Oh, the Places I've Lived--Part II

Call Day is past, and Caroline and Pete ended up in southwestern Illinois. The location is farther from the action than my city-girl daughter is used to, but the church itself sounds like a good fit.

Now on with my story.

Daddy's sabbatical took us to Amman, Jordan. We boarded a ship in New York, disembarked in England, and traveled through Europe on our way to Jordan. Our return trip was on the Queen Mary, which is now a tourist site in Long Beach, California. I was five when we left and six when we returned.

While living in Amman, Daddy taught English at the Bishop's School and Donald and I attended a private school for English-speaking children. (Gordon started school sometime after Christmas.) The classes were small, and King Hussein's sister, Basma, was one of my classmates.

Much of present-day Israel (including Bethlehem and the half of Jerusalem with most of the Christian sites) was in Jordan at the time, so we spent our weekends and holidays visiting Biblical sites. My father had been to Amman and worked at the Bishop's School while still a bachelor, but he wanted his family to experience the Holy Land. And it was a perfect place for a minister to go on sabbatical.

When we returned to the U.S., my father took a church in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. DeTour Village is the place I consider my home town, and it's where I spent most of my growing-up years.

My brother Donald was eight and had three years of school behind him. I was six and had one year of school behind me. But when Daddy went to enroll us at DeTour, he told them that Donald belonged in fifth grade and I belonged in third, so that's where they put us. We each did very well a grade ahead, and Daddy vindicated his failure to convince the LaPrairie school to let us enter a year early.

After three years at DeTour, Daddy decided to take another sabbatical. Again, he let the congregation decide whether it wanted to seek another minister or keep the position open for our return. This time, the church voted to wait for him.

The University of Edinburgh was something of a Mecca for Presbyterian ministers. (Scotland is the birthplace of the Presbyterian Church.) Although Daddy was not looking for another degree, he wanted to take theology classes at New College, and Mama wanted to take classes at the Reid School of Music (also part of the University of Edinburgh).

We sailed on the Queen Mary shortly after I would have entered sixth grade. The Edinburgh public schools placed me with children my own age. The British schools taught at a faster pace than the U.S. schools, however, so I was actually right on track with my class back at DeTour.

The return trip brought a thrill I never (at that point) thought I would experience. Daddy discovered that it was cheaper to fly from Glasgow, Scotland to Reykjavik, Iceland and from there to New York than it was to take the Queen Mary home. So not only did we fly, but we got to take a walk under the midnight sun.

Back at DeTour, I rejoined my classmates for junior high and the first two years of high school. Then Daddy announced that we were moving again.

My parents really liked DeTour, and Daddy loved watching the lake freighters go by his office window. But they were building a retirement home in Holland, Michigan, and Daddy wanted to be closer so that he could work on it during his days off.

What teenage girl wants to be uprooted in the middle of high school and moved somewhere she has to make friends all over again? I didn't. And I was shy in the bargain. But move we did.

Lake City, Michigan, was another small town, but it was close to Cadillac, so it was more built up than I was used to. And I managed to make friends and continued to do well in school, graduating with honors. But it never felt like home the way DeTour did.

The picture at the beginning of this post shows me, Daddy, and Mama dressed in our costumes for Lake City's 1968 centennial celebration. Yes, I know our 1890s dresses were too modern, but we couldn't find a pattern from the 1860s. We were still closer than the other women in town, who wore frontier dresses more suited to a bicentennial.

I should probably end my saga here, but we did move one more time before I graduated from college. During my sophmore year, my parents moved to Schoolcraft, Michigan, near Kalamazoo. They enjoyed the church and stayed until my father retired.

To my future grandchildren: being a preacher's kid has its disadvantages, but it has its good times, too.

So make great memories.

Oh, the Places I've Lived--Part I

Tomorrow (Tuesday, April 27) is Call Day for the fourth year seminarians at Concordia in St. Louis. My son-in-law is one of them. Pete and Caroline have been anxiously counting the days until they know where they will be placed for their first church.

Although Pete and Caroline were asked about their general preferences, the assignments are made by a committee that has to consider the available openings as well as the candidates and try to make the best matches overall. So Caroline and Pete can end up anywhere in the U.S. for their first church. (For subsequent churches it will be a more normal interview process where both Pete and the church will have a say.)

I know how they feel. My father got to choose his churches (as long as they also chose him), and I'm sure my mother had a part in the decision, but my brothers and I had no say. By the time I graduated from high school, I had lived in seven different places and attended four different schools.

So in honor of my future grandchildren, I have decided to reminisce about the places I've lived.

I don't remember the first two, though. I was born in the small town of Shelby, Michigan, and we moved to Elmira, Illinois when I was less than three months old. Elmira was a country church, and my only memory is a vague one of swinging in someone else's yard.

In the fall of 1953, when I was not quite two years old, we moved to LaPrairie, Illinois. The picture at the head of this post is one of the annual Easter photos that Daddy took of us in front of the bay window at the parsonage (or the manse, as we called it).

LaPrairie was another country church, and the land that came with the manse was perfect for my father. Until he heard the call to the ministry, his ambition was to be a poultry farmer.

Although I don't remember much about the people or the church life at LaPrairie, I have fond memories of the manse and our everyday life there. My father raised ducks and chickens that sometimes ended up on the dinner table, and I loved watching the chickens run around after Daddy chopped their heads off. (Yes, they really do. Even though the chicken is dead, its nervous system doesn't realize it yet.) We also had pet rabbits, a large garden, a grape arbor, and an old-fashioned outdoor pump that needed to be primed. (We did have regular running water inside. And electricity. And plumbing. All the modern conveniences of the 1950s.)

I also remember the bees. When a colony of bees swarmed around the light over the church door, my father decided to tame them and try his hand as a beekeeper. He succeeded, and beekeeping became his new hobby. If he had continued living in places where he had the space and no near neighbors (or at least none who would complain), he probably would have raised bees until he died.

It's a good thing none of us were allergic to bee stings, though. Honeybees are not aggressive and won't sting unless you bother them, but my brothers and I often ran around barefoot in the yard and sometimes stepped on Daddy's "pets." So of course they stung the bottom of our feet. Still, I was willing to live with the stings for the honey. And oh was it good, both in and out of the honeycomb.

The other thing I remember about LaPrairie is Daddy teaching me to read and write and do simple math. LaPrairie didn't have a kindergarten, and the cut-off date for first grade was December 31. My older brother and I were both born in January, and Daddy's efforts to get us in early were unavailing. (Probably one of the few things he didn't succeed at. But there is more to the story later.) So Daddy taught us the things we would have learned if we had gone when he wanted us to. Donald actually attended first and second grade at LaPrairie, so he may have been bored. But just when it was time for me to start school, Daddy decided to take a sabbatical.

Daddy and Mama loved LaPrairie, and they would have been happy to return. But Daddy didn't think it was fair to the church to leave it without a minister for a year, so he gave them a choice. They decided to look for someone else, and we began our next adventure.

You'll hear about that next week.