Clarence Jenkins

Clarence Jenkins was a singer and song leader at Jackson Street.
Jackson Street was the Central Alabama Pentecostal church
I was raised-in as a child
during the late 1950s and early 60s.
Clarence was a big man.
Big and robust, about six-foot six, two hundred eighty-five pounds
in his stocking feet.
He was in a parachute regiment during WWII and had jumped into Normandy on D-Day
and later into
Holland.
He played softball for the Methodists and went to all
the Sidney Lanier High School football games.
These activities were considered worldly and ungodly
by all the seriously sanctified at Jackson Street,
yet he somehow managed to do all that
and still lead the choir
without raising too many
eyebrows.
He wasn’t much on prayer meeting and rarely,
if ever,
came to revivals.
Clarence’s secret to successful song leading was swift, short, circular arm strokes
and a booming baritone
voice.
He never missed a beat.
He never got lost.
He always held his hymnal in his left hand
and stroked with his right.
He lost the faith sometime in my early teens
and stopped coming to church.
I only saw him once again at a funeral.
I have always wondered why his music faded and his enormous smile dimmed …
especially after I learned
what all he had gone through
during the war.
He died in the early 90s and rests near his wife
who survived him for about
nine years.
I still miss the smile.
Sometimes
I can still hear the
baritone.

**

Burl and May

Burl Jenkins was Clarence Jenkins younger brother.
Clarence called him his “little brother.”
Not that Burl was little.
He was about six foot four, two fifty
soaking wet.
Burl sang with other members of his family
in a popular quartet at Jackson Street,
the Pentecostal church my parents raised me in
during the late 1950s and
early to mid-60s.
Burl hadn’t gone to the Second World War like his older brother
but he also loved sport like Clarence.
He played first string tight-end for
Sidney Lanier during his high school
years.
Burl would sometimes get an overdose of
religion
and preach a little at singings.
Burl’s wife May played the piano by ear.
She was the pianist of the family quartet
and for a long time
tickled the ivories for the Jackson Street
Sunday morning services.
She could play in every key
except A-flat.
For years Burl and May tried unsuccessfully
to have a child.
When all efforts proved
futile,
Burl bought May a miniature
Chihuahua dog to abate her sense of loneliness
and to somehow assuage her fears of being a barren woman.
They had had the dog for about three years
when May miraculously conceived.
When the child was born,
the dog grieved itself
to death.

**

Buzz

The first time I ever saw Buzz
he was throwing a slow-pitch softball game
at a Sunday afternoon church picnic.
I was about seven years old then.
Buzz turned-out to be the future husband of Ruth Jenkins
Clarence and Burl Jenkins’ little sister and my on-and-off Sunday School teacher.
Her family was influential at Jackson Street, the Pentecostal church
I was raised-in
as a child in
Central Alabama.
Buzz was quiet and extremely polite.
Although he would turn somewhat charismatic after marrying Ruth,
he was Southern Baptist to the core.
His father was an ordained Southern Baptist minister who
pastured a large congregation in Montgomery.
Buzz was tall, thin, ruddy with
dirty-blonde
hair.
Buzz and Ruth sang together in a gospel quartet
that made the rounds of
Baptist and Pentecostal singings in
Central and South Alabama
in the mid-1960s.
They eventually had two boys,
both with blonde hair
just like their
father.
Ruth would also eventually die of cancer leaving
Buzz
to raise the boys
alone.
She believed in faith healing and refused to have surgery
or take any type of treatment after she found a small lump in her left breast.
“It’s all in God’s hands,”
she said.
I never found-out what Buzz really
thought about bringing-up his boys without a
mother.

