Ninth and tenth grade in the Adventist school in Memphis were not that different from seventh and eighth grade. One teacher for all the classes. In addition, our teacher also served as principal, which meant he frequently was out of the classroom to handle administrative responsibilities. At least the subjects were more interesting. Algebra, biology, history.
In tenth grade, our old class was back together which did not bode well for our teacher. That summer the school had expanded a small room that had previously served as a library. The new addition was our classroom. One unfortunate feature of the room was the heating. Even though construction had added square feet, it had not added any heating capacity. On really cold days, the radiators did not keep up and it was uncomfortably cold.
One morning Mt. Williams stepped into the room just as the bell rang. We were all sitting on the window sill with our feet on the heater registers which were barely warm. He ordered us to our seats. Said he would be just a few more minutes in his office, directed us to get our Bible textbooks out, then stepped back into his office.
We didn't sit.
When he came in again, he got really huffy and demanded that we get to our seats immediately. “Mr. Williams,” I said. “It’s too cold to sit in our seats. We are on strike. We’re going to stay by the heaters until we have more heat.”
Mr. Williams stared at us, speechless. He had ordered us to our seats–twice. He threatened us. We said nothing. We didn’t move. His face turned red. He had this funny thing that happened in his throat when he got upset. Suddenly, he turned and stalked back into his office. We finally tired of sitting on the window sill and returned to our seats. Eventually, he came back to classroom. He said nothing. We said nothing. But class was never quite the same again. He was no longer the undisputed boss.
Then came the great Bible class debate. Based on his interpretation of a passage in the most famous book by the Adventist prophet, Ellen White, he told us that Jesus would return to earth precisely at midnight. I raised my hand.
“Mr. Williams, how can you say that when Jesus himself said, ‘No man knows the day or the hour of his return’”?
“Well Johnny, it’s like this. In Jesus’ day, no one knew. But God has revealed it to us, here in these last days. Notice the words of the prophet, ‘It is at midnight that God acts for the deliverance of His people.’ You can’t get any clearer than that.”
“But the deliverance she is talking about doesn’t have to mean the second coming. It could refer to God saving people who are about to be executed. It could be an earthquake or an angel. There are all sorts of ways that God could act at midnight to save his people. Mrs. White’s words do not pinpoint the hour of Christ’s return.”
“Johnny, we are not to question the prophet. She says in this passage, which is about the end of time and the return of Jesus, that ‘It is at midnight that God acts for the deliverance of His people.’ That’s good enough for me. It should be good enough for all of us.”
At home that night Jeannie and I consulted Mother. Mother always supported our teachers. She never took our side, at least that’s the way we felt. But this time she agreed to help us find evidence to rebut Mr. Williams’ midnight second coming theory.
The next day in Bible class we resumed the debate. I brought out my quotations.
“No one knows the day or hour. . .
“No one should say they know the day or hour . . .
“Time is not a test. . .
Mr. Williams sputtered arguments in response, but he wasn’t prepared for the battle. Eventually, he conceded. I was another step away from trust in the competence of church authority.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Chapter 10. National Geographic
Dad may have been anchored in Memphis by his call to serve the blue collar people of his home town, but he had a restless fascination with the whole world. Maps from National Geographic covered the wall of his ham radio room (his “shack” in ham jargon). Sabbath dinner conversations included reports about his regular conversations with Adventist missionaries. We heard about emergencies in which Dad put Catholic and Lutheran missionaries in touch with their headquarters back here in the States and about phone patches (radio to telephone hookups) that allowed lonely scientists at the South Pole or McMurdo Sound talk with girlfriends and wives back home.
We never threw away a National Geographic Magazine and during my teen years, I devoured every issue, both current and those stored in boxes in Dad’s shack. Through fifth, sixth and seventh grades, articles about Africa fueled my dreams of going to Africa as a doctor. Pictures of dirty villages, of dark women in outlandish jewelry that stretched their necks or earlobes, of people squatting in the dirt to cook, make weapons or groom each other. If anyone needed the benefit of enlightened Western civilization and medical care these folk did.
But somewhere along the way, the magazine became subversive. I wasn’t swayed by the reports of the Leakeys about their findings of ancient hominids in Kenya and Ethiopia. They were obviously benighted evolutionists hopelessly committed to an erroneous understanding of earth history. But the description of their outdoor life and their place in the local society undermined the neat separation between America as the land of plenty and Africa as a world of need.
Africa was not just a place of service. It could also be a place of wonderful, sweet adventure. Their son, Richard, grew up camping with his parents on their digs, thoroughly immersed in the natural and native environments where his parents worked. I still vividly remember a photo of Richard in a muddy lake. Just his head was out of the water draped with moss and algae. The caption explained he had learned from Africans the trick of camouflaging himself as a floating stump to sneak up on ducks. It required great patience, but he could walk slowly, neck-deep, across a pond until he was close enough to grab a duck by its feet.
The lakes of northern Mississippi where we swam and skied were muddy, but the lake Richard was pictured in was more like an algae-covered, late summer pond. I could never bring myself to drape my head with gooey, slimy algae. And grabbing a duck by its feet required a boldness and force of will I didn’t have. But I imagined it. And longed for the unconstrained adventure of a life in the wild.
I read with skeptical fascination the Leakey’s reports of their discoveries of bones and tools and dreamed of doing my own field work to find irrefutable evidence to disprove their theories of ancient evolution and establish the reliability of the Bible. I began to imagine a life that combined high religious purpose with outdoor adventure.
As I moved into my high school years, the magazine continued its subversion. It did not alter my explicit beliefs about earth history or God. Instead I was seduced by the back story of the writers and photographers. They told of exotic customs and strange foods. They reported on elements of culture, climate and biology different from anything I had ever seen. But these reports could be ordered into pre-existing categories in my head. The most subversive thing about these writers was what they revealed of themselves.
