Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

"Welcome to our Bible School - we're so glad you're here.
And we hope you'll with us stay, God's own word to hear.
Learn with us of Jesus' love - how from heaven He came.
Died to save us, lives to keep us - Praise His holy name!"

And with this humble chorus of invocation it began. Vacation Bible School. VBS.

For most lucky children, VBS was an annual event, a time to sing and rough house and learn about Jesus and make meaningful Holy Spirit neck lanyards. A fun week. Just a week.

Not so for the boy-child District Superintendent. He was what is known in the business as a serial schooler - a child who frequents VBS after VBS throughout the summer, sometimes overlapping morning and evening.

It wasn't hard to do really. VBS was a family business. Like Santaguida and Sons Italian Bakery or Welch Bros. Plumbing, Vacation Bible Schools were literally our intergenerational bread and butter. My grandparents and my mother made their summer living traveling from small church to small church, staging a week Christian education at each.

Through years of trial and error, the family had perfected VBS into a well-oiled machine of inculcation. Everyone had their roles and responsibilities. My primary occupations were puppet set up and playing the piano for song time. Puppetry was the cash cow of VBS and I was the puppet master. I carefully erected the stage and skirted it with fabric and thumb tacks. Each puppet - antique by any standard by the time I became their keeper - had to be carefully groomed and placed behind the acid green dollhouse that was their home.

This was no easy task. In fact, it was physically grueling. Elmer and Lopsy, the crocodile and bunny rabbit that mouthed morality tales from the dollhouse, were nothing. It was their sound that was a bitch. Scripts were recorded onto reel to reel and played through a Wollensak recorder that weighed as much as a Buick. Just making sure that everything was straight and the recorder in place was enough to overwhelm a lesser child. I flourished.

Far more glamorous was my role at the keyboard. I didn't play for the opening or closing - at least not yet - for I hadn't perfected the arpeggios and glissandos that were necessary for the full assembly. My musical genius was saved for a parade of classes that came for song instruction. First kindergarten, then primaries, then juniors. After you graduated juniors, you were either spiritually complete and on your road to the mission field or a derelict on the broad road to candy cigarettes and Mad Magazine.

Moving from church to church was no easy life. Being gypsies for Jesus took a lot of work. We pulled a large trailer behind my Grandfather's Oldsmobile and parked it in the patchy gravel beside the chapel du jour. The bonus was that in the hick towns of Seelyville, Indiana or Crestline, Ohio, we were minor celebrities. Kind of like a tatty circus with one tired elephant or Huck Finn's Royal Nonesuch.

The components of our VBS were as complex as they were prescriptive. The show was the same from town to town. Lots of sticky kindergarteners and a bumper crop of primaries - all learning their rote and incomprehensible King James Bible verses and screeching songs of salvation. There were portions though, that were mesmerizing. Of course, the puppetry which ended the night was much anticipated and way too short for most tastes. And the stories.

My Grandfather was a master yarn spinner, a scop who could enthrall the youthful audiences with his dramatically rendered tales of sin and redemption, parableized in Scene-O-Felt. The upscale cousin of Sunday School flannelgraph, Scene-O-Felt was handsomely painted on thickly swatched wool. Each night, a different set of figures appeared on the black-draped easel, their silhouetted shapes telling allegories of children who were wayward and willful who repented and lived lives of entire sanctification. I got saved hundreds of times under their mythical spell.

There is simply too much VBS for one post. This story, were it told in Scene-O-Felt, would not be through a mere half of the carefully numbered pieces, each waiting to be adhered to the story board. You, gentle reader, will have to return to VBS tomorrow night. Please bring a friend who was not here this evening: someone you believe needs the love of Jesus in a special way. And don't forget your dimes for the offering.