My earliest religious memories took place at Trinity Pentecost Mission. (Yes, Pentecost. Like Episcopal and Episcopalian, the folks weren’t always sure whether they were Pentecost or Pentecostal.) My grandpa helped build the church when the congregation outgrew its old building around 1970.
My grandpa was also Sunday School superintendent at that church for thirty years. I have the bell he used to ring to round up the children.
Springville church (as it was more commonly known) was truly a country church. For me, that’s as much a feeling as anything, but I’ll try to put it into words. Springville was not a “destination” church. Both its members and pastors were people within the rural community itself. There were no preachers from states away dreaming of becoming its pastor. It was not known as a church with particularly fiery worship or lofty goals. The music was old-fashioned, even for a Holiness church. (Sierra Ferrell’s harmony on this song takes me straight back there, laying under the pews looking at the old chewing gum or dozing while the people sang.) They lived by Holiness standards, certainly, but they weren’t aggressive about it. The church was part of the local fellowship of Holiness churches but the big name preachers never showed up there. Guest preachers were mostly just local men.
One of these local guest preachers made quite an impression on me once. Like most children I didn’t pay much attention to the preaching. I’d usually be stacking hymnals into roads and buildings for my toy cars. But this man was preaching about the end times and it caught my attention. He went on to describe the end in great detail and I was amazed at the detailed knowledge this man had about the future. At one point I recall saying to him, with some amazement, “Really?” A few people chuckled but he looked at me with serious eyes and replied, “Really.”
But the most impressive preacher in those days was the pastor himself. Not for the content of his sermons (I don’t remember a scrap of them and he was long winded by reputation) but for the bizarre way he would catch his breath. First, you should understand that no Holiness preacher ever preached in a normal voice. Never. They would read their text normally, maybe make a few introductory remarks, and then whoop and holler for the next 45-90 minutes. The wonders Holiness preaching must do for your lung capacity!
Brother Chet, the pastor, had a barrel chest and would yell like any other Holiness preacher but when he came to the end of his breath, he would go through this three part inhalation/exhalation that distressed everyone who heard him for the first time. It was like he was having a heart attack. To this day, I can hear it in my mind and, to this day, I can’t make any sense of how he did it.
Mostly I associate Springville church with my maternal grandparents, Bud and Alta. I was only ten when they died but they live on with something like reverence among everyone who knew them. I’ve never heard a single word spoken against them. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Grandpa was a strong and gentle man, who worked first in the limestone quarries and later on bombs at the local naval base. Somewhere along the line half his ring finger was “mashed right off.” He would always carry me on his back down the hill after we picked blackberries, despite me always promising that I’d walk on my own this time. When he got older and needed an oxygen tank and a wheelchair, some men from the church built him a porch with a ramp on the front of his trailer.
Grandma was a legendary cook. She cooked at a local campground and at the school. The she cooked for her family of nine children. Then she’d cook for all the church events. Her chicken and dumplings were one of the favorites at the all day meetings. But she was also known for having prophetic dreams. If she ever told you she’d had a dream about you, you listened. When she dreamed of snakes, there was always trouble ahead.
Grandpa died first and very shortly thereafter all the widowers in the community started talking up Grandma the legendary cook, but she would have none of it. She lived about six months after Grandpa died.
We were devastated. We left Springville church shortly after their deaths. The official reason was that the church was shrinking, there were no kids other than me, and I was losing interest. But the real reason, I think, is that once Grandpa and Grandma were gone, the church would never be the same for us again.