On Sundays when Dad is preaching, we tune in to You Tube to hear his sermon. Since we live 5 hours northwest of St. Simons Island, Georgia, we can’t be there as often as we’d like.
In the 1970s, we’d drive to the First Baptist Church on Ocean Boulevard from the pastorium at 208 Martin Street, and some days I would even ride my bike there with a friend on Wednesday nights in the summer. Those were the days when the world was still safe. I like to go there in my mind, but it’s a little dangerous, because I find myself wanting to stay back in time.. I worry about the state of the world today, and to compare now to then is…..well, heartbreaking.
I think back on those days of riding my banana seat bike and my fancy wheel spokes that were all the rage back then, and how we rode up Mallery Street to Demere Way, and turned by the ball fields to ride through more neighborhoods.
These were Wednesday Night Supper neighborhoods with the kinds of houses that have sidewalks out front, walkways to the door, and monkey grass lining the walkways in yards of thick centipede grass – – the kind of lawns you could walk on barefoot and go running through the sprinklers in the summertime. The kinds of houses made of brick, with carports to the left of the front door, and swag draperies in the living room windows (with sheers) that face the road, and mailboxes still attached to the house by the front door – – where there is a walking mailman. The kinds of houses with shade trees in the front yard and azaleas lining the edge, with flower beds under the front windows. The kinds of houses with front porches and colorful metal sofa gliders.
When I drive through a neighborhood today and see these kinds of houses, they’re the kind that make me stop, take it all in, and know in my heart that someone’s cooking a Wednesday Night Covered Dish Supper Casserole in the kitchen, and that if I just drive slowly and roll down my window, I can smell the glazed pineapple hams and chocolate cakes and chicken and rice and butter beans and creamed corn and dinner rolls wafting right out their windows. There’s no more blessed food in the history of church socials than Wednesday Night Supper meals, and it takes me straight back to the good old days.
So on Sunday mornings before we watch church, sometimes I close my eyes and ride my bike down those streets of my childhood, past the ballfield where Dad still lives minus Mom who’s waiting for him to appear someday at Heaven’s gate, and look up through the Live Oak trees forming a canopy over the quaint streets. I think of how life was then – our dog, Bridgett, always greeting us or sending us off at the door, Mom in her hand-sewn dresses and Pappagallo sandals and a decoupaged wooden octagon purse with its swinging tortoise shell handle, and Dad with his sideburns in his polyester plaid suit and wide tie with white patent leathers, and my little brother with his curly locks of hair that always led people who didn’t know us to think he was my precious little sister. And me. Me with my dress that matched Mom’s, the mother-daughter dress days before they became so wildly popular two decades later, the mother-daughter dress days that happened because there was enough fabric left over to make another dress and stretch every penny in a preacher’s budget, and with a pair of wooden clogs or Bass Sunjuns or Mary Janes, it was groovy or classy or swell.
And suddenly, my heart is ready to hear what the Good Lord has for me today.
Common Threads 