Remembering When

I would not trade my early upbringing and memories of the Lee Heights Baptist Church for a pot of gold. My sisters and I never missed a service, unless the weather was too bad for us to walk that mile and a half.

I loved the singing best of all. Those old songs in The Broadman Hymnal were my Bible. Another church donated some song books as we were on a limited budget. A Sunday school teacher gave Gerry one of them that had a tattered cover and several pages missing. We treasured that.

One night there was a quartet from Arkansas that came to give a program. We were entranced. Even, Red, mother’s younger brother who was our age, went to hear them sing. It was advertised in the Town Talk.

They sang a lot of the songs that I used to hear my grandfather sing. But, the one that stuck with us wasn’t in our song book, it went something like this, “Life’s evening sun is sinking low, a few more days and I must go, To meet the deeds that I have done, where there will be no setting sun.” When they got to the last line, the bass singer would echo “no setting sun” in the lowest voice I had ever heard.

In a few days, my sister Gerry and Red decided we would form a quartet and learn to sing like the Stamps Brothers. Gerry sang soprano, I attempted to sing tenor and Pee Wee sang alto. Red was going to do the best part and sing bass.

First we got the words down pat. Then we began to practice in earnest. When it came time for Red to echo, “no setting sun” his voice wasn’t quite as deep as he would have liked. It is sort of hard to reach a low note when you are eleven-years-old and your voice is changing.

We learned a few other songs but by the time we were really getting good, Red grew bored so the quartet disbanded and our trio never did get off the ground.

We did not know how to read music so we made up tunes to a lot of the songs that were unfamiliar. Except for the words you would not be able to recognize the songs. But, each song was based on scripture and one cannot sing or read something over and over without some it sinking in.
And like the words and music by L.B. Bridgers, “He keeps me singing.”