On Zion's Hill Read online

  On Zion’s Hill

  A Novel

  Anna J. Small Roseboro

  Illustrations by

  Susan J. Osborn

  COPYRIGHTS

  Colored pencil drawing on book cover and interior ink drawings are by Susan J. Osborn “How Great Thou Art” Words: Stuart K. Hine © 1949 and 1953 The Stuart Hine Trust. All rights in the USA, its territories and possessions, except print rights, administered by Capitol CMG Publishing. USA, North, Central and South America print rights administered by Hope Publishing Company. All other non US Americas rights administered by The Stuart Hine Trust. Rest of world rights administered by Integrity Music UK. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  “Let Mount Zion Rejoice” by Dr. J.B. Herbert ©1936 The Lorenz Corporation. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by permission. “Take Me Back” by Andrae Crouch Capitol CMG Licensing. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

  Poem “Grampoppa” Published in 1994 in The Shining Light Vol 61, No. 4 (July/August, 1994) Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible King James Version Other quoted materials are in the public domain.

  ON ZION’S HILL is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of the novel are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Copyright © 2015 Anna J. Small Roseboro All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1507860455 ISBN-13: 978-1507860458

  DEDICATIONS

  For my grandparents

  Reverends Jammie E. and John C. Williams, Sr.

  My husband

  William Gerald Roseboro

  My children

  Rosalyn Renee Roseboro, William Gerald Roseboro, II Robert Alan Roseboro

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Copyrights

  Dedications

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  What Readers Say…

  FIRST SUNDAY

  MONDAY

  TUESDAY

  WEDNESDAY

  THURSDAY

  FRIDAY

  SATURDAY

  SECOND SUNDAY

  Sweethearts of Zion’s Hill

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANKS to God for the experiences that inspired this novel. Heartfelt thanks to my husband William Gerald Roseboro, the love of my life. Warm appreciation to my grandparents whose life of Christian service encouraged me to follow them as they followed Christ. I am grateful to my siblings for supporting me as I fictionalized family stories in this historical novel.

  So many people had a role in my becoming an author. The professors in the San Diego Area Writing Project taught me to write along with my students on assignments I designed for them. Some of those drafts are the nuggets for episodes in this novel. After discussions on the historical fiction written by others, the members of my Heart to Heart Christian Book Group pressed me to try my hand at writing a novel myself.

  When on the faculty of Calvin College, participating in their bi-annual Festival of Faith and Writing, I gained insight from Christian fiction writers and editors who talked about what makes an engaging historical novel. They shared ways to compress time, consolidate stories, to create composite characters, and to be intentional about anachronisms. I’ve chosen some songs and that may have come out later than 1963, just because they resonate with me and fit specific situations.

  A cadre of critical readers helped shape this final manuscript. Warm regards and grateful appreciation to Stella Calloway, Nancy Genevieve, Marilyn Gross, Allison Bodenstab Miller, Verneal Y. Mitchell, Kate Murray, Roz Roseboro, Brooke Suiter, Veronica Vickers, and Joan Williams for your useful feedback. I thank you all.

  I acknowledge with special thanks Susan Osborn for creating the playful, light and lyrical art for this book. She has been a generous colleague and friend since we taught together at The Bishop’s School in California.

  Thanks go to the men and women who have shared oral and written records about the Zion’s Hill Campground that I have drawn on for this story. Some specifics have come from the National Association of the Church of God.

  Most importantly, I acknowledge the current generation of Christians who are devoting their time and talents to preserving and sustaining the legacy inherited from the Brothers and Sisters of Love who began this national gathering of the Saints nearly one hundred years ago.

  WHAT READERS SAY…

  "For many of us Zion's Hill was not just a place in West Middlesex, Pennsylvania; it was an addictive summer experience. The novel On Zion's Hill is a nostalgic journey to a magic moment so real you almost cough from the dust raised by loaded cars and you can hear "the Saints" singing as the author leads you up the winding hill. It is well written, sufficiently accurate and successfully captures a unique and wonderful history of a romantic and glorious time many of us still try to re-live for a precious few days in August every year. If you have never had the experience - read On Zion's Hill."

  Dr. M. Tyrone Cushman, Pastor

  “As a white teen in the American South in the 1960s, I knew only church camps for youth where the counselors were the only adult mentors and role models. As I read On Zion's Hill, I was envious of this vibrant, multi-generational religious experience. No wonder the African-American churches have enjoyed such a long, vigorous and continuing role in the lives of members who were exposed to and who experienced living faith in action in their elders.

  “Fortunately, the real camp of Zion's Hill continues its vital ministry today, a century later, adapting to changing times while maintaining the age-old wisdom of Biblical teachings. Long may it flourish!”

  Brooke J. Suiter, Yale, MAT and NC Court-appointed Child Advocate

  “...such a nice job of writing about .... how the magic of Zion's Hill keeps drawing people back. The way Roseboro writes about the experiences of the participants in their relationships with God is powerful ... without proselytizing. Instead, the challenges of Ken and Angie and the others in the story help to tell the struggle of finding and keeping one's faith."

