Posted by
VBushmills on Monday, May 25, 2009 3:48:39 PM
It's been over twenty five years now, so I'm sure they are no longer among us, but for awhile I got to sit in a wonderful place called "Bachelor's Corner" and smiled, laughed, sang and prayed among the most congenial class of men one could ever hope to know.
It was in an old Christian Church in Kentucky, but it wasn't really a corner, for the church is a rotunda, and our four pews were just center-back behind the pillars, underneath a single stained glass window that shed light enough to read the hymnals.
And they weren't bachelors, either, at least the voluntary sort...except me.
Every Sunday I would arrive thirty minutes early just to sit and listen to them spin jolly yarns about the "wahr". I'd hear about ol' Bud, and his first trip to an Italian barber in the British zone, or Slim's unfailing ability to lose his pay in a single weekend, always drawing to an inside straight. With the telling of each story, they'd all chuckle, then peer off into space with a wistful smile as the Sunday School classes would filter into the sanctuary one by one.
It was like this every Sunday, except that one last Sunday in May, every May, when our minister, a little younger than myself, but also a son of a veteran, would simply turn the program to music. There was no sermon, no passing of the plate, just a short opening prayer, at which time, with the simple nod of his head, he'd sit down while other veterans, sitting among their families in the front, would slowly rise and move to our little "corner" as the organist began "America the Beautiful".
The songs progressed and the congregation sang...or tried. They sang them all; "Battle Hymn of the Republic", "My Country Tis of Thee" , the old Crusader hymn "Fairest Lord Jesus", which as God is my witness, I have yet to get past the first line.
This one Sunday, all these old friends, everyone at least twenty five years my senior, sat and sobbed in memory of ol' Bud, or Dutch or Slim, and in their grief you knew their old pards never saw America's shores again. But only they knew the rest of those stories. And I would think of my own father. It was this one Sunday those men remembered the lost friends of their youth, maybe their youth itself, and God knows who, or what else...for they had seen much to be so young.
But I was always taken by those veterans with families, some as old as my friends themselves, but others from another era, who would bring their sons, and even grandsons, back to this assemblage, just to make sure the circle was not broken, as if to prove that this too is a part of manhood, watching one's elders cry...and knowing the why of it.
That was then, and this is now. They're almost all gone but those pews are beginning to fill once again. I remember writing about that scene after I'd moved to Cincinnati in 1991, and noting the absence of fathers in so many congregations, and a reluctance among mothers to have their children share in the deeper understandings of this very special last Sunday in May, I tried to remind mothers then to send their children back among the walking fallen, to know what it was like to sit among men. I asked people to take this most sacred Sunday and postpone that three day holiday, the beach, the state park, the beer, the grill and visit church this one Sunday, if for nothing more than to say "Thanks" to those old fellows on the back benches.
There is a new generation beginning to move into Bachelor Corner now. Mine. In a very short time, those pews will fill once gain...then just as suddenly begin to empty, just as they did once before...when in another fifty years, after they seem to be almost empty yet one more time they will begin to fill all over again. It's a grief we must all observe and endure...and be ever so grateful for, lest we forget.
So, Mothers, please send your children back among the men on that last Sunday in May.
Vassar