walt317
Member
I wrote this originally for a retired FBI Agent forum. The church I mention was torn down in the mid-70's to expand a hospital. There were small slivers of quartz around the neighborhood for a long time - testament that the old place did not go down easily.
EASTER, 1951
My father wheeled us to church in the family's first new car, a carioca rust and champagne ivory '51 Nash Ambassador. Having it made us plutocrats in the neighborhood, no matter that dad drove a truck during the day and worked in an amusement park nights and weekends to buy it. I was eleven.
The church, made of stone originally quarried for the Santa Fe railroad depot, was solid, with convoluted hallways and mysterious rooms. Cool in the basement, where the colored eggs were hidden, even in blast furnace Oklahoma summers - but just right in early April. Now, there was a hot water, eggy smell overlaying the effluvia of flowers there – forever afterward the odor of sanctity to me.
Before church, before Sunday school, we sub-teens played on the greening grass. Some of the girls still liked to run-and-chase, but oddly some now wouldn't. They stood with a new, scary kind of dignity, arms akimbo, looking at us boys as if expecting something. We didn't know what. Summoned by bells, clear even over the soughing wind, we trooped into the sanctuary.
Inside, women had on corsages - chrysanthemums, orchids, and white shoes and purses. We wore brilliantined hair and sports jackets. A few had ties. Older girls were awkward but determined in their first French heels. The altar had pots of donated lilies in colored foil. The choir, mostly women except for a few lucky men with good voices, were determined, too. Ladies checked each other for straight seams, even though no one could see their legs. Choirmen stood with chins lifted, spines straight. About a dozen men in the congregation sat with "FBI" hats in their laps - light gray fedoras - keeping their fingers off the brims. Folding chairs were in the aisles and in back for those seen twice a year, making for head-twisting looks for acquaintances. The minister spoke of starry crowns and the One who had earned them for us all. Some attendees in military uniform, their ribbons splashes of color on their silver-tans, knew of more mortal sacrifices being made on other hills in a far-off place in Asia.
A lot came in times after – doubt, rebellion, loss – but I can recall instantly the winsome poignancy of sitting on those wooden pews, hard as the road to Heaven, when I catch sight of lilies in foil-wrapped pots, and girls with white shoes, in dresses the color of clouds from summers gone.
What do you remember?
EASTER, 1951
My father wheeled us to church in the family's first new car, a carioca rust and champagne ivory '51 Nash Ambassador. Having it made us plutocrats in the neighborhood, no matter that dad drove a truck during the day and worked in an amusement park nights and weekends to buy it. I was eleven.
The church, made of stone originally quarried for the Santa Fe railroad depot, was solid, with convoluted hallways and mysterious rooms. Cool in the basement, where the colored eggs were hidden, even in blast furnace Oklahoma summers - but just right in early April. Now, there was a hot water, eggy smell overlaying the effluvia of flowers there – forever afterward the odor of sanctity to me.
Before church, before Sunday school, we sub-teens played on the greening grass. Some of the girls still liked to run-and-chase, but oddly some now wouldn't. They stood with a new, scary kind of dignity, arms akimbo, looking at us boys as if expecting something. We didn't know what. Summoned by bells, clear even over the soughing wind, we trooped into the sanctuary.
Inside, women had on corsages - chrysanthemums, orchids, and white shoes and purses. We wore brilliantined hair and sports jackets. A few had ties. Older girls were awkward but determined in their first French heels. The altar had pots of donated lilies in colored foil. The choir, mostly women except for a few lucky men with good voices, were determined, too. Ladies checked each other for straight seams, even though no one could see their legs. Choirmen stood with chins lifted, spines straight. About a dozen men in the congregation sat with "FBI" hats in their laps - light gray fedoras - keeping their fingers off the brims. Folding chairs were in the aisles and in back for those seen twice a year, making for head-twisting looks for acquaintances. The minister spoke of starry crowns and the One who had earned them for us all. Some attendees in military uniform, their ribbons splashes of color on their silver-tans, knew of more mortal sacrifices being made on other hills in a far-off place in Asia.
A lot came in times after – doubt, rebellion, loss – but I can recall instantly the winsome poignancy of sitting on those wooden pews, hard as the road to Heaven, when I catch sight of lilies in foil-wrapped pots, and girls with white shoes, in dresses the color of clouds from summers gone.
What do you remember?
