Old Time Religion
Created | Updated Aug 25, 2011
Everybody is – potentially, at least – an ancestor. (That's about all the moral I can muster for this one.)
Old Time Religion
'Mama!' Jimmy called into the kitchen. 'I can't figure out how to buckle these knee britches.'
Jimmy's mother looked up from where she was fitting a bonnet on her five-year-old daughter – Mary kept turning her head, and the bow kept coming undone. 'Well, come in here, I'm busy. Don't just sit out in the den and complain.'
Reluctantly, Jimmy loped into the kitchen, trouser buckles flapping at the knees. She stared at his woeful seven-year-old face above the bow tie and braces, and laughed. 'Come here,' she beckoned. As she fastened the buckles she'd attached to the old trousers she'd shortened, she remarked, 'You're going to look great.'
'It's kind of neat,' Jimmy admitted. 'Even if I do have to wear Mary's knee socks.'
From the den came the sound of television. 'Can I go watch Flatt and Scruggs?' Jimmy asked.
His mother nodded. 'Just don't waller around on the floor and get dirty,' she admonished. 'We're going to church soon.' She released the unhappy Mary (not a bonnet fan) and headed into the bedroom to dress herself.
Around sundown, the corner parking lot at Glenlea Baptist Church (newest congregation in Memphis, 'City of Churches') was full. Broad-winged automobiles, their fins spread out for takeoff, idled beside more modest agricultural pickups. The Morris family decanted themselves from their attractive green 1957 Chevrolet Belair and joined the others, calling cheery greetings to friends and neighbours. It wasn't as if they hadn't seen them only last evening, but tonight – Saturday – was the last night of Revival, and was special.
They made an incongruous sight for the late 1950s as they headed to the church building. Men and boys wore bow ties (or, for greater authenticity, string ties), braces, and broad-brimmed flat hats dug up from somewhere. The boys wore homemade 'knee britches', as well. Girls sported calico sun bonnets and pinafores over flowered dresses.
Most resplendent were the ladies, whose expertise in déjà couture was responsible for this wonder. Outfitted in turn-of-the-century country chic and bonnets begged, borrowed, or jury-rigged, they would have graced a tintype.
'Oh, Gladys,' Jimmy's mother exclaimed to an elderly friend, 'where did you get that beautiful footwear?'
'My attic.' Gladys Groendyke proudly showed off the high-button shoes. 'My mother never threw anything away.' The two women linked arms and opened fans with a ladylike whoosh, leaving Jimmy to escort his sister (whose knee socks he was wearing), while his dad tugged at unfamiliar neckgear and followed.
It was Old-Timey Revival Night.
Inside, the tidy, modern concrete-and-drop-ceiling box of a churchlet was lit with an unfamiliar glow: in every window niche stood a glass kerosene lamp. It had been an easy matter for the Committee to round up several dozen lamps. Each one was labelled with masking tape underneath, so that it could be returned to its rightful owner. The lamps were Jimmy's favourite part of Old-Timey Revival Night. He loved the sight and smell of them, and wondered why other people preferred the overheads.
It was early fall, and still warm in the subtropics – meaning that with the crowd, it would soon be 80 degrees in the little auditorium – but the re-enactors had decreed that the air conditioning be shut off. The ladies didn't mind. They'd brought their fans, dug out of chests and trunks, made of lace and ivory, and they wanted to show them off. They sat demurely in the pews, flapping with practiced feminine flicks of the wrist. Jimmy, his dad, and Mary made do with the cardboard ones provided (an authentic touch), the ones that said 'Courtesy of Annandale Funeral Home' under the picture of the Last Supper.
They'd handed out bulletins at the door, as usual, and Jimmy, his new-found literacy still a shiny source of pride, examined his in the dim kerosene light. There was an insert – apparently, Old-Timey included some vintage songs not in the hymnbook.
