Church and Church Key in Kellogg

While growing up in Kellogg, I had this idea that our town was divided between the churches and the taverns. I know it wasn't this simple, but I saw it all around me. I got the idea from this idea that church life was a teetotaling life and people who drank alcohol didn't go to church.

My family make-up reinforced this idea. My mother went to church sometimes, but was adamant about my sisters and me going to Sunday School and junior choir. My mom didn't drink.

My dad, on the other hand, rarely went to church and drank alcohol daily, except when he decided from time to time to go on the wagon. He called the opener he used to crack open bottles or pierce a can of beer a church key. Mom was of the church and he was of the church key.

I know that from outside Kellogg, it looked like our town was all about hard work and drinking, gambling, fights, and, until the new freeway construction razed the houses, prostitution (though there prostitutes who worked out of the McConnell Hotel), Kellogg also supported strong Lutheran, Baptist, Roman Catholic, United, Mormon, Assembly of God, Nazerine, and other non-denominational congregations.

I knew Kellogg's Catholics drank alcohol. Many of the Italians in town were Roman Catholic and many of them bellied up to the bar with my dad at Dick and Floyd's and I knew that some of the Italians made their own wine and I'd gone to the annual Italian picnic with my dad and the alcohol flowed freely.

I knew of Lutherans who drank. So I knew that there was crossover, but the prevailing idea in my head was that alcohol and serious church attendance didn't mix. Therefore, it didn't surprise me when one of my dad's friends, whose wife and kids were devoted to the United Church across the street from our house, came to the church to pick up the family, he didn't go in the church, but sat in his car, waiting, drinking a six-pack of beer in the church parking lot.

All through high school, I drank very little beer. Once I started college, this changed. I also sang in the choir at North Idaho College with Rick Frost, a wonderful choir director, and a very public Christian and a teetotaler. Being Christian, Rick attracted many Christians to the choir and I became friends with some of these choir members and I felt torn by the faith these friends professed and my drinking.

In other words, I internalized the conflict I perceived between church and drinking. Once I started drinking, I took on my father's attitude toward church: drinking made me unworthy of the church. I felt guilty when I saw church members and if I went to church I felt like a hypocrite. On the other hand, if I decided to go to church, I felt embarrassed with my friends who were drinkers and who didn't go to church.

This division continued after I graduated from North Idaho College. I transferred to Whitworth College. It's a Christian college. I think I felt like I could shelter myself in North Spokane away from alcohol and be a teetotaler in a Christian atmosphere. It didn't take me long, of course, to discover that many students at Whitworth drank alcohol. At first I was disillusioned. But as time went along, I began to think of myself as being sort of a hip Whitworthian because I began to believe I had integrated the worlds of the church and church key.

I drank alcohol at Whitworth and I worshipped. Upon graduation, in 1976, I got a job as a Chaplain's Assitant at Whitworth. I celebrated winning the job by having a nice dinner and wine with friends and then came back to my dorm and drank a couple of coffee mugs of Chevis Regal with Dave in my dorm and was so hungover the next day I could barely wiggle.

It wasn't the last time my chaplain's work and alcohol crossed paths.

This divide I perceived in Kellogg and felt within myself played itself out most clearly when my younger sister, Carol, got married in July, 1986. I had quit drinking the year before. I had come to the conclusion that I had a terrible drinking problem, and had been maintaining sobriety with the help of a couple of 12-step groups for about eighteen months by the time of the wedding.

Carol and her groom, Paul, were deeply committed to a non-denominational Christian church, the Christian Life Center. Paul's family had been pillars in this church for many years and it had taken hold in Kellogg very strongly.

When the wedding ended and the wedding reception started in Mom and Dad's back yard, across the street from the United Church, where the wedding took place, I was in charge of the bar. I could be trusted with pouring drinks and serving beer because I was sober.

As I started pouring some ditches and gin and tonics and screwdrivers and handing out some beers, I noted that our backyard had become a divided place. Members of the Christian Life Center occupied the west half of the back yard and the boisterous drinkers who were all family friends occupied the east half. As had been the case in my years growing up in Kellogg, the teetotalers and the drinkers were keeping their distance and didn't really know how to get on with each other.

I took a "what will be will be" attitude toward this division since there was not hostility, only awkwardness. But, after an hour or so, the groom, Paul and his brothers and his sister took out their guitars and a banjo and stood in the middle of the yard and began to play and sing.

