Where Dad grew up

Lucas CRC, Lucas, MI

I know I was there before, but I honestly have no idea when. My guess is that, years ago, I escaped the writing conference at Calvin for a day, took off in whatever rental car I was driving, and headed up north toward a place named Lucas, Michigan. The son of a preacher, my dad might have some hesitation about calling Lucas home, but that's where Grandpa Schaap held forth when my dad was a boy, one of three Schaap boys, all of whom spoke fondly of Lucas and "the Lucas church," when the name or place found its way into the merry-making at family gatherings.

 

Uncle Jay especially had the stories, stories of the Schaap boys, who weren't always the angels the preacher's sons were ordained to be. I'm quite sure I never heard all of the stores--some never got repeated, I'm sure--but between my dad and his brothers, it seemed to me that, had I asked, Dad would have chosen Lucas as his hometown because that's where he grew up.

It's not an ambiguous phrase really, but it means more than the words say--"where he grew up." What he meant was a good deal more than simply surpassing scratched-in pencil marks on a door frame. I'm thinking it might well have been the place where he pushed his way out of childhood innocence and stumbled like a newborn calf into a life that's a whole lot bigger and wider, less of a romp and more of a mystery. It's where he came of age.

We had to search to find it. In fact we had to ask--twice--because it seems to me that Lucas CRC is--or was--a country church, a big white, old-fashioned place built out in the country where the farmers who made up the congregation tended their cows. Today, it stands up the street a ways from what seemed to us to be the town, but the Lucas church wasn't new--it wasn't some modern design in brick or Lanin stone. It was white, frame, barn-like really. I'm sure it was the same building that stood there long ago when my dad was a boy, a century ago.

Uncle Jay remembered every last naughty thing he and his friends--the Meekhof boys, I remember--pulled off, but the Lucas story that arose about (but rarely from) Dad was something about a sled and a winter accident that happened because Dad was being reckless--or at least more reckless than Mom and Dad (the Dominie and his juffrouw) expected of him. The story was about a sled and an accident and all of it happened right across the road from the Lucas church on or just off of that steep hill, across the street from the Lucas parsonage, which is still there today. 

I wish I knew  the story. What I know is that once upon a time he got hurt when he wasn't being as careful as he should have been, and it happened right there near the church and parsonage. 

Two men were laying new flooring in the parsonage the morning we got off the freeway to look for Lucas. The parsonage looked vacant. I couldn't help wondering whether the congregation was hoping new flooring in the old place would make a call a bit more enticing.

Not long ago, Dad's birthday passed without me saying much at all about it--even thinking about it. It's July 26, a date I'll always remember, even when I forget. He might well say something different, but I can't help thinking that I'm far more like him than either of us might care to admit. 

He was born in 1918, which means he'd be 105 years old were he still around. But he isn't. And he wasn't a couple of weeks ago on that bright, sunny morning we stopped at the church and parsonage where he grew up. In Lucas, MI, what little I know of that sledding accident is all that remains of him or his time there. No one in the old folks home, in all likelihood, would remember him, much less my grandfather's serious pulpit carriage.

All that life has passed away, gone forever. Had we been able to get into the old church, we may have found Grandpa Schaap's picture hanging in the consistory room, along with a gallery of other old bucks. Then again, maybe some folks took them all down--"nobody sees them anyway," someone might have said.

All things must pass, say the Beatles and the Bible. It's a note that might have been sung in the old church a thousand times in its 150 years, a truth my dad might have noted a dozen times at least during after devotions after supper.

Frequent repetition doesn't make the truth any easier to take when you stand out on the sidewalk of the church your Grandpa once led and look over the driveway at the parsonage where your dad's room, upstairs, was in a place I think I could find on my own, even though I've never been inside.

"All things must pass/all things must pass away."

I hope you had a happy birthday, Dad. Sorry about forgetting. BTW, we stopped in Lucas last week . . .

This morning, I'm thankful for a fragment of a story I barely remember in a place we visited, just for a few minutes, a week or so ago.

The parsonage where Dad grew up