This past weekend in Ohio was mostly an exercise in exploration for Jim.  He was only two when we moved to Kentucky, so he doesn’t have any real memories of living there.  It’s just things he’s been told by others.  I doubt if any of my brothers remember much about that time.  Even Eddie was only five when we left.  For me, it’s an odd mixture of things I’ve been told, that sometimes don’t seem to agree with what I think I remember or what I see when I’m there, and actual memories.

I remember going to church.  I was in a play there once.  I remember learning lines and being on stage, but not what the play was about.  I know it wasn’t a traditional Christmas pageant about the birth of Christ, but I’m simply not clear on any other facts.  I knew the church was out in the country.  There don’t actually seem to be any churches in Conover, where we lived.  However, I didn’t realize until Aunt Jean was reminiscing on Saturday that it was the same church she attends now.  We’ve been there several times with her and I had no deja vu at all.

Now, I find myself wondering if any of the people there remember us from that time. None of them have mentioned it, but they don’t really have any reason to make the connection.  Aunt Jean is very active there, but she has many nieces and nephews.  There really isn’t any reason for any of them to consider what happened to the family members that were attending when she first started going there.

The discussion this weekend was the first time I realized that my grandparents and most of my father’s siblings were not church people.  They were solid citizens with high moral standards, they believed in God, they simply didn’t practice a religion.  Aunt Jean said Mama was the one who got her started attending church for the first time in her life.

Although she says it was a Christian church then, it’s now a Church of Christ.  I was too young, at the time, to understand about things like baptism and communion so I have no idea if the practices changed with the name.  However, they do not practice weekly communion now.  It seems strange to me to hold a worship service without passing the elements.  That was really the only major difference though.  The rituals and the hymns were familiar, although the order of service was slightly different.  It’s a very small church, but they have an organ and the young minister is a good speaker. As I stood at the front of the sanctuary when the service was over watching the members stand in the aisle and visit it felt very much like home.

The house where we used to live has been remodeled multiple times and it is now standing empty, a victim of the bad housing market.  The bank apparently has little interest in the home they confiscated.  The back door wasn’t even locked and the rooms are filled with debris.  The stairs to the second floor looked to decrepit to trust, but we walked through the downstairs after a neighbor said it would be alright.  The “summer porch” behind the kitchen has been turned into a bathroom.  Someone along the way added an entry room outside the kitchen, otherwise it’s still got pretty much the layout I remember.  Of course, we didn’t have built-in cabinets in the kitchen and I think the sink is in a different position.  What saddened me the most was the absence of all the huge trees that used to stand along the road at the side.  There is only one tree and part of the stump of another one left.  I spent many hours under those trees, drawing roads and houses in the dust with twigs when we played with my brother’s small cars or setting up a playhouse with my doll furniture.  The flower beds where I used to snitch Iris roots to use for pretend potatoes are all gone too.  The grass has been replaced with gravel and weeds.  If I had lots of spare money, I’d buy it and fix it up, but that’s just not possible so all I can do is draw my memories with words.  That, however, is an exercise for another day.