When they were in Fiji, National Geographic writers dined with the local king not the villagers. On the Mongolian steppes they were guests of the chief. It was not too difficult to imagine stepping into their culture–not the culture of the people in the pictures, but the culture of the people taking the pictures–urbane, educated, sophisticated, cool. They were a secret aristocracy with privileged access anywhere in the world, the very opposite of the effete dullness I associated with the fat, rich people of upper class Memphis. And certainly very different from the ordered, boring world of conventional Adventist church life.
While I was immune to the science in articles about evolution, I was enchanted by the reports on balloon flights to explore the troposphere, expeditions to the poles and the work of Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall. The science reporting that most fascinated me concerned Edward Link’s work on extended periods of living in undersea environments, the story of a midwinter traverse of the Arctic Ocean by the nuclear submarine, Nautilus, and the work of Alvin, a deep-sea submersible used to explore seven miles down in the Marianna’s trench.
In all these expeditions there were doctors. Not missionary doctors, but still doctors. I found my place in the stories in the references to the medical challenges of sustaining human life in a submarine environment.
At school, I was an outsider. I wasn’t picked on. I was just different. I was different at home, too. I was different everywhere. This was unmistakably clear to me by third grade. At recess, I wasn’t the worst ball player, but usually I was no better than the top of the bottom twenty percent. Not infrequently I spent recess inside with Kenny Brooks doing late homework. My parents and teachers talked to me constantly about what I could do if I would just apply myself. I tried sporadically, but the tedium of homework always defeated me. By sixth grade I was aware the cutest girls would never be interested in me. I just didn’t have whatever it was that got their attention. In addition to being clumsy, socially inept, and hopelessly defeated by homework, I was separated from most of my classmates by my intense (fanatical) piety. While the kids were not mean, it was clear I could never fit in with the school crowd.
The world of science was different. It was an exotic, enchanting culture in which the price of admission was intellect not social coolness. Scientists were like missionaries in their ability to flout social conventions and in their intense, life-forming commitments to their tasks. They were an elite I could imagine being part of. At least that’s what I learned reading National Geographic.
We never threw away a National Geographic Magazine and during my teen years, I devoured every issue, both current and those stored in boxes in Dad’s shack. Through fifth, sixth and seventh grades, articles about Africa fueled my dreams of going to Africa as a doctor. Pictures of dirty villages, of dark women in outlandish jewelry that stretched their necks or earlobes, of people squatting in the dirt to cook, make weapons or groom each other. If anyone needed the benefit of enlightened Western civilization and medical care these folk did.
But somewhere along the way, the magazine became subversive. I wasn’t swayed by the reports of the Leakeys about their findings of ancient hominids in Kenya and Ethiopia. They were obviously benighted evolutionists hopelessly committed to an erroneous understanding of earth history. But the description of their outdoor life and their place in the local society undermined the neat separation between America as the land of plenty and Africa as a world of need.
Africa was not just a place of service. It could also be a place of wonderful, sweet adventure. Their son, Richard, grew up camping with his parents on their digs, thoroughly immersed in the natural and native environments where his parents worked. I still vividly remember a photo of Richard in a muddy lake. Just his head was out of the water draped with moss and algae. The caption explained he had learned from Africans the trick of camouflaging himself as a floating stump to sneak up on ducks. It required great patience, but he could walk slowly, neck-deep, across a pond until he was close enough to grab a duck by its feet.
The lakes of northern Mississippi where we swam and skied were muddy, but the lake Richard was pictured in was more like an algae-covered, late summer pond. I could never bring myself to drape my head with gooey, slimy algae. And grabbing a duck by its feet required a boldness and force of will I didn’t have. But I imagined it. And longed for the unconstrained adventure of a life in the wild.
I read with skeptical fascination the Leakey’s reports of their discoveries of bones and tools and dreamed of doing my own field work to find irrefutable evidence to disprove their theories of ancient evolution and establish the reliability of the Bible. I began to imagine a life that combined high religious purpose with outdoor adventure.
As I moved into my high school years, the magazine continued its subversion. It did not alter my explicit beliefs about earth history or God. Instead I was seduced by the back story of the writers and photographers. They told of exotic customs and strange foods. They reported on elements of culture, climate and biology different from anything I had ever seen. But these reports could be ordered into pre-existing categories in my head. The most subversive thing about these writers was what they revealed of themselves.
When they were in Fiji, National Geographic writers dined with the local king not the villagers. On the Mongolian steppes they were guests of the chief. It was not too difficult to imagine stepping into their culture–not the culture of the people in the pictures, but the culture of the people taking the pictures–urbane, educated, sophisticated, cool. They were a secret aristocracy with privileged access anywhere in the world, the very opposite of the effete dullness I associated with the fat, rich people of upper class Memphis. And certainly very different from the ordered, boring world of conventional Adventist church life.
While I was immune to the science in articles about evolution, I was enchanted by the reports on balloon flights to explore the troposphere, expeditions to the poles and the work of Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall. The science reporting that most fascinated me concerned Edward Link’s work on extended periods of living in undersea environments, the story of a midwinter traverse of the Arctic Ocean by the nuclear submarine, Nautilus, and the work of Alvin, a deep-sea submersible used to explore seven miles down in the Marianna’s trench.
In all these expeditions there were doctors. Not missionary doctors, but still doctors. I found my place in the stories in the references to the medical challenges of sustaining human life in a submarine environment.
At school, I was an outsider. I wasn’t picked on. I was just different. I was different at home, too. I was different everywhere. This was unmistakably clear to me by third grade. At recess, I wasn’t the worst ball player, but usually I was no better than the top of the bottom twenty percent. Not infrequently I spent recess inside with Kenny Brooks doing late homework. My parents and teachers talked to me constantly about what I could do if I would just apply myself. I tried sporadically, but the tedium of homework always defeated me. By sixth grade I was aware the cutest girls would never be interested in me. I just didn’t have whatever it was that got their attention. In addition to being clumsy, socially inept, and hopelessly defeated by homework, I was separated from most of my classmates by my intense (fanatical) piety. While the kids were not mean, it was clear I could never fit in with the school crowd.
