Another Visit Down Memory Lane

 I wasn't going to post anything else today, but I wanted to just share something while it was fresh on my mind about a childhood memory.  This is a strong recollection too, as it was considered family legend for many years on Mom's side of the tree.  First though, today also commemorates what happened on September 11, 2001.  I recall that day ever so vigilantly, because at the time I was only 31 years old and I remember when it happened.  I was actually completing a job interview in the same building where Barbara worked at the time, and this was in downtown Tampa on Westshore Boulevard.  Being we lived in St. Petersburg at that point, I had ridden in with Barbara for the interview and after I finished my appointment, I was just sitting in the car in the parking garage behind the office complex.  The news came on that morning about the World Trade Center getting hit by what was thought to be a rogue airplane (they discovered later that Islamic terrorists had hijacked the planes), and I vaguely saw something about it as I was finishing up my interview as the agency's office had a TV in the lobby that was broadcasting what was happening live.  At the moment, I didn't know all the details, but everyone was in a bit of an uproar about it.  Then, Barbara and the people in her office were told to get out of there and leave early, as a major city like Tampa would be a premium risk.  When we got back to the house in St. Pete, the first thing we did was turn on the news, and there it was - the collapsing towers and then the plane hitting the Pentagon.  It was a surreal moment then for all of us, and the one thing I recall at that point was that all of a sudden political differences didn't matter - it was time for us to come together as a nation.  I would venture to say that it was probably the last time we were really a united nation, as now at 25 years later there are idiots like Hasan Piker celebrating the tragedy, and radical Islamists like Ilhan Omar in Congress dismissively describing that day as "some people did something."  Up to that point, the only real scare was Y2K, which came and went without anything happening then despite the hype we heard in the late 1990s about it.  However, that tragic day - September 11th - would define what has been one of the most chaotic centuries we have had yet - the 21st century has been one crazy thing after another.  First was 9/11, then it was Hurricane Katrina which did tremendous damage 4 years later.  After that, we had a brief bit of hysteria with the whole 2012 scare, and then the political scene started getting insane when "wokeness" for a while really prevailed, and then there was COVID, the Iran war we have now, and God only knows what is next.  Seeing all of this happening in the past 25 years is really making me miss the 1980s and 1990s.  And, it is also one reason why I decided to start taking a lot of forays onto Memory Lane to revisit some things and share.  What I am about to share took place personally for me about 50 years ago, and it is one of my more light-hearted memories but I got some good information earlier in the week that helped fill in some gaps.  So, we'll dive right on into it. 

As I have talked about before, my late grandfather and my step-grandfather lived in a little community just outside Martinsburg called Bedington.  To get to this community, you would go north on Route 11 until you got to County Route 5, also known as Bedington Road.  If you turned right onto Bedington Road, the little town was just about a few hundred yards, and if you kept going you would then make a left turn onto what was called Scrabble Road.  A couple of miles out there is where my grandfather owned a sizeable parcel of land, and he had a mobile home on it then.  My step-grandmother Goldie at the time was the quintessential homemaker, so she had cellars full of canned goods, gardens full of things such as cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables that would end up being canned and stored in those cellars, and she also kept a few chickens down close by Hoke Run, a small creek that ran in behind the property where I used to catch tiny spring peeper toads (that has a place in this story shortly too) and other critters in large Maxwell House coffee cans or jelly jars.  Additionally, Goldie was also devoutly Pentecostal, the result of a very intense conversion she had about 10 years before when she was first diagnosed with cancer (that would eventually take her life in 1979).  Her fervent faith led her to start going to a little church in nearby Falling Waters where she would essentially be a member until she passed away, and in either a fortuitous circumstance or by divine guidance it turns out that little church now has a website, and that is what brings me to what I wanted to talk about today because now I have a historical backstory on a little church that played a pivotal role in my childhood. 

Little Falls Chapel, Falling Waters, West Virginia

The recently discovered website for Little Falls Chapel has a concise history section to it, and referencing that (if you want to look at it yourself, the URL for it is https://littlefallschapel.com/discover-the-rich-history-of-little-falls-chapel/ ) I got a bit of a backstory on the little church.  It seems the history of that little church goes back to the early 19th century, when a group of Pennsylvania Germans settled there and established what was the Salem German Reformed Church, a Calvinistic church that originally was German-speaking.  In time, it then was assimilated into another Calvinistic tradition, the Presbyterians, and this led to its rebranding in 1892 to Little Falls Presbyterian Church.  In time, the Presbyterians outgrew that little building, and they have a more modern brick structure just down the road still called Little Falls Presbyterian Church.  But, it was in the 1960s when the church began its transformation to another tradition of Christianity, that being as a Pentecostal church.  There is a little more to this story than the church website has, so I will devote a bit more space to telling that. 