**

Tim Greer

Tim was a middle-aged, totally bald gentleman
who was known for many years as
“the voice” of the Jackson Street choir.
I grew-up in Jackson Street, a Pentecostal church in Montgomery, Alabama.
Mr. Greer never wore suits to church as was the custom in those days, but he was still
the best dressed man in the congregation.
He fancied sport coats, flannel slacks and pigskin loafers.
He even wore an ascot at Christmas.
He only worshipped on Sundays and
never came to revivals or prayer meeting.
On Sundays however,
Tim was in fighting-form.
In those days, Clarence Jenkins was the Jackson Street choir leader.
Clarence had a habit of selecting old-timey Methodist spirituals
that Tim really loved.
Mr. Greer would return Clarence’s favor.
Tim was famous for getting-in-the-spirit and repeating a chorus line
over and over, something Clarence – as well as the congregation – dearly loved.
Clarence would always watch Tim and
when Tim suddenly got worked-up and began to repeat a chorus,
Clarence would just carry the rest of the choir right along with him
with his famous right handed short-strokes
and his booming baritone voice.
Together they were renown for “Lord Lead Me On, From Day to Day,”
and “When the Home Gates Swing Open for Me.”
Theirs was indeed a symbiotic relationship … they lived-off one another.
Kind of like a white bird on a Black Angus bull.
If you loved spirituals and good gospel singing this was the cat’s pajamas.
In fact, this was one of the main reasons you went to a Pentecostal church
to begin with.
Tim’s tenure as “the voice” of Jackson Street came to an end
when Clarence suffered a lapse of faith
and stopped coming to church.
Less than six months after Clarence was replaced as choir leader,
Tim began to have sharp, excruciating pains in his right side.
He went to the doctor and was rushed almost immediately to surgery.
He was ate-up with cancer
and died within a few days.
Clarence Jenkins tried to sing at Tim’s funeral.
He took it very hard.
Over the years and more often than not on a really dark night of the soul
I have been able to hear those old-timey Methodist spirituals, with Clarence and Tim’s repeated chorus lines and re-live fascinating episodes of my childhood at Jackson Street.
I have never been able to figure-out who was the Black Angus bull
and who was the egret.

**

J.W.

J.W. was a blue-eyed,
lightweight,
blonde-headed guy
with a crew cut
me and my family met
at Jackson Street.
Jackson Street was
the Pentecostal church
my mama and daddy
attended
when I was a child.
J.W. was part-time
and later full-time usher
after Brother Pridgeon
stopped coming to church
on a regular basis.
Brother Pridgeon had been
a stalwart
at Jackson Street and
at one time
was also my Sunday School teacher.
Somehow he turned
lukewarm.
J.W. quietly took his place.
Becoming a regular usher
was a respected thing
at Jackson Street,
especially for a guy so young.
J.W. was originally from Chilton County,
right outside Clanton.
When I was a freshman and sophomore
in high school,
J.W. and I ran-around a little.
He drove a used Pontiac
he had bought
from Burl Jenkins.
It could fly.
He usually carried
a sub-nose .22 magnum pistol
he called a short-gun and
one well-worn,
foil wrapped
Trojan condom
he always kept
in his wallet for
“emergencies.”
After he finished military service,
he worked for years
at the glass plant
in Boylston
until it moved its operation
to Malaysia
and closed down.
For many years J.W.
suffered a divorce.
When I started to high school,
my mama told me that J.W.
had come home early
from the glass plant
one day
to find both his wife
and soon-to-be
ex-best friend
in birthday suits.
J.W. carried around
his pain
like he did his condom.
Only it didn’t need
a well-worn
aluminum wrapper
to remain effective,
and it never had
emergencies.
J.W. and I went to all
the church parties,
hayrides and singings
up in Wetumpka
and Autauga County.
Even to football games
now and then.
J.W. was a straight-up guy,
reticent and unassuming.
What you saw
was what you got.
After many years
I finally
saw J.W. again.
He had successfully re-married.
“Three grown daughters and doing fine,”
he told me.
He looked about the same,
only older.
His blonde hair
was white.
His eyes were still
deep blue.