  Joan Williams, Educator

  “On Zion’s Hill is a great lighthearted novel of a young couple who met at the West Middlesex Camp Ground. The inclusion of realistic youth testimonies and thought processes for coming to grips with faith through the eyes of teens and young adults makes it a usable guide for camp counselors, youth leaders, young converts and those who want to share their Christian experience. The vivid description of the campground, camp members and activities, brings back heartwarming memories for those who’d been there and ‘I wish I had’ for many others.”

  Verneal Y. Mitchell, NP, Former Camp Nurse

  “…it is Anna’s setting that makes the story distinctive. Zion’s Hill is an oasis from the outside turmoil of troubled race relations in a tumultuous time in American history. The injustice of segregated lunch counters and perils of driving while black fade from focus as we witness followers of Christ living in community. At Zion’s Hill, the sacred and everyday intersect: preaching and worship are no less important than fashion, food, and gossip. Women parade the latest styles and men “strut their stuff” while singing to the Lord on Zion’s Hill’s holy grounds. Campers soak in the sermons and then gossip about the attendees. Residents share life and death stories, contrast dysfunctional with ideal family dynamics, struggle with the Christian standards of purity and sanctification in their outside lives, and put all aside to sing, pray, and worship God together.

  “Warning: Anna’s vivid descriptions of food will make you crave meatloaf and potatoes, fried fish served in paper cones and 50-cent double scoop ice cream cones!”

  Kate Murray, Editor
/>   First Sunday

  1 - The Ice Cream Stand

  “MY ARM FEELS LIKE TACKY FLYPAPER! I’m already a sticky mess up to my elbow,” she grumps, arching onto her toes and leaning over the waist-high freezer to scrape a final scoop of maricopa ice cream from the cardboard tub.

  “Three scoops on a sugar cone. That’ll be seventy-five cents,” Angie states.

  “Seventy-five cents? It was only twenty cents a scoop last year.”

  “I know, but this is the price this year. Twenty-five cents a scoop on a cone or in a cup. You got three scoops, so that’s seventy-five cents.”

  Frustrated, the customer turns to the others in the line, “Can you believe that? Gone up a whole nickel a scoop! You’d think Christians wouldn’t be trying to make a profit off the Brothers and Sisters coming to camp meeting. They know we can’t hardly afford the cost of gas and rooms and food for the week, plus offerings at every service. It just ain’t right!”

  By this time the caramel-swirled vanilla ice cream is melting down the cone, dripping onto the back of Angie’s chocolate-colored hand. She’s tempted to slurp a circle around the lip of the cone to stem the flow of what the customer apparently sees as liquid gold.

  Instead, Angie stands patiently holding her outstretched hand and peeking around the woman to see how long the line still is. Miss Fuss Budget reluctantly hands over a crumpled dollar she’s been clutching and steps aside and puts away her quarter change while tipping her head to catch a creamy butterscotch ribbon of caramel oozing from the vanilla in the maricopa ice cream before it slithers off the cone.

  Too bad she’s not the last. It’s time to close the ice cream stand now, but the line curls around to the side with at least a dozen more people wanting a last minute something to eat before the evening service begins. Well, to be honest, it’s a good thing that woman is not the last. If there were no customers, Angie’d have no job.

  Anyway, Angie likes working here and has been trying to develop more patience. Customers may complain about prices, but they do return when they’ve been treated courteously. Stella, the woman who has this Conley Family ice cream concession, says “courtesy” is Angie’s middle name; she seldom loses her temper, and she can make accurate change, too.

  Her gaze pans the hill, watching the heavily-loaded cars creep up the last incline of the road leading into the campground. These older Fords and Chevys will be cast in the shade on the weekend when the Buick Deuce and a Quarters and Oldsmobile Ninety-eights show up. She dips a scoop of vanilla and one of black cherry into a paper cup for the next customer. Apparently, this one doesn’t want to risk a single drip of the twenty-five cents a scoop ice cream! Multitasking, Angie scoops and scopes simultaneously.

  Dust mutes the colors of cars trudging up the unpaved road between the Pennsylvania state highway and the rural church camp site, but the smiles on the faces of their passengers glow with delight to be back up on Zion’s Hill. Cars roll in, rear ends nearly scraping the gravel road, so loaded with clothes and food for the upcoming week of meetings.

  ANGIE HAS BEEN COMING TO CAMP MEETING every summer since she was a child. Though nearly twenty years old, she still bunks with her grandparents in their tiny room on the second floor of Richardson Hall. Her space is set off by a quilt hanging over a clothesline to give her privacy from the thinly mattressed double bed on their side. Their annual residence is the same tiny mid-corridor room they’ve rented from the time the mattresses were stuffed with hay till now when some rooms boast standard hotel quality mattresses that the campground board of directors bought at auction when a nearby discount motel chain went out of business.

  The pungent smell of mothballs permeates the halls, reminding everyone that the building is again open for lodging after being shut up tight for nearly ten months. Grit recently displaced by the Lysol scrubbing, striped tick mattresses not quite fresh despite having lain out in the sun, and the clatter and scrabble of tired travelers bumping their loaded suitcases up the narrow exterior stairs greet the returning campers – year after year.

