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Coming of Age in America
Part 8


My parents were members of the Methodist Church in town. One of my first memories of sitting in church was being on the back row. That’s where my folks had to sit after I came along. If I started misbehaving, they could slip out the back without disturbing the rest of the congregation.

To keep me quiet they’d give me a toy or something to occupy my time during the service. One Sunday they handed me a small bag of marbles to keep me busy. That turned out to be a memorable experience for not only them, but the entire congregation.

Before the church was remodeled in the 60s the old sanctuary had a hardwood floor that had a gradual slope all the way to the front of the church. Only the aisles had carpet runners. The flooring ran north and south across the width of the sanctuary and the old boards had a slight cup in them.

I was playing with those marbles on the back row like a good little boy. I’d take them out of the bag, examine them one by one, then put them back and pick out another, only to do it all over again. Well, the inevitable happened. I fumbled the bag and all those marbles poured onto that hardwood floor. They bounced a few times and commenced to rolling downhill toward the front of the church.

As they made it through the forest of feet and legs dangling from the pews, they picked up speed. The little cups in the boards gave them an added bounce on their journey to the altar.

Every head in that building turned and looked in our direction. I didn’t know that because I had dropped to the floor and was watching my marbles getting away from me. However, my red-faced parents were fully aware of the people looking in their direction.

I have no idea what became of all those marbles because I never saw them again.

Evidently it was an altar call where none of them were saved or added to the flock. After that Sunday I began to work on my drawing skillset when my folks gave me a pencil and a piece paper to keep me quiet.

Then there was the Easter when I found a live bunny in my Easter basket. I was thrilled beyond words. It was love at first sight, for me, not the rabbit. I loved that little rabbit so much. I was the only child in Sunday school that had one and I wasn’t about to share. All the other kids wanted to hold him, but I wasn’t about to let it go.

Sometime during the lesson Mrs. Baker became concerned with my attachment to the furry critter and tried to convince me to set it down. But I knew better. It was a trick to let her or the other children get their little hands on my bunny. The more she tried to get me to let it go, the tighter I held on.

Sadly, it was during that Sunday school hour the Lord called that little rabbit home to be with Jesus. I had just loved it too much. We didn’t make it to big church that day. Instead we all went home and had a funeral service in the backyard.

That wasn’t the only year things went south at Easter time. Living on a farm we had a lot of eggs to dye when Easter rolled around. Some years we even had goose eggs and the children at church were amazed at how big they were.

We always had an egg hunt after lunch. Each of us knew exactly how many eggs we had because Mother always divided them out evenly to prevent us from squabbling. So when we hid the eggs we knew exactly how many had to be accounted for. We took turns hiding the eggs.

I can’t remember which one of us hid them the last time that day, but when the hunt was over the egg count was off by one. Ordinarily it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but it was raining that particular Easter and we had hidden the eggs inside. So we had to find that missing egg.

The good shepherd couldn’t have done a better job of looking for his lost sheep than we did looking for that blooming egg. But try as we might we couldn’t find it and and we were afraid to tell our parents.

A few days passed and we began to notice an odd smell in the house. At first we couldn’t determine where the odor was coming from. It was just there, somewhere, just there, everywhere. Then another day passed and that smell got a little stronger. We all knew it had to be the lost egg. My folks were getting concerned.

Just like Jesus looking for that one lost sheep, everyone spread out and we were determined to find that darn egg. The smell was everywhere and nowhere in particular. But it was definitely a bad egg.

After a week had passed there was no doubt the smell was coming from our bedroom.

We looked beneath beds, behind bookcases, in closets, behind pictures on the wall, in the curtains, we left no stone unturned. The odor had reached the point it was unbearable. We slept with windows open.

Then one day I was going to put on a pair of shoes I hadn’t worn in a while and opened my closet door to get them out of the cloth shoe rack Mother had made and attached to the back of the closet door.

I found the egg.

It was in the bottom of one of the shoe pockets. By then it was to the point we didn’t know if we should even touch it. If moved it could have exploded and then the stench would have gone everywhere. There was no rotten egg bomb squad to call and Mother certainly wasn’t about to touch it.

One of us guys finally stepped forward, carefully removed it from the shoe holder and ever so gently walked it out the front door and into the horse pasture beside the house. One good lob and BOOF! It exploded out in the pasture.

It took baking soda and several days of airing out before our room was anywhere close to being back to normal. After that year, there were no more egg hunts held in the house.

Concerning the goose eggs we had for Easter-eggs; we had a goose and a gander that stayed with our hens in the chicken yard. They were old and I really believe they had been there so long that they thought they were chickens, too. The old goose would, normally, lay eggs around Easter and we always tried to get them away from her because they were great to dye, but the gander was very possessive and tried to defend his territory. Any time we came close to the nest he would hiss and attempt to bite us!

We decided one of us would try to distract him while another one ran up, pushed the goose off her nest and swiped the eggs. It normally worked, but you had to be fast.

Then one year our cousin, Eddie, was with us during the raid and it was his turn to distract the gander. Unfortunately he wasn’t as fast as the gander. The image of him running out of the chicken yard with that gander half running, half flying and nipping his butt is forever imprinted in my memory.

(To be continued)


First Methodist Church

First Methodist Church as it looks today.

View of the bell tower from the Masonic Cemetery.

This is the First Baptist Church that replaced the one destroyed by the 1913 cyclone.

Photo by Walter Bennett, circa 1930s.

Terry, Tonny, Betsey and me preparing to go to church.

_______________
Rick Algood
August 24, 2021

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