My dad was a minister and I grew up living in parsonages. Parsonage is “church-speak” for a church-owned dwelling in which a minister resides. Such dwellings are considered by governing boards of churches to be a portion of ministers’ compensation packages, aka salary. Based on individual schemas for all things church, these dwellings are also known as rectories, manses, vicarages, and presbyteries.
Because I married a minister, I went from parsonage living to apartment living in a college town, to parsonage living again. (This was after I swore that I would never marry a minister or be required to ever again live in a parsonage.) So much for swearing!
Living in church housing can be any or all of the following: amusing, annoying, frustrating, funny, hilarious, comical, peculiar, or weird. I actually think the description of this strange housing arrangement can be handily summed up in one word, “atypical.” More fortunate ministers are eventually in an assignment where the church doesn’t own a house and the choice of an abode belongs to the minister. By good fortune this happened in our lives while our children were still quite young.
I have a collection of strange parsonage-related incidents stored in my memory but, here, I will share just one.
Putting to use his pricey degree in religion, Hubby accepted an assignment with a small country church. A little white house across the lot from the church served as the parsonage.
Arriving in the country, I found that there were no neighbors close enough to give a yell and that the parsonage included several surprises: flamingo pink kitchen cupboards, crayon drawings covering the upstairs walls; see-through floors (cracks between the boards through which the basement could be seen); and a view from the kitchen window that included cows grazing contentedly only a few feet away. In addition, we had a free phone answering service. If we were away, the neighbor down the road who shared our phone line answered our ring and let the caller know we were not home. For some reason our extended family did not appreciate paying the long-distance charges that came with this information.*
We arrived at our new church with a little one who was less than a year old and were expecting another child in a few months. So, one bedroom on the main level became ours and the other served as a nursery. Thankfully, we were not there long enough to deal with the whole house, but my Dad did arrive with a gallon of white paint one day to “redecorate” the kitchen cabinets. Goodbye, nausea producing pink.
To say that this city girl was petrified out there in the country is not an exaggeration of fact. Even with reassurances that more crime occurs in cities than in the country, I was fearful. I kept the doors locked at all times and the going down of the sun meant the pulling down of window shades. If someone knocked on the door after dark and Hubby was away, the door remained unanswered. While hanging laundry on the clothesline, my little daughter’s stroller was always just feet away. As I moved down the line, I moved the stroller so she would be within reach in case the boogeyman arrived.
One terrifying memory from our short stay in that parsonage occurred in the middle of a dark winter night. Our second daughter had arrived and both girls were in the nursery. Around 2 a.m. I was awakened by a sound coming from the direction of their room. Jumping out of bed while screaming at Hubby that someone was trying to break into the house, I ran the few steps across the hallway and into the nursery. Hubby groggily peeled his body from the warm bed and followed.
Arriving in the nursery, I switched on the light and saw something I don’t expect to ever see again – a walnut suspended about half an inch above the floor. As I stepped closer to the flying walnut, it started to move up and down, making a tapping sound against the floor. Brave Hubby, inspecting this phenomenon more closely, discovered that the jaws of a tiny little rodent were firmly clamped around the bottom of the shell and a determined little critter was attempting to move the nut from our level to his abode below.
I can laugh now.
I was born in this (former) church parsonage. (Bladen, NE)
Anyone who knows me and has heard me relate stories about parsonage experiences will not be surprised to learn that the young minister’s wife in my novel lives in a parsonage. Do my experiences enter the story? Well, I’ll have to admit that shades of past experiences do appear here and there, and that incidents involving how church people interact with the minister’s family and with each other appear on occasion.
Link to Child of Desire
Clipart from OCAL
Your father not only removed some of the nausea-inducing features of that first parsonage you and Hubby occupied, later in his life when he was in an administrative position he made it a personal mission to persuade local churches to dispense with parsonage ownership and provide the ministers with a housing stipend so that they could choose their own place of residence-- and possibly have an equity to carry with them if they moved on.
ReplyDeleteMinisters have always had a few advocates, and Dad was one of them. Nice for the younger pastors, but too late for him and his generation.
DeleteAnd as to party line, I once had a phone partied with a neighbor next-door but one. Not good.
ReplyDeleteOur Lapel, IN, party line number: 205 Black. Having three other households on the line is not a good arrangement for a minister. When members wanted to talk privately they came to our home or to the church. Our kids still have difficulty believing some of the party-line stories.
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