donbosco
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You track in on a lot of things from your childhood as being a certain way or just not being right. A PB&J sandwich for me is made with apple jelly and apple jelly only. The theme song to Carolina Basketball will forever be Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas” because it was the intro music for ‘The Dean Smith Show.’
(Listen here:
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Burgess Meredith IS ‘The Penguin!’ You get the idea. Kid Things Stick.
Hymns are like that for me. I’m not a church-goer at present but the Bible and Biblical teachings inspire me. I consult ‘The Good Book’ often. I’m still a “registered Southern Baptist” but the ways of that congregation turned me out decades ago. Bless their hearts. Fifteen years teaching at a Quaker school had an influence on how I deliberate - for good and ill. That path is probably most dear to my heart.
But “The Baptist Hymnal” is where the songs of spirituality that stir my soul can be found. In the summer of 1970 during the intensity of my home church’s Revival Week I ‘went down to the front’ to testify away my sinfulness, ask to be cleansed, and to become a Baptist. “The Nail-Scarred Hand” was the song that played at that youthful Moment of Decision (https://youtu.be/GW7GnYNl908?si=OW7NFUZ3xTrat0cn).
Of course those times were filled with deep emotion - twelve years old was the age at which boy Jesus went to Jerusalem for Passover and amazed the theologians so that was a ‘coming of age’ time, especially in the rural Tar Heel churches of my youth. The pressure to make “The Walk” was on that summer for me. The songs, which I sang fervently and whose words I took very much to heart were as important as the admonitions of an Eternity in Hell. That summer I also got my first gun, a .410 single-shot. Being a Man couldn’t be far off.
One of my favorite hymns was, at least as I remember it, also the best-loved of my Grandmother Dilly Womble — “The Church in The Wildwood.” I remember her playing it on the piano, quietly singing. It’s a bit secular sounding in that there’s no finger-pointing nor portent of eternal suffering for the wayward so it makes me smile to think of it making her happy. I think there was a little honky tonk in her anyway.
There’s an episode of “The Andy Griffith Show” where Andy and Barney are porch-sitting of a Sunday evening, all while car-stranded city-slicker out of Charlotte Mr. Malcolm Tucker paces about and frets about the work and the money he’s missing while Goober and Gomer work on his downed vehicle. Andy is strumming his guitar and slowly and quite beautifully slides into a rendition of “Church in The Wildwood.” Barney joins in and a little Mayberry Miracle transpires.
Dolly does it wonderfully here too:
Below is a link to Ole Ange singing a bunch of those “Baptist Hymnal” selections. He must have grown up a Southern Baptist too.
Andy hymns: https://youtube.com/playlist...