The world of science was different. It was an exotic, enchanting culture in which the price of admission was intellect not social coolness. Scientists were like missionaries in their ability to flout social conventions and in their intense, life-forming commitments to their tasks. They were an elite I could imagine being part of. At least that’s what I learned reading National Geographic.
Chapter 9. Lawful Rebellion
Mr. Wood taught seventh and eight grade at our Adventist School. He was conscientious and boring. I remember thinking how sad it was that some people doing their very best could only be mediocre. Not every kid could be an A student. School work didn’t come easily to everyone, especially math. But still they had to go to school and accept their “C’s” and “B minuses.” It must be like that for adults who became preachers and teachers. They worked as hard as they could, but their best deserved a “C.”
Mr. Wood didn’t try to make us play Patty Cake. He was just plodding. He had spent years building the band program, with a beginners band for the lower grades and the concert band for the upper grades. Even a teenager had to respect his indefatigable commitment. But I couldn’t help overhearing conversations between my mother and my older sister, both musicians, about the pedestrian nature of Mr. Wood’s music. He was sincere, devoted, hard-working, but didn’t have a sharp ear or a gift for conducting.
In class I was required to respect him for his position and his dutifulness. But he failed when measured by the ruthless meritocratic scale my parents constantly held up, a scale with intellectual acumen at the top. Probably second in that ranking was, curiously, skinniness. A fat preacher or teacher was ranked far lower than a dull one. At least Mr. Wood wasn’t fat.
He combed his straight back. It had these amazing waves in it. I had curly hair, but I didn’t have waves like he did–precise, parallel lines of peaks and valleys from his forehead back, neatly held in place by Vaseline hair tonic. (I assumed it was Vaseline. That’s what my dad made me put on my curls to keep them in place.)
I survived seventh grade. The next year, Mr. Wood became the principal and the ninth and tenth grade teacher. I was thrilled we had a new teacher for seventh and eighth grade–Mr. Streeter. He seemed like a really nice man. After the first week I knew this school year was going to be a lot more interesting than seventh grade.
But then came the “peninsula incident.” It was geography class and we were talking about land forms. Mr. Streeter wrote “peninsula” on the board and asked for examples of a peninsula.
I raised my hand.
“Johnny.”
“Florida.”
“No, Florida is an isthmus.”
I raised my hand again. “Yes, Johnny, what is it?
“Mr. Streeter, Don’t you mean Panama is a isthmus?”
“No. Florida is an isthmus.”
“But I thought Panama was an isthmus.”
“No, Panama is a peninsula. Florida is an isthmus.”
I couldn’t believe a teacher could be so dumb. I waited until the lecture was over. Once Mr. Streeter finished and released us to work on the assigned exercises, I got up and brought a dictionary from the shelf back to my desk.
I raised my hand and waited to be recognized. Finally Mr. Streeter looked up from his desk.
“Yes, Johnny, what do you want?”
“Mr. Streeter, I know you said a peninsula is a narrow strip of land that connects two larger land masses. But this dictionary says a peninsula is a strip of land sticking out into a body of water. It lists Panama as an example of an isthmus. Which are we supposed to believe, you or the dictionary?”
He asked me to bring the dictionary to his desk. I did. He read the entries as I stood there.
“Well, I guess you’re right.”
It was only the first time.
We were studying compound interest. He told us he was going to show us a short cut. He took the simple annual interest based on the initial amount, divided it by 365 and multiplied it times the number of days the money was on deposit. “That’s your total interest for the year compounded daily.”
I raised my hand.
We argued round and round.
At home that afternoon, I recounted my argument to Mom. She always supported
teachers when I complained about them, but I could see her surprise as I described Mr. Streeter explanation of compound interest. I showed her my work and she agreed I had it right.
The next day, to his credit, Mr. Streeter said he had done some more study. He went over compound interest again and did it correctly. But the class remembered yesterday.
Blood was in the water, and we were sharks.
One assignment in language arts class was to create our own vocabulary list each week. Each of us chose twenty-five words to write with their definitions. Naturally, I looked for interesting words. The third or fourth paper was returned to me with the word “aardvark.” marked wrong. I couldn’t believe it. I raised my hand. (I only asked questions in private when I didn’t already know the answer.)
“Mr. Streeter, I have the word aardvark on my vocab list. But it’s marked wrong. Can you tell me why it’s marked wrong?”
“Bring it up to my desk.”
I did. I laid my notebook on his desk and pointed to the word.
“What’s wrong with this word?”
“Johnny, your vocab words have to be actual words. You can’t just make up words.”
“But it is a word. I found it in the dictionary.”
“No, it can’t be. There is no such word.”
“Yes, there is. Let me show you.”
I fetched the dictionary, laid it on top my notebook and opened it to the first page of entries. “See. It says right here, aardvark. A-A-R-D-V-A-R-K.” The entire class was listening, delighted.
Late in the fall, I was summoned to a meeting with Mr. Streeter and Mr. Wood, the principal. They talked to me about my attitude. If I wanted to, they said, I could be an influence for good. But my attitude was affecting the other students and making learning difficult. If I couldn’t make some changes, perhaps they would have to expel me.
It was a curious meeting. They were pleading with me to change. But they had nothing definite to pin on me. I hadn’t broken any rules. I never corrected Mr. Streeter without first raising my hand and waiting to be recognized. And Mr. Streeter was always wrong.
Mr. Streeter left after the first semester. I stayed. I felt sorry for him but felt he had earned everything we gave him. I found out later he became a preacher. That suited him–he was a nice guy, just not too bright.
Mr. Johnson took his place. He was a fiery, aggressive teacher. He pushed us hard and we thrived under his pushing. He left half way through the middle of the next year. Kids whispered rumors about something dirty going on at his apartment with some of the boys.
