Grew Up In a Christian Science Family. We always went to church, even though we lived way out in the country in northwest Connecticut, quite a distance from our in little church group in neighboring Millerton, New York. The members initially met in the Odd Fellows Hall, but later on they found a nearby building of their own.
As a youngster, I didn't have a degree of sincerity about church. My silliness alone was enough to make even the hardiest Sunday school teacher cringe at the thought of yet another class with me. My parents were very strict in our upbringing and wouldn't tolerate any deviance from churchgoing. So I accompanied them every week, because that's just what children did.
Perhaps there was too much "do this because I say so" and not enough logic in what my parents required of me, and I rebelled at the very notion that parents knew best. When I was old enough to be on my own, whatever my mother had told me not to do, I made sure that I did that very thing at least 90 times, just to make sure I was driving my own bus. So in the beginning of what I like to call my prodigal son experience—the "riotous living" part—I was on the outs with my parents for a number of years. Religion in general was on one of my many back burners, along with school, temperance, and morality. Church was something that parents did. Most of my friends in high school and college had the same view as I did about church—not for us!
