair. And I mean it stood out. Literally. It extened out over his eyebrows like a cliff for about three inches. And no matter if Jesse was standing in dead air in Torrey Gray Audiorium giving his testimony and intoning, "It's a real joy to be here tonight," or holding a rail and hanging straight out from it at Lake Michigan in a gale while telling a bum on Chicago Avenue that God loved him and had a wonderful plan for his life, HIS HAIR DID NOT MOVE. Nothing. Not a single strand budged. Jesse must have ordered a pallet of hair spray and had cases of it stored in his room at any one time. I don't know if he was on the path to Rush Street like the other disciples or whether he got up at the crack of dawn and encased his wolfman head in cement with a can in both hands. In my imagination, I can see him now springing from his rack, buckling on his holsters, standing before the mirror like Matt Dillon with hair standing out like Don King in Nightmare on Elm Steet, and then reaching for his guns and drawing two cans of Maximum Hold and Lock Tight. Breathing billows of lung-clogging toxins that filled the room with a milky haze after he made sure that his granite hair could withstand the Benny Hinn healing-hammer-to-the-head test, Jesse would dress and prepare for his exit. The door would open, and he would step out like Zorro with his plasterd plank polished and in place as hairspray vapors swirled at his feet and head and surrounded him like steam from a Union Pacifc Big Boy. He would mount his Campus Crusade horse by loading up with the Four Spiritual Laws and ride the Bill Bright charger down the stairs where he would break out in the Spirt-filled-life-smile and gallop across the campus to what we called the 4-H Club, the Houghton Hall Husband Hunters, where Carolyn Swanson, a Chicago girl from Judson Baptist in Oak Park, looked just as prepared as Jesse and waited for him there.
Today, that has all changed. For one thing, his hair just isn't there anymore to support an entire can of flourocarbons. A lot of it probably fell out because it remained hard and had no blood circulation to the individual hairs for so many years. Besides that, football helmet hair is out now. Not only that, but Jesse heads out on a regular basis to the Ukraine these days where they have their own version of Jesse James hair, those muskrat rugs that Gorbachev and all of those Bolshevic types wear over there. And if you have armor brazed onto your skull like Jesse used to do, it is hard to get those goofy looking Rusian bear-hair hats on.
But I prefer to remember the days of yore when Jesse and Carolyn Swanson, who was as happy as Jesse's contractor in the hairspray industry, would stroll hand in hand over the university campus and together harmonize:
"...Don't try to understand 'em,
Just witness, share and hand em,
The Four Laws we carry at our side.
Boy, I wanna reach em'
Soon I'll be apreachin', be preachin' at UCLA tonight,
Bill BRIGHT!"
Today, that has all changed. For one thing, his hair just isn't there anymore to support an entire can of flourocarbons. A lot of it probably fell out because it remained hard and had no blood circulation to the individual hairs for so many years. Besides that, football helmet hair is out now. Not only that, but Jesse heads out on a regular basis to the Ukraine these days where they have their own version of Jesse James hair, those muskrat rugs that Gorbachev and all of those Bolshevic types wear over there. And if you have armor brazed onto your skull like Jesse used to do, it is hard to get those goofy looking Rusian bear-hair hats on.
But I prefer to remember the days of yore when Jesse and Carolyn Swanson, who was as happy as Jesse's contractor in the hairspray industry, would stroll hand in hand over the university campus and together harmonize:
"...Don't try to understand 'em,
Just witness, share and hand em,
The Four Laws we carry at our side.
Boy, I wanna reach em'
Soon I'll be apreachin', be preachin' at UCLA tonight,
Bill BRIGHT!"