Mr. Wood didn’t try to make us play Patty Cake. He was just plodding. He had spent years building the band program, with a beginners band for the lower grades and the concert band for the upper grades. Even a teenager had to respect his indefatigable commitment. But I couldn’t help overhearing conversations between my mother and my older sister, both musicians, about the pedestrian nature of Mr. Wood’s music. He was sincere, devoted, hard-working, but didn’t have a sharp ear or a gift for conducting.
In class I was required to respect him for his position and his dutifulness. But he failed when measured by the ruthless meritocratic scale my parents constantly held up, a scale with intellectual acumen at the top. Probably second in that ranking was, curiously, skinniness. A fat preacher or teacher was ranked far lower than a dull one. At least Mr. Wood wasn’t fat.
He combed his straight back. It had these amazing waves in it. I had curly hair, but I didn’t have waves like he did–precise, parallel lines of peaks and valleys from his forehead back, neatly held in place by Vaseline hair tonic. (I assumed it was Vaseline. That’s what my dad made me put on my curls to keep them in place.)
I survived seventh grade. The next year, Mr. Wood became the principal and the ninth and tenth grade teacher. I was thrilled we had a new teacher for seventh and eighth grade–Mr. Streeter. He seemed like a really nice man. After the first week I knew this school year was going to be a lot more interesting than seventh grade.
But then came the “peninsula incident.” It was geography class and we were talking about land forms. Mr. Streeter wrote “peninsula” on the board and asked for examples of a peninsula.
I raised my hand.
“Johnny.”
“Florida.”
“No, Florida is an isthmus.”
I raised my hand again. “Yes, Johnny, what is it?
“Mr. Streeter, Don’t you mean Panama is a isthmus?”
“No. Florida is an isthmus.”
“But I thought Panama was an isthmus.”
“No, Panama is a peninsula. Florida is an isthmus.”
I couldn’t believe a teacher could be so dumb. I waited until the lecture was over. Once Mr. Streeter finished and released us to work on the assigned exercises, I got up and brought a dictionary from the shelf back to my desk.
I raised my hand and waited to be recognized. Finally Mr. Streeter looked up from his desk.
“Yes, Johnny, what do you want?”
“Mr. Streeter, I know you said a peninsula is a narrow strip of land that connects two larger land masses. But this dictionary says a peninsula is a strip of land sticking out into a body of water. It lists Panama as an example of an isthmus. Which are we supposed to believe, you or the dictionary?”
He asked me to bring the dictionary to his desk. I did. He read the entries as I stood there.
“Well, I guess you’re right.”
It was only the first time.
We were studying compound interest. He told us he was going to show us a short cut. He took the simple annual interest based on the initial amount, divided it by 365 and multiplied it times the number of days the money was on deposit. “That’s your total interest for the year compounded daily.”
I raised my hand.
We argued round and round.
At home that afternoon, I recounted my argument to Mom. She always supported
teachers when I complained about them, but I could see her surprise as I described Mr. Streeter explanation of compound interest. I showed her my work and she agreed I had it right.
The next day, to his credit, Mr. Streeter said he had done some more study. He went over compound interest again and did it correctly. But the class remembered yesterday.
Blood was in the water, and we were sharks.
One assignment in language arts class was to create our own vocabulary list each week. Each of us chose twenty-five words to write with their definitions. Naturally, I looked for interesting words. The third or fourth paper was returned to me with the word “aardvark.” marked wrong. I couldn’t believe it. I raised my hand. (I only asked questions in private when I didn’t already know the answer.)
“Mr. Streeter, I have the word aardvark on my vocab list. But it’s marked wrong. Can you tell me why it’s marked wrong?”
“Bring it up to my desk.”
I did. I laid my notebook on his desk and pointed to the word.
“What’s wrong with this word?”
“Johnny, your vocab words have to be actual words. You can’t just make up words.”
“But it is a word. I found it in the dictionary.”
“No, it can’t be. There is no such word.”
“Yes, there is. Let me show you.”
I fetched the dictionary, laid it on top my notebook and opened it to the first page of entries. “See. It says right here, aardvark. A-A-R-D-V-A-R-K.” The entire class was listening, delighted.
Late in the fall, I was summoned to a meeting with Mr. Streeter and Mr. Wood, the principal. They talked to me about my attitude. If I wanted to, they said, I could be an influence for good. But my attitude was affecting the other students and making learning difficult. If I couldn’t make some changes, perhaps they would have to expel me.
It was a curious meeting. They were pleading with me to change. But they had nothing definite to pin on me. I hadn’t broken any rules. I never corrected Mr. Streeter without first raising my hand and waiting to be recognized. And Mr. Streeter was always wrong.
Mr. Streeter left after the first semester. I stayed. I felt sorry for him but felt he had earned everything we gave him. I found out later he became a preacher. That suited him–he was a nice guy, just not too bright.
Mr. Johnson took his place. He was a fiery, aggressive teacher. He pushed us hard and we thrived under his pushing. He left half way through the middle of the next year. Kids whispered rumors about something dirty going on at his apartment with some of the boys.
Chapter 8. Anomalies in Eden
My parents and uncles, aunts and cousins were Adventist. I went to an Adventist school, read Adventist books, went to Adventist campmeeting and Adventist summer camp. We ate Adventist food (vegetarian), did Adventist entertainment (no movies) and Adventist fundraising (door-to-door solicitation for cash donations “for the poor, sick and needy”). Adventism was a complete system, nearly an entire world.
The only exception to this complete social system was our neighborhood. No other Adventists lived in the area, so our playmates were Baptists or Catholics or people who did not go to church. We played and fought with them in typical city neighborhood fashion, and never worked too hard at figuring out how they could be such good friends and at the same time be candidates for the Mark of the Beast. In the neighborhood, friendship counted for more than theology.
But with the one exception of our neighborhood, the rest of my world was Adventist. Everything that was necessary–truth, God, adventure, meaning, guidance for life, theories of earth history and political science, romance, professional education–could be found inside the Edenic ecosystem of our church.
