When Does A Sense of Incompetence Really Begin?

Here we have the impressive Hawthorne LDS Church which is located at Roosevelt Avenue and 8th East in Salt Lake City Utah.

This would have been the building that my Grandmother and Grandfather Mary Salmon and Ira Bennion Cannon would have attended with my father, Bennion Rhead Cannon, and the building my other Grandparents, Nellie Bull and Edward Axel Peterson with their children, Welby, my mother, Helen Maurine and Patricia Joy would have attended had they been so inclined.

This also is the building, including the side shot of the very door (left side of shot) which my mother and grandmother would glide by and slow down enough to toss me out each Sunday morning to attend Sunday School as I lived at Grandma and Grandpa Peterson's.  The circumstances of living at Grandma's and the reasons I was to be eliminated from the household on Sundays are not clear.  I'm figuring I must have been about four.  All facts are vague except for the following.  It is just too traumatizing.

No one went in with me ever and I know this for a fact because no one at Sunday School ever knew my name.  I was asked, and I told them, every week.  But I must have been as unintelligible as Brad was at the same age because they never got it.

The same routine went on every week.  They would ask me my name, I would tell them, and they would ask me to have my mother come in the next week to talk to them to tell them my name.  I'd agree, time and again but would forget to comply.  That was just the beginning, I guess, of my letting God down.

But as I look back, I'm wondering, why didn't they just take a clue from the schools?  The old "pin a note to your shirt" trick wasn't all that secret.  But nevertheless, the mere sight of the old Hawthorne Ward House raises a greater sense of inadequacy in me than fear of wearing a shirt twice and smelling bad or using bad grammar in my blog.  I'm not kidding.

Another Good Guy Laid to Rest -- Goodnight, Bishop Miner

Bishops have to be creative to be sure.

When we were twelve, there were a bunch of us -- probably twenty of us who went to Sunday School.  And few of our parents went to church at all but most of them sent us to Sunday School to get us out of the house.  Unless we had the grippe or some such thing.

Quite a number of us were scary, too.  Names could be named.  Names of several have probably been to jail, or possibly prison.  We were a blue-collar neighborhood in Provo, Utah with houses built right after World War II.  

Little tiny houses right at the base of Y-Mountain, almost all alike; two bedrooms, one bathroom, living-room, kitchen a little hall adjoining all and almost everyone's dad worked at Geneva Steel. And like I said, almost no one went to church except for the kids who went to sunday school so the parents would have some peace and quiet on Sunday morning.  All the kids went to church, I might emphasize.

Anyway, no one wanted to teach our class.  We were awful.  Loud, crass, awful.

So the good Bp. Gordon B. Miner called my father, Ben R. Cannon and Ted Bandley to be the Sunday School teachers.  They were neighbors and buddies and of course never went to church.  They accepted the call.  After all, Bp. Miner evidently liked and trusted them to do no real harm, so how could they say no?

Every week, Ted would read the lesson right out of the manual without ever looking up.  Dad would run the room, hurting people if they dared step out of line.  I remember one week, Jon Hall was high up in the window sill, and dad lifted him down, just by two fingers by Jon's forearm, slowly and carefully, Jon hanging and flopping like a trout.  Jon, too tough to cry or yell, just took it.

Dad would squeeze the thigh, or shoulder of anyone who looked like they might try to act out of line.  That class never behaved better before or after that year.  It was an inspired call.

I don't know why everyone continued to come.  I imagine it was because no one dared tell their parents about what was happening at church.  I think once they got the gist of what was happening, the torture really didn't need to happen very often.  The parents didn't want their kids home and they also didn't want their kids behaving badly at church anyway.  They knew Dad and Ted and knew they'd treat them the same way at home anyway so what was the problem?  Those were different times anyway.  Those were the fifties.

Bp. Miner died last week at 92.  I bet God welcomed him home with open arms.   Who doesn't want a good man like that around?

I think my Dad and Ted welcomed him home, too.  How could they not like the guy, too.  He was just a really good guy like that.  He liked everyone.   He was just a really nice guy who wasn't judgmental like sometimes religious people can be.  He even liked that class of twelve-year-olds.  Enough to have them taken care of by a couple of guys who could do it.