Like just about every other building in Laredo before 1960 or so, the old First Baptist Church on Houston St. across from St. Peter’s Plaza had no air conditioning. On hot summer Sunday nights, the windows, which did have screens, and all the doors, which did not, would be wide open to let in whatever cooler air there might be. There were big ceiling fans spinning on the high ceilings, blowing the hot air drafts down on us — a reminder of the unquenchable fires of Gehenna where sinful souls like mine could expect to burn for eternity.
Bugs would fly in, beguiled by the electric seduction of the lights, June-bugs, cigarras, and other large flying insects native to Laredo’s northeast Chihuahua Desert ecosystem. Some of them flew right into the fan blades spinning above us. Stunned by the blow, the bugs would fall on the congregation’s heads. They were only stunned, and if one hit you, it would fly off in a second as it regained consciousness, long before you could swat at your head with any chance of knocking off the bug. It was always great fun for the bored children to watch the older church members who had hilariously awkward spasms of slapping and flailing away at the poor unconscious insects that had landed on their heads, shoulders, and laps. Some of the ancient men jerked their heads up, rudely awakened from peaceful sermon slumbers by crash-landing insects.
An alien (the extraterrestrial kind) who’d seen an old-fashioned insane asylum, the kind that existed before the practice of controlling behavior pharmaceutically, could easily have mistaken the First Baptist Church for Bedlam, just another place for crazy earthlings.
Bats flew in, too. Dazzled by the light, they would flutter around blindly above the congregation in the species’ characteristically jerky erratic path.
One Sunday night, a bat flew in just as the church organist, Mrs. Winnifred Bell, was playing an uplifting hymn solo.
The bat that Sunday night was totally confused. Perhaps it had flown through the smoke cloud of some vatos locos smoking mota out on the street by the plaza. But whether it was in an altered state of consciousness or not, this bat would veer up to the ceiling and then would make a crazy dive downward.
Over and over, like an air show.
Each time straight at Mrs. Bell.
By then she was playing without looking at the sheet music or the keyboard, her eyes locked on the Satanic bat dive-bombing her.And only her! No one else in the church was victimized. Either Mrs. Bell had a special appeal for the Evil One in chiropteran disguise, or her acoustic image in the bat’s sonic locator was mesmerizing.
Every time the bat fluttered down toward her, Mrs. Bell would cringe and duck, and the music veered off into a weird glissando worthy of the psychedelic bands I would be listening to several years — a lifetime — later.
The bat dives. Mrs. Bell cringes and ducks, her ample bosom pressing the keys in unusual achromatic chords. Her fingers slid across the keyboard, and the notes would go up and down the scale eeeeooooouuuuuuummm!
Again. And again!
My father and one of the other deacons stood up as if they could do something about it, but no, they were helpless, and nothing could be done about the bat.
Mrs. Bell finally just stopped the hymn in mid-verse. Once the preacher began his sermon, the threat of hellfire scared even the bat-out-of-hell, and it immediately flew back out into the sweltering darkness.
I got in trouble that night with my mom on the way home for irreverent laughing in church. By the time I was in high school my misbehavior had nothing to do with bugs or bats.
But the windows weren’t all that was open on those Sunday nights at First Baptist Church. The front doors were, too. Their welcoming symbolism could be misinterpreted by the odd characters who happened to be wandering down Houston St. toward downtown. More than once evening worship was interrupted by unexpected entrances.
Had these strange men just got off the 7:05 from San Antonio? Were they psycho-tourists on the way for Mexican mushrooms or the Yaqui wisdom of Don Juan? Or just fellows who’d had a few too many?
Missouri Pacific still ran passenger trains to the Laredo railway station six blocks away. So, in the category of the overheated, tired, disoriented traveler, I’d place the fellow with a valise in hand who stuck his head in the doorway and interrupted the Scripture reading to inquire with an annoyed expletive, “Where the hell is the Bender Hotel?”
The occasional drunk stumbled in and enjoyed a snooze in a back pew. They were left to sleep in peace — unless they snored too emphatically. One of the drinkers woke up sober enough to realize that he was in the First Baptist Church rather than the First Bacchic Church and exited post-haste for communion at another house of worship.
Then there were the cranks and crackpots who insisted on injecting their disputatious atheism into the evening’s worship. By 1950s Laredo standards, they were unusual looking. One had a big black beard Bluto might have envied. Another had long hair, something I’d never seen on any man — other than Jesus, of course. These strangers may have been wanderers, pseudo-hobos, kooks, or even Beat Generation wannabe’s, I don’t know. But they were typical street-corner, soap-box debaters, and they brought their proselytizing right down the main aisle.
Their arguments were the familiar clichés: the problem of evil in Creation, the paradox of God’s omniscience and free will, science vs. the Bible, the absurdity of miracles, the unholy history of Christian warfare, and so forth, with straining voices and much finger-waving. The Rev. Stanley was as patient as a parent with a raving teenager, and eventually, the disputations ended with no declared winner.
As with most things that take place according to a set ritual, children suffer terribly from their utter predictability. At least I did. The element of chaos that walked through those open doors were always entertaining respites from monotony.
The open windows and doors allowed yet another uninvited element to enter Sunday evenings at the First Baptist Church.
That was the annual St. Peter’s jamaica in the plaza across Houston St. (If you are not familiar with this Tejano festivity, just know that other than its name, the jamaica has nothing to do with the Caribbean island that gave the world reggae.)
Like every good parish jamaica in South Texas, there was plenty of food, as well as games of chance, and music, all in a festive atmosphere of business as unusual.
On jamaica Sunday nights, I’d be immobilized there in the pew within striking distance of my mother’s elbow, keeping an ear cocked toward the sounds of fun coming in from the plaza. My mind wandered out the window and across the street, imagining myself at the jamaica with one hand holding a taco al vapor and a Coca-Cola in the other, a raffle ticket in my pocket, and ranchera music in my ears.
Sixty years later, I can still hear the tipsy MC calling out on the portable PA system, “Officer Manzano! Officer Manzano! Report to the ticket booth immediately right away!”
I never did make it to a jamaica.
But I did go a few times in my imagination, sitting there in church listening to the polyphonic carnival going on in St. Peter’s Plaza, and the sounds are still in my head.
If only I could have one of those tacos…
