Catechism

When I was a kid, the thing I was most impressed with about street cars were the seats.  They were more like benches than chairs and both the seats and the seatbacks were made of narrow strips of wood butted up against each other.  All of the seat backs had a wrought iron handle on the aisle side.  You could grip the handle and pivot the seatbacks to reverse the direction they were facing.  When the street car got to the beach they didn't turn the car around, they just flipped the seat backs to face in the opposite direction.

Right about the time they ripped out the street car tracks in the early 1950s, my cousin Donnie and I would often spend the afternoon counting automobiles.  The tracks were only 35 yards from where Donnie lived with his mom near the corner of Norwalk Ave and Eagle Rock Blvd.  We positioned ourselves behind the wall that separated his front yard from Dick & Hal's gas station on the corner.  The house and the wall are still there but the gas station is now Manning's Auto Body & Paint.

We tallied hash marks on a piece of paper with columns for the various makes of autos travelling the streets back then.  In addition to the cars made by Ford, General Motors and Chrysler; we had columns for Hudson, Studebaker, Kaiser, Packard, Crosley and Nash.  The Hudson Hornet was a frequent NASCAR winner in the early '50s and the Crosley may have been the first American-made sub-compact car.

Back then Eagle Rock was considered a suburb of Los Angeles and the city's population has more than doubled since then.  Places like Tarzana and Azusa resembled the Australian outback.  The traffic on Eagle Rock Blvd at the time was made up of cars venturing to the outskirts of civilization.  Eagle Rock's six-year high school (7^th through 12^th grades) had less than 600 enrolled – today there are over 3,000.  The norm was one car to a family in our neighbor hood.  At the end of an afternoon none of the columns on our tally sheet, including the big three auto makers, ever reached a total of fifty.

Next door to Donnie lived the Moore family with daughters Katie and Margaret Jane and a father who was a Presbyterian Minister.  As near as I can figure, the Moore sisters, Donnie and I were all somewhere between seven and nine years old.  On the afternoons we weren't counting cars, we used to play with the Moore sisters in their back yard.  Katie was quite the looker.  Her black hair was done in a page boy that made her look like Louis Prima's wife Keely Smith.  I don't know about Donnie but for me, spending time with the Moore sisters had intriguing overtones not present when playing with boys.  I never said a word about it to Donnie or anyone else at the time.  The experience was too alien for me to be able to verbalize.

The future for Katie and me as a couple never materialized as her father intervened.  He encouraged me to attend Sunday services at their church a few blocks south at 4652 Eagle Rock Blvd.  The building is still there but through some sort of drastic transformation has been renovated and attached to an adjacent newer building.  Together they stand as one of the more peculiar structures in Northeast Los Angeles.  Currently It has a super tiny "for rent" sign out front and I wish them good luck. 

My parents regarded all forms of organized religion as positive proof that the human race has barely evolved.  The only time I saw my parents in a church was the day I got married.  When I informed my parents that I was going to Mr. Moore's church there was no reaction whatsoever.  My parents never provided me with any direction after we got past potty training.  They thought it best to let me figure things out for myself.  To assist me in this was an ongoing debate between the two of them covering the issues of the day.  My father would begin by calling someone or something "fruit".  It might be a politician, a criminal, an actor, or the latest fad or pastime.  My mother would in turn launch a vigorous defense of said person or thing despite caring or knowing little about them or it.  I can't say I gained much from these exchanges other than to realize that my father really enjoyed throwing out the "fruit" label and my mother just liked to argue.   

Walking in from Eagle Rock Blvd to Mr. Moore's church put you at one end of a big room where hymns were sung and sermons delivered.  The first few Sundays I sat alone in the big room and went home after the service let out.  I liked the hymn The Old Rugged Cross the best.  The sermons were hard to follow at first because of the vocabulary but then I discovered a small little red booklet called the catechism that used a question and answer format to clarify what was meant by certain words and phrases.  I spent my time on Sundays in the big room during the announcements and sermons studying the catechism.  I committed to memory the full catechism much as I had memorized the backside of my baseball cards:

American League pitcher, 1952 lowest ERA - Allie Reynolds, Yankees 2.06

Oldest living person – Genesis 5:27, Methuselah, son of Enoch, 969 years.

One Sunday someone approached me before the sermon and asked me whose kid I was and how old I was.  Before I knew what was happening, I was shuttled out of the big assembly and sent to one of the Sunday school classes being held in the smaller rooms in the back of the building.  Once there, I was told to sit on the floor with a dozen other kids and listen to a woman who was telling bible stories with a felt board as a visual aid.  This was my first time hearing these stories – loaves and fishes, water into wine, healing the afflicted, etc.  I thought these were pretty entertaining yarns and came back the next week looking forward to more.

At some point during that second Sunday school session the term "saved" came up.  The felt board lady asked the group if everyone present had been saved.  Everyone's hand shot up but mine.  If the catechism covered "saved", I either hadn't gotten to it yet or I couldn't comprehend the explanation.  The felt board lady asked me to stay and sent everybody else outside to the play area in the back of the building.  She then placed inside the clothes closet, two of the little kiddy chairs so that they faced each other about a foot apart.  She had me sit in one and she sat in the other.  Then she shut the closet door.  It was very dark and quiet in the closet.  I heard her ask me, "Do you know what it means to be saved?"

I said, "No."

The felt board lady explained, "It means you accept Jesus Christ as your savior."

I had no response for this.

The felt board lady then asked, "Phillip, are you ready now to take the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal savior?"

I said something to this but I don't recall what it was.  I am sure that I was polite.  I may have answered yes for all I know.  I don't know what was supposed to happen next but she opened the closet door.  It seemed a little abrupt as though we had skipped something.  Perhaps she sensed my discomfort and decided to call a halt to the proceedings.  In any case, I left the felt board lady sitting there and went outside to the play area.  I never went back to Mr. Moore's church.  Nor could I ever bring myself to spend time in the Moore sisters' backyard.  I lost track of the catechism booklet.  I never mentioned the closet with the felt board lady to anyone.  The experience was too alien for me to be able to verbalize.

The next time I was among church goers came when I was in high school and my mother dragged me to the baptism of a neighbor's daughter one evening.  My mother had become good friends with Iona Ware, a neighbor living on Addison Way, and I assume she felt obligated.  I am surprised she got me to go along because normally she couldn't even get me to go with her to Iona's house.  My mother always had a thing for out-of-the-ordinary but the Ware family was too unconventional for my taste.  Iona's daughter was one of two girls in my high school who did not shave their armpits and Iona's son who was in his early twenties had green hair.  His hair was actually blonde but he skated five nights a week in Long Beach trying to catch on with one of the professional roller derby teams.  The roller derby track was covered with some type of material that spewed green particles which had permanently dyed his hair emerald green.

The baptism took place before a packed house in a theater shaped like a small opera house.  I sat between my mother and Iona's son with the emerald hair in one of the balcony levels looking down on a dramatically lit stage.  After the opening ceremonies and a few hymns, the curtains were drawn to reveal an elevated platform on which sat a three-foot deep kiddy pool.  Then one-by-one about twenty men and women, Iona's daughter included, made their way up to the pool to be totally immersed.  They all wore a neck-to-ankle plain white sheath that clung to their bodies once they had emerged from the pool.  I wondered if they were wearing anything under the white sheath so I tried to check out the daughter's armpits to make sure, but we were too far back from the stage.