I REMEMBER

Growing up in Saturdays was for house cleaning. Chore like dusting, laundry and cleaning my room again was the norm then watching some baseball game [The Mets] with my father. There was one particular Saturday I’ll never forget.

There was a phone call and all of a sudden the adults started scrambling around getting dressed to go out. My father who rarely moved from his “Archie Bunker” chair got up. My mom changed my outfit and we rushed out of the house. In the 1960’s children were seen and not heard when it came to adults and having no opinion of anything, just follow the instructions that were giving you.

I found myself at church. Church on Saturday strange for me who went on every Sunday? Our church had a balcony that rarely opened except on Mother’s day or Easter Sunday this is where we had to sit. I was amazed at the number of people that were here today. I was excited that we got to go up into the balcony. I was scared that I might have fallen crashing to the lower level if I leaned too far forward. I sat quietly with my mom squeezed in a seat looking down from the balcony on the preachers.

The church was so quite you could hear a pin drop on cotton. The preacher spoke in a harmonic soothing voice, not that scratching rasping preacher voice I had come to expect. It could have been 20 minutes or an hour and 20 minutes, I was not sure. My mom found some of the “pocketbook candy” and gave me a piece. I looked around the sanctuary and looked into the adults faces as they were transfixed on what the minister was talking about. Every adult looked hypnotized but content.

After the service was over we went outside and found there were so many people out there where the church and placed a speaker so the crowd could hear the minster. To my pleasant surprise my daddy was out there as well. You see my father was not the type to go to church every Sunday. He did believe in God but did not see the point to talk to God in a suit only on Sundays. I got into his car and rode back to the house with him.

When we got home there were so many people still outside talking about the day. We kids were playing outside while the adults were socializing. It was a memorable day.

I remembered that day not only because it was the first time I saw my daddy come to church, but it was the day Rev. Dr. martin Luther King visited the church and I was there.

…Pandora

I REMEMBER.