My parents had me christened in the Congregational Church across from town hall on the edge of the village commons in the town of Lunenburg, Massachusetts. The church was where I performed in my first piano recital in the fellowship hall below the sanctuary. I probably played something out of John Thompson’s Modern Piano Course or maybe it was something even more fundamental from his Easiest Piano Course, the books with the illustrated goblins pointing out clefs and time signatures, notes and rests. It was where I celebrated my first communion. The no-frills sacrament wasn’t a special affair. I didn’t have to wear a new suit bought expressly for the occasion and I didn’t receive a certificate stating that I had crossed some spiritual milestone. It was probably just an accident of fate, not faith, that caused me to be there on that Sunday morning.
As a child I attended an austere Congregational church with my grandmother in Lunenburg. Grammy somehow thought I was a holy child and got me a monthly subscription to an Oral Roberts’ magazine for children. Roberts, a Choctaw televangelist, had a worldwide following and was known for his ability to perform healing miracles; he himself having been healed of a severe stutter and tuberculosis when he was seventeen. On one Sunday, I must have been around six years old, she took me to my first Wonder Bread and Welch’s grape juice communion, an event that only happened four times a year at this local church, most Sundays intended for preaching the Word. The bread was served on silver-plated platters passed down each pew where every person took a piece and held it patiently in their palms until everyone in the congregation received theirs. The grape juice followed in a similar serving tray but one equipped with slots to hold tiny individual cups filled with the purple liquid. Once everyone was served, and as if on cue, the entire congregation popped the small squares of spongy bread in their mouths, chewed and swallowed and then drank the juice from the tiny glass cups in unison; like men at some corner tavern nibbling on bar nuts then in unison downing shots of bourbon that had been lined up and waiting along the bar top. When everyone had finished, the tiny glasses were inserted in drilled out holes in a small wooden shelf screwed to the back of the pew in front of them. I joined the others in drinking the juice, but forewent eating the cubed piece of bread, instead squeezing it in my small fist, holding it there until the service ended. Once outside, I tossed the now pulpy lump behind a shrub near the steps of the church. I was afraid that if I ate it, Jesus would pop out of my mouth on the ride home in my grandmother’s black ’48 Chevrolet Fleetline. To this day I still think about that piece of bread every time I pass the church on my way to North Cemetery to visit the family plot or attend a relative’s funeral.
Photo: Lunenburg Historical Society