In my hometown in Ohio, church membership was a given for middle-class people. With a population of 8,000 people, somehow 19 churches were kept open a

AI Is Speaking In Tongues

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2024-04-23 15:00:12

In my hometown in Ohio, church membership was a given for middle-class people. With a population of 8,000 people, somehow 19 churches were kept open and running. A big part of your social fabric were the kids who went to the same church that you did, the people you would gravitate towards in a new social situation. The more rural and working class your family was, the less likely you actually went to a church on a regular basis. You'd see them on Christmas and Easter, but they weren't really part of the "church group".

My friend Mark was in this group. His family lived in an underground house next to their former motorcycle shop that had closed down when his dad died. It was an hour walk from my house to his through a beautiful forest filled with deer. I was often stuck within eyesight of the house as a freight train slowly rolled through in front of me, sitting on a tree stump until the train passed. The former motorcycle shop had a Dr. Pepper machine in front of the soaped windows I had a key to and we'd sneak in to explore the shop on sleepovers while his mom worked one of her many jobs.

She was a chain-smoker who rarely spoke, often lighting one cigarette with the burning cherry of the first as she drove us to the local video store to rent a videogame. Mark's older brother also lived in the house, but rarely left his room. Mostly it was the two of us bouncing around unsupervised, watching old movies and drinking way too much soda as his German Shepard wheezed and coughed in the cigarette smoke filled house.