Tellers of Time

Went to a church festival yesterday. Any of you do that? Or remember them? Raffles, games of chance, bake sales, a familiar face or two from the past? I bought an Oliver Towne book circa 1958 for me and six books for Henry (most on fish – “Finding Nemo” instilled an avid interest); small yellow and orange rooster salt and pepper shakers; a choir boy figurine, and a necklace. At $2.00, the vintage necklace was the most expensive item. My mom was with me. She bought a paperback or two and a glass shoe for her shoe collection.

We bid on a few items at the silent auction, with numbers 13 and 14. I bought her the taco dinner because her birthday’s this week. Father walked through, smiling; the deacon cut in front of me in the taco line; the one old friend I ran into waited a few people behind me and the woman between us joined in our conversation.

Here in St. Paul, there are fall festivals (at least two at a time) every weekend for six weeks or so. It’s a very Catholic city and most, but not all, are hosted by Catholic churches. There was a full-page spread on them in the paper last week. My sister-in-law said she was disappointed she’d miss the one associated with her grade school, because she could give the kids money to go play the games and just stand and talk to one old friend after another.

The Saturday night crowd that Mom and I encountered last night is not what the Sunday crowd will be today and the crowd today will not be what it was a few years ago, at least not at my inner-city parish where music played in an almost deserted parking lot, few took advantage of the brats and beer, and cop cars dotted the curbs. The last newsletter bore testimony to the change with a picture on the front that challenged readers to guess what year it was taken. One of those giant bubbles where kids jump amongst colored balls was in the parking lot and it teamed with people. Mainly by the hairstyles of the women I’d guess it was from the 70’s. I’m at that age when that doesn’t seem all that long ago.

It was a beautiful night with a half a moon wavering in the cloudy sky and it got me reminiscing about changes. A few years ago I was all for such things ending. Okay, it wasn’t a few years ago, it was in the 80’s when I felt overly involved in festivals at my husband’s church and thought to myself that all of us volunteering would be better off to just give money.

But you become aware, through such events, of the changes in atmosphere and culture and climate that you can miss much more easily without them. It’s not all dismal. There’s a sweetness to the pie booth with only four pretty sad looking pies set out, and the garage-sale nature of the stuffed animals awaiting kids, and the memories of the desire to win the bike or the doll being raffled and the way the impressions of your youth stay with you.

Likewise in church, the nature of the sermons change. A week or so ago I wondered what I was missing in the news when Father spoke of how communion is the right of everyone. I wondered what ornery cleric was refusing communion to a politician known to be pro-abortion, or to obvious gays.

And likewise in books.

The Oliver Towne book, a collection of the stories written in the “Oliver Towne” column of the St. Paul Dispatch between 1954 and 1958 feels familiar even though I’ve only seen the yellowed copies stuck in the photo albums and cook books (where all clippings seem to eventually end up) of mothers and grandmothers around town. I opened to a page where Oliver cleared up the mystery of my side of town, know as the West Side, being not west but south, and how it came to be called that because of old steamboat captains for whom, he said, there were only two directions – the west bank and the east bank – of a river.

So there you are, living on a side of town called “west” all your life, only giving it a little thought when an occasional visitor from Minneapolis asks “What’s “west” about it?” and then you find out that it was steamboat captains who were the source of this name that is a lie to us (directionally speaking) and a truth to them.

It is strange and pertinent to me this morning where you can find tellers of the times and the truth, and how even the truth, given your view of it, and your language, and the way you interact with it…changes.