Ah yes, the Mormons

After returning to Germany, it took us a couple of years to find something we could call our own patch. In the interim we moved from a huge earthquake plagued apartment block, to the ground floor of an old villa in Lahr/Schwarzwald. The landlady was what the neighbours unceremoniously described as another "Geldgeier"  aspiring for the inner circle of the secret hand-shake. Yes, Lahr has been a Freemason town since 1750. Of course the old glory days of the South Baden region faring as the summer paradise for famous artists and philosophers came to an ugly end with Hitler's efforts to reclaim the Alsace under the Third Reich. With the fall of the Sigfried Line, Lahr simply dwindled into another Tobacco and Wine town like any other under the French occupation. When DeGaulle decided France had no further need of NATO, their bases were turned over to the Canadian Forces, and in the course of Trudeau's regime, Lahr became the centre of Canadian Forces Europe. Given the exchange rate of the Canadian dollar and the benefits of "living out allowance" Lahr prospered immensely, soon becoming a haven for ill-repute rather like the towns of the old gold rush days. This, of course, soon caught the undivided attention of various religious fanatics just itching for a wealthy congregation.

Needless to say, anyone living in Lahr with an English name, soon found these loonies knocking at their door- as by all accounts some dirty bastard in the personnel administration office sold them the information. Living on a main street of that town, we were practically bombarded, so I took the liberty of using this to hone my skills in psychological warfare. The Jehovas were a piece of cake because of their inanely singular focus on doomsday. The Mormons, however, had to be the greatest string of outright confabulation I ever heard in my life. Very well, I thought, two can play that game, so I conjured up some quasi-Dänikenesque alien conspiracy cult mythos with revelationist undertones.

Amazingly, the theory was so good, it almost had them convinced, which of course, caused quite a ruckus amongst their Elders. Somewhere down the line, they saw need to send in their head hauncho, as if they had run into the devil herself. He made airs about being some senator's son from Washington D.C, with connections to the NSA. Well, while I tried to stop the sardonic smirk from creeping across my face, I told him he might as well throw in the towel, because the Canadian security council have always been into quite different occult practices since the days of MacKenzie King; and they would certainly not be impressed by some Mormon political heinie encroaching on their territory here. There was also this fact of Joseph Smith violating Native American burial mounds, and no surprise he had to move to Utah to flee the curse. Aside from that, I expressed my discontent with the fact that the Mormon idea of polygamy was just too one sided for my taste, as I wouldn't mind having several husbands to do the housework, so I can focus on "conjuring a few spirits" myself. On this note, the blighter finally fled with his entourage, never to be seen in my whereabouts again!