Today Devilstower posted a fine diary on the Millerites and the end of the world. I was exposed to a lot of this from an early age, from Beyond the Fringe's "The End of the World" http://www.youtube.com/... on my parents Hi-Fi to tales of the "Millennium" as my LDS schoolmates called it.
I even got an up close look when my younger brother became a Seventh Day Adventist in the ultimate act of rebellion. Vegan to piss off my gourmet chef mother, teetotaler to repudiate off my hard drinking Pa and reducing his literary intake to one book, the Bible to torque us all.
But the best was yet to come...I posted this as a comment to Devilstowers diary and it was suggested that I make a diary of it...so without further ado
Back in 1988 I was assigned to a project in northern Virginia where we were building a power plant. My job was subcontract administrator and one of my charges was the boiler erector. The superintendent , Kyle, was an old crusty coot of about 67 years, German extraction from the hills somewhere. He was very religious and along about July started handing out pamphlets titled 88 Reasons the Rapture Will Occur in 1988.
This caused more than a few raised eyebrows but work went on. According to the book the end of the world was due on Yom Kippur in early October. The pamphlet gave detailed ‘signs’ and seemed to have this guy (at least) convinced. He had bought a couple of hundred and was passing them out like, well cheap religious tracts. I was even a lucky recipient despite my obvious heathen nature.
As time when on and October approached this guy became more and more nervous and stopped all productive work. Saying “I don’t think I’m gonna be around to finish this job and the rest of you are going to have trouble completing it during the Tribulation”. Progress on that subcontractors work almost ground to a halt with this attitude and the job started to suffer.
The day (Oct 7th I believe) came and I sort of sauntered down to Kyle’s office and acted surprised “Kyle, I am surprised to see you”, his reply was “no man knows the time or place of God’s plan, I’m gonna give it another couple of days”.
Well along about October 15th Kyle decided that the timing was wrong, something about Pope Gregory or something, anyway he thought it was time to get the job trucks winterized so he went down and bought a case of anti-freeze. Being older and out of shape he hurt himself in the process and spent the next week in the hospital getting a hernia operation.
During his absence word on the job was that he had misread the pamphlet, it should have read 88 Reasons the Rupture Will Occur in 1988. In the end Kyle was run off having convinced his employer he was nutty as a fruit cake. True story, I have been waiting years to tell it somewhere other than cocktail parties. Thank you for the letting me unburden myself.