Wistful Vistas: Garden Heights Baptist Church

If you read Clarence regularly, you know that "Young People's" is a Baptist youth group from my childhood that often met after church and for special events. The Young Peoples at Bethel Baptist Church in Erie, PA (back when it was at 737 E 26th St) was for kids aged 14-18 or so, in junior high or high school. It was a place for teens to be with other teens and to have some adult supervision.

One of the nicest Young Peoples memories I have is when I was invited to join an outing at Garden Heights Baptist Church near Lawrence Park, PA.[1] I think I was invited by a friend who attended there.[2] I don't recall anyone else from Bethel being there but me.

It was a fall cookout on someone's farm. I remember it vividly: dry cornstalks to the horizon; a setting sun behind them shining through both sides of an open barn; fresh corn being roasted in a rusty 50-gallon drum that had been converted to an oven - a hinged door had been cut out and welded back on, and the drum was raised and turned slowly over a fire; inside, the corn cooked until the husks were charred black.

It was delicious, and I was made to feel very welcome, even though I didn't know anyone there but my friend.

(We've all had experiences at large functions where we feel unwelcome or invisible; these are especially painful when we've anticipated the reverse.)

c0

I may use "wistful vistas" as a new category for retrospectives like this. If you aren't aware, Wistful Vista was the street that Fibber McGee and Molly lived on in the old radio show, which initially captured the rural struggles of post-Depression America.

c0

[1]
Garden Heights Baptist Church appears to still be there at 4224 McClelland Ave Erie, PA 16510, and they have a website >

Bethel Baptist Church and Garden Heights Baptist Church were both part of a church softball league I played in when I was a kid, and I played not a few games behind Garden Heights. I think it's built up now, but at the time home plate was kitty-corner to a pasture, and we occasionally had to shag balls in it.

It was also one of my earliest experiences with angry Baptists. I heard Larry Beaton drop the f-bomb from the pitcher's mound as men from both churches repeatedly lost their tempers over an ump's calls.

It's common in my religious tradition to point out other denominations as being not very Christian despite their name, but I can tell you that there were a few games in which the Baptist adults in my life didn't demonstrate Christian behavior, either.

I also learned that whether you're playing for your high school coach or for your church, if you're not any good, you don't get to play unless you're winning by mile.

It is usually about winning, even though we often say otherwise.


[2]
That would be Scott Cadwallader, whom I recently reconnected with on Linked In. That reconnection may have jarred this memory loose, but truth is, I think about those days a lot, and fondly. Scott, Jerry Beers and I were the Three Musketeers of Bethel Christian School, but spent more time trying to get into trouble than get others out of it.

I hope to see Scott again on one of my trips back to Erie. My trips have been infrequent since my dad passed.

c0

Started:2013-01-26