HOW WE GOT HERE

VOLUME 4

And so it went. We were Christian kids. We were good kids (for the most part). We were at church every Sunday morning and evening and every Wednesday night. If the doors were open, we were there. Darren’s dad became an elder and he was very tough on Darren. Heck, he was tough on all of us. If you spent the night at Darren’s house, you might get roped into a family Bible study around the fireplace. It wasn’t that bad though.

The McEntire household was nice. Classic 70’s. Sunken living room, brick floor, built-in desks and bookshelves. Joanne McEntire was a good cook and friendly enough, though she wouldn’t let you get away with much. The house was decorated with yard sale finds, including, but not limited to a collection of bowling trophies. This was odd, because the McEntire's didn't bowl. We (Darren and I) spent most weekends at his house (he had two twin beds in his room) playing Atari all night and doing yard work and kicking around the neighborhood during the day.

As I mentioned before, Jared lived next door, he had a trampoline, and there was another boy, Robert, who lived at the bottom of the street. His parents would later be the third and fourth people I knew to get a divorce (the first and second being my best friend, Lee Pearson’s parents, Walter and Jo). Darren and I went to church together and we were all in the same Boy Scout Troop. We were all-American goody goodies and we were bored out of our minds.

As we got older our interests turned more and more toward the worldly things we were being protected from. I remember Robert’s parents let him have a sixth grade dance in his garage. Robert’s dad hated when Lee and I got together “something always gets broken” he would say, and he made us spend the whole party at least ten feet away from each other. This backfired on him though, because we thought it was hilarious and caused twice as much destruction trying to stay apart.

I remember now that I was in charge of music so I borrowed my older brother’s 8-track player and his Ted Nugent Double Live Gonzo tape. All the sixth-graders danced as “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” played through a single 8-inch Realistic speaker. Best dance ever.

Darren’s dad wouldn’t let him come inside the garage though. He sat on his bike out on the street and watched us have a good time. He was crying, hard. Some of us came out to check on him, he said his dad had told him that he didn’t want him dancing with girls because it would cause him to lust in his heart. I wasn’t sure what lusting was, but I knew that it was odd that D.L. McEntire wouldn’t let his son go to the sixth grade dance, but he had no problem with him sitting on the street on his crappy imitation BMX bike watching all of his friends dance their way into hell.

The funny thing was that shortly after that, the McEntires got cable. Talk about lust. HBO was showing “The Best Little Whore House in Texas” what seemed like every second of every day and we had to see it. One night I was at Darren’s and he knew that “Whore House” was coming on and we were going to watch it no matter what. As it started, Darren’s dad came in. He expressed his disapproval. I was nervous. Darren just stared at the screen. D.L. tried another way to get us to turn the T.V. off. I was scared now. A Church of Christ elder was ordering us to do something and his own son was not following orders. He tried one more time to steer us clear of sin, but Darren refused to move toward the television’s dials.

D.L. suddenly gave up. Muttered something about us keeping in mind that the behavior we were about to see was unGodly or sinful, or something (it was much more eloquent when he said it). This meant two things to me 1) D.L. McEntire had watched “Best Little Whore House in Texas” and 2) I was about to watch “Best Little Whore House in Texas.”

It was a rare moment of understanding between D.L. and Darren. I guess D.L. figured we were going to find out about this stuff one way or another, and this movie starring Dolly Parton was probably a semi-harmless way to go about it. This meant two things to me 1) Even Church of Christ elders probably remember what it was like to be a young man and 2) that this Church of Christ elder was completely unaware of the stockpile of nudie mags we had amassed in his son’s three-story treehouse.

HOW WE GOT HERE

VOLUME 3

The renovation at Jupiter road rolled along quite nicely. The idea was to add a bigger auditorium on to the front of the building and convert the old one into classrooms. We had outgrown the small auditorium (praise God) and would build one bigger than we actually needed and go to work outgrowing that one as soon as it was finished.

When I think back on it, the structure seemed massive. It took up the front lawn, and during the construction we had to have our potlucks at the Fairview Volunteer Fire Department (Darren’s dad was a volunteer fireman).

There would be progress made on the building, and then the money would run out. We would take up a special collection and work would start again. When I was really little, and the collection plate would come around, I asked my mother what the money was for. “It’s for God,” was her answer. A perfectly legitimate answer, only in my head, I imagined a big truck full of cash driving to heaven and dumping the money at God’s feet. The construction of the new auditorium taught me a little more about the finances of the church.

The new auditorium was finally finished and it was a thing of beauty. A giant Noah’s ark (as no one outside was going to survive the second coming) of beige metal. A very high roof (still no steeple), a new cry room, and, I think, two new restrooms. During the construction, Brother Smith had stepped down and Joe Fields had taken his place.

