The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

A married couple that gives Goodyhay and Mink a ride to the chapel; the car they drive is "hard-used and a little battered" (304).

This man owns the land on which Goodyhay wants to build his "chapel"; he has "changed his mind," or, Albert speculates, had it changed for him by "the bank that holds the mortgage" or maybe "the American Legion" (303).

Albert is the member of Goodyhay's irregular congregation who drives the truck carrying construction materials for the church they are trying to build - and who tries to explain to Mink what unites the Goodyhay's flock across racial and other boundaries.

When Franklin Roosevelt died in office in 1945, his Vice-President Harry Truman became the 33rd President of the United States. Dad mentions "Truman" in a sentence about the unorthodox theology and politics of the members of Goodyhay's congregation (300).

Norman Thomas was a Presbyterian minister by training, one of the country's most famous pacifists during the First World War, and the six-time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America, 1928-1948. According to the character named Dad, the members of Goodyhay's unorthodox congregation "like as not would have voted for Norman Thomas even ahead of [Franklin] Roosevelt" (300).

Dad speculates that "the rest of the folks in the neighborhood" of Goodyhay's unconventional church won't "put up with no such as this" (300). He assumes they will object to Goodyhay's congregation of ex-soldiers and their families as "a passel of free-loading government-subsidised ex-drafted sons of bitches" who want to do "something" politically radical about the American status quo (300). Dad is not particularly reliable as a character, but later the man who had given Goodhay permission to build a church on his land "changes his mind" (303).

The congregants in Goodyhay's church are mostly ex-soldiers and their wives or mistresses; one of the men wears a "barracks cap still showing where the officer's badge had been removed" (305), and another refers to the group as "ex-drafted sons of bitches" (300). But the group also includes "the moms and pops of soldiers that got killed" (295) as well as the men who help to build at the two church sites.

Dad mentions this "mama's boy" when he tells Mink about Goodyhay's experiences during World War II. According to him, during a landing on a Japanese-held island, this Marine got "scared or tangled up in something" while under attack and had to be rescued by Goodyhay (295).

This "Four-F potato chip salesman" ran off with Mrs. Goodyhay while Goodyhay himself was serving in World War II (294). ("4F" is not a brand of potato chips, but a draft designation which made one ineligible for military service.)