TBT

#TBT: Indoor revival meeting in Portland, Oregon

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Portland, Oregon Revival Meeting, August 1966

 

In researching my memoir, I oftentimes revved up my roadster and slipped into the role of my alter ego, Nancy Drew.  I’ve gathered clues from the National Archives; I’ve explored the sites of former tent revivals and churches, long since demolished; and I’ve unearthed numerous artifacts, along the Sawdust Trail.

And so it is, that on this Throwback Thursday (#TBT), I’m recalling that other blogging meme, Thankful Thursday. I unearthed this classified ad in the Portland, Oregonian archives. Like so many other treasures I’ve collected, it could’ve been lost to time and decay, were it not for for the myriad librarians, genealogists and archivists who’ve devoted their time and energies to the preservation of our individual and shared histories.

#TBT: Tent revival meeting in Tennessee

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My father’s just 29 years old in this photograph, taken well before my time and stashed among my sister Coral’s belongings for a good many years.. The canvas cathedral’s been lifted into place, and preparations are underway for a Pentecostal revival meeting in Johnson City, Tennessee.  Coral is sitting on my father’s lap, eyes keened on the family dog, Chow-Chow, who’s shaking my father’s hand. My brother Roger is lingering in the background, taking in the entire scene as it unfolds.

We lived like nomads when I was younger, so it’s no surprise that only a handful of  family heirlooms survived. But when my father died, I found that very hat in his belongings. Or at least, one that’s remarkably similar. It rests on my bookcase, next to my own Rebecca-of-Sunnybrook-Farm straw hat.

Happy Birthday to my father, Clifford Suva, who would’ve been 98 years old yesterday.

#TBT A wheel within a wheel, circling back

First up, some bizarre but really fun pictures of an “alien sighting,” via last weekend’s getaway to Palm Desert.

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I love quirky stuff like this, don’t you?

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Using the unfamiliar to instill fear, not so much.

This being Throwback Thursday (#TBT), I’m harkening back to a time when that happened. You see, alien beings aren’t a foreign concept for those of us who grew up in the 1960s, when the Space Race was at its peak and tales of UFO sightings ran rampant. It was then, right before President Kennedy was shot, that an evangelist stood at the platform of  my father’s nondenominational church in Dallas, whispering conspiratorially to an enthralled congregation.

Dr. Frank Stranges first recalled for us Ezekiel’s prophetic vision of a fiery, whirlwind-driven, wheel-within-a-wheel in the skies–proof, he suggested, of ancient astronauts. Louder still, he spoke of extraterrestrials, come to earth. “The End Times are drawing nigh,” Stranges warned, and he illustrated that belief with a series of grainy black-and-white glossies of Unidentified Flying Objects, pinned in dramatic fashion to a clothesline he’d strung from one end of the platform to the other. “Read it for yourself,”  he said, “It’s in the Bible. It’s also in my book.”

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4th edition, via ResourceBooks, LLC

Dr. Frank Stranges went on to make a name for himself, in that he became something of a cult figure who authored several books. He also appears in my own book, CAN I GET A WITNESS? Memoir of a Tent Evangelist’s Daughter. Why, you ask? Because aside from that revival meeting in Dallas, Stranges was the assistant minister at a church my father owned for a short time in Oakland, California.

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Oakland Tribune Classifieds (Friday, 13 March, 1959)

Say what you will about his theories, Frank Stranges was a great storyteller. He knew how to rub together two sticks of implausibility until they generated light and heat.  And so it was that, after forging a link between ancient prophesies and “modern science,” Stranges whirled around the platform, hoisted his Bible above those 8 x 10″ glossies and brought the congregation to its knees with a fiery sermon about sin and redemption, the Rapture and Armageddon.

Did I fall under the spell of his stories? I hope you’ll read the answer for yourself someday…It’s all in my book. Which, by the way, I’ve just recently sent out on submission.