Joe was A LOT younger than Brother Smith. He had a mustache and red hair that touched his collar in the back and covered his ears. He was as hip as any Church of Christ preacher in the early 70’s could be, and he was a hero to me. I had no idea that part of the congregation was dissatisfied with his ways and were hatching a plan to get rid of him. Oh, firing preachers is another Church of Christ shared hobby.

Now, you will remember that growing up, most adults had no trouble discussing murders and car crashes and other gory things in detail around children, especially if it would help teach a lesson. Church business however was a different story. They didn’t want children to see the dirty side of things. I suppose it’s a carry over from Santa Clause. Let us believe for as long as possible, and then one day we’ll figure it out on our own. No, church business was as mysterious as the inside of Mecca.

So, I don’t know the details of the switch, but I do know that Joe was out, and a new guy named Mike Somethingorother was in. He was even younger than Joe, but nowhere near as cool. We had a church gathering at our house one summer night and a lot of people showed up. Hot dogs, softball, you know, the usual. Preacher Mike was in our “playroom” shooting pool when he noticed a poster of Linda Ronstat that my brother Todd had put up. It was a shot of Linda looking over her exposed left shoulder. Preacher Mike pointed to the poster with his pool cue and asked my mother about it. She probably laughed it off. But Preacher Mike told her it was contributing to her children’s lives of sin (not a quote mind you, but pretty close). I think it hurt my mother’s feelings. I did notice that the preacher kept looking at ol’ Linda, and it didn’t look too disapproving to me.

It was around this time also that some of the adults in the congregation noticed that a lot of kids were starting to get a little bored with traditional church services, and that it probably wouldn’t be too long before we got bored with the straight and narrow. So, a sort of youth group was organized. This meant that we took frequent trips to the McKinney, Texas Del Taco (Allen only had a Dairy Queen and not much else at this time). On the way back from Del Taco, the goal was to try to hold hands with a girl. And by hold hands with a girl, I mean hope that God would intervene and that some miracle would land her hand in yours while your heart beat out of your chest all the way back to the church building where it was too late to make your move, sending you home disappointed and frustrated once again. I firmly believe these trips to Del Taco were the beginning of my downfall.

HOW WE GOT HERE VOLUME 2

The Jupiter Road Church of Christ was a little, light-colored brick building with a high-pitched roof and a small porch and double wooden doors on the front. No steeple, these were the days when very few, if any Churches of Christ had steeples. I’m not sure for the reason, but I’ve always assumed it had something to do with the tower of Babble.

Behind the wooden double doors was a wooden rack that held comics about the dangers of sin, a water fountain, two bathrooms, three or four class rooms, a nursery (now usually known as cry rooms) and a small auditorium.

Brother Smith was the preacher. A stocky man who’s wife Bulla always wore a hat (my mother says for religious reasons) and made the best potluck dish in the history of potlucks. It was called tamale pie and it contained grits, meat and mexican spices. It should be mentioned that my sister and I have tried unsuccessfully for years to find the recipe.

Brother Smith was a traditional C.O.C. preacher. Meaning he went out of his way to let you know without a doubt that God was going to get you. Meaning God could not wait for you to step out of line so that the devil could have his turn with you.

Once, my Grandpa Tardiff (the former preacher) wanted to borrow a saw from Brother Smith. Brother Smith never loaned tools unattended. You were welcome to borrow, but he came with them. Grandpa handled this arrangement by telling Brother Smith that ever since Jesus, every preacher has thought he was a carpenter and every carpenter thought he was a preacher.

My first Christian lessons were taught in that building. When I was very young they just let us play with blocks while we sang songs about God, Jesus and the Bible. At the end of class the teacher would ask us what we had built with our blocks. Every time, without fail, my blocks would be in a random pattern on the table and I would always say that it was the Japanese army crossing the street. I’m not sure what that means, it’s just something that happened.

As I got older the lessons got more advanced. The good Samaritan, the loaves and the fishes, Sermon on the Mount, lame men walking, woman at the well, John 3:16, etc. As we got older, the lessons got more serious. Most were about the dangers of sin and how God was watching all the time.

They were good too. Everything timed just right. When you were at the age where you might help yourself to candy or a small toy at the King Saver they would talk about the Ten Commandments and really make a point of the “Thou shalt not steal” part. I should mention that this one always confused me because it was in the Old Testament which, at a pretty early age, I knew was written to the Jews. And we were definitely not Jewish, and don’t even get us started on the Catholics.

