Newcomers were something of a rarity in Argyle, Texas back in 1971 and given my mom's thick foreign accent and my long hair (and lack of a drawl) we drew a significant amount of attention.
And so it was when I arrived at the First Baptist church that Wednesday evening there was a great deal of curiosity, and after the initial introductions a lot of gawking and whispering...
As I mentioned in my prior post - the occasion was my first practice with "The Chosen Few" - the youth Christian music group associated with the church.
A bit more background:
The group had been performing at churches throughout the region for a few years, but I arrived during a time of transition. The older members were getting to the age where their interests were shifting elsewhere. And that wouldn't have been a problem except the leadership was changing too... But (once again) I'm getting ahead of myself :-)
One of the first thing I noticed was that there weren't many boys in the group: There was Sam (he was a Methodist), Royce, Steve and Mickey (who dropped out soon afterward)... OK - there was one more boy but he wasn't really "one of the guys" and that's all I'll say about that :-)
There was an abundance of girls and most of them were named Linda, Brenda or Becky. It got really confusing sometimes - you'd say a name and 3 girls would answer... I'm surprised they hadn't been given nicknames :-)
Speaking of which: One of the Lindas was called Sissie by her family and it wasn't until the teacher called roll on her first day of school that she found out that was not her real name... Apparently her folks were unaware that she didn't know - she was absolutely devastated when she found out...
Another thing that struck me as odd was that the girls who were near my age didn't seem very interested in me, but the "teenyboppers" were...
I eventually learned that many of women in the community had gotten married in their mid teens, so 13 or 14 year old girls going out with 16 to 18 year old guys didn't raise many eyebrows... I strongly suspect that the local "customs" have since changed, but even now a 13 year old girl can get married in Texas with parental and judicial consent. Amazing...
Prior to my arrival all of the "musicians" had graduated from the group, so the singers were accompanied on piano by either the youth director's wife Bobbie or a lovely young lady named Nancy, who always wore mini-skirts and looked quite amazing in them... Hey - I was a teenage boy - I couldn't not notice :-)
Aside: At the time Nancy was in her early 20s and had just graduated from college. So, of course, we saw her as an "adult" and it never even crossed our minds that she might be interested in hanging out with us... Then a few years ago my wife and I were in Argyle and visited Nancy. As it turns out she had thought of herself as "one of us" and was quite bewildered by our behavior towards her... I'm sure there's a moral there somewhere - I'm just not sure what it is :-)
Another aside: Bobbie (the youth director's wife) had suffered an injury as a child that resulted in her being able to hyper-extend her left elbow. Basically - she could bend her arm about 25ยบ the wrong direction... If you've never seen anyone do that be forewarned that it makes you want to puke. It was one of the grossest things I've seen :-)
You know I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to tell the "story of Argyle". It's basically a few central themes surrounded by a lot of little side stories... I have to say that all the people in Argyle were wonderful to me and many of them had a major impact on my life... But at the same time there were some serious youthful indiscretions that I'm sure nobody would want their children or grandchildren to know about. So I'm either going to have to keep it all to myself or invent fictitious characters - and I'd rather not do that :-)
I'll spend the next few blog entries describing the main characters. And I think that's enough for now...
Friday, September 30, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
The Rev
As I mentioned in the prior post, the house we rented in Argyle, Texas back in 1971 was next door to the home of the minister for the First Baptist Church. His name was Dee Carpenter but most of the young folks called him Brother Dee... A recent Google search turned up his obituary and apparently his real first name was Otto - can't say I blame him for going by his middle name :-)
The best way to describe Brother Dee is to say that he was the "real deal"... I've seen a lot of phonies standing at the pulpit but there was absolutely nothing fake about Brother Dee... He was a simple, humble man - not an exceptionally skilled preacher, but his faith was genuine and his sermons came straight from the heart... And I'm getting ahead of myself :-)
We hadn't been in Argyle very long before Brother Dee inquired about my religious background. When I mentioned I had been raised Catholic he was actually a bit excited and asked if I happened to have a Catholic Bible he could borrow... Seriously! ... Catholics are not very common in the rural south and a lot of fundamentalists regarded them as pagans because they pray to the Virgin Mary and the Saints and they do rituals and tend to have statues and relics and rosaries lying around... And then there's the difference in the Bible: I don't think most protestants are aware, but up until the early 1800s the Catholic and Protestant Bibles were roughly the same. Then the protestants threw out all the parts of the Old Testament that weren't included in the Jewish Bible... ??? Go figure. :-) Anyway - brother Dee had been wanting to check out the "missing books" but the opportunity had never presented itself before.
