My mother taught Sunday School at River Ridge Baptist Church in northwest Spokane, Washington. The church doesn’t exist by that name anymore. A church called the Cornerstone Community Church seems to be in the correct place and though photos show a cream-colored building (not the dusky red I remember), the structure of the building coincides with my youthful memory and the photo below. My family moved from Spokane when I was but eight. That I remember it at all counts for something, I guess. But I’m attempting to resurrect a time and place with which I can set memories of my mother, a supremely good-hearted woman.

Imagine it as I saw it on that day just before my birthday: a deep brick-red. The current building looks clad in maintenance-free siding. Imagine instead twelve-inch boards, rough-hewn such that little children easily could get splinters in their soft hands. I thought the roof had the typical white steeple one sees on a Baptist church, but if it did, it must be on the far hidden end. That would make sense since the sanctuary was back there. To the east side of the current church is a lawn surrounded by a cyclone fence. In the time I’m talking about, approximately 1957-1962, no fence separated the church from passersby, and the where the lawn spreads out a house stood: the parsonage for our minister. I can almost remember the name of the one who was serving when we moved away—he had dark blonde hair and a wife named Dorothy (I think). In the photo above the parsonage lies just out of the picture to the right.

It seems important to set the scene. Mom and Dad would dress themselves and us boys for church of a Sunday morning. My brother and I at this time wore matching medium-gray sports coats and black slacks extending down to our dress shoes. We wore ties, clip-ons to be sure, but ties nonetheless. Perhaps we only dressed that finely for Easter—the photo is only dated “April” but Easter was in April in 1961. I’m reconstructing this detail from several photos reclaimed when my parents died. Mom would wear one of her nice dresses and Dad of course wore a suit.

I distinctly remember Sunday School from the time immediately preceding our move. Mom taught Sunday School for the primary grades (1-3), and my brother and I were both in it as first and third graders, respectively. One of Mom’s duties was to letter the words for our simple hymns onto lined, kraft-colored sheets which were hung by their tops on a blue frame. It remains one of my salient memories, marveling at the decidedly weird way she printed letters, so different than I was being taught in school. Do businesses or conference still use those pads with the easy tear-off sheets? The ones you can set on an easel? Usually the sheets wind up being placed all over the room as a group activity, likely an “ice breaker”? Our hymn sheets were that size. Two big rings were at the top of the frame and two holes in the sheets enabled one to hang multiple sheets. To sing a particular song, one simply flipped the sheets until you found the one you wanted. Hymns could be written on both sides of the paper—you just needed to turn the frame around. We children would gather around on the floor to sing the hymns. If you look closely at the church building, you can see it has a partial daylight basement level. This was where our Sunday School took place. Rugs were thrown on the concrete floor. Little wooden chairs, just big enough for childish derrieres were also used.

I’ve no idea what my father did while Mom taught Sunday School with one or two other women. I think he likely had a type of Bible study with other adults, because after Sunday School we would have a break, then everyone would troupe upstairs to the sanctuary for our worship service. Imagine this: the floor is covered in industrial-dark-brown linoleum tiles, one foot square. As with the current building, the windows are high on the walls, the better to minimize distractions while the minister is preaching! Putty-colored metal folding chairs (no cushions) would be arranged in rows. Mom and Dad both sang in the choir, and therefore sat behind the pulpit in the altar area. My brother and I, being ages six and eight, were seated in the front row, on either side of the center aisle. This prevented most misbehavior; being fully exposed to our parents’ gaze prevented the remainder.

This exhausts most of my memories. I have snippets of running around the church after a service, of going to the sanctuary on a Saturday with Dad to do something and taking advantage of his careless supervision so that I could look at the full-immersion baptismal tank. I knew all about that because Dad’s father also was a Baptist minister, and had a pair of waders to prove it! I can slightly picture the parsonage and the minister himself. I remember some of the people because my family was very involved with the church. I can see the pink background that stretched up from the baptismal tank.

[this post will be updated as I find more photos]