My childhood at Jupiter Road was pretty happy, especially if you don’t consider the fact that I spent most nights alone in my room shaking with fear and crying over the fact that I was most assuredly going to Hell. I’m not sure if you could call what I did praying so much as you could call it begging for my soul to be saved from the lakes of fire.

At the age of nine I decided I had better do something to insure that God knew that I meant business about this whole church thing. So one Wednesday night I told my mom to tell our preacher (a young one named Joe Fields who had come in after Brother Smith had retired... or maybe died) that I wanted, needed to be baptized. We had begun an addition project on our church and our baptistry was out of order, so we had to move the whole shebang over to the McKinney Church of Christ about ten miles away.

The McKinney Church of Christ was where my friend Jared Holloway and his family went to church, even though the Holloways lived 50 yards from the McEntires who attended Jupiter Road, who’s son Darren was one of my best friends, and who hung out with Jared all the time. This is one of those things about the Church of Christ, the members love to disagree, and the splitting of congregations is a sort of a shared hobby.

The baptism went smooth. Though I was nervous about a grown man pushing me under water, I was more nervous about where I would spend eternity if I didn’t let him push me under water. After I came up I didn’t feel different. I was a little disappointed. I had hoped that the ceremony would ease my fears. In fact, I think that it somehow made them worse. Like I was missing something. Like God was trying to give me a gift and I was refusing to open it.

Darren came up to me with tears in his eyes. “Welcome,” he said. That’s it. Just “welcome.” He had been baptized earlier in the year, and was on fire for the Lord. Well, to be fair, his dad D.L. was an elder who kept a tight reign on him. That probably helped with his devotion.

All I knew was that Darren knew something I didn’t, and I wanted to know and I didn’t want to know all at the same time. I also knew that from that moment on, I was going to turn over a new leaf. The straight and narrow. That’s where you could find me.

HOW WE GOT HERE VOLUME 1

BLOG 1. 10/28/09

HOW WE GOT HERE VOLUME 1

One of my earliest memories, after my family moved from Farmersville, Texas to Fairview, Texas, was early one Sunday morning stopping at the Friendship Baptist Church to get directions to the Jupiter Road Church of Christ. My mother was a devout Church of Christer from way back. Her father was a C.O.C. preacher before he decided he preferred drinking to that particular vocation. I guess my mother’s devotion made us all pretty devout Church of Christers in one way or another. Everyone but my father who preferred the Dallas Cowboys to a church pew. And so this is where our story begins.

Sitting in the back seat of our giant family car (probably a late 60’s Chevy, and probably not a car seat between us) perched on an uneven shoulder, careful not to actually pull into the parking lot so as not to give the Baptists false hope. Surprisingly, I now recall that my father was with us on this fateful morning, and was actually the one who went in for the directions. I was three-years-old and sat in the back seat between my sister, Randi (two years older than me) and my brother Todd (five years older than me). Dad came back to the car and started it up. We were off to the Jupiter Road Church of Christ.

Jupiter Road Church of Christ was actually in the next town over, Allen, Texas. Just five miles up the road, it seemed like you had to drive all the way across the widest part of Texas to get there. Back in those days, the main thoroughfare between Fairview and Allen was Stacy Road.

Stacy Road started off paved at one end (the end where Friendship Baptist Church was located) and wound through a small “neighborhood” before emptying onto a narrow white rock lane. A hand-full of farm houses dotted the horizons on either side of the road.

The biggest obstacle between sinner and salvation was a rickety old one lane wooden bridge. You may picture a painting of one of those charming old covered bridges surrounded by trees just ready to lose their leaves in celebration of Fall. You would be wrong.

Picture that bridge in the painting, then take the cover off. Pull most of the planks out of the driving surface. Make it narrower and shakier. Now lose the trees, grass and any other sign of beauty, then replace it with a medium sized creek, surrounded by only white rock as far as the eye could see. Then make it shakier again.

Even Dad couldn’t hide the concern on his face as we inched across the structure. Did he have the directions right? Could this be the way to the Jupiter Road Church of Christ? Narrow was the way that Sunday morning for sure.

Eventually, Stacy Road led to Highway 5 and a four-way stop. As we took a left out onto the two lane road. I noticed a white house with a large porch and a small silo out back. For some reason, I was instantly convinced that someone had died in that house. And furthermore, was quite sure that said someone had been brutally murdered. I’d like to say that years later I found out that was true, but I’m really not sure if I ever found out. The house is gone now, and we may never know. I do know that even though I was young, it seemed like a lot of bodies were being found in the area and the adults around me had no trouble discussing the details. Somehow, they always turned it into some sort of warning about living life right. Which brings us back to the Church of Christ.

A few miles, one left, and two rights later, we were in front of the Jupiter Road Church of Christ.