So I loaned him my bible and he returned it the next day. I remember that we spent some time discussing the missing books (Tobias, Judith, etc)... He asked me a lot of questions about what I had been taught growing up. I reassured him that Catholicism really is focused on the teachings of Christ - all of the "pagan" stuff is secondary... He seemed somewhat relieved :-)
BTW: I no longer recall if I mentioned my "confession" problem to him... It all started when Father Wheeler yelled at me for not going to confession during the summer of 1960. (What if I'd been hit by a bus and died without my sins being forgiven???) So I never went to confession again. Then it hit me: I had been taught that God was "all powerful" except he couldn't forgive my sins unless I told them to a priest and said some Hail Marys first? Riiiight... That didn't make a lick of sense to me... But I digress :-)
Dee had also heard me playing the guitar and mentioned that his church had youth music group called "The Chosen Few" and I should go check it out. (They were short on musicians.) Now - I had played my guitar in church before (folk mass) and I would do darn near anything to play in public, so I went to the church the next Wednesday evening - that's when the group practiced.
Aside. I really should interject here and talk about "the big picture" again:
There's a whole spectrum of beliefs about how (and why) we are here, but there is one big, clear dividing line: Either there is a purpose behind our existence or it's all a big cosmic accident...
Personally, I find both notions to be inconceivable. I really can't figure out what kind of intelligence would go through all the trouble of creating an entire cosmos just for us. (What an abject disappointment we must be to that creator!) But it's also hard for me to swallow the notion that all of this just happened at random out of nothingness for no particular reason. The current theory posits that our universe is just one of many, and it is a 3 dimensional slice of 10 dimensional space - and, BTW, happens to contain approximately 54 quadrillion stars. (For those who are math impaired that's a really big number...) And somehow, on a spec of dust circling one of those stars billions of self-aware life forms came to exist - and I'm one of them...
I mean - the whole thing is so fantastically ludicrous that I can't say any explanation makes more or less sense than another. (My dinky human brain is just too limited to wrap itself around the problem.) Heck - if it weren't for the fact that I exist I could easily convince myself that I don't :-) But I have to admit that I do like the notion of a higher power - it makes it all seem less pointless. And as a result I find religion rather appealing (but not churches - they are primarily political institutions). I've just never been able to "commit" to it the way others do... and I'm really not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing :-)
The point of all of this is that I went to First Baptist Church of Argyle with an open heart and an open mind... And this is probably as good of a stopping point as any :-)
The best way to describe Brother Dee is to say that he was the "real deal"... I've seen a lot of phonies standing at the pulpit but there was absolutely nothing fake about Brother Dee... He was a simple, humble man - not an exceptionally skilled preacher, but his faith was genuine and his sermons came straight from the heart... And I'm getting ahead of myself :-)
We hadn't been in Argyle very long before Brother Dee inquired about my religious background. When I mentioned I had been raised Catholic he was actually a bit excited and asked if I happened to have a Catholic Bible he could borrow... Seriously! ... Catholics are not very common in the rural south and a lot of fundamentalists regarded them as pagans because they pray to the Virgin Mary and the Saints and they do rituals and tend to have statues and relics and rosaries lying around... And then there's the difference in the Bible: I don't think most protestants are aware, but up until the early 1800s the Catholic and Protestant Bibles were roughly the same. Then the protestants threw out all the parts of the Old Testament that weren't included in the Jewish Bible... ??? Go figure. :-) Anyway - brother Dee had been wanting to check out the "missing books" but the opportunity had never presented itself before.