But there were anomalies in the Garden.
Like many Adventist elementary schools, our ten-grade school, Memphis Junior Academy, had two grades in each classroom. So every other year I was in the same classroom with my sister, Jeannie, who was a year behind me. When I was in sixth grade we had a dreadful teacher. She must have thought we were second graders. One recess, she required us to sit in a circle. Then she tried to force us to play Patty Cake. In front of students from other grades who were also on the playground at the same time.
We sat in a circle like she said. And some of the kids cooperated in clapping their hands with her. But the guys were appalled at the very idea of playing a little kids’ game. We hooted and jeered each other. We were careful not to make fun of our teacher directly, but we loudly ridiculed the game.
Mrs. Larson finally cut recess short and made us return to the classroom. She was still in charge. But that day we declared war. We put a tack in her chair. She didn’t sit on it, but we felt brave for our effort. We slammed our books in unison. We drew comical pictures of her on the board when she was out of the classroom. We threw paper planes when her back was turned.
Nearly every day, my sister and I would come home to recount to our mother some fresh indignity we had suffered at the hand of Mrs. Larson. How could the church employ someone so utterly unfit for the job? We occasionally reported on our own guerilla tactics, but always in the context of extreme provocation by Mrs. Larson. Mom counseled obedience and courtesy and forbearance. But I thought I detected in her some amazement at the loony actions of our teacher.
When we returned to school after Christmas break, Mrs. Larson was gone. Mrs. Crowson took her place. Mrs. Crowson was pretty, young, and tough as nails. She was my third cousin. I quickly fell in love with her. We had a great rest of the year. I think I even did a little school work, though that’s probably just wishful memory in honor of a favorite teacher.
The following year I returned to campmeeting. I took with me my most prized fossil, a gift from one of the old men at church. It was some kind of plant, the piece I had ten inches long, two or three inches in diameter and branched. My first thought was petrified wood, but it didn’t look quite like wood. I asked all the men at church who might know about rocks. But none of them knew what it was. I was eager to show it to Pastor McLean. He would know.
Sure enough, when I showed it to him, he immediately identified it.
“No question about it. You’ve got a nice piece of petrified wood.”
I protested slightly. “Well, I asked several other people and they weren’t sure it was petrified wood.”
“Oh, there’s no doubt about it. It’s petrified wood.”
“But what about these lines that run length-wise on it and even appear to run lengthwise inside it. Shouldn’t petrified wood have rings inside instead of these little stringy things?”
“No, it’s really quite simple. What you have is a nice piece of petrified wood.”
I was a Southerner. While I might have been a social misfit, I did have manners. And a young person does not prolong an argument with an adult. Especially one you admire. But I wasn’t sure what to do with my admiration. It appeared to me the coolest preacher I had ever known had just made a fool of himself. He was certain when he should have been tentative. He had made an authoritative statement, and I suspected he was wrong. I didn’t know he was wrong. I didn’t know where to find a better identification, but I trusted my own eyes as much as I trusted a preacher when it came to rocks. And this fossil did not look like wood to me.
The only exception to this complete social system was our neighborhood. No other Adventists lived in the area, so our playmates were Baptists or Catholics or people who did not go to church. We played and fought with them in typical city neighborhood fashion, and never worked too hard at figuring out how they could be such good friends and at the same time be candidates for the Mark of the Beast. In the neighborhood, friendship counted for more than theology.
But with the one exception of our neighborhood, the rest of my world was Adventist. Everything that was necessary–truth, God, adventure, meaning, guidance for life, theories of earth history and political science, romance, professional education–could be found inside the Edenic ecosystem of our church.
But there were anomalies in the Garden.
Like many Adventist elementary schools, our ten-grade school, Memphis Junior Academy, had two grades in each classroom. So every other year I was in the same classroom with my sister, Jeannie, who was a year behind me. When I was in sixth grade we had a dreadful teacher. She must have thought we were second graders. One recess, she required us to sit in a circle. Then she tried to force us to play Patty Cake. In front of students from other grades who were also on the playground at the same time.
We sat in a circle like she said. And some of the kids cooperated in clapping their hands with her. But the guys were appalled at the very idea of playing a little kids’ game. We hooted and jeered each other. We were careful not to make fun of our teacher directly, but we loudly ridiculed the game.
Mrs. Larson finally cut recess short and made us return to the classroom. She was still in charge. But that day we declared war. We put a tack in her chair. She didn’t sit on it, but we felt brave for our effort. We slammed our books in unison. We drew comical pictures of her on the board when she was out of the classroom. We threw paper planes when her back was turned.
Nearly every day, my sister and I would come home to recount to our mother some fresh indignity we had suffered at the hand of Mrs. Larson. How could the church employ someone so utterly unfit for the job? We occasionally reported on our own guerilla tactics, but always in the context of extreme provocation by Mrs. Larson. Mom counseled obedience and courtesy and forbearance. But I thought I detected in her some amazement at the loony actions of our teacher.
When we returned to school after Christmas break, Mrs. Larson was gone. Mrs. Crowson took her place. Mrs. Crowson was pretty, young, and tough as nails. She was my third cousin. I quickly fell in love with her. We had a great rest of the year. I think I even did a little school work, though that’s probably just wishful memory in honor of a favorite teacher.
The following year I returned to campmeeting. I took with me my most prized fossil, a gift from one of the old men at church. It was some kind of plant, the piece I had ten inches long, two or three inches in diameter and branched. My first thought was petrified wood, but it didn’t look quite like wood. I asked all the men at church who might know about rocks. But none of them knew what it was. I was eager to show it to Pastor McLean. He would know.
Sure enough, when I showed it to him, he immediately identified it.
“No question about it. You’ve got a nice piece of petrified wood.”
I protested slightly. “Well, I asked several other people and they weren’t sure it was petrified wood.”
“Oh, there’s no doubt about it. It’s petrified wood.”
“But what about these lines that run length-wise on it and even appear to run lengthwise inside it. Shouldn’t petrified wood have rings inside instead of these little stringy things?”
