How to Hear Your Past

It is possible. You can hear your past ... sometimes. I suppose circumstances have to be right, but they were right for me last week on Easter morning. My past literally sang.

Let me give you some background.

The focus of Easter for our family has always been church. On Easter my family had an established routine that continued faithfully for about thirty years - from the time I was an infant through my own child-rearing years.

Mt. Bethel Baptist Church on Layton

The church we attended was Mt. Bethel Baptist Church. Located only a quarter mile down the road from our home on Layton, it was the family place of worship  from 1950 to about 1980. Both sets of grandparents raised my mother and father in the church, too,.taking our history with the church back to the 1930s. That's a family association with Mt. Bethel of about fifty years.

But the church is much older than our family. Its history begins in the mid 1800s. Generations of farmers, miners, and laborers up here on the mountain have called Mt. Bethel, "House of God on the Mountain," their church. It's certainly old enough to have the ghosts of past congregants roaming about. In fact, as a child I mortally feared going into the church basement alone, a feeling solidified the time I encountered a black snake slithering through the old stone wall in the basement.

Mt. Bethel grew us. Our mothers and fathers carried us, shoved us, and pulled us there from the crib roll class, to pre-school, to youth group until we walked the old burgundy and black carpet down the center aisle of the sanctuary to marry our sweethearts, and later to bring our own babies to the crib roll class. Carol, Jackie, Lynda, Sybil, Karen, and I were neighbors, schoolmates, and church chums. We came of age together. One Sunday night our small youth group was appointed to conduct the evening service. But our idols, the Beatles, were in America for their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show that night. We raced through the entire service, abbreviating the readings and songs (one verse only of the hymns ... a cutting edge change of protocol), so we could get home to see the show. Our folks never let us forget it. Mt. Bethel was family.

Grandpa and Nana Jones

Grandpa Jones lived about six houses away from us on Layton. As church maintenance man, he would walk several times a week from his home to the church to do his chores. I'd see him pass the front window and run out to say hello. He didn't have a car in the 1950-60s, so he walked everywhere, to his sister's in Blakely and to Scranton. On Sunday mornings he was the first one to get to church because he rang the bell, a large iron one in the steeple, connected to a long rope in the church's vestibule. Every week as we entered, there was Grandpa, arms extended above his head, pulling with all his might so that bell could be heard all over the top of this mountain and throughout Justus.

And when we worshipped, we always sat in the same pew. It wasn't assigned. We hadn't paid for it. It was simply the Jones pew on the left as we entered the sanctuary, second row from the rear. Grandpa Jones always sat on the end of the pew by the center aisle, convenient for fixing the thermostat, shoveling the front stoop or whatever. Next to him sat Nana Jones whom I can never picture in church without a hat, I liked sitting next to her. Then mom, one or both of my sisters and dad sat on the far end of the pew, a bookend to his father with all us Joneses in between.

The Jones pew could sing! Grandpa, a miner who emigrated from North Wales in the 1920s, stood about five feet-five inches with a powerful tenor voice, groomed in the best Welsh tradition in the pubs and chapels of the old country. I can still see his white wisp of hair, round wire-rimmed glasses, and well-worn suit and silk tie which, as a child, I enjoyed stroking as I sucked my thumb during church. His powerful tenor belied his size, and his voice, easily identifiable in a room full of strong singers, would have made any Gamanfa Ganu proud.

At the other end of the pew, Dad could belt a hymn out with the same power as his father, and Mom, in the middle, had a famous soprano range, at least it was famous in Mt. Bethel. She could hit the high notes, and it sounded great.

On the right side of the church sat the Evans and Morcom families, also in their designated pews.

Dad, furthest left in rear, and Janet, second row in the middle, are the
only two still living from our Mt. Bethel family in the middle of
the 20th century. Mom is first on right. Albert Morcom, Jim Carpenter, and
Jack Evans are in that order, last row, from right.

Both Jack Evans and Albert Morcom maintained an equally high volume although without the pitch perfect voices of the Jones family, so the Joneses said. Jack's trump card was his wife Janet who sang alto. She carried all of us in the church who couldn't hit the high notes with my mother. Mom and Janet had been singing duets since they were teens. Left side versus right side of the church, a singing competition raged every Sunday morning. Our post-church dinner conversations usually alluded to the volume or key of the morning's hymns.

The climax of our singing year at church was Easter. "He Lives, He Lives! Christ Jesus Lives Today!" could be heard at Justus Corners, followed by a more mellow "In the Garden." We managed a rather vociferous "And He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own." But the piece de resistance was "The Old Rugged Cross." Every man, woman, and child in the place sang it with gusto and sincerity.

Easter morning, 1959, Jo Ann and Sally

The singing began at about 6:00 am every Easter morning. Sunrise service was standard protocol, followed by a full breakfast of pancakes and eggs in the back of the church. Jim Carpenter was usually the cook extraordinaire and supervisor in the kitchen. Jim, our cigar smoking Sunday School teacher, always had the kids' attention as he was a master of stealing noses.

 After breakfast we children would be eager to get home and find our Easter baskets. Mom would hurry us into our new dresses with matching hats, white gloves, and shiny shoes. Dad would present us with a small corsage, and off we'd go to church again to sing those same precious songs we'd sung at 6:00 am, but that was just rehearsal. At the 10:00 am service we were warmed up, tuned up, and ready to raise the rafters.

And so it went, year after year. Eventually, I left the little church down the road. People change. Life moves on. Although I left Mt. Bethel in the 1980s, in recent years I've been back to buy Welsh cookies or to attend funerals. There have been quite a few, both cookies and funerals: Grandpa and Nana Jones, my friends Carol, Karen, Sybil, and Lynda, Jack Evans, Jim Carpenter, Albert Morcom, and the rest, right and left sides of the center aisle. A few years ago Mom's funeral was at Mt. Bethel even though she had been living the retired life in Myrtle Beach for the past thirty years. At the funeral we played a tape of her and Dad singing the old hymns together. The iron bell in the steeple belfry has been silent for a long time.

But the little church down Layton hasn't left me.

Last week I passed Mt. Bethel's outdoor bulletin board: "Sunrise Service 6:30 a.m. Easter Morning. Breakfast afterwards." That's all it took.

By 6:25 a.m. on Easter morning, I entered the front doors of Mt. Bethel and noted the absence of the dangling belfry rope ... and the absence of Grandpa Jones. This time my attendance wasn't for a funeral; it was for a resurrection, and Jesus had called me home to remember the power and beauty of His sacrificial love. I took my assigned seat, left side, second pew from the rear. About thirty people eventually filtered in, but I only knew two in the entire congregation. And then we started to sing ... the same old hymns I'd been raised on all those Easter mornings ago. But a strange thing happened.

I heard Grandpa's strong tenor as we launched into "He Lives." I heard Mom's soprano hitting the high notes none of us could reach, Jack's toneless gusto, Albert's volume, and Dad's harmonization with Mom. The church resounded with their voices. I heard them all, just as if it were 1960 with the place alit and abuzz with people I loved on our most precious holiday.

My friends, you can hear your past, and sometimes ...  it will sing to you.