When the pianist had finished her prelude, Lester Oxendine, the music director, stood up. He'd obviously gone all out for the night, and apparently located a can of Dapper Dan hair treatment. The centre parting of the slick hair made Jimmy suppress a laugh. He thought Mr Oxendine looked like a comic from one of the country music programs he was missing on television tonight – the kind of comic who made people laugh by pretending to be an ignorant farmboy with pretensions to intellectualism, like Speck Rhodes. He liked Mr Oxendine, who had a good sense of humour and an equally strong sense of rhythm. The music director announced that the first 'hymn' tonight was on the bulletin insert.
'I know some people think 'The Old Time Religion' is sacrilegious,' he apologised. 'But it wouldn't seem like Old Timey Revival Night without it. And they used to sing it, back in the old days.'
There was a bit of coughing at that, but the good-natured crowd acquiesced, and soon a couple of hundred badly-dressed Baptists were belting out over the rousing stride bass of the piano:
It was good for the Hebrew children,
It was good for the Hebrew children,
It was good for the Hebrew children,
It's good enough for me!
Give me that Old Time Religion...
A few more 'numbers' followed, including that old-time hit, 'Power in the Blood.' (Jimmy gathered the pioneer folk were big on the doctrine of blood atonement.) As this was Memphis, the song sounded like this:
There is paaaahr...paaaahr...wonder-working paaaahr...in the bloooood...of the Laaayaaaamb....
Jimmy couldn't match the men's chorus of '...in the blood...of the Lamb...' but he tried, adding a piping soprano to their booming bass.
A mixed quartet performed 'special music': a stirring rendition of what Jimmy knew to be his father's favourite, 'My Mother's Bible':
There's a dear and precious Book, tho' it's worn and faded now, which recalls those happy days so long ago...
Privately, Jimmy wondered at his dad's devotion to this song. It wasn't really very good, and besides, his paternal grandmother was allergic to church attendance. It was his grandfather who faithfully read his Bible... His thoughts were interrupted by the end of the song, and the announcement that the grownups had had it. Forty-five minutes of sweating and choking in the kerosene fumes had reminded these children of the Great Depression why they were glad it was 1959. Over the muffled protests of disappointed children, the lights (and air conditioning) were turned on, and the lamps doused. The preacher delivered his sermon by modern illumination (and without coughing).
'Brethren and sisters,' he said, 'we're here to honour the ones who went before us. From mountain cabin and low-country farmstead, they gathered together to worship and praise. They faced hard times – war and famine, danger and need. But their faith sustained them.'
Jimmy listened – but, as usual, his mind wandered. He wondered...what would those old-timey pioneers have thought of today's problems? What would Davy Crockett, the Congressman from the other side of the state, have thought about the atomic bomb? Would he have encouraged them to 'duck and cover', as Jimmy's class was practising to do in the hallways? Crockett was a brave man. Jimmy wondered if he'd have nightmares about those bombs, the way Jimmy did...
The sermon was over, and even though there were no Visitors, they had an Invitation Hymn (because you did), and while they were singing, 'Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling', Jesus must have done so, because Orrin Hathaway, a big, red-faced long-haul trucker, rededicated his life to the Lord, and swore he'd honour his mother's memory by joining the Brotherhood and passing out more tracts. (Jimmy thought, If he joins the Brotherhood, he'll find out all they do is have prayer breakfasts at the pancake house and go on fishing trips. But everyone seemed pleased.)
Back in the car, Jimmy was free to pull off the clip-on bow tie, and Mary finally discarded the despised sun bonnet. His dad breathed a sigh of something like relief as he turned the ignition. The car jumped to life and purred like the wonder of technology that it was.
'Hey, kids,' he said. 'How about we drive over to the Tasty Freeze?'
'Yay!' they both called, making their mother laugh. Jimmy added, 'I want a strawberry milkshake!'
'I want chocolate!' called Mary.
Jimmy laughed. 'You always want chocolate.' And off they drove into the warm fall night, a family who, having honoured their ancestors, were now in search of refreshment and togetherness.
They didn't know they were pioneers, too, as they drove in the direction of the neon on Summer Avenue.
Fact and Fiction by Dmitri Gheorgheni Archive