  Few are put off by the last minute scrambling of the maintenance men there to see that all works as it should. The conscientious crew ensures that the single light bulbs on cords dangling from the center of each dorm room can be turned on and off by the switches that still turn to the left or right rather than flip up and down, that toilets in the shared bathrooms all flush, and that the dampness-swollen window sashes are unstuck and will open to let in the fresh morning air and close to keep out the evening mosquitoes.

  Each year, the parade of cars snakes its way up the hill and splits off onto the narrow dirt roads that spread hydra-like from the main entry gate. A few cars slow to unpack in front of the dormitory; another car stops next to a single room cabin; two park next to an egg-shaped aluminum trailer; two more pull into the driveway of a freshly painted cottage. Others groan on up the hill to the various abodes to hundreds for the next seven days of the church’s annual gathering. A few hardy campers still rough it in tents.

  The Richardson Hall dormitory is named for one of the families in the Brothers and Sisters of Love, the fellowship of Christians who started the summer camp meetings nearly fifty years ago. The Richardsons helped to negotiate the sale of the property in the verdant hills above Western Pennsylvania’s Shenango Valley near one of a row of steel mill towns dotting the banks of the sludgy Shenango River.

  Her grandparents had told her about the Brothers and Sisters of Love who were members of the local congregation looking for a place for Negroes from across the nation to gather annually to rekindle their faith and renew their friendships. It was to be a place where families could spend a week with other Christians, singing, praying, and hearing sound preaching, and sharing fellowship in a beautiful natural setting. These worshippers called themselves the Saints with a capital “S” whether written or spoken.

  WHEN THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF LOVE found this site up on the hill not far from their small town, some of the members mortgaged their homes to come up with a down payment for the property. Trudging up the hill each year reminded these men and women of the Old Testament Israelites’ yearly trek to Jerusalem to worship in the tabernacle there. So thankful for the spacious grounds set atop a mini-mountain, the Saints called their camp Zion’s Hill. Former southerners like Angie’s grandparents had been coming every year since they moved north from Alabama in the late 1930’s.

  Angie notes the bulging suitcases and overstuffed garment bags the new arrivals drag from the grimy cars that hold more than the necessary clothes to adorn the women and deck out the men. Although this is a camp meeting, most folks arrive ready to parade the latest fashions from their area of the country. Nimbly tipping along in shoes too high for the terrain, trying to avoid the pebble or stone in the road that could twist the ankle or scrape their spiked shoe heels, the women from across the nation will strut their stuff.

  The last time she’d seen so many different styles in one place was a few weeks ago in her hometown. Just this past June, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. had led the Walk for Freedom down the streets of Detroit, Michigan.

  IT WAS HOT AND HUMID THAT SUNSHINY SUMMER DAY. Angie’s church youth group joined hundreds of other teens high-stepping to music blared by local high school and college bands and to songs blasted over the loudspeakers. Over 100,000 people marched to the music of Motown, dancing in the streets to the sounds of Martha and the Vandellas. What a rush to see colored and white men and women, members and leaders of local labor unions from the auto plants, state legislators, and even Michigan’s governor, George Romney, marching together for freedom.

  Her most vivid memory is the melodious rhythms of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering a speech in Cobo Hall. She still can hear him fervently repeating the refrain, “I have a dream!” The young preacher espoused so passionately the hopes of the men and women of all ages and races who had come together that day as a precursor for the bigger march in Washington. D.C. scheduled for the end of Aug
ust. Going to that march is out of the question for Angie; she has to be back to work and her second year of college classes would be starting a week or so later.

  THAT WAS THEN; THIS IS NOW. Women in the parade there in Detroit wore some of every fashion style. And just as big a spectacle will be on display here, this August, 1963 in Western Pennsylvania. Women will flaunt flouncy hats chosen to match the shoes, purse and gloves that complement the colors of their toned-down tailored suits and flamboyant designer dresses, but not pants. No pants or slacks allowed for women on these holy grounds.

  Over the years that Angie has been coming to camp meeting, she’s seen men swagger in brightly-colored leisure suits with flared legs or bop along in dark sharkskin straight-leg slacks, shod in stacked heels or Stacy Adams wingtips that dare the dust to settle on their toes. Depending on the fashion trending that season, the males may don stylish hats with stingy brims or pull on wide brim ones bent just so, shading their left eyebrows. Women and men strut and swagger, showing evidence of God’s bounty and, adorned in their perfectly coordinated outfits, parading with righteous thanksgiving balanced with humility and flair.

  Angie loves coming with her grandparents and looks forward to seeing forever friends who had promised to write every week, but hadn’t. She’ll hear roof-raising music and heart-thrilling preaching. And this year, she might even meet Mr. Right. Every year there is some guy with whom she sits in services and later eats crispy fish sandwiches bought at the concession stands. Maybe she would even hold hands with him during a clandestine walk around the grounds after evening service.

  Though tempted more than once by the Lotharios who come each year, she’s maintained her grandparents’ trust and has not compromised her virtue. All who come to these hallowed grounds are not Christians.