A Band of Shriners

My uncle Alton Green was a member of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. He was the only Shriner I know of in the immediate family.

The only exposure to Shriners I had growing up was going to see him perform when the Shriners Band was playing in Tallahassee. I can remember seeing him play the trombone in a parade and at a baseball game at the old minor league park in Tallahassee. He never talked about the Shriners and as far as I know never tried to get my Dad to join.

There was always a current running in the background that the Shriners were not something a good Christian wanted to be around.

Alton was not a religious person. He confessed his belief in God after he came down with cancer and was near death.

After he died I found a couple of his Shriners books and their Bible. They had ominous warnings that there were only to be read by members of the Order. There was way too much of their secret symbolism in the books to make much sense of them. I figured out then that what attracted Al to the group was the music.