Sloan: Fundraiser makes for great lyrics

While having lunch with Ron Barker and friends at a Mexican restaurant sporting mounted deer heads in my east Texas hometown of Mt. Vernon last week, Barker serenaded us with “Kill a Moose for Jesus.”

Wendel Sloan

Legendary for his humor and practical jokes (he brought Vienna sausage, beans, crackers, pudding and a small, red bottled Coke to lunch) — and once paid his water bill with 8,000 pennies — Barker wrote the tongue-in-cheek song about a 1980s Methodist fundraiser.

“There was a group of men called the Methodist Mavericks who decided to have a hunters’ harvest fundraiser where they would feed wild game to ticket buyers,” Barker said. “They cooked anything they could shoot — squirrels, alligator, fish, ducks, quail, deer, moose — in a variety of styles.”

The second year the fundraiser was so popular it was moved to the rural airport community room.

“Not only was the food served buffet-style around the room, the animals were mounted on the walls so you could see their last expressions.

“The hunters dressed in camouflage. Some, having pot bellies, resembled camouflaged bushes,” said Barker — who recently got into a dispute with a local funeral home over a used coffin he’d retrieved from its dumpster. He asked for a second one to have a matching pair, while the funeral home wanted theirs back.

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Here are the “Kill a Moose for Jesus” lyrics Barker sang to us in a beautiful baritone under a restaurant deer head wearing an autumn wreath:

“The Methodist church in my hometown could barely pay the rent … Before they took the offering in, it had already done been spent.

“They tried bazaars and church bake sales … Though nothing seemed to please us … Until the Methodist Mavericks stepped right in with ‘Kill a Moose for Jesus.’

“Yes, I said kill a moose for Jesus … Blow that sucker down … Throw it in your pickup truck and we’ll feed it to the town.

“It don’t matter what you’re doing … Just hunt when you hear the call … Pack it in and cook it up … And we’ll eat it #$%*& and all.

“Yes, I said kill a moose for Jesus …”

Contact Wendel Sloan at [email protected]