“No, it’s really quite simple. What you have is a nice piece of petrified wood.”
I was a Southerner. While I might have been a social misfit, I did have manners. And a young person does not prolong an argument with an adult. Especially one you admire. But I wasn’t sure what to do with my admiration. It appeared to me the coolest preacher I had ever known had just made a fool of himself. He was certain when he should have been tentative. He had made an authoritative statement, and I suspected he was wrong. I didn’t know he was wrong. I didn’t know where to find a better identification, but I trusted my own eyes as much as I trusted a preacher when it came to rocks. And this fossil did not look like wood to me.
Chapter 7. Geodes
Campmeeting was not just meetings. One boy I met lived near the campground. On Monday, he showed me a soft-ball sized gray rock he had broken open. The inside was lined with white crystals. I was mesmerized.
“Where did you get it?” I asked.
“Down by the creek.”
“Where? Which creek? I haven’t seen any of these down at the creek.”
“I’ll show you this afternoon, if you want.”
“Really? Today?”
“Sure, you want to go now?”
We clambered down a faint path that took off down the steep hill just beyond the old bathhouse. At the bottom was a larger creek than the one that ran along the lower campground where I was used to building dams. We bushwhacked downstream a ways until we reached a place where the creek had eaten into a bank comprised of a dark gray rock that broke off in layers. After searching for ten or fifteen minutes I found a round, knobbly rock. I worked it out, then stepped down to the creek where I cracked it open with a larger rock. Sure enough. The inside was lined with white crystals. It had broken into too many pieces, so I went back to look for more. I collected six before we quit.
I could hardly wait to show Pastor McLean at the afternoon meeting. He showed interest. That warmed my heart. But then he blew me away. He told us what they were. These were geodes. He even explained how they formed.
When Noah’s flood covered the earth, it laid down layers of mud. The mud had hollow spaces in it. Over time, water with dissolved silica in it moved through the mud and filled up the hollow spaces. Then the water somehow escaped and left behind the crystals.
But I couldn’t see how water could be inside a solid rock and then leave. There wasn’t any hole the water could escape through. And how did the water get in there to start with? Where did the water find the chemicals that turned into white crystals inside the geodes? I didn’t have any better idea, but neither was I prepared to fully accept Pastor McLean’s explanation, even though I was sure it was scientific.
The most impressive thing about all this was that Pastor McLean knew about rocks! After that I brought my best geodes to show him. He was always properly impressed with our finds. Then I found a fossil, an entire leaf, perfectly preserved.
Pastor McLean explained how Noah’s flood had rapidly buried then intensely pressurized the mud with this leaf in it, preserving it for four thousand years until I dug it out of the shale bank. Pastor McLean even came with us once to check out our geode and fossil-hunting sites. It seemed that maybe this cool pastor liked me. It didn’t get any better than that–especially for a hyper-religious kid who was something of a social misfit.
“Where did you get it?” I asked.
“Down by the creek.”
“Where? Which creek? I haven’t seen any of these down at the creek.”
“I’ll show you this afternoon, if you want.”
“Really? Today?”
“Sure, you want to go now?”
We clambered down a faint path that took off down the steep hill just beyond the old bathhouse. At the bottom was a larger creek than the one that ran along the lower campground where I was used to building dams. We bushwhacked downstream a ways until we reached a place where the creek had eaten into a bank comprised of a dark gray rock that broke off in layers. After searching for ten or fifteen minutes I found a round, knobbly rock. I worked it out, then stepped down to the creek where I cracked it open with a larger rock. Sure enough. The inside was lined with white crystals. It had broken into too many pieces, so I went back to look for more. I collected six before we quit.
I could hardly wait to show Pastor McLean at the afternoon meeting. He showed interest. That warmed my heart. But then he blew me away. He told us what they were. These were geodes. He even explained how they formed.
When Noah’s flood covered the earth, it laid down layers of mud. The mud had hollow spaces in it. Over time, water with dissolved silica in it moved through the mud and filled up the hollow spaces. Then the water somehow escaped and left behind the crystals.
But I couldn’t see how water could be inside a solid rock and then leave. There wasn’t any hole the water could escape through. And how did the water get in there to start with? Where did the water find the chemicals that turned into white crystals inside the geodes? I didn’t have any better idea, but neither was I prepared to fully accept Pastor McLean’s explanation, even though I was sure it was scientific.
The most impressive thing about all this was that Pastor McLean knew about rocks! After that I brought my best geodes to show him. He was always properly impressed with our finds. Then I found a fossil, an entire leaf, perfectly preserved.
Pastor McLean explained how Noah’s flood had rapidly buried then intensely pressurized the mud with this leaf in it, preserving it for four thousand years until I dug it out of the shale bank. Pastor McLean even came with us once to check out our geode and fossil-hunting sites. It seemed that maybe this cool pastor liked me. It didn’t get any better than that–especially for a hyper-religious kid who was something of a social misfit.
Chapter 6. Junior Tent
The next year at campmeeting, I graduated to Juniors. It was everything I had imagined and more. The Junior tent looked like an Army tent, a dark green square with a massive center mast. Two sections of white picket fence flanked the entrance. The center aisle bright with fresh sawdust aimed straight at the stage and backdrop. And no kiddy chairs. These were real, adult seats, folding metal chairs.
It was all by itself right across from the old bathhouse at the bend in the road at top of the hill coming up from the lower campground.
The music was fantastic. We sang our lungs out. Boys competing with the girls. Standing up. Sitting. The preacher in charge was a cool, guitar-playing young pastor named Terry McLean. He taught us a new song, he said came from South Africa.
I’m happy today
I’m happy today
In Jesus Christ, I’m happy today.
He’s taken all my sins away.
And that’s why I’m happy today.
I’m singing today . . .
I’m laughing today . . .
I’m smiling today . . .
The verses could be multiplied endlessly.
