Mr. Hall. At this time, being Christmas and so, and I am not real strongly religious—I mean not to any extreme, but I have my firm beliefs, and I believe in God and the fundamentals of our Christianity—I am a Baptist—I mentioned to Oswald—this is what touched the whole thing off—they didn't have a Christmas tree. We wondered why, because you can buy a Christmas tree for 39 cents, probably a little one, and my wife, I think, asked why they didn't have a Christmas tree, and Oswald said he didn't want a Christmas tree, that he didn't believe in this sort of thing, that it was commercialized, and so forth.
When he mentioned this, it got me interested in his thinking. This was actually the first time I think that—this is the third time that I saw him—I think this was the first time I felt he was odd, because when he crossed me on religion, I mean just general religion, not anything specific—when he crossed me on religion, then I was offended mentally.
I might not have seemed that way—I didn't get mad or anything, but I didn't like it, and I asked him about, since he didn't have a car, I asked him if Elena, when we went to the Greek Orthodox Church here in Dallas, if we might stop by and pick him up and take him with us.
And he said, "Oh, no, he didn't believe in Christianity, that this Marxism, Leninism, this book, whatever the name it was——
Mr. Liebeler. Did he have a book there?
Mr. Hall. I didn't see it if he did. He had a lot of Russian literature, I saw, but I never really thumbed through it.
Mr. Liebeler. Do you remember any specific books or periodicals that he had?
Mr. Hall. No; I really don't.
Mr. Liebeler. Go ahead.
Mr. Hall. Well, we differed on religion. So then he told Elena that he didn't believe in Christianity and so forth, he said, "If you want to come by and pick up Marina and take her to church, that is all right, but I am not going to go."