Heaven Is In Your Mind (#atozchallenge)

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Heaven Is In Your Mind

        When I was seven years of age my family moved to a duplex in the Penn Hills area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.   Practically in our backyard was a tiny Free Methodist Church which became the church we not only began to attend on Sundays, but it became the focal point of my social life.  The pastor gave me my very first personal copy of a Bible which I still have in my possession.  This began my lifetime spiritual journey.

        My father was deeply interested in the Bible and all things related to Jesus and seemed very pleased about the interest which I took in the church.  We had never been involved in any church up to that time although my father frequently read from and quoted passages from the Bible.  In our first Christmas at that house--this would have been the Christmas of 1958--my father gave me a two volume book set concerning Bible commentary and history and an art book with paintings depicting scenes from the Bible.   I spent many hours with these books and the Bible given to me by the church pastor.

         These studies stayed with me throughout my life, having a great influence on my thinking and my actions.  We moved from Pennsylvania the following year and relocated first in San Diego, California; then Crown Point, Indiana; and finally Maryville, Tennessee.  Often our family attended church, but sometimes there would be lapses.  Through the years matters concerning God, the Bible, and Heaven were always in my mind.

         Even in my wilder days of college and some years after I was never far from my spiritual side.  I always maintained some limits.   I still dreamed of some future place where absolute goodness reigned.  I suppose once Heaven is in your mind it's difficult to get it out.

          Were you involved in any sort of religious activity as a child?   Did spiritual matters ever enter your mind when you were young?   How has your outlook towards spirituality changed since becoming an adult?

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My School Lunch Box

Lunch boxes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

         I sure wish I still had my lunch box from back when I was in second grade.  That was over fifty years ago so that thing might be worth a few bucks.

         I can't even remember what kind of lunchbox it was.  It may have been one depicting Hopalong Cassidy since I was a big fan as a child.  Looking back, I'm not sure what Hoppy's appeal was to boys back then.  It was an innocent time when television was still new and we were the benefactors of the heroes of our fathers.  Hopalong could never reach hero status in today's world.  In the fifties I don't know that "cutting edge" was used in the sense of something that was trendy.  Cutting edge would not be a phrase that would be used to describe Hopalong Cassidy.   Hopalong was an intergenerational  fad in his day--something not often seen in today's pop culture.

          If Hopalong wasn't the icon on the lunchbox then it was probably some other Western hero such as Roy Rogers or Davy Crockett.  But whoever it might have been was not the biggest item of interest for me.  The metal lunch box was pretty nifty and all, but the Thermos inside was the feature attraction as far as I was concerned.  

         What sold me on the Thermos was that I could carry hot soup to school.  That was pretty amazing to me.  On a cold day during lunch I could open my Thermos and pour hot soup into the little plastic cup that fit onto the top of the bottle.  It was a marvel of marvels as far as I was concerned.  Inside that tin box depicting cowboys was a contraption of science fiction proportions--a wonder of the modern age.

           Hot soup was probably not the only liquid I carried in my Thermos.  I undoubtedly carried cold beverages as well, but I can't remember exactly what they might have been.  What I did know--and something that was part of the Thermos advertising campaign--was that this magic bottle kept liquids hot or cold until needed.

           This was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the school year of 1958.  We'd moved to the Penn Hills neighborhood from Cleveland, Ohio.   We moved to Penn Hills during the summer of 1958 and stayed until almost the end of the school year leaving at the beginning of June 1959 when we were uprooted to San Diego, California.   That year at the Penn Hills school would be the only time I would ever carry a lunchbox to school.

           Seeing as how the lunchbox didn't get that much use, it was probably in pretty good condition after we left Pittsburgh.  I'm sure I found a way to trash it though.  I distinctly remember breaking the inside of the Thermos at some point.  I probably wanted to see how the darn thing worked.  I had a habit of doing that sort of thing when I was younger.

           The tin box is another story.  Maybe I used it to keep things in for a while.  Can't rightly say that I remember.  Somehow the box faded out of my life like so many things I'd had as a child.   If I had known better, I would have kept it and preserved it.   But why would I think of such a thing.  It was just a tin box to carry sandwiches and cupcakes in and it once had a Thermos bottle in it that I broke to see how it worked.

           I guess I probably should have taken better care of a lot of things and kept them.  My parents would have loved that.  Our house would have looked like one of those houses you see in those television shows about hoarders.   I'd bet you a Thermos bottle full of hot soup that some of those hoarders you see on television have old lunch boxes kind of like the one I had.  Their lunch boxes might even still have old sandwiches in them and soup in the Thermos bottles.

         Maybe it's a good thing that I don't have that lunch box anymore.  But still I wonder.

     

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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Photo credit: Dougtone)

     
         When my family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1958 I was entering the second grade.  We moved into a newer duplex home at the bottom of a hill in the Penn Hills suburb.  The school I attended was at the top of that hill and there was a Free Methodist Church practically in our back yard.  I spent a lot of time at that church and this was when I began to read my Bible and think a lot about God.

         With this new move came new things.  My parents had lived in a number of places after I was born and each move seemed like a step up.  The move to Pittsburgh brought the first purchases of new furniture for our young family.  Along with the furniture came luxuries like a better television, a hi-fi record player that played LP records, and an 8 mm movie camera.

         Many of my Pittsburgh memories come from the 8 mm movie films that we viewed for many years afterward.  My actual memories are as fragmented as those films.  The memories come in disconnected snippets--visits to Kennywood Park, sled riding on the hillside behind our house, going early morning bird-watching with the pastor's wife on Saturdays, playing baseball in the backyard, and watching my parents juggle.   My parents spent a lot of time practicing their juggling act if they weren't actually out performing.

         One evening I recall hearing my mother wailing in distress.  She informed my sister and I through her tearful sobs that my father had been hit by a car.   My little man insides seemed to drop, leaving me in a depth of sadness.  Now that my father was dead what would we do.  He had been the one who worked and provided for us.  I was afraid of the uncertainty that lay ahead.

          But my father hadn't died.   He'd been taken to a hospital, but he was soon released with not much more than a big bruise on his hip.  With the heightened drama of reactions my mother often had to events, things sometimes seemed much worse than they were.  And the mind of a child can step the fantasy up a notch.

         I seem to recall hearing about a bus accident in downtown Pittsburgh while we were living there.  I thought I read in the newspaper about how the bus crashed into a department store display window.  After the accident bloodied bodies were draped upon the furniture that was in the window displays.  There was death and carnage all over the sidewalk.  Many people had died and many more were injured.

         Well, that's what I remembered.  Actually I doubt that I was reading the newspaper when I was in the second grade.   There might have been a bus accident, but I probably blew it way out of proportion.  I suppose I take after my mother in that respect.

           I sometimes wonder which of my childhood memories are real and which were fabricated by a child with a vivid imagination.

           Do you have childhood memories that you're not sure if they are real or not?   At what age are your earliest memories?



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