We had meetings at 10:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. The evening meetings were down at the hill at a campfire bowl set into a hillside. Again there was music. And there was a continued story. One year it was Corbett’s tales of the Man-eating tiger of ????
Another year, a woman told a continuing story about life at the end of time. An Adventist family–Mom and Dad, three kids–struggled to stay alive while maintaining their faithfulness to God. Probation had closed–that is God had already closed the books of the heavenly judgment. The eternal fate of all humanity had already been determined.
Just a few months remained before the return of Christ and the end of the world. But during those few months, the true people of God had to perfectly resist all the temptations of the Devil. They were to be God’s final demonstration to the world of the validity and value of God’s holy Ten Commandment law.
Of course, no one could know for sure what God’s decision had been. So the members of this good family were constantly reviewing their lives, wondering if they had confessed all their sins before it was too late. They lived with a crushing sense of unworthiness and doom. Still they were heroically faithful.
They were hiding in the mountains, eating weird plants and food they found in unlocked hunter’s cabins. They lived in constant fear of the police and vigilantes who were searching for them.
The family’s crime? They were Saturday keepers (that is they observed Sabbath in the Jewish pattern from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday). In a time of national emergency (never quite precisely defined) the president of the United States had declared the United States to be a Christian nation and persuaded Congress to pass a law requiring Sunday church attendance by all Americans. The law had specifically prohibited the practice of Saturday- keeping (the observance of Saturday as the holy day). The penalty for keeping Saturday was death.
The reason for this unAmerican turn of events was national desperation in the face of overwhelming catastrophe. People became convinced that the reason for the catastrophes was God’s anger. If only American’s would return to the proper worship of God, then God would reverse our national fortunes. The most obvious expression of America’s Christian identity was Sunday church services.
Saturday keepers were the most flagrant transgressors of this Christian rite, so they were the special target of punitive legislation and negative public sentiment.
Nothing about the story seemed strange to me. It was fiction, true. But it sounded like the theology I heard at the Adventist school and in evangelistic meetings and around the dinner table on Sabbath after church.
I had heard my father remark with pleased wonder about our prophet’s prediction that at the end of time, people would attack us with swords and the swords “would break like straw.” In Bible class at school teachers talked about the Close of Probation, The Time of Trouble and the persecution of God’s people at the end of time. Evangelists preached fantastic sermons about the National Sunday Law and the Seven Last Plagues and the Mark of the Beast.
This stuff was as normal to me as Memphis accents, massive elm trees that formed green arches over the street or having a Colored maid. This was just reality. It was the world I lived in.
The story connected with my profound, ineradicable sense of unworthiness and guilt while at the same time giving my personal struggles cosmic significance. My church was part of a movement called by God to resist the creeping forces of spiritual corruption. My own calling was to make sure I was ready for the close of probation and the last- day contest between true religion and a world seduced by a false Christianity. I was often miserable with guilt and vague self-reproach, but the endtime stories taught me that my current misery was, at worst, a mild training for the spiritual and personal agony of the Last Days which were just ahead.
It was all by itself right across from the old bathhouse at the bend in the road at top of the hill coming up from the lower campground.
The music was fantastic. We sang our lungs out. Boys competing with the girls. Standing up. Sitting. The preacher in charge was a cool, guitar-playing young pastor named Terry McLean. He taught us a new song, he said came from South Africa.
I’m happy today
I’m happy today
In Jesus Christ, I’m happy today.
He’s taken all my sins away.
And that’s why I’m happy today.
I’m singing today . . .
I’m laughing today . . .
I’m smiling today . . .
The verses could be multiplied endlessly.
We had meetings at 10:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. The evening meetings were down at the hill at a campfire bowl set into a hillside. Again there was music. And there was a continued story. One year it was Corbett’s tales of the Man-eating tiger of ????
Another year, a woman told a continuing story about life at the end of time. An Adventist family–Mom and Dad, three kids–struggled to stay alive while maintaining their faithfulness to God. Probation had closed–that is God had already closed the books of the heavenly judgment. The eternal fate of all humanity had already been determined.
Just a few months remained before the return of Christ and the end of the world. But during those few months, the true people of God had to perfectly resist all the temptations of the Devil. They were to be God’s final demonstration to the world of the validity and value of God’s holy Ten Commandment law.
Of course, no one could know for sure what God’s decision had been. So the members of this good family were constantly reviewing their lives, wondering if they had confessed all their sins before it was too late. They lived with a crushing sense of unworthiness and doom. Still they were heroically faithful.
They were hiding in the mountains, eating weird plants and food they found in unlocked hunter’s cabins. They lived in constant fear of the police and vigilantes who were searching for them.
The family’s crime? They were Saturday keepers (that is they observed Sabbath in the Jewish pattern from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday). In a time of national emergency (never quite precisely defined) the president of the United States had declared the United States to be a Christian nation and persuaded Congress to pass a law requiring Sunday church attendance by all Americans. The law had specifically prohibited the practice of Saturday- keeping (the observance of Saturday as the holy day). The penalty for keeping Saturday was death.
The reason for this unAmerican turn of events was national desperation in the face of overwhelming catastrophe. People became convinced that the reason for the catastrophes was God’s anger. If only American’s would return to the proper worship of God, then God would reverse our national fortunes. The most obvious expression of America’s Christian identity was Sunday church services.
Saturday keepers were the most flagrant transgressors of this Christian rite, so they were the special target of punitive legislation and negative public sentiment.
Nothing about the story seemed strange to me. It was fiction, true. But it sounded like the theology I heard at the Adventist school and in evangelistic meetings and around the dinner table on Sabbath after church.
I had heard my father remark with pleased wonder about our prophet’s prediction that at the end of time, people would attack us with swords and the swords “would break like straw.” In Bible class at school teachers talked about the Close of Probation, The Time of Trouble and the persecution of God’s people at the end of time. Evangelists preached fantastic sermons about the National Sunday Law and the Seven Last Plagues and the Mark of the Beast.