**

Ferrell Carlisle

The bedrock of the Jackson Street church,
the small to middling Pentecostal Church
of my childhood,
was Ferrell Carlisle.
Pastors, clans, song leaders, clerks
and piano players
seemed to come
and go.
Ferrell was always there.
During my childhood he was
at some point
my Sunday school teacher,
an usher, the youth director,
a regular choir member,
the tenor in a gospel quartet
and the Jackson Street janitor.
He even played the piano
at funerals
when no one else could be found,
wincing at every missed-note.
He mowed the church grass and
cleaned the church toilets.
Ferrell was the physical embodiment
of faithfulness.
He was always available to serve
and in a pinch
could always be counted-on for
just about
anything.
He was a confirmed,
died-in-the wool bachelor
and lived with his parents
until their deaths.
After he finished his military service,
he attended a Bible
college in East Tennessee.
There he met and courted the love
of his life.
Just prior to his graduation,
they announced their engagement.
Tragically, she was burned to death
in a boardinghouse fire.
After that, he never pitched-the-woo again.
Mr. Carlisle fancied
the pomp and circumstance
of the Roman Catholic Church,
a rare thing indeed for a Pentecostal.
He often said that if he hadn’t found
the true light of holiness he would have
become a practicing Catholic.
Once, a rumor got-out in Jackson Street
that he was indeed
a closet Papist.
He quietly got-up in the middle of a service,
walked down the aisle and testified
to the contrary.
Lots of people had to eat crow
that Sunday morning.
But no matter where it is eaten,
in Paris or in Montgomery, Alabama …
crow is crow is crow is crow.
I saw Mr. Carlisle at a funeral
recently after many, many years.
He was pretty much the same
as I remembered him,
only much older.
He walked with a cane.
My sister told me that both of his parents
had been dead for quite some time.
They are both buried at Greenwood Cemetery
in Montgomery,
and by accident or fate, one row down
from where my father also rests.
I found their headstones one afternoon
with my mother.
I had driven her to the cemetery
to change the flowers on daddy’s grave.
As a rule, whole families tend
to be buried together
in family plots both in Alabama
as well as in most parts
of the Deep South.
It’s a Southern tradition.
People usually sort-out their plots,
even tool their headstones
long before they
pass away.
Mamma and I
couldn’t find
Ferrell’s.

**

J.C.

J.C. was a carpenter turned Pentecostal preacher from Northwest Alabama
who gained a bit of holiness notoriety in the central part of the state as the
pastor of a small church
in the suburbs of Montgomery during the early
1960s.
He was then called-up to Jackson Street, a much larger congregation
but only after a bitter fight between two rival factions in the Jackson Street parish.
Jackson Street was the Pentecostal church of my childhood in Montgomery, Alabama.
He lasted about five years. He got involved in preaching on the radio
and state politics.
He ended-up having a nervous breakdown which
promptly rendered a lot of empty Budweiser cans,
Jim Beam bottles,
a marital separation
and an enormous and unprecedented scandal
at Jackson Street.
After he returned to carpentry
he and his wife eventually got back together.
He never set foot in any church of any denomination
again.
In spite of it all, most of J.C.’s kids turned-out ok.
There were three … a girl and two boys.
The oldest boy became a multi-millionaire land developer.
The youngest boy became a neurosurgeon in Atlanta.
The daughter married a fireman immediately after she finished secretarial school.
A few years later, right after she had had her fourth child, her husband fell out of a tree and was
permanently disabled.
I never saw J.C. again
after his sudden fall from grace.
I did know his daughter –
who was, for awhile,
a close friend of my sister.
I saw her once again at a funeral about two years ago.
Her eyes looked tired.