So I loaned him my bible and he returned it the next day. I remember that we spent some time discussing the missing books (Tobias, Judith, etc)... He asked me a lot of questions about what I had been taught growing up. I reassured him that Catholicism really is focused on the teachings of Christ - all of the "pagan" stuff is secondary... He seemed somewhat relieved :-)
BTW: I no longer recall if I mentioned my "confession" problem to him... It all started when Father Wheeler yelled at me for not going to confession during the summer of 1960. (What if I'd been hit by a bus and died without my sins being forgiven???) So I never went to confession again. Then it hit me: I had been taught that God was "all powerful" except he couldn't forgive my sins unless I told them to a priest and said some Hail Marys first? Riiiight... That didn't make a lick of sense to me... But I digress :-)
Dee had also heard me playing the guitar and mentioned that his church had youth music group called "The Chosen Few" and I should go check it out. (They were short on musicians.) Now - I had played my guitar in church before (folk mass) and I would do darn near anything to play in public, so I went to the church the next Wednesday evening - that's when the group practiced.
Aside. I really should interject here and talk about "the big picture" again:
There's a whole spectrum of beliefs about how (and why) we are here, but there is one big, clear dividing line: Either there is a purpose behind our existence or it's all a big cosmic accident...
Personally, I find both notions to be inconceivable. I really can't figure out what kind of intelligence would go through all the trouble of creating an entire cosmos just for us. (What an abject disappointment we must be to that creator!) But it's also hard for me to swallow the notion that all of this just happened at random out of nothingness for no particular reason. The current theory posits that our universe is just one of many, and it is a 3 dimensional slice of 10 dimensional space - and, BTW, happens to contain approximately 54 quadrillion stars. (For those who are math impaired that's a really big number...) And somehow, on a spec of dust circling one of those stars billions of self-aware life forms came to exist - and I'm one of them...
I mean - the whole thing is so fantastically ludicrous that I can't say any explanation makes more or less sense than another. (My dinky human brain is just too limited to wrap itself around the problem.) Heck - if it weren't for the fact that I exist I could easily convince myself that I don't :-) But I have to admit that I do like the notion of a higher power - it makes it all seem less pointless. And as a result I find religion rather appealing (but not churches - they are primarily political institutions). I've just never been able to "commit" to it the way others do... and I'm really not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing :-)
The point of all of this is that I went to First Baptist Church of Argyle with an open heart and an open mind... And this is probably as good of a stopping point as any :-)
Monday, September 5, 2011
Where to Start?
I've titled this post "Where to Start?" because that's what pops into my head whenever I think about the time we spent in Argyle, Texas in 1971... Although we were only there for a little over 6 months it changed me in some very fundamental and profound ways - and for reasons that may surprise you :-)
I guess I'll start with a little bit of background about Argyle:
Back when we moved into the rental house on Old Justin Road the population of Argyle was around 400, so it's not surprising that everyone knew everyone... What was a bit more surprising is that a lot of the people's great-great-great-great grandparents had known each other too :-) That's not say that there weren't a significant number of "newcomers" in the area, but there was a core group of families that had been there since the 1850s.
BTW: There's a little private cemetery near Argyle called the Eakins Cemetery. It was founded in 1855 and it's still in active use, but by "invitation only". You have to be a descendant of the original settlers (or really good friend of one) to be buried there... I think that's kind of cool :-)
Argyle was the proverbial "wide spot in the road", consisting of a store, a tiny post office, a gas station (which doubled as a bait shop), a K-8 school, 2 churches (Baptist and Methodist), and an old vacant bank building. (The bank got robbed back in 1912 - it was the most notable event in Argyle history.) ... And that was about it... Given that Argyle was only a few miles south of the outskirts of Denton I guess it really didn't need much else :-)
I should also mention that Argyle used to be on the main highway between Denton and Fort Worth, but in 1959 they built Interstate 35W just a mile west. That reduced the traffic through the town to almost nothing... There was still an occasional freight train (the tracks ran alongside the old highway) but other than that it was really quiet...
As near as I could tell the entire population of Argyle was conservative - split roughly 50/50 between Baptist and Methodist (except for one Catholic family)... However - I'm not including the trailer park. Suffice it to say that not all of those residents were churchgoers :-) ... And then there was us. We were as of that point "uncategorized"...
