The Carriage House

During my high school and college years, I was selected to run a small gathering place presented by the First Baptist Church. Across the street from the church, in a small one room wooden paneled old garage, the place was called the "Carriage House".

The youth minister of the church asked me if I would open and close the coffee and chip conversation room with discussion of life, God, music. Every Saturday I would open the door, start the coffee, put out the chips, select music and set up tables with checkered table cloths and candles.

Friends would come and they would bring friends. Some troubled teens. Some kids trying to find answers.

The music would inspire questions and often heated debates of the government, war, sex, drugs....

We'd pull out guitars and play folk music, songs of protest, songs of love, songs to sing along with.

We watched the first man on the moon. We played checkers.

Some night were full of coffee and tea drinking teens reading, talking, laughing.

The kitchen was a stir with each cup of coffee covered with whip cream, each Earl Grey or Constant Comment tea cup, each basket of chips or pretzels prepared and served with a smile.

As the years went on, the folk atmosphere turned to revolution rock. The crowd thinned out.

I closed the door and turned in my keys to the church.

The next attempt went to a basement room with day-glo color walls, loud rock music, smoking, and without the church's awareness drugs and stealing.

A good idea that could not last the years.