My dad became a private in the United States Army in June of 1945, having been drafted when he turned 18 earlier that year. When he was in his 50’s, he decided to create a memoir of his army experiences. His parents and brother had saved all of his letters home (a good rule of thumb: always save letters) and he interspersed those with his own memories of his time in the Army. He included his original comic illustrations from those letters.
I was reading Part One of these memoirs to my mother recently and came across the following story which took place shortly after he arrived at Fort Lewis in Washington state. He and another guy had some free time, so they hitchhiked into Tacoma.
Don and I were in Tacoma one Saturday evening looking for something to do when we were stopped on the street by two well dressed gentlemen.
“Hello there,” the first one greeted us with a smile, “we’re having a party for servicemen at our church this evening. There’ll be cake and ice cream and some girls for you to meet. How about driving over there with us?”
Meeting the girls sounded interesting, but it was the cake and ice cream that got us into the car for a short trip across town to the church. I had assumed that the party would be in the basement, but we were led up the front steps to the main entrance of the church. When the doors were opened, I saw a whole church full of servicemen and realized that we’d been tricked into attending an evening church service.
After we were seated, the minister gave his sermon and then invited everyone to come down to the altar to accept Jesus as their personal savior. That was something we had never done in our church back home in Duluth.
While the organ played in the background, ushers came up the aisles and asked everyone they could reach to come down to the altar. I was getting nervous because Don and I were second and third from the aisle and were sure to be asked. When the usher reached our row, he asked a young sailor on the aisle if he would like to come down to the altar.
“Oh, no,” said the sailor, “I can’t do that, I’m Jewish.”
“I understand,” said the usher and turned to Don. “What about you?” he asked.
“Ahhh, I’m Jewish too,” replied Don, thinking fast.
“And your friend?” asked the usher, pointing to me.
“Oh, he’s Jewish, too,” said Don, while I nodded my head in agreement.
After the service there was a party downstairs with lots of ice cream and cake. The girls were there as promised and several came over to chat with us before we left. Although we had the answer for an invitation to come up to the altar, Don and I decided not to attend any more church parties in Tacoma.
I found this story both amusing and sad. It was funny to read about their creative way of escaping the invitation to the altar, but sad to think that the people at the church thought deceiving people was an acceptable way to get them in the door of the church. The net effect on my dad was clearly a negative one.
When I was still a young Christian I invited a friend of mine to see a movie with me which I was told had a Christian message. A couple days before the movie I found out that there would be an altar call at the movie theater after the movie had ended and I was somewhat horrified at the thought. I didn’t want my friend to think that I’d entrapped her into this, so I told her ahead of time and gave her the option to back out. At the very least she would know what she was getting into. She appreciated the heads up and decided to come anyway. Too bad the movie wasn’t that great. I’m not a big fan of altar calls, but this one was low pressure, unlike what happened with my dad. If I’d seen ushers coming up the aisle to nab people, I would have grabbed my friend and run for the exit.
I’ll probably delete this…wait a minute. Did you say cake and ice cream? Gotta go!
Lynniebeemuseoday 