My parents moved from New Haven, Connecticut, to Elm Grove, Wisconsin, in 1950, when I was two years old, Ann was four, and Sara was one. When we aged a bit, my parents attended church on Sunday mornings. There was a local Community Methodist Church (today entitled Community United Methodist Church), and at first it was held in Leland School, which was our grade school. After a few years they raised enough money to build a physical church in Elm Grove.
When I was about nine or ten years old I was kicked out of the Sunday School class one day. I think I was kicked out because it was Easter, and I had been eating candy all morning and was out of control.
During one day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the church had sales of popular items. Prior to then, mom worked for several weeks with other church ladies. They made roasted peanuts (boiled and then salted), which were sold quickly. My parents purchased the nuts quickly, before they sold out. My parents also purchased chairs at that event, which were the right size for our kitchen table for decades.
One year, I was forced to attend church classes on Saturdays in order to become a church member. The classes did not fascinate me.
There was a Sunday morning church group for high school students, and it was run by parents. It was supposed to be interesting, but again, I found it boring, although it may have been over my head. I was totally ignorant about sex and love.
One of the benefits of the church was that it had a huge parking lot. I used the lot as a space to learn how to drive the car, and how to park safely.
Sometimes we walked to church. On a summer day we would walk home along Watertown Plank Road, and cut through the woods to get home. Dad greeted us with a steak on the outside grill. He used our “awesome steak platter” that had bull heads with horns as the two handles.
Sometimes my sisters and I did not attend church, and instead stayed home with our dad. On those Sunday mornings, dad read interesting parts of the bible to us, and then we made some drawings related to the bible. I remember Daniel in the Lion’s Den story and others like it. Dad eventually lost interest in this church. Mom continued to go to the church, regularly, for many years even after dad died.
Dad’s relationship to the church might well have been affected by his life. His mother was very religious, and she took dad and his sister to church (his father died in 1919, and they lived in Milaca, Minnesota), not only on Sundays but also on Wednesday evenings. Grandma used to tell stories about taking their buggy home after the evening church events and sometimes had to fight wolves, which attacked her horse. Dad was a very good student in high school, college and medical school, and he realized that many of the strict church teachings were not logical. I believe that dad gradually became much less involved with the church.
I went to the church service when dad died. The minister did not seem to know anything about dad. I was quite upset and did not stay afterwards to talk to people. Of course, my difficulties when dad died mostly related to the emotional pain: he died young (age 58) of complications of alcohol and depression.
In later years, after marriage, we often went to the church in Minneapolis. This was a more intelligent one, and delightful people and friends attended. The organist was particularly incredible and to this day continues to play there and have a website, and he has international fame. I remember when he took my invitation once; I invited him to give a one-hour organ presentation to my Minneapolis medical center (Park Nicollet) at noon time. Many people (mostly doctors) attended.