My father, Joseph Dutton was a good man. A religious man, a devoted man, an intelligent man who oft quoted not only the Bible, but many illustrious tomes.
My mother, Cebah Dowlen Dutton was a very wise woman. A naturalist, a keen observer and trusted few organized religions. She might have aligned with agnostics but she never said as such.
My father and his family back as far as the early 1800’s were founding members and devoted followers of The First Christian Church in Somerset. My dad attended church every Sunday, singing in the choir and pouring his hard earned money into the collection plate each and every Sunday. He doled out a nickel to each of his kids to put in the collection plate for Sunday School. (Here I impose my own feelings, I am glad I nicked my nickel now and then to buy butterscotch life savers from the Beecher Hotel lobby just down the street from the church… rich city kids always had spare change for such things.)
My mother, on the other hand, was loathe to believe in “all that malarkey.” Particularly if it was associated with the Baptist religion. Seems as a young adult she and her brother Madison were harped upon at the nearby Baptist Church to “repent and be saved.” Saved from what?” my mother said…. quite often.
My Aunt Margarite, mom’s older sister, guffawed and said, “nice fairy stories.”
My Dutton aunts were devotees of religion and THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH. My mother thought they were pompous when they traveled to Lexington to Stewart’s Department Store to buy cashmere coats, kid gloves and the latest chapeau. My mother had homemade dresses and used cast off dresses to remake into dresses for her three daughters. She once dressed my younger brother Joseph for church in woolen short breeches (cast off from somewhere) my mom fumed for years as some haughty woman, nose down, said, “isn’t that such fun, a little boy in woolen shorts and before Easter.”
My mother relegated herself to the basement of the church, tending the nursery ("spoiled little brats") and perhaps earning a buck a week for changing diapers, wiping noses and rocking colicky babies. She mostly never complained because she sure as hell was not going to sit in a row with the Dutton aunts, Willie and Gladys. My Dutton uncle Silas and his wife the Gladiator attended TFCC when I was a child but abandoned it for the same Baptist church that pestered my mom & her brother to repent.
So here is my peeve. My dad, a good and kind man, was never an elder nor a deacon nor an officer nor position nor anything in the church. Ever.
Dad was on the football field in the mid thirties when the new preacher, Lee Davis Fisher, strolled across the field. My dad, a running back, asked his fellow players about this striking young man. “Why Joe, they said, that’s your new preacher.” Lee Davis Fisher was a learned man, a good man and certainly not a fire and brimstone man. He had a quiet presence and a dignified air. He never asked his congregation to be saved. He asked them to join the church and to believe in heaven, a good place to go. Another good place to go would be Joe and Cebah’s house after church on Sunday where my mom would prepare fried chicken, fresh and unbelievably juicy and crisp. There would be green beans, mashed potatoes, cole slaw in spring, yeast rolls, apple pie, freshly churned butter and tea (a luxury) and also coffee! Midday coffee, unheard of unless the preacher was coming. Mom liked Brother Fisher, she did. And he like my parents. He really did.
But this is where I falter. How could this kind and intelligent preacher come to our humble house and enjoy a full afternoon of food and conversation but never feel my father was worthy of a position in his church? Dad had a gabardine suit, a crisp white shirt, starched and ironed each week by my mom. He had a nice tie and a top coat for winter. He was a strikingly handsome man and he had legacy in that damn church.
Was the fact that he drove the cattle truck in all the months except winter, an old Jeep bench seat in the back for Phyllis, Ruth Ann & Bobby? Joseph and me in the front with Mom & Dad. In the winter all of us kids would pile in Gladys 1953 Plymouth and Mom and Dad would drive in the cattle truck. Daddy always parked in a small lower lot from the main parking lot.
We never entered TFCC through the front door, we entered through the basement door where mom would go to the nursery and we would go to our Sunday School class. Dad would go up the back stairs to slip on the back row of the choir, singing the hymns he dearly loved. It is all quite inexplicable to me.
Every Sunday night Mom & Dad would go back to church, dad singing in the men’s choir and mom tending the kids. We were left at the old house with Grandma, Willie, Gladys and DH. Sometime around 1956 Gladys bought a tv set. Sunday nights were the highlight of the week. I found faces and voices to fill an imaginary world.
Back to the business of religion:
After years and years and years of going Sunday after Sunday, my Dad and Mom abruptly stopped going to church. No explanation, just stopped going.
Did my dad become disillusioned? Did my mom finally persuade them to no longer go? Did they drift away after Lee Davis Fisher left the pulpit? I have no answers.
I only know, for certain, that my dad held a part deep inside his soul that honored THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
I equally know, for certain, my mom held significant scorn for the same institution.
They both had a deep conviction of truthfulness, decency and a love of words and music.
Dad believed in forgiveness, mom in retribution and revenge.
I harbor a bit of both.
I do wish, just one more time, I could hear them sing "Church in the Wildwood".
There’s a church in the valley by the wildwood
No lovelier spot in the dale
No place is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale.
Oh come to the church in the wildwood
Oh come to the church in the vale
No spot is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale
How sweet on a clear Sabbath morning
To listen to the clear ringing bells
Its tone so sweetly are calling
Oh come to the church in the vale
There close by the side of that loved one
Neath the tree where the wildflowers bloom
When farewell hymns shall be chanted
I shall rest by her side in the tomb.
Come to the church in the wildwood
Oh come to the church in the vale
No spot is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale.