But the other day, I received a nice surprise, a stiff 3-by-5-inch card displaying the 23rd Psalm and a picture of Jesus rescuing a lamb. A letter accompanying the card said anyone could send two postage stamps to Chuck Thompson and he would send them a Psalm 23 card.

Chuck, who lives in Texas, wants people to have a sense of duty to memorize the 23rd Psalm as an "inspiring blessing worth remembering."

His telephone number was on the letter, so I gave him a call. And before I could stop him, Chuck told me about a man who traveled to France to find the grave of his best friend, who had been killed during World War II. When he found the burial plot, he had trouble finding anyone to say a few religious words in English. But one American happened to know the 23rd Psalm, and he recited it over the grave. The man wrote to Thompson and said he could still hear that recitation after many, many years.

So last year, Thompson decided to send out 150 cards to people who might help him promote his little mail-order plan. His goal isn't to make money. He simply wants people to have the Psalm so that, perhaps, they will memorize the verses.

Thompson might know a little bit about promotion. The 76-year-old worked most of his life in radio and television. In fact, he was one of the original gang of television people in the '50s and '60s who struggled to get the new medium up and running in the southern United States.

"We were very lucky in Mobile (Ala.), because we had the first TV station in the state," Thompson said. "So every celebrity who came through wanted to get on our station. People like Ed Sullivan, and Bob Hope. Hoot Gibson - he was an old cowboy star - and he came around. And there was Gene Autry and Smiley Burnette.

"Smiley was a songwriter as well, and I had done some songwriting, so we hit it off pretty good. Gee, I don't know, Dean Martin came through once, and Janet Leigh after she had made (the movie) `Psycho.'"

"So it was fun," Thompson said. "I got a scrapbook, but I don't have anything to eat - that's a joke. I'm just foolin' around. My wife says I'll never get over (that time). She was a singer at a competing station. So we had to date on the sly because they thought we would give away trade secrets."

But then Chuck began to talk about a particular visitor to his southern station that made my ears perk right up.

"I remember Hank Williams Sr.," Thompson said, "of course he was an interesting character - a genius with a drinking problem. His downfall was the bottle. Today they would call him an alcoholic, but we just thought about him as a drunk in those days."

One of the great honky-tonk musicians in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Williams Sr. also was one of the most prolific hymn writers in the United States at the time. So while Chuck continued to remember Hank Williams Sr., I remembered some of his hymns.

"But it was interesting," Chuck said, "he would make notes even when he was in the studio - notes on everything, little scraps of paper, napkins. I went to lunch with him once. He took a couple bites out of the sandwich and then pushed it away and started making notes again.

"He was a tall, skinny guy," Chuck said. "He wore cowboy clothes and a big white cowboy hat. I understand his songwriter, Fred Rose, would take all those notes and make sense of them."

Williams died young, at age 29 on Jan. 1, 1953, just as rock 'n' roll was taking over pop music. Today, some of Williams' classic hits, such as "Cold, Cold Heart," "Jambalaya," and "Your Cheating Heart," are making comebacks.

What is telling of William's character is that even though he was struggling with alcoholism, he also wrote many Christian hymns, some of which still are sung in churches today.

And that fact brings me back to Chuck Thompson, 76 years old and trying to find his own special place in heaven. He's kicked around a bit, from a "hard-shelled Baptist" to a Catholic today.

All Chuck seeks is for needy souls to have a copy of something holy, in this case, Psalm 23. He's got his cards all lined up, and he's ready to send them off. All he asks is that you send a couple of postage stamps with your request.

I'll go one step further and suggest a donation or two, a few goodwill pennies so cards can be sent all over the United States in the next few months. You can request cards by sending two stamps to: Chuck Thompson, 10802 Greencreek Drive, No. 703, Houston, Texas, 77070-5367.

Clark D. Morphew