**

Red Cannon

Red Cannon was a mounted policeman
at the Montgomery Public Stockyards.
He was red-faced and ruddy
and had
the body shape of a
Bartlett pear.
He was crazy about music, read square notes
and was particularly enamored
with the
Jordanaires,
Elvis Presley’s back-up group.
Mr. Cannon loved Gospel
and was himself a
member of several Central Alabama
gospel quartets
in the late 50s and
early 1960s.
He ran around with Lee McCree
and James Kraft,
two Jerry Lee Lewis
wannabes
who had Jackson Street
connections.
Jackson Street was the
fundamentalist
Pentecostal church my parents
attended
when I was a child.
Red went to all the singings
at Jackson Street
and was for a very limited period
of time
an actual member
of the church.
This was during Mr. Odom’s tenure
as pastor.
He only managed to really cut the holiness mustard
for less than a year.
My mama said he always smelled of tobacco.
Back in those days,
Mr. Cannon was the only white person
I had ever actually met who could
really sing lead
in falsetto.
This was decades before the Bee Gees
ever got the Holy Ghost.
Mr. Cannon always got along well
with Mr. Odom.
But when Mr. Odom got the axe
as pastor,
Red suddenly dropped-out
of the Jackson Street
scene.
I saw Mr. Cannon
on his horse
only
once.
I was with my father
and for some
reason we were
down
at the stockyards.
Mr. Cannon was riding
a huge Palomino and
had on a white, ten gallon
hat.
He was sporting
a .32 caliber
long-barreled revolver
in a hand-tooled Mexican holster.
He wore it up high
on his right
hip
like John Wayne.
Although
I could never
spot the resemblance,
my father said
he looked a little like
Cowboy Copas
with a belly.
I saw a lot of Gene Autry films
as a child and since that day
at the stockyards
with my dad
I have on occasion
wondered
if Mr. Cannon
ever sang to the doggies
in falsetto.

**

Mr. Sides and Mrs. Wolford

I don’t remember much about Mr. Sides.
He pastured Jackson Street before Mr. Odom.
He didn’t stay all that long.
Jackson Street was the Pentecostal church my parents attended when I was a child.
Mr. Sides was either moved by the state office in Birmingham or wasn’t re-elected as pastor.
He was a hellfire and brimstone sort of fellow. Portly and graying,
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
This kind of guy.
He could get worked-up like Elmer Gantry in a heartbeat.
What I do recall was Mr. Sides’s special relationship with Mrs. Wolford, wife of the church secretary Mr. Wolford. Mr. Wolford was a veteran of the 8th U.S. Army Air Force during WWII. He had flown 20-plus bombing missions over Nazi Germany as a tail gunner in a B-17.
He was short, balding and hailed from Bristol, Tennessee.
Mr. Wolford kept books for a large construction company in Montgomery
and was, for about two years, clerk of the Jackson Street church.
He was a bit more educated than most of the other members of the congregation.
Mr. Wolford was forever trading cars and was the first person
I can ever recall who owned a Volkswagen Beetle, ate pizza and openly frequented bowling alleys.
His wife was a deaf mute from upper New York State.
Before marrying Mr. Wolford and moving to Alabama,
Mrs. Wolford had had absolutely no experience whatsoever with Pentecostalism to include the Pentecostal style of worship.
Mrs. Wolford went to Sunday School at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
St. John’s was the only church in Montgomery in those days
which offered services for the deaf and the visually impaired.
Must have been quite a contrast for Mrs. Wolford,
high church Anglican to mainstream Holy Roller.
Together, Mr. Sides and Mrs. Wolford could take a run-of-the-mill Pentecostal service
and turn it into something absolutely sublime.
As a child, I used to watch Mrs. Wolford whenever Mr. Sides would really get exercised
during one of his sermons.
Mr. Sides would rant against the evils of alcoholic beverages, using tobacco, dancing, mixed swimming and listening to rock and roll, the devil’s music.
He despised Jerry Lee Lewis.
At any given moment he would suddenly tear-off his clip-on neck tie, throw his suit coat on the floor, snap his suspenders with huge, outstretched thumbs and scream “hallelujah.”
He was also given to running half-way down an aisle yelling “repent, and be baptized.”
This was much to the delight of poor Mrs. Wolford and much to the chagrin of poor Mr. Sides.
Mrs. Wolford hadn’t a clue about what was happening and couldn’t hear a word to boot. She had never experienced this type of preaching before moving to the Deep South, so at any given moment she would simply come un-done and begin to laugh right out-loud during one of Mr. Sides’ exorcisms. It was a delight to behold, what she could do to a service.
When Mr. Odom replaced Mr. Sides as pastor,
the Wolfords left Jackson Street and Pentecostalism for the Baptist Church.
I have always wondered if Mr. Sides ever understood Mrs. Wolford and
if Mrs. Wolford ever understood Mr. Sides.

