When I was a senior at Ole Miss, I was taking a course in social studies. I took it because it was supposed to be easy. The teacher, a guy with long hair and a beard, and who drank beer at the same place I did, told us to write a paper for our final grade. It could be on anything. The emphasis had been on religion, so I chose snake handling churches as my topic.

You would not believe all the information there was out there on the subject and this was in the 70's. Mostly it was from West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.

It was amazing what I learned about these "handlers". They have authority from the Bible, it's in the 16th chapter of Mark. ( they took up serpents and they harmed them not)

As I write this, I'm beginning to think I have written this story before, but If I have, don't stop me, cause I love telling it.

The descriptions of the services were all very similar, a lot of noise in the church, singing, dancing, clapping, shouting ,drums, guitars, just a lot of noise. They would get so worked up with chants and prayers that they would go into a trance. That's what most of the articles and books concluded. Their body temperature would drop at the height of the trance so that's when they would go for the snake. Mostly they were in cardboard boxes and were always big rattlers, I mean big. The preacher would reach in there and just drag it out for the congregation to marvel at. I remember one book I read where the narrator said the snake couldn't tell the difference between the temperature of the box and the preachers hand. That's pretty strange to me,

But then, they have the Bible to back them up. The Bible also says not to eat shrimp.

I made a B on my paper.