The Attic: A Memoir

Bulletins

70 s BULLETINS oon after establishing the prairie homestead, Grandfather made use of his carpentry skills by helping to build a white frame church. A mellow-sounding bell, which had been forged in an eastern Iowa foundry, was set in the belfry. But by the late 1930s our minister talked of replacing the edifice with a new house of worship because at present there was no basement room for Ladies Aid meetings and Sunday School classes; no place for bridal showers or receptions after funerals or weddings; and no nook for mothers with crying babies ME (on the right) WITH REVEREND AND THE CONFIRMATION CLASS OF 1940, CHRIST LUTHERAN CHURCH, REMSEN. BULLETINS 71 to seclude themselves yet listen to the sermon over a sound system. Reverend was not a modem clergyman except for this publicly announced goal: to have a new brick church. According to synod literature, suchcampaigns renewed the parishioners' commitment to religion. These efforts were needed periodically, the draw upon the purse having the effect of bringing fresh attention to God's word proclaimed from the pulpit. A strangely inappropriate alliance perhaps, but that's how religion worked: always a connection between giving money and being saved, though never put in those terms. To us, however, the proposed brick church, Spanish mission in style (odd for these parts), wouldjust not seem ours. There would be no steeple, only a small belfry on the side, where hymn tunes in chimes might be broadcast to the whole town and countryside on Sunday mornings. A church without a bell? Whoever heard of such a thing! All these decades Grandpa's bell with its beautiful, deep tone had tolled the years on the occasion ofa death in the congregation. I had pulled the coarse rope to make it clang just before Sunday services when I became an usher at age thirteen, after beingconfirmed as a bona fide member of the church. Uncle Jack was particularly upset that the architectural plans did not include reinstallation of the bell, and he was horrified at the cost of the building-totally inappropriate for wartime. Army veteran that he was, any lack of instant patriotism which he might observe in the community "got his goat." The church buildingeffort, launchedat thestart oftheforties, wouldappropriate vital materials needed for the national emergency. All four boys in his family would bejoiningup when the timecame for them to do so, whereas in other farm families many sons received 2-C deferments; an easy way out, because oftheir employment in the crucial industry of agriculture. When the church building committee came to Jack for a donation, he asked if that request wasn't in conflict with the federal government's war bond drives? How would anybody around here know there was a war on? Perhaps they might be a little inconvenienced by ration-book coupons for gasoline and sugar, but even these restrictions were easily circumvented by unlimited fuel allowances for tractors-which could be tapped for any farmer's auto as well. And extra sugar coupons for preserving fruit could be 72 TIIEATIlC wheedled out of the local Office of Price Administration. Some said the old bell ought to be contributed to a scrap iron drive, but Jack hated the thought ofsuch a fate for it, knowing how much discarded iron most farmers still had lying around in the weeds. And there were those in the congregation who thought the belfry might one day be enlarged to accommodate it after folks tired of the novelty ofchimes. So the bell ended up in the center of town. Whenever somebody bought enough war bonds to make a noise about it, they rang the old bell. Jack said it pained him to hear that ringing, for it only emphasized his difficulty: his loyalties pulled in opposite directions, between church and country. All the while, the Missouri Synod Lutheranism proclaimed by Reverend with relentless conviction successfully took hold in me, almost without my knowing it. Reverend was a strong presence in our lives, though physically not very prepossessing: fairly short and slim, with a button nose and somewhat bulbous eyes, a mouth too full and flannely for the narrowjaw; dark hair that went straight up to add to his height but which reminded me of the china heads you plant with seeds for green hair to grow. Since Reverend'snameended in the same ck letters as mine, I figured his people and ours...