Thursday, January 29, 2009

That Old Time Religion

Thanks to Church, Diane and Grant for leaving comments. As for the rest of you, I'd like to hear from you too. Please leave me some comments. If you have nothing else to say, at least tell me how dreamy I am.

Portrait of the Artist as a young man:


Thou Shalt Bask In Our Cuteness!

This is in a card on the back of which is written in (royal) purple felt tip marker, "Ye Olde Country Fair!" and then below that, "June 8, 1974."

Which would have put me at all of five years old. Man I wish I had a body like that today, never mind the hair. You can't fully appreciate my cuteness here, I seem kind of goonie looking. As I remember, this was at a church thing, back when we were foaming-at-the-mouth Congregationalists. Actually, if you know any Congregationalists, you'll know that they never foam at the mouth and if they ever began to do such a thing, they would certainly have a napkin at the ready. My membership in the church at this time brought the age of the average member down to about eighty-seven years old.

Edit: This stuff in the upcoming paragraph and photo is just plain wrong. Read it and then check the post after it for the real deal: http://theonethousand.blogspot.com/2009/01/wherein-i-am-revealed-to-be-big.html

I just found an old timey (1940) picture of my actual church online. Apparently the building is part of the United States National Register of Historic Places (they must have found out I used to hang out there). So here's my old church in Plainfield, Connecticut, looking like the classic old New England building that it is. Built in 1816, Architected by Ithiel Town (Yes, that's a guy's name).



And if Ye Olde Country Fair! wasn't a church thing, it was a Grange thing. The Grange was right next to our church, so close I thought it was owned by the church. Is it that white building all the way in the right corner? Thats where I remember it being, but I don't remember it looking like that. All the church members seemed to be Grange members as well, so until a couple of months ago, I thought the Grange was a strictly Congregationalist organization. Thank you Wikipedia, because you know everything.

If my sister, Deb, reads this blog (and I'm pretty sure she doesn't), she could explain everything. Perhaps in the comments! She not only is eleven years older than me with a better memory, but she still lives up there.

Those of you who know me well can understand why I had to leave the church. I'm as anti-social as society allows me to be and if there's one thing those Congregationalists do, it's congregate.

I don't cotton to that.

3 comments:

Michael R. Fosburg said...

I envy your august religious upbringing. I went to St. Andrews Catholic school/church, and was furnished with a healthy amount of guilt, terror, and despair.

Loved _The Golem_, by the way.

Church said...

I, too, grew up in CT with a Cong. Church (wine? WTF?) and a grange. It all seemed kind of off.

There's probably a story there....

Matthew Sanborn Smith said...

Michael, I'm glad you liked the story. Though it's tiny, it's one of my favorites. I'm glad I can finally share it with the public at large.

My mom grew up Catholic. It seems to scar everyone. Thanks for the comments!

Church, what town in Connecticut?