It’s already August and it makes me think of Falls Creek. My old home church, First Baptist of Stonewall, always attended this massive religious camp. Except back then we were into numbers. Big numbers. There was just one big 10-day encampment which finally had to be cut up into several time periods of one week each. Sanitary reasons? Perhaps. It was a very special time with the one encampment featuring (always) some big international type of star evangelist. A famous preacher from London was there the last time I camped there. His name was Taylor. His most famous sermon, “Payday, Someday.” I guessed at its message and its ending and was right on.

Eventually massive sewer problems, (no other comments on this) and a lack of enough drinking water and massive garbage and trash problems were drawing more flies and attention that did the Rev. Taylor’s sermons and eventually the massive encampment cut back to five encampments per summer. No more 30,000 people count hearing sermons were to be had. Churches that could afford it built better and bigger cabins and Falls Creek even tore down the oversized tabernacle they had erected back in the 1920s in favor of a smaller, air conditioned, indoor mega chapel with flush toilets, state of the art lighting and the most advanced and loudest sound system known to man.

To obtain funds for this ambitious project they even cut up the old pews and make little plaques to sell to old-timers such as me. (How Baptist can you get?) Yes, I have one. Also, over the years the water and sewer systems along with the electrical services have been massively improved. I can still remember the religious connotations we campers thought of when one of the massive electrical transformers exploded in tandem with a point our highly esteemed preacher was making. That’s all been fixed. The preaching, though still good, is strictly local now. And the trash? Did I mention that? It was everywhere.

How could I not? Trash was not such a problem when I was a kid. Over at Stonewall we had a personal burn barrel and when the unburnable stuff filled the barrel, we “hauled” it off. A favorite place to dump it was on a road-ditch just south of town called “Tin Can Alley.” I drove past that road recently and it was glitter-free. No more endless string of broken glass and tin cans along its edges. Who cleaned it up? What happened?

Stonewall, like the rest of the world, finally hit the “full” mark and the state now mandates that trash be gathered and placed in a provided can and the trash be carried off and buried in a special spot in a scientific sort of manner. These spots soon became big hills. My Grandma Bullard would be astounded about this whole subject. Why? They didn’t know what trash was on their Leflore County Farm down near Wister. What few staples, flour, cornmeal, sugar, coffee they bought came in sacks. Yes, the sacks were saved and re-used. Table and kitchen waste? None. It was fed to the hogs. Manure from farm animals, such as chickens and cows? Saved and used in the garden. I asked my all-knowing older brother, Gerald, “where is their trash pile?” “There ain’t none,” he answered.

Gerald was right. Their Kansas City Star newspaper was valued as a useful liner. The Sears catalogue was placed down at the outdoor john. Kerosene, to light up their house came in a reusable can. But no trash cans were needed in the house. Things are different now. But in spite of the expensive trash trucks hauling away our mess, I still see plastic Walmart and Dollar-Store sacks flapping on every tree and it’s still not hard to find where some folks dump their trash in ditches out in our once beautiful countryside. I wondered why these people don’t just throw it into one of their ugly yard cars, of which I see plenty here in Allen. Some of these places in Allen remind me of Haiti.

Have a good week and be sure and go to church on Sunday. And we’d rather you didn’t haul your trash to one of our church dumpsters either.

Wayne Bullard, DPh cwaynebullard@gmail.com