The church website said that in 1962 the Church adopted the name Little Falls Calvary Temple, and it became an independent Full Gospel Church.  The pastor of that church for many years was a diminuitive older man who looked more like an insurance adjuster by the name of Rev. Claude Benjamin (or "Jeff") Carbaugh (deceased 1994) and his wife Alta (1914-2008).  Rev. Carbaugh, who was originally from Pennsylvania, was an ordained minister with the Church of God denomination, but chose to pastor an independent Full Gospel church instead.  Although later retired, the Carbaughs were pretty active in church planting in both Washington County, MD, and in Berkeley County, WV, as Alta's obituary said they planted about 17 churches.  Given the name "Calvary Temple" was attached to the Little Falls Church, I am thinking there is some connection between that and the larger Calvary Temple in nearby Williamsport, MD, which was founded in 1940 by a Rev. Vernon Wesley Miles (1913-2001) and his wife Mary (1913-2010) - the connection I want to make is if it was possible that Rev. Miles may have been one of the people that Rev. Carbaugh originally worked with, given that Alta's obituary noted that at her passing she attended there regularly.  This means I need to do the work of the historian I am and do a deep-dive into Calvary Temple's history

Interior sanctuary, Calvary Temple, Williamsport, MD

Well, as it turns out, it looks like Rev. Carbaugh pastored a different church at the time called Jones Chapel, also in Williamsport, so he and Rev. Miles were not directly connected although I would wager they knew each other.  The history of Jones Chapel, including a photo of a very young Rev. Carbaugh, can be found here - https://wmspthistory.org/jones-chapel.  At that time, he was still in the Church of God denomination too, and Little Falls Calvary Temple was still Church of God up to around the late 1960s, when it was just called Little Falls Chapel from that point when Rev. Carbaugh pastored it.  By the year 1976, when I first became familiar with the little church, my step-grandmother Goldie had been going there for several years, and even led house prayer meetings in her living room.  And, that leads to a hilarious story I wanted to share that some of you may have heard before, but it bears repeating with more information now. 

Interior of Little Falls Chapel during a Sunday service

I mentioned the affinity I had for collecting all sorts of critters years ago, and one thing I loved catching was these tiny little toads called spring peepers.  A spring peeper is so small it could fit on a dime with room to spare, and after a summer rain they could be found all over the place near creeks in wooded areas.  I had a "sweet spot" just a little ways behind Grandad's house at Hoke Run where I would catch dozens of those little amphibians, and I collected them in one of the large aforementioned Maxwell House coffee cans.  On one occasion, it was a Wednesday afternoon, and as was the routine, Goldie had the church ladies over for a prayer meeting, and she assembled about 15 or so in the room, so I was encouraged to sort of stay out of the way by Mom and instead go hunt frogs, which I gladly did.  That particular day, I had a can full of about 30-40 of those little critters, and I was really quite proud of myself.  So, I go back to the house, and not thinking that a prayer meeting was going on inside, I just happily charge in like I usually did.  The 15 church ladies and Goldie were doing some praying - they were crying, wailing, and speaking in tongues like good Pentecostal church ladies do, and to be honest, they did not even notice me when I came in.  That would change quickly, as I had a bunch of jittery tiny frogs cramped in a can, and they wanted out!  And, I was excited to show them off, so the lid to the can came off, and tiny frogs went all over the place.  That got the church ladies' attention!  Next thing I know, the prayer meeting is in chaos as these 50-something-year-old Pentecostal church ladies were scrambling on top of chairs and screaming because some of the frogs decided to hitch rides on their panty hose.  That of course meant that for me, the church service had just started, and I was about to get one hell of a sermon from Goldie - she was not happy!  Grandad of course was sitting in the corner with a big goofy grin on his face - he was enjoying the show - and my poor mother looked like she was about to have a stroke.  From that point on, I think caution was taken to keep a disruptive 6-year-old boy with a can full of critters at a safe distance away from any church functions!  Later, I would also try to take Rev. Carbaugh - who in my young six-year-old mind I for some reason called "Preacher Jake" because I actually really liked him, and he seemed to be entertained by me - a gift of a large field toad I had caught earlier in the day and snuck into the church in my suit pocket one Sunday night.  While "Preacher Jake" got a good laugh out of it, my step-grandmother Goldie was not amused and she came up with her own behavior incentive to keep me on the straight path in church.  Everyone knows I hate pickles (you all have heard that story already), and Goldie was well aware of it.  So, as a behavior enforcement measure, she kept a small baggie of them in her purse to make sure I behaved myself from that point, and all I had to do was see her just show them in her purse and that would immediately cease any bright idea I might have in church with anything.  Looking back on it, Rev. Carbaugh was a nice and very longsuffering guy, and all accounts I heard of him were that he was a good pastor to his people.  I am a bit surprised that whoever set up Little Falls' website didn't mention him somewhere, but it is easy to fill in gaps now, thanks to the miracle of the internet.  Anyway, now that I told that story, let's get up to date about Little Falls.

In 1997, a widowed lady pastor, Rev. Linda Reese, assumed the pastorate of the little church, and she is still pastor there as far as I can see.  The little church runs about a dozen congregants a week, and it does have videos of its services and a solid web presence, including the aforementioned website as well as a Facebook page.  They are pretty much now an independent, identifiably Pentecostal church, and they are still going strong, which is good.  I figured that as a historian it would be a good story to tell, thanks in part to the very good information they have on their website plus the material I found on Rev. Carbaugh later too.  I am thinking about doing more recollections like this as I learn more about certain things, so stay tuned.

Thanks again for joining me, and will see you next time.