Amazing Grace with a spin

[Sam]

My wife had an uncle named Eugene Shafer.
He had been married to her aunt.
The aunt backslid and hit the bars.
After carrying her out of the bars crying a few times they divorced.
Eugene married and always had the stigma of being a preacher who had divorced and remarried.
He was a Jesus' name preacher, belonged to one of the Church of Jesus Christ organizations, and used that name for his church.

He used to sing "I Saw the Light" and also "Prayer Bells of Heaven."
One time in a fellowship meeting in Warsaw, KY many years ago,
he was singing "I Saw the Light." He was singing full blast when,
all of a sudden, he stopped momentarily,
and I saw that his upper denture had almost flown out of his mouth
but he caught it in his jaws and his jaws were clamped down on it.
There it was, exposed, looking like a strange toothy smile.
He shoved it back in and kept on singing and rejoicing and dancing,
barely missing a beat.
Afterward he said, "Next time I'll remember to bring the Polygrip."

He was quite a guy.
Years ago I heard that he had personally baptized over a thousand people in Jesus' name. He never had much of a church, just a few store front places.

At his funeral, and then afterward from someone else I heard this same comment:
"Bro. Shafer has baptized so many people in the Ohio River that the catfish all know him by name."