Festival magic evokes memories of Alabama

It is almost Festival time in Sandpoint and thousands of people will gather to enjoy “music under the stars.”

This time has always been a magical time for me, not just for the beautiful music, but for the memories it evokes.

Last year, I found myself looking at the large festival tent and thinking about my childhood back in the hills of Alabama.

I thought, “We never had anything like this when I was a kid. We never had a festival,” but then I remembered that we did have a festival of sorts. It was called a Bush Arbor meeting.

Once a year the men of our little coal mining community would build a bush arbor in preparation for the big day.

Now an arbor is a rough framed structure with no sides or top.

Two by fours were spaced on the top and sides to steady the thing and then bushes were placed on the top for the roof.

Benches were made of pine trees split long ways and nailed to stumps. Pine resin would seep out but that tended to hold in place those who got the desire to run when the preaching got too hot.

A pulpit was built with a single bulb hanging over it, great for drawing bugs, and sawdust was put down the middle aisle.

Two or three bare light bulbs were hung over the center aisle so people could see who was “hitting the sawdust trail.” When all was complete, it was time for the festival, called a bush arbor meeting or a revival meeting, to begin.

I remember that every year Parson Jack from far off Atlanta, Georgia came to preach at the meeting. He was a little man with a big voice and when the wind was right he could be heard for three counties over. When he talked about the ways of Satan and that all of the people present were “hanging over hell on a rotten limb,” four counties were easily in his range.

All of us kids, though scared to death, enjoyed and admired him because he could yell, fling his arms around, and swallow bugs from the light over his head without missing a beat.

He always wore a long black coat symbolizing the darkness of hell and a once-white shirt that bore sweat lines from meetings of the past.

In my time, people would shout at church or bush arbor meetings.

To be honest, only the women shouted while the men watched from the back. In those days, “shouting” was an art form and the talent was given to but very few people.

There was always one person who stood head and shoulders above all the rest in shouting and in our community that person was Sister Gert. She was a generously proportioned woman and weighed in at about 300 pounds.

Her timing was perfect and she usually came out with a blood-curdling scream when everyone least expected it. To all us younguns' it seemed as if our spines would freeze with fear and our hair stand straight up on our heads.

Now a typical shouting would take three to five minutes and it was something to behold.

I noticed that shouting usually started when the preacher was describing the after life.

Women worked long and hard in those days and when the parson talked about streets of gold instead of roads of red mud, it got their attention. Ears would perk up when, instead of work bonnets, all would wear jeweled crowns. If you glanced at Sister Gert at this time, you could see the head of steam building. The plug was pulled and Gert would hit center stage when Parson Jack would say that there would be no more labor and there would be singing and shouting forever and ever.

I remember well one of the last meeting nights of a revival. Some of the older boys of the community were fun loving types and they had gone out and harvested a couple of “Toe” sacks (potato sacks to some) full of black snakes. They set themselves down on the back pew and waited.

Parson Jack was slowly building momentum as he stoked the furnaces of hell. With bug in mouth and arms a-flying, he worked the crowd up to a place where they could feel the flames of Beelzebub lapping at their heels and they could smell the fire and brimstone.

It was then that these old boys loosed all those snakes. Then a wondrous thing happened.

It started in the back where the men sat. Old men, young men, and those in between, jumped to their feet and started shouting and pointing.

Parson Jack had never seen the like of this in his life. He had never gotten to the men before and he threw another shovel full of coal on hell's fire.

Row by row people were jumping to their feet and competing with Sister Gert in sound and action. Parson Jack quit fighting the bugs and turned up the heat of hell several degrees until it was white-hot and crackling.

Now all this went on for what seemed like an eternity to us young people who knew the predicted end of time was upon us.

The meeting ended abruptly when in mid-sentence Parson Jack looked down in front of the pulpit. His parting words were, “Where the hell did all those Š snakes come from?”