Jackson Free Press

On this episode of "All God's Churn Got Shoes," the Right, Reverend "Chicken Bone" Jones conducts a morality campaign and protest rally across the street from the Mystical Magic City strip club, bar, grill and dollar store. From an elevated platform, he delivers an urgent message to a small crowd.

Rev. Chicken Bone:

Desperate times make desperate people. Fear and hopelessness produce a people without faith. As folk lose their jobs, benefits, Social Security and Medicaid, they walk on the crooked path of immorality. Get-rich and fast-money schemes lure our youth and adults into the world of exploitation and vice, like that strip club posing as a dollar store.

I confronted a young lady entering Mystical Magic City and asked her a simple question: WHY? She replied: "Preacher, I'm so poor I don't know what to do any more. My momma's ill and unsure about Medicaid. I'm in college studying to be an engineer. I'm forced to supplement momma's medical costs, pay college tuition and other expenses just to make it. So, with the economy the way it is, I must work at this joint and lap dance to buy a laptop computer; lap dance for my social security; lap dance for Medicaid."

My response to this young lady was: Sista, ya need the Lawd's touch instead of strip-club clients touchin' ya with folded money.

Join us next episode When Grandma Pookie says: "Hmmmm. Lap dance for a laptop—a possibility!"

Ken Stiggers is a television producer in Jackson and the co-host of The Lyric Lounge Thursday at Santiago's.