Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: CAMP (08/18/22)
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TITLE: The Comfort and Comedy of Camp Meetings | Previous Challenge Entry
By Mariane Holbrook
08/25/22 -
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Dad thought for a minute, then replied, "I believe it's the devil's preferred method of distracting campers like you who desperately need to hear those 'fire and brimstone' messages so you'll change your ways." They both laughed.
Other church members insisted it was just a series of coincidences by people wanting to have fun (if their definition of "fun" includes feigned or near-drownings during baptisms in the nearby lake.)
This was a family camp, meaning that so many activities were being planned for children that grateful parents could turn their kids loose after breakfast and tell them not to return until suppertime.
Camp Meeting was a place to grow spiritually and make friends with Christians with similar "Thou Shalt Not" lists that evangelicals dutifully recite when backed into an apologetics corner struggling to defend their faith.
There were few amenities at our denominational camp in the 1950s. A huge, open tabernacle stood at the center of the several-acre campground, surrounded by cabins, tents, outhouses, bath houses, a small store, dining room, and various buildings for arts and crafts, prayer meetings, and preaching by young pastors desperately trying to hone their skills.
One summer in the late 1940s, my sister and I hitched a ride to Camp Meeting with other teengers from our church. Five girls and two boys squeezed into an old Chevrolet which smelled like it was kept in an odoriferous cattle barn, (which it was). Halfway there, the car met with a larger-than-life bump in the road, propelling our vehicle into sudden orbit. With everyone screaming and praying aloud for forgiveness of real or imagined sins, the car flipped over in mid-air before landing right side up in a farmer's ready-to-be-harvested cornfield.
Mercifully, none of us was injured but the distinctly bovine smell followed us even after we arrived at Camp Meeting four hours later. The owner of the cornfield was faced with the choice of housing seven rowdy teenagers until their car was repaired, or immediately driving them to Camp Meeting, just an hour away. It was a no-brainer decision by the farmer who immediately loaded us in the back of his truck and drove away.
At one Fourth of July Camp Meeting, my teenage brother, Jimmy, skipped the afternoon service along with some other boys to have some fun. Accepting a private challenge from one of the boys, my clueless brother lost the bet. As the loser, my brother was required to eat a live, large, fat, yellow caterpillar. We stared in open-mouthed horror as Jimmy's tongue began to swell, finally filling all available space inside his quivering mouth. My parents, confused and frightened, bit their nails to the quick while following the speeding ambulance to the hospital. After that, Jimmy wore a plastic yellow caterpillar on a chain around his neck as a badge of honor until Mother got rid of it.
Another Camp Meeting became legendary because of the sadness it left in its wake. My 16-year-old sister had spent the week playing tennis or hiking with her boyfriend, Jay. One sleepless night, Jay decided to walk through the campground, hoping to induce those quiet, nocturnal necessities known as "Zzzz"s". He had a congenital hearing defect which later required several surgical procedures, so he didn't hear the night watchman's call to identify himself. The inexperienced watchman, seeing the husky teenager continue toward him in the near-darkness, fired one warning shot. It hit Jay squarely in the chest, killing him instantly. My sister remained inconsolable.
A couple of years later, though, an event took place that relieved the sadness. During the afternoon service for adults, one of the more popular Bible teachers was occupying the
outhouse near the open-sided tabernacle. The reverend could hear the speaker expounding on the book of James when he suddenly felt a massive, stinging burst of water hit him from under the seat. With his trousers still wrapped around his ankles, he was blown through the door, and landed on the massive lawn, all in full view of the open tabernacle whose occupants spontaneously jumped high for a better view of this bizarre event. The groundskeepers who were using powerful fire hoses to clean the undersides of the outhouses beat a hasty (and permanent) retreat.
Inside the tabernacle, the worship leader, with red-faced embarrassment, struggled to announce, "Please open your hymn books to page 128 for our closing hymn, 'Showers of Blessing.' "
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