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Campmeeting. Is there any such thing anymore? And I don’t mean three sorry services in an air-conditioned auditorium where the pews are padded and the bathrooms rival The Ritz for elegance. I mean campmeeting....the way it was when I was a kid.

That’s what June meant. We were scarcely out of school for summer when it was time to pack up seven days worth of duds and head for the Church of God Campground in Benton, Illinois. Actually, if it had been only clothing, it would have been an easy trip. But then there were the bed clothes, towels and washcloths, hot plates, pots and pans, buckets and dishpans, mops and brooms, fans, iron and ironing board.....you get the picture.... everything needed to take up residence for a week in a sweltering 10x10 “cabin”. The cabins were actually just a row of contiguous little rooms, roughly ten or so, on each side of a long narrow concrete block building that could today be easily mistaken for a “You-Store-It” facility.

There was a bath and shower building located what seemed like the length of a city block away and closer to the woods. There was always a line of shower-capped ladies standing in line waiting their turn to share the archaic shower with a half dozen or so grand-daddy longlegs. It was just an old concrete building with no real door, but just a block wall partition between our personalities and the great outdoors. More than once some mischievous rascal tossed a firecracker over the wall and sent ladies screaming and scurrying about in their towels and robes. Then you could hear someone reprimanding the pranksters, threatening to tell their father, and shaming them that pastor’s sons should know better.

If you could manage to fight your way through the shower mob, then you could wrap your hair in a towel and traverse the long, often muddy trek back to your cabin, praying you wouldn’t see anyone you knew until you looked presentable.

Getting ready for church was a struggle in a 90 degree room. You’ve just showered, and now you’re drenched in perspiration. Your hair feels like cotton candy and your clothes look like you’ve slept in them. Add to the room’s ambient temperature the hot plate and electric skillet mom was using to whip up supper before church, and you can see just how stifling it was in there. I’m sure I went to the services many a time with the smell of homemade cheeseburgers and fried onions on my clothes.

Well before time for church to start that evening, we would walk over to the open air tabernacle and find our favorite seats....uh, well, at least they were mom’s favorite seats...second row on the right-hand side. The tabernacle, too, was just an old concrete block structure with only a front and a back. The sides were completely open. Sitting diagonally across the left side of a raised wooden platform was the “choir”, a series of ancient church pews on risers. When I was little, I dreamed of the day that I could sing with the choir up on that elevated perch.

We would take our seats on those splinter-laden homemade pews and watch people trudge through the straw laid out along the altar area. Some brought out their lawn chairs and sat just outside the “building” and others sat on the hoods of cars parked near enough to throw a stone. Those are the people I always envied...in church, but not. I remember looking longingly across the way at the yellow-lighted concession stand where some of my friends slurped Coke, munched on chips, and romped happily while I was stuck in that pew. Mom wouldn’t have dreamed of letting us run amuck, especially while church was going on...a decision I questioned back then.

It wasn’t long before the sun surrendered to the night sky, and when the temperature began to drop I was glad for that sweater mom insisted I drag along, although I wouldn’t have told her so.

I can still hear the choir singing out of the latest convention songbook, their four parts traveling their own paths until they converged again somewhere in the chorus. I remember a husky-voiced woman leading out on a trio rendition of “Til the Storm Passes By”, and feeling goosebumps crawl up the back of my neck because of their anointed delivery and close harmony. I remember the night speaker preaching loud and long into an old 50’s style microphone and people literally running to the altar. Those people came to have church, and it didn’t matter if they were in the building, on a blanket in the grass or on the steps of a nearby home. God came and the people rejoiced.

By the time I was a teenager, we were renting two adjacent rooms connected by a door. One room was for the metal bunks and our clothes. The other was the “kitchen”. After a time, my sister Darlene and her kids shared the rooms with us and campmeeting became a part of their young lives as well. The old muddy paths gave way to sidewalks and the old wooden pews to metal folding chairs, but God still came... just like in the old days.

I remember one year in particular that the days had been unbearably hot and humid. On the last night of campmeeting the blue gray haze of the Midwest sky began to take on a tinge of green and the maple leaves began to turn their veiny backs to us, almost as if to say, “I can’t watch what’s about to happen.”

Suddenly, the wind became violent and began to toss about folding chairs as easily as paper clips. The lightning was incredible and the rain torrential. Mothers huddled down with their terrified children and prayed, while the minister yelled for everyone to stay calm…not an easy fete. They herded as many of us as they could into the choir area. (Not the way I dreamed of being in the choir!) The big wooden cross at the front of the tabernacle came tumbling down and missed my head by what seemed like inches.

Almost as suddenly as it came, it was over…and so was campmeeting. I remember trudging back to the cabin through downed branches and river-like puddles that covered my new cobalt blue patent leather heels.

I’ll have to admit I wasn’t in the greatest mood when I stepped into the cabin that night. I was still shaking from the whole ordeal and I was disappointed that the last night of campmeeting ended that way...no time to say goodbye to friends, no chance to meet that one guy before it was all over. Everything was just blown away…literally.

I happened to glance up on one of the top bunks to see my eight year old niece, Kathi. She was sitting in her pajamas with a sprinkling of freckles across her tan little nose and her strawberry blonde hair still hanging in strings from a soaking rain. She was grinning from ear to ear like a mouse in charge of cheese. When I asked her what she was up to, her smile broadened and she said, “That was a GOOD storm!”

I just stood there and blinked. A good storm? What was good about it? It was terrifying! It was ill-timed. It was inconvenient. It ruined all my plans. I’d been robbed. After all, God surely knew how important all this stuff was to me, didn’t He? How could He let this happen?

At some point I came to realize that Kathi’s perspective was really the right one. Yes, we had a big storm …the tail end of a twister we later learned...yes, it was frightening, and yes, it did change our plans. But we also went through the storm and came out on the other side unscathed, totally safe, having seen the hand of God up close and personal with a testimony of God’s protecting power.

Many years have gone by and at some point the state hierarchy decided it would be a great idea to sell off the old campground. Nothing has been the same since.

But one thing does remain. Life will always bring us those sudden storms, the ones for which there is no apparent shelter other than the arms of God. I hope and pray that when those days come and go that I can look back on them with a grin and realize “That was a GOOD storm”, for all things do work together for our good.

Janice Crow

P.S. If you know where I can find an old-time campmeeting, let me know.

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