Sittin' on the Dashboard Watchin' Over Me

As Bob and I drove cross country from California to Ohio in 1971, one of the songs on the radio had the lyrics:

I don't care if it rains or freezes,

'Long as I got my plastic Jesus

Sitting on the dashboard

Watchin' over me!

Now I never considered that blasphemy because I knew that a relationship with Jesus was not dependent upon having a plastic image of Him on the dashboard. I understand, now that I am older (and wiser?), that for some people having a plastic Jesus on the dashboard is a visual reminder of His Presence with them.

Have you ever read The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan? She tells a tale that Amazon describes as "Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past—including the terible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events that led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949." Having read that and "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck I was aware that there are myriad dieties in some asian belief systems.

I was struck in the local grocery store parking lot the other day as I placed my cart in the corral by a car with seven, yes I counted them, 7! plastic Asian gods and goddesses on the dashboard of one car. All I could think as I stood there stunned was:

"I don't care if it rains or freezes,

'Long as I got my plastic dieties

Sittin' on the dashboard

Watchin over me!"

A blast from the past and a stunning thought for Clermont County, Ohio!

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