Sundays for the Young Son of a Theologically Conservative Pastor

When I was young I hated Sundays. They made me miserable. In the morning, I had to go to Sunday School and Church, wearing very uncomfortable clothes: a starched white shirt with a tie, a jacket, wool pants, and stiff, tight leather shoes. In this garb I had to sit quietly, without any wiggling, through a worship service that went on for what seemed an eternity. No leaving the service for a visit to the restroom. No misbehaving for me. My father was the pastor, and he was not above reprimanding his children from the pulpit if we didn’t sit very quietly. And even after church, the rest of our day was pretty bleak. My mother thought we should rest on the Sabbath, so we mostly sat around in our good clothes (sans the tie and painful shoes) and read or played board games—very quietly. It was my least favorite day of the week. Until supper time! Somehow, around the time evening arrived, my attitude changed drastically. What had been the worst several hours of my week gave way to one of the best times. I have spent some time over the years trying to figure out what made the difference.

For one thing, supper on Sunday night was leftover night. My mother was not an inspired cook, and we were poor. So we ate a lot of what people in my father’s congregation gave us: vegetables, cheap meat like cow’s liver, fish that defied filleting (especially perch chock-full of tiny bones). We also ate a lot of casseroles and soup, meals that often were filled with unhappy surprises like onions, celery, and mushrooms. During the week we had to eat what was placed in front of us (my parents were children of the Great Depression), so supper was often painful, me staring down cow’s liver and onions, hoping my parents would run out of patience before I did. But on Sunday evening we could usually find something left over that we liked—and you did not have to eat anything you didn’t want to eat. I still have very fond feelings for leftovers.

If there weren’t enough edible leftovers, Sunday night was the time Dad did the cooking rather than Mom. He had a pretty limited repertoire, but he was very good at preparing what he liked to eat. So often we enjoyed heavy, wonderful, often greasy fried things that we loved: apple or corn fritters, thick pancakes loaded with butter and syrup, waffles—all served with generous supplies of bacon or sausage, or both! Such a wonderful end to what to that point had been a painful, dismal day.

After supper, of course we all had to attend evening service. We were the pastor’s children and needed to set a good example. But Sunday evening services were much more attractive than the morning regime. For one thing, my brother and I did not have to wear a jacket and tie. If we were lucky, occasionally we could lose the wool pants and tight shoes and wear our comfortable school pants and sneakers. My dad preached much shorter sermons on Sunday evening, and we had long, enjoyable hymn sings. Our fundamentalist churches were not good at much, but we were great singers. On Sunday night the congregation could choose what members wanted to sing, maybe six or seven hymns. Not always fun for us children. We had to sit through slow, sentimental hymns like “Beyond the Sunset” and “In the Garden.” But then my dad would let kids choose a couple of hymns. We always chose snappy, moving things like “Wonderful Grace of Jesus” with its rocking and rolling base line or “When the Roll is Called up Yonder.” We youngsters would throw ourselves into these hymns, singing at the top of our lungs. Quite pleasurable, even something to look forward to.

But the best times were Sunday evenings in summer. As I said before, we were poor, so we didn’t have many treats in our house. Plus we were fundamentalists, so we were denied the pleasures of dancing, movies, and even TV for many years. But on Sunday evenings in summer my parents would pile the four kids into the car, and we would go out for ice cream. Sometimes it was just to the local Dairy Queen, where we had to decide between Dilly Bars and a cone with sprinkles. But most often we would drive out into the country to a little family-owned ice cream stand whose name I cannot remember, unfortunately. These people made the greatest ice cream, lots of flavors you couldn’t get in town. And it was so cheap that we could have double or even triple scoops, occasionally even a banana split! What an unmitigated pleasure, to sit in the back seat of our car, licking a delicious ice cream cone, surrounded by my entire family.

Part of the reason I liked going out into the country was that the ride home was long, and often my dad was in the mood to explore. So we would ride for a long time, looking out at scenery bathed in moonlight, the whole time slowly, reverently eating our precious ice cream cones.

And then I started to fall asleep. I always loved sleeping in a car. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was the movement itself, or the sound of the tires on the road and the wind against the car, or maybe it was just that I was surrounded by my entire family in one of our few peaceful moments together. So I would drift off to sleep. The best part was, if I was asleep when we got home, my dad would carry me into the house, up the stairs, and lay me gently on my bed—I wouldn’t even have to put on pajamas or brush my teeth. He would kiss me on the forehead, a lovely, gentle moment with my strong father.

But that wasn’t the final—or even best part—of Sunday nights in the summer. For almost every Sunday except in summer, while I was drifting off to sleep, I would think ahead to the school day that awaited me. It wasn’t that I hated or feared school. I was a quick boy, and I did very well in school. But I loved leisure more than learning. And in the summer, just before I finally fell to sleep, I would remember that I did not have to get up for school the next morning. I would smile to myself, drift off to sleep with dreams of baseball, swimming, and bike riding with my friends.

Image Credit: Vasily Perov, “Children Sleeping” (1870)