Their wonderful playing and singing attracted immediate attention. My dad's friends inched toward the music. So did the church members. Pretty soon Dad's friends, a little lit up, but not sloppy, began to compliment the musicians to the church members, employing all their concentration not to say, "Son of bitch, these kids are goddamned good" and instead saying things, a bit artifically, like "These kids are great musicians. You must be very proud of them."
Joyful laughter accompanied these words of praise.

The music broke the division. The music seemed to cast a spell on those celebrating my sister's marriage to Paul that erased the self-consciousness of the polite church-goers unsure of how to mix with the more rough and tumble drinkers and of the drinkers acting sure that they were being held in judgment by the Christians.

Like most such magic moments, this one ended when the party dispersed. My dad's friends did not become members of the Christian Life Center and members of the church did not all grab a bottle of Oly and start telling stories spiced with profanity.

My period of sobriety lasted until fall, 1996. For mental and physical health reasons, I'm in another period of abstinence which I think will last a long time.

My struggle now is less with church and the church key as it is with refinement and vulgarity. Whether I'm drinking or not, I've been blessed by growing up in Kellogg with a profane mouth, a love of dirty jokes, vulgar phrases, giving and taking shit from people, and the kind of unrestrained humor that I learned in the Zinc Plant, from my high school friends, and at home. But, I work in higher education.

The classroom is not the right place for this love I have of profanity, irreverent comments, and picking on people. (Fortunately, I have several fellow teacher friends who don't mind too much if I lengthen the leash and some students with whom I can be myself away from the classroom.) But, in the public square, the prevailing tone and attitude is to be refined, not profane, and so I watch my tongue. Too many people take too much pride in how easily they can be offended.

I fight this all the time. How much, in the academic context, can I be my full self? How much should I hold back? How much can I let my personality rip? How about at home? In a way, my job has become what church used to be and watching my tongue as become the equivalent of not drinking.

I suppose it's why when I get excited about something around my family or enjoy a poem with my students or want to compliment a piece of student writing, I don't say, "It's like a wooden dick: you can't beat it."

I wait until I get back to Kellogg to speak such words that reflect my personality that honestly.

Kellogg Tour: Uptown, Photos taken 12/30/2006 (Part 4)

In its heyday, Kellogg's uptown area bustled with taverns, churches, clothing stores, banks, cafes, the city library, the Elks Club, car dealerships, furniture stores, drug stores, a bakery, an office supply store, etc. It's hard to believe, looking back, that so much was going on. Today, January 1, things have slowed down considerably. Here's a view looking up Kellogg's empty Main Street:


Where there used to be clothing stores and a loan center, now these second hand stores operate:




My dad's favorite bar is gone. Here is Dick and Floyd's exterior:




Next door is the entrance to the old IOOF hall. Our church was too small to hold all the Sunday School classes, so we older kids had Sunday School class upstairs through this door:




It's a gymnastics center now, but until I was in about the fifth or sixth grade, this was the United Church of Kellogg:




In the last year, Emmanuel Episcopal Church merged with the parish in Wallace. Consequently, the church building uptown is up for sale:


For years, the most important place for me and my friends was the YMCA, long since closed:


Right next door to the YMCA was the little office and waiting room where Bunker Hill's employing agent Albi Sinks handed out orders, telling new employees where and who to report to when we started a new job for Uncle Bunker:



I hear that Dick and Floyd's and the YMCA and employment office are all being remodeled into condos. I hope the new residents don't mind the sounds of ghosts swimming, playing basketball, getting drunk, and being hired out on a new job.

Three Beautiful Things 12/29/06: Cronies, Shoe Relief, Book Gift

1. Mom, Jane, Christy and I went out to breakfast this morning at CJ's Cafe and saw a bunch of Kellogg men who meet every day at the cafe. I was especially grateful that Keith Green, another Dick and Floyd's softball teammate came over to our table to say hello. He escorted me to their table and I enjoyed shaking hands with Jack Wombolt and Floyd Williams (former proprietor of Dick and Floyd's) and seeing Mike Bencich again.

2. Finding out that a shoe Snug had chewed the end of the heel off of was actually a toy, not a shoe anyone wears. Beauty in relief.

