We called her Sister Tackett.
That, in itself, is a complete sentence. Hell, it's a whole book, really. She was, as Tom Jones would have said, a Lady. She was also an ordained minister, as was her husband. But, being wise, as husbands should be, he took the position of assistant, and Sister Tackett, every Sunday, took the pulpit.

In 1961 and '62 and '63, gray and slight, with a sparkle in her eyes and a smile on her lips, and a strength in her voice that you wouldn't expect, she held that little church together. Sometimes through sheer grit, sometimes with spit and a prayer. Membership had dropped, although we didn't have any requirement that anyone join in any sort of official way,- just come on in and we were happy to see you, and if you were comfortable, would you come back again? Simple, really. Basic, wholesome... and real. But most of the folks who once attended had gone to some of the other churches in town; bigger, fancier, with pipe organs and ushers in suits... why, they even had parking lots!

That little church did have a double driveway... right next to the church, just like the parking lots overtown. Actually it was the driveway for the parsonage, but four cars could fit there. At the time I was going to church there I don't think that any three of us had a car. Sister Tackett had an old faded green International Harvester pickup, and she amazed me with the way she could handle it, going along the dirt roads to visit someone, gas pedal clear to the floor - to watch her double-clutch was sheer poetry. She was only in her late sixties then, or maybe early seventies, and she said she could still drive as well as when she was growing up on the farm. She must've been something with a tractor pulling a harrow...

At one time that little Church of God had forty or so people who sat in the pews on Sunday morning, and again on Sunday evening. I was usually able to count somewhere between a dozen and nearly twenty most of the time I was there. Maybe half of them were adults, the rest were kids. Sister Tackett would ask us to bring a friend, if we could, and sometimes we would. Ronnie Chelette brought me, and I stuck around, which was the way it was supposed to work.

When I first went to church there, I had no idea what to expect. From the outside it was just a tiny rectangle with a cross on the roof. Two wooden steps up from the sidewalk on Monroe Street, and when I stepped inside I saw that it was about as bare as any church could possibly be, and still be called a church. Thirty pews, an aisle with a threadworn carpet, and four windows on each side, a dozen bare lightbulbs hanging down from the ceiling, and a couple fans up on the little raised platform that also held the very handmade pulpit and an ancient, scarred piano. There was a little piano light both on the piano and the pulpit. At the back, above the dozen folding chairs that were there for the five or six members of the choir, was the most beautiful hand-hewn cross I had ever seen, and I have never seen one to match it since.

Yeah, I had been to fancier churches, for sure. But something, somehow, made me sit comfortable in the pew, and I came to like this little church on the side of Monroe Street in that little town in Louisiana.

Learned a lot there. I didn't mean to, but I did. People could care. About others. And they could understand, and they could help. What really impressed me was that everyone there was totally real. No plastic smiles, no hidden attitudes, nothing to put you off... they were all "just folks." Services were basic, sometimes people would stand up and testify, or ask for prayer for a friend or loved one, announcements were made, plans were discussed, and Sister Tackett would take her place, standing there, behind that little podium-like pulpit, and she would give us her message. She didn't try to scare us with stories about hellfire and brimstone, and she never threatened us with the idea of not being allowed into Heaven, but she would tell us how we should be toward others, how we should live our lives here while we could, and she would say it in a way that showed that she expected us to do just that. And we loved her so much that we really tried our best for her, and for the Lord. She could have asked us to march into Hell with her, and we would have.

We did, once. Downtown. In 1962. I was just a little past fifteen. A Black man was on trial, and it seemed that every white man and woman with a small mind, who had nothing better to do, was outside the little courthouse every day of the trial, yelling and screaming obscenities, and this had to be doing a number on everyone inside that courtroom. The windows were open and all the anger in the street outside could be felt inside, as well as on the street. Sunday night Sister Tackett said she was going down to the courthouse on Monday morning, and was going to be there all day long, if necessary. She invited anyone who wanted to arm themselves with a Bible to join her. It was summer, so all of us kids said we'd go, and that sort of got the adults to agree to go as well.

Good sized crowd of fools yelling by the time we got there, but we walked up and around the crowd, and lined up along the front of the courthouse. We just stood there, holding our Bibles, and we didn't say a word. Sister Tackett had told us to stand our ground unless things got nasty, and to just look at the noisy ones. I got a pretty good idea of how those kids at the lunchcounter must have felt, but we all stood there. I don't mind admitting that it was kind of frightening.

Then Sister Tackett opened her Bible and started to read to herself, quietly. We did the same thing. We did this for nearly an hour, I think, and for some reason, the crowd got quieter, then they weren't yelling any more, then they just stood there, looking at us as we read in our Bibles. After we had been there a while longer, the crowd slowly started to break up. One man and his wife even came up and stood with us as the rest of the crowd left. We stayed there for nearly another couple hours, because Sister Tackett thought they might return, but for the rest of the trial, even with us not there, the crowd never came back. Sister Tackett had the Power. And she shared it.

The fun part of the Church of God was Camp. Church Camp, cabins by the lake, campfires and stories and songs at night, and the sawdust trail between the log seats leading up to the log altar... it was a little bit of Heaven on earth, and it was beautiful. I attended Camp three summers, and became the best dishwasher they had; that was the way I paid for my being there, as my family didn't have any money.That was also where I overcame my fear of singing in public, and found a love of the old gospel songs that still feel good today. It was also where I finally walked that sawdust trail, alone, afraid, trembling, and gave myself to Jesus. That was a good thing. Later on, in 1964, I would go into the Army. That, it turned out, was a bad thing. But in the time between my Walk and the Army, I enjoyed every day in a way that I would never have believed possible until then. The church didn't become everything in my life, but it became important, and it gave me direction,and it gave me a sense of peace and fulfillment and happiness.

It kind of snuck up on us... Ronnie Chelette and I felt we had a calling. We talked about it all one summer long, and accepted the idea. I remember it was a frightening feeling - like having thunder inside me, as well as a feeling of peace and a conviction that at first I doubted, but learned that it was not something to be taken lightly. I believed that I should become a minister, as did Ronnie. We were going to finish high school, then go to school, maybe starting at Gulf Coast Bible College, but our goal was to go to Anderson, Indiana to study. We were going to be a team, together.

We never did make it. In 1964 we became very aware of Vietnam, and I went into the Army, Ronnie went into the Navy, and we both lost our dreams, but that's another story for another time...

The last chapter was coming...
I remember one Sunday evening, in 1964, when Sister Tackett made us a deal - she said she wanted to strike a bargain with us. Even though she was getting older and she got tired more easily any more, she would continue to open the church doors every Sunday morning, and she would be the one to close them Sunday evening, as long as we would continue to come to church. She asked us: If she would be there, would we be there with her? We loved that lady, and would have been with her anywhere, had she ever asked us to. And we were, for a while. One Sunday morning, however, her husband was the one who opened the church doors, because Sister Tackett had gone to her reward during the night. I guess the bargain she struck with everyone was finished then, because it wasn't too long after that, that I went into the Army, and everyone else went overtown, to one of the other churches... maybe to one of them that had a big parking lot, and a fancy pipe organ.