**

George Poe

No narrative real or imagined
about Jackson Street,
the Pentecostal Church
my parents attended
during my childhood,
could come close to being
the real thing
without including
a few words about George Poe.
George was the half-wit,
mentally challenged
adopted son
of Mrs. Poe,
one of the
few well-off
members
of the Jackson Street
congregation.
Actually, George and
his sister Anne were
Mrs. Poe’s nephew and niece
by her sister from Birmingham.
George and Anne
were only nine months apart
and after George was born,
Mrs. Poe’s sister fell into
the baby blues
and couldn’t quite
recover.
In fact, she had to be committed
to Bryce the
state mental hospital.
Back in the fifties
people called it
“the crazy house.”
Mrs. Poe stepped-in
and promptly
did the right thing:
she adopted the
two children.
Mr. Poe who had gone on
to his reward
a relatively young man
had been a successful
building contractor.
Mr. and Mrs. Poe lived
in the high rent
district of
what was then
East Montgomery.
After his passing,
Mrs. Poe always
traded cars and pretty much anything else she wanted
on a cash on the barrel-head basis.
George always sat by himself,
in the same place
in the same pew at Jackson Street.
He always wore black slacks
that were too short in the cuff,
white socks and
lace-up oxfords,
a white short-sleeve shirt and
a grey extremely thin
clip-on
necktie.
He always sported
a crew-cut
and wore black horn rim
eyeglasses.
He also could always
be counted-on
to get religion
at each and every altar call
at the end of each and every
service.
As soon as the invitation
to come forth,
to reject Satan and repent
was given,
as regular as clockwork,
George would run down
to the altar
awash in tears and
completely undone to
repent.
You could count on it.
It was always a done
deal.
As a small child,
I always thought he was
the biggest backslider
who had ever walked the face
of the earth.
He was an evangelist’s dream…
until he repeated the same
guilt-ridden performance
at the end of
each and every sermon at each
and every night
of a revival.
Hellfire and brimstone
really leveled George’s karma.
After about the third straight
night
of getting saved
all over again,
the preacher usually
understood the deal.
Anne, George’s sister,
wasn’t quite
as challenged
as George.
When I was about eleven,
she got married and moved
to Georgia.
After I went away to school,
I never saw George again.
My mother told me recently
that after Mrs. Poe died
in the early seventies,
the State of Alabama
took responsibility
for George’s welfare.
She also said that
he lived for several years
in a refurbished
hotel for special people
in old downtown Montgomery,
over close to Troy University,
and washed dishes
in a cafeteria
on the south side of town.
He was beaten and stabbed to death
by crack addicts
one evening
when he got off the bus
returning home
from his dish washing job.
He died
in front of the Hank Williams Museum
just a few blocks
from his accommodation.
Mama didn’t know
what went
with his sister
Anne.

