The Congo

My mother was the church-goer in

our family.  My father, like many men

who grew up in the Great Depression

Era, had no use for the fire and brimstone

nonsense.  Just surviving was hard enough.

If he had anything like a religion it was

town team hard ball which he excelled at

into his fifties.  And as town team games

were played on Sundays, there was a

scheduling conflict with church-going, too.

I often speculated that the church may have

snubbed him as a boy for things he

and his mother had no control over,

but these are family things that we never

talked about.

And, of course, church pastors all realized

that if they got the mother to come the rest

of the family would follow.  For my older sister

and I this wholesale catering to the choir

singing females backfired.  My sister, now

pushing 80, has no use for religion, Christianity

or the Republican Party.  As for me, I have

never had passion for much of anything,

including baseball, although I understand

the game and am thankful for that.  I often

think about poetry, I suppose, but God knows

poetry doesn’t count.

My mother sent my sister and I to

the Congregational Church which was

a white clapboard building with a bell tower

in the center of town.  And like the Civil War

cement statue on the town common, it was

a picture postcard you can see of hundreds

of other NH small towns just like it.

In her rebel college days my sister came

to calling the church the Congo.  Once when

my mother coerced my sister to going, but did

not go herself, my sister came home saying,

“Mom, it was Pearl Sunday, why didn’t you

go?”  My mother standing at the kitchen sink,

looking into the backyard said, “There’s no such

thing as Pearl Sunday.”  My sister affecting

a collegiate air said, “Of course there is,”

she thumbed through a copy of Life, “it’s

right before Palm Sunday, and you know

what next Sunday is, I hope.”  My mother

shot her a glance and then with narrowed

eyes looked back out the window.

I did go to Sunday school at the Congo,

but that was in a purpose built building

across the side street.  I have very few

memories of being in the church itself.

Funerals for my mother and father and

many others were in the Rising Funeral

home, not in the church.

As a first grader I was sent to for what

amounted to day-care after my school

ended in June.  I remember being in

the vestry which was a dark room with

high ceilings and tall folding doors

to close off the room from the sanctuary.

For some reason, and I don’t know why,

the small hairs on the back of my neck

tingle when I remember this shadowy

room.  I know our normal business was

to color and drink bug juice our of paper

cups  . . . but I think I saw something

happen to another child that surprised

me.  Maybe an adult - and by adult I mean

a babysitting-aged girl - berating or slapping

a child or perhaps something happened

downstairs where there was a kitchen.

I don’t know what it was, but I can’t

think of this room without thinking

something evil happened that I just

couldn’t get my five-year-old mind around.

On the last day, we were let outside

to sit in a circle on the ground.  The grass

was thin and patchy as it was shaded by

large Elm trees.  We sat near the granite

slabs that served as steps to the vestry.

The doors were open and the shadowy

dark air rolled out and down the steps

to where we sat.  There was a two story

wooden office building to the south which

made this patch of lawn little more than

an alley.

The late morning sun was bright on Main

Street, but when I think of this vision

now, I have the feeling of being closed in

by an alley of history that was before my

time and which I had no control over.

At last we were allowed to rocket around

the alley as if it were a recess of sorts. Down

closer to the street, I heard my mother’s

voice and stopped cold.  “Forry,” she said,

“come here.”  I went to the only open,

screened window, stood on tip toes, cupped

my eyes and looked in.

My mother sat at a huge wooden desk

pounding away at a high, black typewriter.

I remember seeing the silver arms rise

up like my cap gun and make a rapping

sound.  “Mommy’s got to finish these

mentions, so I can’t talk right now, but here,” 

she rolled her swivel chair close to the screen

and opened it from the bottom up.  “you

take this (it was a Reese’s’ peanut butter cup

 – my favorite), but I want you to wait for

your sister right up there in the sun at the front

of the church where I can see you, OK?” 

I nodded and she closed the screen.

“Now, you go on and wait for your sister.

I’ll be watching.”

I found out years later that my mother

worked for a magazine called The Atlantic

Fisherman.  The magazine was printed

elsewhere but put together in this small

office.  Every time a piece of gear was

mentioned in the magazine, my mother

would type up a letter to the manufacturer

saying his gear had been mentioned.  The

hope was the letter might generate an ad.

Even today it still seems strange to me

that a magazine whose bread and butter

if you’ll excuse the pun was to record

the amount of fish caught at East Coast

ports hundreds of miles away was put

together in our town.  Stranger still that

I remember all of this while I sit

and look out a window here in Thailand

that is nothing like the windows I looked

out of as a boy.

Mr. Stevens, one of my grammar school

teachers, once told the class that the most

important building in town on was

the Congregational Church.  I remember

thinking that was nuts.  What about the town

hall, the fire station, the library, Charlie’s Pop

Corn stand, Pierce’s (that sold Reese’s peanut

butter cups), or even Howe’s Pharmacy that

was air conditioned!  And what about the

other churches in town?  Why single out the

Congo?

Now, I’m not so sure.  The other three churches

were all imports from overseas, but the

Congregational Church comes down to us

from our New England  history of black dressed

Puritans that so troubled Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Now, I’m not so sure.  There’s something that

higgles my mind here, something I can’t quite

get my seventy-year-old mind around.

Now, I’m not so sure.

FG                                 8/24/2016

I think Gardner Lampson, and maybe his father, started the Atlantic Fisherman, but I’m not sure.  This piece is along my belief that poetry is memory and perhaps should be called a combination of poem and story or poemory.  Maybe my ancient mind is just dumping facts.