THAT "SCARY" CHURCH on the CORNER

The "Monster" Grows a Second Head

 

As steady readers of this blog know, many of my most persistent memories (both pleasant, and otherwise) are from the period; 1943 through 1949.  You also know why that period was a very traumatic period for me.  There were persistent nightmares, however, in which monsters held sway, and it was  all I could do to make them go away.  I relied on my many brothers and sisters to keep me safe, because, with Mother gone, Dad was both mother and father.  He had no time for a child's dreams.  Besides, he was a fierce disciplinarian, and none of us dared to get on that side of him.  He worked night shifts and we were most often in the house alone through the night.

 

There was this Church on the corner of our block that played a role in those nightmares.  In a world where the sight of white people was rare, this church overflowed with whites on Sunday mornings; their cars lined both sides of our block as they ventured "across the tracks" to worship.  The church was on a large plot of land and contained a number of buildings.  During the week, however, the "Fathers" were there.  They had candy, and I loved candy.  DuringWorld War II  sugar was rationed.  Mother was a great cook, and she never failed to have delicious foods for us.  That disappeared with her death.

 

Dad was adamant in his rules that we were to stay away from those people.  The "Fathers" offered me candy and told me to ask my parents if I could attend the school they were setting up.  I never did, because I had already made the mistake of telling Dad about them once before.  I received his stern threat of a dreaded "whipping" if I went near them again.  From time to time, I would sneak back for the candy, however.

 

Those damn dreams had those guys in them.  In their Black and Red and White robes.  By the time I was ten, they went away, and the white people stopped coming to the church.

 

Fast forward more that 50 years, and my Dad's youngest sister told me the story of her younger brother, for whom I was a namesake.  It seems that some of the guys in my nightmare befriended him also.  She gave me his "prayer beads" that she had kept from that time in 1933 when he was murdered at the age of 12.  She said he was "worryin' those beads to death" the morning he was shot.

 

Stay Vigilant!  Listen to your Children!

 

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