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You know, I was just sitting here taking a small sip of blackberry libation from my new flask that was gifted to me by a good Marine friend.
And I was thinking about the first time I went to church in my home town.
I lived with my Grandmother Gen in an old log house in the middle of Dargan, and just up a short path bordered with briars and honeysuckles lived Marie and Bud Johnson.
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Marie and Grandmother Gen were good friends. Marie would often come down to visit and have a cup of coffee and some dessert.
Marie, too, was a very good baker and would make some of the best pies on the mountain. I enjoyed her fruit pies the best, especially the black raspberry. Chocolate was down my list of favorites; it was messy.
One day while she was visiting, Marie, who was a religious woman, suggested to my grandmother that I should go to church. She even volunteered to take me for the benefit and betterment of my soul.
I’m thinking I must have been around 10 or 11 years old.
Now I fully admit to liking Marie’s pies, but going to church back in them days was not exactly on my bucket list. Yet I do acknowledge that Marie was one of my favorite people.
Well, I suspect the die was cast, and my grandmother thought that notion a good idea.
The next thing I knew, a Sunday was chosen. I washed up in our tiny white basin of soapy water, put on my best duds and walked up that honeysuckle path.
Marie, plus me, then strolled on over to that little church in downtown Dargan.
It was an early Sunday morning, and since I stayed up late on Saturday nights, I was practically still half asleep. And besides, it was the very first time I ever went to church.
Marie and I soon arrived and given her disposition to the Lord, one might have guessed that we took a seat in the front pew. Just above us stood the preacher, dressed in black, who had the tendency to look right down upon me.
He began to bellow his Sunday sermon from the pulpit; it was one of those fire-and-brimstone orations. He spoke of sinners who failed to follow the word, who would end up in some fiery pit for a very long time.
I couldn’t much tolerate burning my fingers on Grandma’s black cast-iron skillet, let alone picturing the rest of my extremities burning up in some inferno for eternity.
And every time that preacher said something a bit arousing to the church attendees, Marie and others would offer up an "Amen."
The louder the man in black preached, the more I heard those amens cascade down.
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Only real trouble with the sermon, though, was the preacher kept looking down at me as I suspected he already knew I was no angel.
Halfway through his prepared remarks, I figured out where I was headed, and concluded the devil would find me out somewhere in the Dargan woods.
Going to church was a real awakening for me. Marie and I stood up from our seats, the preacher prayed a closing prayer and we left.
I was a little nervous from the visit, but Marie held my hand as we departed. When we got to her house, she offered me a piece of pie, cherry I think, and I began to revert back to my not-so-old but easy-going sinner self.
Some years later, I read the wisdom of Oscar Wilde, who reminded me: “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."
“Amen, Brother Wilde," I thought.
I was never going back to that preacher’s church.
Matter of fact, I never went back to church my entire youth, and I acquired an opinion that church most likely was alright for some, but for a sinner like me, I would just rather leave well enough alone.
As for Marie and I, we always got along real good and remained friends forever. And besides, I most likely made my Grandma Gen happy, too, by going to church this one time.
Nevertheless, that was my first and last visit to that little Dargan church.
Later on while in the military serving in Vietnam, I went to church once again and heard that God was a God of love. That sermon sounded a lot better to me than the first one.
But I still had to wonder what God must have thought about all the killing that surrounded me.
Pete Waters is a Sharpsburg resident who writes for The Herald-Mail.
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