By Marian Carache
During my childhood, summertime meant staying up late at night, sleeping late the next morning, going barefooted, and enjoying a diet of fresh vegetables grown, picked, and cooked by my mama. It also meant a week-long Revival at the small Jernigan Methodist church built by my great-great-grandfather and his sons. They built the church for the wedding of my great-grandmother, Eliza, who said she wanted to be married in a church.
A visiting minister would “preach the Revival.” In addition to the dozen or so members of our small congregation, members of the Baptist church up the road and the Methodist churches in nearby communities would attend the nightly services. Usually, there would be a guest singer with a powerful voice and hand gestures.
While I resented with all my being that the Billy Graham’s television crusade was taking up a week of my summer TV freedom, many people claimed to have been “saved” by him. My childhood resentment had nothing to do with what he said but everything to do with the fact that he dominated an entire week of airwaves during the one season I could watch TV freely. “Saved” or not, I much preferred the excitement of our Jernigan Revival, sitting among our local Communion of Saints to watching him on television.
Revival always smelled like a mixture of the floral sachets and powers the ladies wore and the Avon mosquito repellent that competed with those flowery fragrances. There were also faint scents of Old Spice, Mennen Skin Bracer, and Wildroot hair groom in the air. These smells melded and were dispersed by ladies with thin pasteboard hand fans trying desperately to create a breeze inside the hot church.
The fans bore color pictures of Jesus in the Garden, Jesus Ascending into Heaven, Jesus Carrying a Lamb, and Jesus Knocking on the Door. On the wall of the church was another popular icon I hold dear, a framed print by Heinrich Hoffman of Jesus at Twelve Years Old.
Since Revival took place in the heat of summer in the south, and we had no air conditioning at the church, the windows were all raised to allow a breeze — and a variety of bugs, including mosquitoes, June bugs, and gnats — in. Mama called the Avon repellent “gnat knocker.”
One year, the visiting preacher — who became something of a celebrity for that week — swallowed a bug in the middle of a sentence. We could hear the man outside retching, even above the hymns the pianist played non-stop once he fled the pulpit: How Great Thou Art, He Lives, I Come to the Garden Alone, and Abide with Me. I’m sure I was not the only one squirming on the hard wooden bench, wondering if we’d get to Just as I Am for the “invitation to come forward” that night.
I had been brought up to see religion as personal, not something to put on display, so I knew better than to answer the “altar call” anyway. Mama seldom quoted scripture, but she was firm on “going into a closet to pray” rather than doing so “to be seen by others.”
Though our Baptist neighbors did not approve, we used scuppernong wine Mama made every summer for the Lord’s Supper. That bottle was tucked inside the hollow space in the back of the piano. Eventually, somebody made the decision to switch to Welch’s grape juice — and Mama made the comment that folks “strain at a gnat and swallow a fly,” but she went along with the decision.
I remembered the guest preacher who had, indeed, swallowed a flying insect but kept quiet.
Our little one-room church was built by a family with their own hands. Its pulpit and altar rail were also hand-hewn. We had no screens, and coffee came from a stainless steel 30-cup urn.
At some point, one of the members of the church placed a framed poem by Alda White above the old lecture that sat right inside the front double doors and was draped with a royal purple velvet cloth. The poem praises Little Country Churches that are “small and unpretentious,” and perfectly describes the small church that was so much a part of life in Jernigan:
If I listen carefully, I can still hear the not-perfectly-tuned piano and the not-quite-on-key small number of voices singing from the brown Cokesbury Hymnal. They may be singing slightly out of tune, but they’re singing from their hearts.
No dome or spire imposing,
Nor light from stained glass tall,
But bright and pure the sunbeams,
Through plain glass windows fall.
No voice of hired singer,
Is born up on the air,
But grateful hearts express the joy,
Of those who gather there.
—Alda White
