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.