BTW: Almost everyone in town considered our landlord to be a bit on the "loopy" side. I think it was because he was spending his spare time building a submarine that looked a sea-serpent... Seriously - it was in pieces out by the back fence. (You can't make this stuff up.) ...
He also left us a riding mower so I could mow the acre from time to time. I'd never operated any kind of mower before let alone a riding mower so it was actually kind of fun. (He showed me how to maintain it and everything.) ... I really didn't have to mow very often - the only place the grass grew very much was on top of the drain field :-)
And it didn't us take long to discover that we were living next door to the Baptist minister and his family. They greeted us almost as soon as we got out of the car... And that will be the topic of the next post :-)
Epilogue:
I've been to Argyle many times over the years and it never seemed to change - that is until my most recent visit... Ever since the 1970s the outskirts of Dallas have been creeping steadily northward - and a few years back Argyle suddenly became a "suburb of choice" for wealthy city folk. The population jumped to around 4,000 almost overnight - there are McMansions everywhere. (Argyle's average home price is now triple the county average). There's a high school, and a strip mall - new buildings everywhere - and all the community organizations (schools, churches, etc) have more money than they know what to do with...
I realize that change is inevitable... I'm just never quite sure how to feel about it :-)
I guess I'll start with a little bit of background about Argyle:
Back when we moved into the rental house on Old Justin Road the population of Argyle was around 400, so it's not surprising that everyone knew everyone... What was a bit more surprising is that a lot of the people's great-great-great-great grandparents had known each other too :-) That's not say that there weren't a significant number of "newcomers" in the area, but there was a core group of families that had been there since the 1850s.
BTW: There's a little private cemetery near Argyle called the Eakins Cemetery. It was founded in 1855 and it's still in active use, but by "invitation only". You have to be a descendant of the original settlers (or really good friend of one) to be buried there... I think that's kind of cool :-)
Argyle was the proverbial "wide spot in the road", consisting of a store, a tiny post office, a gas station (which doubled as a bait shop), a K-8 school, 2 churches (Baptist and Methodist), and an old vacant bank building. (The bank got robbed back in 1912 - it was the most notable event in Argyle history.) ... And that was about it... Given that Argyle was only a few miles south of the outskirts of Denton I guess it really didn't need much else :-)
I should also mention that Argyle used to be on the main highway between Denton and Fort Worth, but in 1959 they built Interstate 35W just a mile west. That reduced the traffic through the town to almost nothing... There was still an occasional freight train (the tracks ran alongside the old highway) but other than that it was really quiet...
As near as I could tell the entire population of Argyle was conservative - split roughly 50/50 between Baptist and Methodist (except for one Catholic family)... However - I'm not including the trailer park. Suffice it to say that not all of those residents were churchgoers :-) ... And then there was us. We were as of that point "uncategorized"...
BTW: Almost everyone in town considered our landlord to be a bit on the "loopy" side. I think it was because he was spending his spare time building a submarine that looked a sea-serpent... Seriously - it was in pieces out by the back fence. (You can't make this stuff up.) ...
He also left us a riding mower so I could mow the acre from time to time. I'd never operated any kind of mower before let alone a riding mower so it was actually kind of fun. (He showed me how to maintain it and everything.) ... I really didn't have to mow very often - the only place the grass grew very much was on top of the drain field :-)
And it didn't us take long to discover that we were living next door to the Baptist minister and his family. They greeted us almost as soon as we got out of the car... And that will be the topic of the next post :-)
Epilogue:
I've been to Argyle many times over the years and it never seemed to change - that is until my most recent visit... Ever since the 1970s the outskirts of Dallas have been creeping steadily northward - and a few years back Argyle suddenly became a "suburb of choice" for wealthy city folk. The population jumped to around 4,000 almost overnight - there are McMansions everywhere. (Argyle's average home price is now triple the county average). There's a high school, and a strip mall - new buildings everywhere - and all the community organizations (schools, churches, etc) have more money than they know what to do with...
I realize that change is inevitable... I'm just never quite sure how to feel about it :-)
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