**

Mr. G

His baptized name was Warren.
He was the Justice of the Peace in Chisholm,
a working-class section of
East Montgomery
and a respected elder of the church
at Jackson Street,
the Pentecostal Church of
my upbringing.
He was a self-professed born-again
adherent of Pentecostalism
decades before Dylan
went electric.
He had a daughter and two sons.
I only saw the daughter once,
she was the oldest sibling and lived in Florida.
I only saw the youngest boy
at the oldest boy’s wedding.
I remember the wedding because
right in the middle of the ceremony,
the bride suddenly sang a song
to her groom.
This was popular in those days
but has since faded
into kind
oblivion.
The groom was Mr. G’s oldest boy
Warren Jr.
He was very tall.
In fact, Warren Jr. was a forward
on the University of Alabama
basketball team
in the late 1950s.
My mother told me that
although Warren Jr.
had played basketball
all his life,
from junior high onwards,
Mr. G had never attended
one
single
game,
not one of his son’s games,
because he believed attending
sporting events
to be worldly and sinful.
Mr. G was what Mamma called
“run-it-in-the-ground
and break-it-off holiness.”
I remember Mr. G the most
for the night he made his famous decision
in a week-long evangelistic revival
held at Jackson Street
in the dog days of summer, 1959.
It was a hum-dinger of a gospel meeting
featuring Amanda Miller and
the Ken Apple Trio.
Lots of gospel singing and lots of hard core
Pentecostal preaching
and altar calling.
After six nights of hellfire and brimstone,
the seventh night was indeed special.
Reverend Amanda was on a special mission.
She had had a premonition
that on this night, the last night of the revival,
someone in the congregation other than George Poe
was going to be given one final chance
to escape eternal damnation.
George was Sister Poe’s
mentally retarded adopted son
who so far had repented
as regular as clockwork
every night of the revival.
But poor George notwithstanding,
this night would be
that special sinner’s very last night,
his or her very last chance for
repentance,
to be saved … or eternal perdition.
Mr. G was oblivious
to all of this.
He was quite long in the tooth
and wore two hearing aids,
the kind that
had wires running
down the sides of
his neck
to batteries hidden somewhere
out of sight.
He also went to sleep as regular
as clockwork
five minutes after the singing
ended
and the sermon had
commenced.
When the climatic altar call
was finally given
with the Ken Apple Trio
gently harmonizing
“Just as I Am, Without One Plea,”
Mrs. Miller shouted-out one
final
strident supplication
to avoid the fires of hell with
“won’t you come.”
Mr. G, seated as he had
for more years
than anyone could count,
second row
center aisle
suddenly awoke from his
golden slumbers.
Thinking that the benediction
had started;
the service ending … he stood-up
in all his humanity.
Mrs. Miller flew down from
the pulpit
on wings of eagles,
to pray in tearful victory
with her newest convert.
The pastor, Mr. Odom,
almost had a heart attack.
Mr. G,
founding father of Jackson Street,
had finally come home
to Jesus;
the lost lamb had taken
his final opportunity
to make his decision and come
into the fold,
escaping the lake of fire.
Mrs. Miller even gave
Mr. G the floor,
to testify from the altar
about how it felt
to finally be redeemed,
much to Mr. Odom’s
mortification.
After witnessing
all this as
a child,
as an adult
I have always wondered
how Warren Jr.
must have felt when
he walked-up
to the free-throw line
in a tight scoring basketball game
to take a free-throw,
especially after taking
a hard foul
for the
Crimson Tide.

**

Brother Harold

I saw him twice,
two-times in two days
almost a year to the day
before he met
his demise.
He was found in a death sprawl,
alone in his small wood frame house
he had lived-in for over fifty years.
He had been dead for several days.
His neighbors finally found him.
Bad heart – no foul play involved.
He was obese and had suffered bad health
for quite some time.
When I was a small child
he had carried me about in his arms while
socializing after church services at Jackson Street,
the Pentecostal church my parents attended when I was
a child. Socializing after church services was
a tradition in
the Deep South of the 1950s.
He was a postman, a part-time insurance salesman
and an on-and-off
fundamentalist preacher for most of his
adult life.
A few years before his death
he was falsely declared
unstable and
institutionalized against his will,
rumor has it
at the behest of his
own children.
After a long day’s journey into what must have been
a night of self-doubt,
whisper
and opprobrium,
a name-sake nightmare that seemingly
had no end,
he was deemed mentally fit and released.
“Mistakes have been made,” they said.
“He isn’t crazy or dangerous after all.”
His wife returned to live with him
again
only to subsequently
pass away after a very short
period of time.
He survived her almost
a year.
His house, just a block or so up the street
from my mother’s place,
is still empty.
The yards are immaculate.
Someone must come and cut
the grass.