3. Paul, my brother-in-law, finished Michael Lewis' book, "The Blind Side". He has been reading it non-stop since yesterday and was fully engrossed. I thought he'd love it. That's why I gave it to him for Christmas. I really do enjoy getting the gift of a book right!

The 1964 World Serious

October 1964
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In 1964, all the World Series games were still played during the day. Many, many people were more serious about the World Series than about their day jobs. My dad always called the World Series the World Serious. I think that's why.

I don't know why I didn't have school on October 15, 1964. Maybe it was one of those days when our teachers had meetings in Coeur d'Alene. Moreover, I don't know why my dad was off that day. It wasn't like him to dump a shift at work. But, maybe, in order to watch the seventh game of the 1964 World Series between the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals with me, he skipped work.

Maybe Dad felt like he owed me one.

He and I had been in a heated battle over this World Series. Dad loved the Yankees. He loved Micky Mantle. His other favorite was Yogi Berra. In 1964, Berra managed the Yankees and Mantle was in the dusk of his career.

I had gone my own way. I became a National League fan in 1962 out of heartbreak. In the 1962 World Series, when the Giants' Willie McCovey, his team down 1-0, two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, Felipe Alou on third and Willie Mays on second, smashed a screaming line drive into the desperate, spearing glove of the Yankees' second baseman, Bobby Richardson, it ended the seventh game of the 1962 World Series and my love affair with the Giants began. So did my love for the National League. So did my life-long love affair with baseball bridesmaids, second place teams, perennial losers, and underdogs.

As the 1964 World Series opened, Dad and I laid down a World Serious wager. I took this bet very world seriously. It was as if my Christmas gifts or whether I'd get to play Little League or whether I could put my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Denlinger on the trading block hung in the balance. I sorely, desperately wanted to beat my dad, even if the bet was only for a quarter.

He knew this.

Dad was confident the Yankees would win. He baited me, teased me, introduced me to the world of Silver Valley smack talk. After Mickey Mantle homered in the bottom of the ninth off knuckleballer Barney Schultz to beat the Cardinals in Game 3, I picked a throw rug off the living room floor and slapped the television. Dad siezed the moment. He went to Don Rinaldi's market on Mullan Street and made a taunting poster out of butcher paper and wax marker mocking the pitching efforts of Schultz. One problem: his poster called Schultz "Willie the Knuck" instead of "Barney the Knuck" and after I quit bawling, I taunted my dad back for his error and our World Serious war momentarily melted into roaring laughter.

After Dad made me cry with this poster, I thought I'd show him how tough I was. I went to the Public Library and checked out a biography of Yogi Berra. When the Yankees won Game 6 and dad started giving me the business, I opened the book to show him I could take it. The moment got lost, though. I was crying so hard at being teased, I couldn't read the words through my tears.

"Son, come on. You don't need to do that," Dad said, an air of new respect in his voice. I was determined, though, and continued to try to read the Yogi book, my throat sore from crying.

For Game 7, Dad took me to his favorite soda fountain and bar, Joe and Henry's (later to become Dick and Floyd's). Joe and Henry's was Yankee central. Sports pictures covered the wall opposite the bar, including one of Henry posing with Joe DiMaggio when DiMaggio had spoken at a sports banquet in Coeur d' Alene or Spokane. Dick Costa, the bartender, like many of his customers, was Italian, and the Italians in Kellogg felt like blood brothers with the great Italian Yankess: DiMaggio, Rizutto, Berra, and others.

I was in the enemy's lair.

Dad asked Dick if I could watch the game in the bar. Dick went to the back of the establishment and found a wood Pepsi crate and placed in on his side of the bar below the television. I was out of sight of any policemen or liquor board inspectors who might stroll in that afternoon. I had to crane my neck to look up at the television, but I got to watch the game without sitting at the bar. Dad bought me a hot dog and all the root beer I could drink.

The battle between Dad and me died. We had such a great time watching Game 7 that when the Cardinals, behind the power pitching of Bob Gibson and the hitting of Ken Boyer and Lou Brock, built a six run lead by the fifth inning and held on to win, 7-5, the smack talk was over and we left the bar together the closest to peers we had ever been.

Our days in Joe and Henry's/Dick and Floyd's had just begun. But that day, watching Game 7, settling our bet, putting down the verbal swords and the emotional machetes, sharing the company of Dad's friends on his turf, made the 1964 World Series the most memorable of many memorable World Series to come.