There was a wonderful old church in Pampa, and I can remember going to it from when I was five years old until I was a grown-up and moved to Houston, Texas. It was the First Baptist Church ... it was “my church”; the largest church in the town with a population of around 20,000. Brother Douglas Carver (later, he was Dr. Carver) was the pastor.
The church had plenty of kids going there. These years were the end of the Great Depression of the 1930s and during the time of World War II, in which America got involved from December 7, 1941, to September 2, 1945. Most church members were plain “wage earners” who were scraping out a living and worrying about their sons and daughters fighting in a foreign land and many dying in this war.
The chance of death for these heroes was significant, and all the people back “home” were very conscious of a divine power that we hoped and prayed looked favorably upon our nation and us. I remember seeing men in uniform sitting in the congregation every Sunday.
Looking back on this, I witnessed what became known as “The Greatest Generation.” Little did I know I would be in that category when history was written about this era.
There were only two occasions in my early life when I had to get dressed up in my one set of dress duds, and that was 1) to go to church or 2) to go to the movies (yep, that’s right). When I was about 5, I remember going to the Crown Theater one evening. Mom and Dad had their Sunday best on, including dress-up hats; I had on my suit and shiny shoes that Dad would shine every Saturday night. Theaters back then had ushers to show you to your seats; ours wore a red uniform and used a little flashlight to help us find our seats. It was a war movie starring Robert Taylor and Van Heflin in “Bataan.”
Before the movie started, there was a “newsreel” about our war efforts. Our war correspondences would film actual parts of battles and talk about what was happening.
Then the movie started. Robert Taylor, as Sgt. Bill Dane and a band of American and Philippine soldiers are caught up in the retreat from Manila toward Bataan during the Japanese conquest of the Philippines in early 1942. As our guys retreat from the advancing Japanese, a small patrol is ordered to delay the enemy as long as possible at a strategic bridge crossing. The group blows the bridge and then waits for the inevitable enemy (Japan) to rebuild the bridge and capture the Americans, and it dawns on the American men that they have been deemed expendable. That was the first time I developed a real hatred for a country and its people ... the Nazis (Germany) and Japan. But, of course, now both countries are our allies ... Imagine that.
There was no television or cable news, and it was how folks back home got to see what was happening over there. Incidentally, “Over There” became a WWI and WWII song:
Over there, over there
Send the word, send the word over there
That the yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming
The drums are rum-tumming everywhere
So prepare, say a prayer
Send the word, send the word to beware.
We’ll be over there, we’re coming over there,
And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.
By George M Cohan
And now, back to my recollections about First Baptist Church. Almost everyone went to Sunday morning church; fifty percent went to Sunday night services, and fifty percent went to Wednesday prayer services. It didn’t matter which organization you were involved with during the week, time stopped, and you started any meeting with a prayer for our service men and women and our nation. This was a time of American exceptionalism.
You saw an example of that mindset right after 9-11 in 2001 when the twin towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. were attacked by radical terrorists flying passenger planes into them, causing death and destruction on our own soil.
Wellsir, my family happened to be one of those who went to church whenever the doors were open. Now, as a kid, I loved it! There was always something going on that challenged me ... such as stories from the Bible (especially those about Jesus and Samson and Moses), the Rhythm Band where I was given the triangles to play (that didn’t thrill me at all), and the Youth Choir, or being inducted into the Royal Ambassadors. How many of you can remember the song “In the Highways; In the Hedges?” And, of course, there was a yearly summer Vacation Bible School... what a blast! I can still name several lady teachers, but the two I really liked were Mrs. Viola Jordon (sheriff’s wife) and Mrs. Cleo Johnson, co-owner of the best restaurant in town, Johnson’s Cafe (the cafe is another story within itself).
When I was eight years old, I was riding in the back of a pickup, and I jumped out while it was moving and landed on the pavement on my head. I was unconscious for a day... was in the Pampa Hospital on Gillespie Street for another four days. I can still see our pastor, Brother Carver, standing beside my bed and asking, “Is there anything I can get you?” My answer was, “I would like a pocketknife!” That afternoon, I was the proud owner of a double-bladed knife... which I still have to this day!
I considered Reverend Douglas Carver a close friend and mentor from then on. He was the person who married Johnnie Lee and me in 1958, and I set up with him when he was dying in the Worley Hospital in 1966. That old Worley Hospital closed down in 1973 and has sat empty all these years. The windows are boarded up, and graffiti is written all over it, inside and out. It was the place where I was born in 1936.
As I was looking up information on the Worley, I learned that now, in the year 2014, it was supposed to be haunted! It’s famous in Texas as one of the most haunted buildings in the state, where you can hear a woman screaming and babies crying ... Imagine that.
Every Christmas, our church did a big production of “Handel’s Messiah,” which included three choirs, with lots of singing and always the reenactment of the nativity scene with men and women from the church playing the parts. I don’t remember any animals being involved. As a kid, I sat through the entire program just to hear the ending. The final song was always the “Halleluiah Chorus,” with the preacher’s wife at the piano and an old maid schoolteacher playing the pipe organ; you could feel the vibration down to your toes!
Actually, that old wooden floor did vibrate. It was always a fantastic evening.
There was a basement in our church, like most other churches, that was used for Sunday school classes and/or a banquet hall. Boy, did we like to have banquets with the food cooked by the best chefs in the world! First Baptist had a huge kitchen, and half the church women were involved in the cooking and in bringing their prize recipes of pies, cobblers, and cakes. Mrs. Edith Wilson oversaw the kitchen, and her contribution was always hot rolls. Nothing tastes quite like a pillow-soft yeast roll fresh from the oven. With a golden-brown crust and a light, airy center, those rolls were to die for! I can still smell them baking; the aroma filled the basement. I would take one of those tasty, yeasty, hot rolls with a big slice of home-churned butter melting off it and pop it into my mouth! Man-o-man, they were good!
Everybody who was a member of our church had a “special place” they always sat in the auditorium; our place was the fourth row from the back on the right side of the center aisle and anywhere from the middle to the end of the row. Church started straight up at 11:00 a.m., with Virgil Mott leading the singing. My favorite song was “Onward Christian Soldiers” (a part of my war efforts).
The Baptists liked to get out a little before noon to beat the other churches to the restaurants! At five minutes past 11:00, our famous sheriff, Rufe Jordan, and his wife, Viola, would enter from the back swinging doors, come down the aisle, and go right beside where I usually sat at the end of the pew. Sheriff Jordan really was famous ... he’s been written up in newspapers and magazines as one of the ten most famous sheriffs in Texas.
He knew the first name of every student who lived in Pampa from the fifth through 12th grades and kept us on the straight and narrow.
Well, as I was saying, Rufe and his wife Viola would come down the center aisle to go to their very one pew... three rows down from our family and ALWAYS at the end of the row! When I was very small, Rufe would pat me on the head, or if I turned to face him, he would give me a wink ... but the thing I will never forget was his footsteps! That old church floor would shake when he came down the aisle!
Sheriff Jordan was a huge man, probably 6’4, weighing at least 300 pounds. He was always in a pair of black cowboy boots, with western attire and a huge Stetson cowboy hat. I’ve been told that he was also a powerful man who could handle anyone or anything if it became necessary. He was sheriff of Gray County for 38 years. At the age of 9, I became their paperboy, and we became good friends. They had a beautiful redheaded daughter named Ann and a deputy named Shirley ... I always felt sorry for him, or any guy named Shirley ... that reminds me of the Johnny Cash song about a guy named Sue!
Ahhh, those were the Days!
