CATEGORY: LATE CHILDHOOD
PHOTO: SHANIKO WAREHOUSE
GRAY BOARDS

There was no church of any kind in Shaniko.  My two school mates who were close to my age, Pat and Margaret, were devout Episcopalians.  They were cousins by marriage, Pat being the niece of Helen Reese, the main promulgator of the Episcopal Church in Shaniko, and Margaret being the niece of Helen’s husband, Delbert Reese.  Every two weeks a minister came from The Dalles and held church and Sunday school in the school house.  Very few people attended, and I noticed right away that Pat’s mother, Glade, who owned the tavern, was never there even though she was Helen’s sister.  Margaret’s mother had died, and she had been raised by her Reese grandparents, also Episcopalians.

Of course, mother, being liberal minded although personally unconvinced about any particular religion, welcomed this, and Mary and I were expected to attend.  To say that I was not fond of this duty would be an understatement.  The Episcopal method of teaching seemed ritualized and was meaningless to me.  Mother had been a Christian Scientist and used to tell us that God was Love.  Out of curiosity I had started reading the bible and was beginning to wonder how the God of the bible could be a God of love considering that he was so war-like.  I had read the 31st chapter of Numbers and doubted if this violent God of the Israelites could be any decent kind of God at all–certainly not one that should be a role model for children!  To make my forced attendance at this church worse, it took a big part out of the two days when I didn’t have to go to school and could be out of doors: my favorite place to be.

One spring Sunday the weather was beautiful.  The sun was shining; the sky was blue; it was warm.  The agony of sitting in the school room repeating what seemed to me, mindless phrases, became too much.  I got up and left the room as if I needed to go to the bathroom, but what I needed was lots of fresh air.  I left the school house and ran home.  Later I discovered that everyone in the Sunday school class, including my mother, saw me since our rented house was just up the street from the school, and both the sidewalk and our house were visible from the school windows.  However, I have always wondered how this could have happened since the window sills of the school house were too high for anyone to see out the windows unless they were standing.  The likely scenario was that someone had been standing and notified all the rest.  Could it have been the minister?  Of course!  I can see them now, ogling my liberated and un-repentant back side as I galumphed up the dirt sidewalk.

When I got home, I changed my clothes.  Then I was out the back door like a “blue streak.”  I circled the edge of the town, crossed the railroad tracks and climbed up on the platform of one of the old warehouses.  The wide sturdy boards of the platform were weathered a silvery gray.  They were warm from the sun.  I lay down on my back on these welcoming boards and looked up at the sky.  Tiny white clouds were gently moving through the expanse of blue and, by providing a foreground, gave depth to the all of it.  I lost myself in their movement; I stared into the deep, deep, deepness of the sky.  It was the inverse of my staring at the deep green of the slowly moving John Day River the last time I had run away.  I seemed to become part of the gray boards.  I was as old as they.  No, I was older.  I was as old as the trees they came from, the seeds they grew from, and the trees that produced the seeds.  I was as old as all eternity.  I was one with time.  I stopped thinking.  My whole being expanded and welcomed time and space.  I lay there for a long time–being blue sky, being white clouds, being gray boards, being ALL THAT IS.  In retrospect, I think I had a religious experience.  Well, it was Sunday, after all.

When I got home, mother didn’t seem to be much upset, but she did want an explanation.  I told her exactly what I had done and why.  She accepted my story with a faint smile on her face.  Knowing my mother’s religious preferences, I think maybe she had wanted to run away too.  However, Helen Reese was not amused.  She told mother that I should have a good spanking and be sent to bed.  Mother told her that she believed in freedom of religion even for twelve-year olds.