My father’s first church was Riverside Baptist in Cramerton, North Carolina. The parsonage, a small mill house, was less than fifty yards from the South Fork River.
Growing up in Cramerton was a delightful experience. As a child, on summer days, I usually left home after breakfast, returned for a quick lunch, and then left for the rest of the day, coming home much later for dinner. The rest of the day was spent playing baseball with boys from the village and from Baltimore, fishing, walking the train trestle, and riding my bike from one end of the village to the other.
No one locked their doors. Every parent watched out for all the children. It actually did take a village in those days.
I wrote Confessions of a Preacher’s Kid to reclaim some of that childhood and to describe some of the experiences in my father’s ministry. Every part of the book is based on actual events, even the one involving the day I fell through the ceiling of the sanctuary.
Though I compress everything into 1954 when I was eight years old, some of the incidents were much later and occurred at other churches. I admit to taking some liberties with the stories for dramatic effect, thus it is a fictionalized memoir. But a visiting pastor really did set his hair on fire, and he preached his sermon much in the manner as described in the book. It was a fun book to write, and I have had many compliments from other preachers’ kids who describe similar experiences.
