Heaven in the Quonset

The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.” (Matthew 11:19)

The Nelson auditorium is a corrugated steel quonset that rises like a half-moon on the east side of Main Street, otherwise known as Nebraska State Highway 14. When I left there, 38 years ago, the population sign read 750, but I think the pollsters were two sugar-high five-year-old boys having a clicker-counter contest. I suspect the actual number was a third less.

But the number of souls makes less difference that their quality, and to this day the souls I knew there still bring tears to my eyes when their faces appear out of the ether and parade through my mind. Some of those faces have long rested beneath the ground they loved and worked to make a life for themselves and their families. Most things in Nelson revolve around agriculture in one way or another. People pray for rain, hate hail, work hard and often play even harder, which is why I think of the auditorium.

As I recall it, the quonset is a 70- or 80-foot-long cylinder, walls sloping to the foundation. Inside, there was a basketball floor with an elevated stage at the far east end for community plays and follies, all local talent. One year, my wife, Dixie, was a saloon dancer, and I sang in a barber shop quintet. I don’t think the New York Times ever sent a reviewer. Their loss. It was a hoot.

As a local pastor, I don’t know how many wedding receptions I attended there. They coalesce in my mind into one great celebration. There was always music and long tables of food, self-serve for the most part. Cuisine was basic and plentiful, sandwiches, ham, roast beef and barbeque, and five-gallon bowls of potato salad. There was pinkish punch for those who didn’t indulge and a brewery of beer for the majority.

No one bothered to watch the door or check invitations, and as the night deepened, I recall times a couple of stragglers would wander in from Sportsman’s Corner down the street because food and beer flowed freely here, and, after all, this was a community celebration, right?

Certainly, there were toasts as well as a few colorful blessings and embarrassing moments recounted by friends and well-wishers who, oft as not, made a joke of it because telling someone straight out what is in your heart might make your eyes leak.

All in all, it was community and love and joy and, in my imagination, rather like celebrating a meal with Jesus, that wine bibber and party boy who was regularly denounced for eating and drinking with the wrong sort of people. A drunk and a glutton they called him.

The Kingdom of God is like a wedding feast, Jesus said on more than one or two occasions. And on more than one or two occasions, I walked among the revelers in the auditorium thinking about why Jesus used weddings to tell us what happens when heaven marries earth and they are joined as one.

I didn’t have to think long. Looking at their faces, I knew. Life and love and the heart of God are far better than I know how to say.

 David L. Miller