| Church Alone! |
| I am sure everyone has heard of the movie Home Alone! Well, this is a little different tale of being at..... Church Alone! This is another one of my memories of growing up as a child in Rockingham and attending the Pee Dee Pentecostal Holiness Church - and I am sure this is a story you have not heard before. This church had those long, hardwood pews that most churches had at that time. There were no cushions and no air conditioners - other than those little handheld fans that were on the back of the pews. And, of course, no central heat - just a big stove on the side of the church that had to be loaded with coal to keep everyone warm. My parents had us in church every time the doors were open - Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, and, if there was a revival that week, we would attend that every night. But a lot of the time we spent in church, being young boys with short attention spans, we would fall asleep on those long, hard pews. In fact, one night I fell asleep and started walking in my sleep! I was told I walked down to the front and around the heater and back to the pew and laid back down. One night we attended a Wednesday night service and mom and dad and all the boys (they thought) loaded up in the old '51 Chevy to go home. There were four boys in our family so it would not be too hard to misplace one every now and then. We got home and started getting out of the car but noticed someone was missing! Where was Keith? We were sure he had gotten into the car with the rest of us but we were wrong. Everyone jumped back into the car and raced back to the church. In those innocent times, the church doors were never locked, so when we got there, we rushed in through the dark and turned on the lights. And, there, he was - in Church Alone! He was asleep on the back pew where we had left him....and still asleep! If he had awaken during that time and found noone in church, and pitch dark! . . . . well, none of us wanted to think about that. Anyway, he survived this ordeal and from then on, mom and dad were sure to make a head count everywhere we went. |
| So, as the Train of Life keeps chugging along, another page written of my Childhood Memories of.... Rockingham Remembered. |
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