The Singles at First Baptist in Columbia had spent two summers in Philadelphia doing Vacation Bible School, and it seemed they both had been success stories, so we were asked to do the next summer in another part of the country--Smyrna, TN.
So, in 1982, we went to Smyrna and the First Baptist Church there. Nissan had built a plant there, and the church wanted us to come and do some outreach with the children of the workers, and thus VBS for preschoolers through six graders once again. I took my puppets with two other puppeteers. Our group consisted of fun-loving and committed young people. Each morning, we did three shows for the kids. We used the same scripts I had written for Philadelphia, but I changed some words to fit a more Southern audience.
Some man donated some campers for us to sleep in at night. They were parked in some woods off of the road. The campers slept 3-4 people in each, and of course they were not co-ed. After the first night of roughing it, a deputy showed up at our campsite. It seems that someone was not informed about our presence in the woods, so he came out to check on us. Even though he didn't like us camping there, as he thought we were trespassing, we convinced him that we were doing God's work, so he reluctantly let us stay there. It was only after the man, who owned the campers, said something to the sheriff, and we could stay. The deputy did make it clear to us that we needed to clear out by Friday, which was good for us, because we left Friday night.
In the afternoons and evenings, we had some free time, so we explored the area around Smyrna. For those who don't know, Smyrna is close to Nashville. Nashville would say that Smyrna is a suburb of that city. Smyrna would take exception to that notion. At any rate, there was a lot to see and do.
One place we went to was a Civil War battlefield. That was kind of spooky, because you could almost hear the cries of soldiers on both sides. I even thought I saw their blood on the rocks. We also did some shopping near there. The highlight though was our two trips to Nashville.
The first was to Opryland and the Grand Ole Opry. Opryland was an amusement park much like Six Flags. Everywhere you turned, there was either country or gospel music playing. I enjoyed Whack a Mole. We rode most of the rides, but the best was the flying swings. I must say for a church group, there was some profanity let out on that ride. It got to be rather funny. At the Opry, we saw Tom T. Hall and Jerry Clower. Jerry had me falling on the floor laughing. My stomach hurt from laughing so hard.
The second trip into Nashville was to see the headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention. I had never been to Nashville before, but it was like going to Mecca for me. My father had been in denominational work all of my life, and my mother had written Sunday School lessons and devotionals for the Convention. I had been to several Convention meetings, and countless numbers of conferences at Ridgecrest and Glorieta, but Nashville was where all the bigwigs worked. We toured the Sunday School Board, where all of the music and educational work was based. We saw where the printing of the literature was done. I also walked across the street to the First Baptist Church and saw how huge the sanctuary was. It was a special place for me, so I could go back home and tell my parents what I had seen.
We left Smyrna that Friday night to return home. We left in two vans. One of the vans had some trouble, while we had been in TN, but we had gotten it fixed, so we thought. The plan was to take the two vans down to Spartanburg, and meet up at one of our group's parents' house for breakfast. Each van had a walkie-talkie to communicate with the drivers if anyone wanted to stop along the way. So, down I-40 we went. Some of us wanted to sleep, so the decision was made to cut off our radio. We passed someone stopped on the side of the road, but since it was night, we didn't know who it was, so we kept going. When we got to Spartanburg, we rolled into the driveway and found the parents frantic. It seemed that the vehicle that we passed on the highway was the broken down van. Someone from the van had connected with a highway patrolman, and he had phoned the parents to say they were stuck on the highway. Our van driver went back a couple of hours to pick up the rest of our group. The breakfast was good though.
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