Sunday, August 31, 2003
Prototypical Church.
I suppose because it was the church of my youth, the one at 6th & Washington looks like I think a church should look. West and North doors enter the vestibule below the bell tower, steps lead to the sanctuary where rows of polished wooden pews face a pipe organ as tall as the stained glass windows you see on the west and north side of the church.
If my parents had to be away, I stayed with the preacher and his family in the antique furnished manse one door south. The meals were prettier than at my house but not as tasty. If it was summer, kids slept on the screened sleeping porch upstairs in the back, got up early and played baseball with a gang in the vacant lot at 6th and Hulman until dark.
One day some guys wearing neckties told us we couldn't play there anymore and erected a tent for a revival meeting. We were pissed off and made plans to cause them trouble.
When the meeting started, we climbed into a large tree that hung over a part of the tent meeting not covered by canvas. We tried to time our interruptions, the kind of rude noises 11-year-old boys love to make, for maximum effect but we were ignored. After a while, most of us went home.
I noticed that one of the neighborhood kids my age stayed out on a limb to listen to the kind of evangelical rhetoric none of us ever heard in the Presbyterian or Methodist churches. He grew up to be known as Brother Jed, of Usenet fame, who travels from campus to campus insulting students for Christ.
Beecher House.
One mile south of downtown, on heavily shaded 8th Street, I pass the house where I lived and park on the west side of the street to get a good look at the houses on the east side.
When I was small and not allowed to cross any streets, this was the block where I could walk, bike and even spring shoe (another story) using the sidewalk and the tree rows if I would be careful and look both ways before crossing the alley – Mom said.
I knew each of these houses and every resident even if they didn’t have any kids. Trees have grown since I last looked at this part of the block. The Beecher house, always brighter than others what with the white paint and a fewer shade trees, catches my eye.
I'd rather think of Quentin Beecher, who was 3 years behind me in school but lived on the same block of South 8th street when we were kids, driving one of those red sidewalk cars, that you pump with your hands and steer with your feet, around our block than think of him flying a doomed helicopter in southeast Asia.
He had a fine broad face and a ready smile. They must have moved someplace else when he was about 13 because I can't picture him any older than that.
I've known for a long time that we lost Quentin to that war and he's the one I think of whenever the topic comes up. He personifies our losses for me, not just him and the smiling kids like him but the men they would have become.
It's unclear to me what we won there but I have a good idea what we lost.