This stuff was as normal to me as Memphis accents, massive elm trees that formed green arches over the street or having a Colored maid. This was just reality. It was the world I lived in.
The story connected with my profound, ineradicable sense of unworthiness and guilt while at the same time giving my personal struggles cosmic significance. My church was part of a movement called by God to resist the creeping forces of spiritual corruption. My own calling was to make sure I was ready for the close of probation and the last- day contest between true religion and a world seduced by a false Christianity. I was often miserable with guilt and vague self-reproach, but the endtime stories taught me that my current misery was, at worst, a mild training for the spiritual and personal agony of the Last Days which were just ahead.
Chapter 5. Crinoids!
Beth’s father and mother were doctors. They moved to Memphis to work at St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and began attending our church. They had kids the age of my older brother and sister and maybe one or two older than that, and Beth. She was just a year older than I was, so she was in my Sabbath School class at church and in my classroom at school.
I didn’t play with Beth at recess, but at least she was friendly. One day she brought a rock to school. It was a small cylinder about three-eights of an inch long and a quarter inch across. It looked like a stack of flat rings with a hole through the center. I was enthralled. A real fossil. In my own hands! Then, as I was admiring it, Beth told me I could have it.
“What? Really?”
“Sure. I can find more of them in my driveway at home.”
I couldn’t believe it. She had fossils in her driveway. What an exotic house! I could hardly wait for the next time we were invited for Sabbath lunch. As soon as we could be excused from the table, Beth took me outside to mine the driveway. In less than five minutes we found another fossil. We found six that afternoon. In addition to the kind of fossil she had brought to school, we found another one, horn-shaped with longitudinal ridges. This was marvelous beyond words. After sundown worship, when the kids played hide-and-seek, Beth and I hid together. I hated to go home.
I wanted to know what kind of fossils we had found. I looked in the encyclopedia but didn’t find anything that looked just like what we had found. I asked adults, but no one knew anything about fossils. Then Mr. Holmes told me it was a crinoid. He showed me a picture in a book. No wonder I didn’t recognize it. The books all showed crinoids as long stalks with what looked like a flower on top and a broad base. It was a sea creature related to sea anemones. The pieces I had were very short sections of the stem. I was thrilled. I had a fossil that actually had a name.
Searching Beth’s driveway for fossils did lead to one major disappointment. When she first brought the fossil to school, I had hoped that after seeing them in her driveway and knowing what to look for, I might be able to find fossils in the gravel in the alley behind our house or at the Holmes’ house in the country south of town. But when we searched her driveway, I realized right away that something was different about this gravel. It didn’t look like any other gravel I had seen around Memphis.
I already knew any large rocks in Memphis had to have been transported in by truck or train or barge. I had visited a gravel pit near my cousin Ricky’s house. The largest rocks were smaller than my fist and the color was the same as the red gravel roads that ran through the Mississippi countryside south of town. Even along the banks of the Mississippi River which I explored when we went skiing with my Uncle Alex, there were no large rocks and no fossils. And there was a lot of reddish color.
The gravel in Beth’s driveway was tan to white. The pieces had a different shape from anything I had seen anywhere else in Memphis. Maybe it came from over near Little Rock, Arkansas or from up toward Nashville where I had seen gray and white rocks. For sure Beth’s gravel did not come from Memphis.
I had been collecting rocks since I was old enough to pick them up. This was perhaps the first time I gave much thought to rocks as part of a system instead of as individual specimens.
I didn’t play with Beth at recess, but at least she was friendly. One day she brought a rock to school. It was a small cylinder about three-eights of an inch long and a quarter inch across. It looked like a stack of flat rings with a hole through the center. I was enthralled. A real fossil. In my own hands! Then, as I was admiring it, Beth told me I could have it.
“What? Really?”
“Sure. I can find more of them in my driveway at home.”
I couldn’t believe it. She had fossils in her driveway. What an exotic house! I could hardly wait for the next time we were invited for Sabbath lunch. As soon as we could be excused from the table, Beth took me outside to mine the driveway. In less than five minutes we found another fossil. We found six that afternoon. In addition to the kind of fossil she had brought to school, we found another one, horn-shaped with longitudinal ridges. This was marvelous beyond words. After sundown worship, when the kids played hide-and-seek, Beth and I hid together. I hated to go home.
I wanted to know what kind of fossils we had found. I looked in the encyclopedia but didn’t find anything that looked just like what we had found. I asked adults, but no one knew anything about fossils. Then Mr. Holmes told me it was a crinoid. He showed me a picture in a book. No wonder I didn’t recognize it. The books all showed crinoids as long stalks with what looked like a flower on top and a broad base. It was a sea creature related to sea anemones. The pieces I had were very short sections of the stem. I was thrilled. I had a fossil that actually had a name.
Searching Beth’s driveway for fossils did lead to one major disappointment. When she first brought the fossil to school, I had hoped that after seeing them in her driveway and knowing what to look for, I might be able to find fossils in the gravel in the alley behind our house or at the Holmes’ house in the country south of town. But when we searched her driveway, I realized right away that something was different about this gravel. It didn’t look like any other gravel I had seen around Memphis.
I already knew any large rocks in Memphis had to have been transported in by truck or train or barge. I had visited a gravel pit near my cousin Ricky’s house. The largest rocks were smaller than my fist and the color was the same as the red gravel roads that ran through the Mississippi countryside south of town. Even along the banks of the Mississippi River which I explored when we went skiing with my Uncle Alex, there were no large rocks and no fossils. And there was a lot of reddish color.
The gravel in Beth’s driveway was tan to white. The pieces had a different shape from anything I had seen anywhere else in Memphis. Maybe it came from over near Little Rock, Arkansas or from up toward Nashville where I had seen gray and white rocks. For sure Beth’s gravel did not come from Memphis.
I had been collecting rocks since I was old enough to pick them up. This was perhaps the first time I gave much thought to rocks as part of a system instead of as individual specimens.
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