During the darker days of “The War” (to the “elders” of today’s society that always means “WWII.”) gasoline was stringently rationed. Drivers were issued “A,” “B,” or “C” decals to put onto their windshields and a rationing book filled with coupons that could be redeemed only on a week by week basis. An “A” sticker entitled the driver to, as I recall, three and a half gallons per week. The “B” and “C” drivers got correspondingly a little more but no one could get enough gasoline to drive as much as they might want to. I learned years later that there was a flourishing “Black Market” in gasoline in the bigger cities but such an appalling offense against patriotism simply didn’t happen in our part of the country.
We belonged to a small denomination which had the longest name of any church in Christendom and it was a name that was recognized by few people outside the church. As a child I was always a little bothered by that long name and secretly wished I had a short, snappy answer to give when someone asked what church I belonged to. It seemed so simple for others to say “Baptist,” “Presbyterian,” or “Catholic,” etc. The nearest congregation for us was 16 miles away in Coffeyville KS. Since Dad’s 1941 Ford burned a gallon of gas about every 17 miles, a round trip to Coffeyville, (whose main claim to fame is being the place where the infamous “Dalton Gang,” who specialized in making illegal withdrawals from banks, were ambushed and gunned down by Coffeyville citizens) would easily use up most of one week’s ration. That surely contributed to my parent’s spotty church attendance.
One summery Saturday afternoon, Dad, Mother, and some now-unremembered church member were sitting in our back yard talking about whether or not they would attend church the next day. I was nearby listening to the conversation. In a burst of sanctity I spoke up, saying, “Don’t you think that if you go to church, God will take care of the gasoline?” It may have been an inspired thing to say but more likely I was just trying to put a sanctimonious face on myself. It did have an effect, however. Dad decided we would make the drive to Coffeyville the next day. It would be nice if I could say that some extra gasoline ration coupons came Dad’s way in some quasi-miraculous way, but they didn’t. He managed to get by with what he had.
When I was around thirteen I was packed off to a one-week church camp down in Oklahoma during the summer. It was a fun week with swimming, nighttime campfires, sleeping “barracks-style” in open-air camp buildings and of course a heavy dose of praying, hymn singing, and studying. As expected, when my parents came to pick me up I was feeling ardently sanctimonious and filled with a firm resolve to be “good”. “The World,” though, soon closed in around me and I quickly became the boy I had been before I went to the camp. The only memory I have of anything I learned during Church Camp are a few words to a little campfire song we sang. It told in a lugubriously funny way the problems faced by an African “Cannibal King With a Brass Nose-ring" and his dusky girl friend who were separated by a crocodile infested river. The song would be condemned as virulently racist today. It was a vastly more innocent time.