The Tent Meeting

         Sonny Hartay was a boy in my class in grade school.  He was always in trouble and came to school in dirty smelly clothes that needed mending.  In those days boys all had to wear those horrid knickers. But Sonny didn't even have knickers, he wore old bib overalls.  He was a slow learner and when it was his turn to read he stumbled over easy words and we kids laughed at him. 

         Now I know things about Sonny.  He wasn't a real Hartay, to start with.  His mother was an unmarried teenager when she brought him into the world, unready to care for herself much less another life.  Disowned by her family for immoral conduct, she married Noble Hartay, who never lived up to his Christian name. The young couple had four sons together and was raising her illegitimate son along with them. The Hartays were dirt poor but then so was everybody else because the great Depression held the land in its murderous grip.          

         Sonny didn't go on to high school and I did not see him again for a long time.  A series of bad years bankrupted Noble and the bank seized the farm.  Noble contributed to his own failure as a farmer, as a father and as a man by excessive drinking.  The children who by then were in grade school were parceled out as "County Boys."  Sonny's foster parents were a young preacher and his wife.  They were poor as the church mice we hear about, but they were good people, educated people.  They took the wild boy to their hearts and domesticated him.  Like everybody else Sonny had a real first name.  His was Hershey.  His fourteen year old mother named him the word on the wrapper of a treat she enjoyed when she could get it.  He also had a surname of his own which was Lambert.  The boy born to semi literate child and named after a candy bar became a member of a family who loved him.
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         I was home from school for the summer of forty six.  My aunt told me there was a tent meeting going on.  Tent meetings back then were a summer time thing.  A preacher and his entourage would rent an area on someone's land and set up a large tent.  There would be revival meetings for a week or so.  Rows of people came every night and sat in the tent fanning themselves with big palm leaf fans and hearing the Word. 

         The tent meetings had a large turnout.  Just as in the time of Jesus there were people who came to learn new ways and there were people who came just to see the show.  This time some young preacher nobody had ever heard of before was one of the speakers.  I saw a thin young man with flaming red hair.  He wore a suit and tie as if they were a costume in which he was unaccustomed and uncomfortable.  Someone started to play the portable organ. The young man with the orange hair stood up to the lectern and began to sing:  "There were ninety and nine that safely lay in the shelter of the fold, but one was out on the hills away far off from the gates of gold ~~ “And on through Ira Sankey's poem about the lost sheep and the Shepherd who went out all night to find it and bring it home.  His voice rose in a grand crescendo on the final lines "Up from the mountain thunder riven, up from the barren steep, there arose a glad shout to the gates of Heaven, rejoice! I have found my sheep."

         To say there was not a dry eye in the audience is a cliché but I saw rough old farmers pulling out their red work handkerchiefs.  Whoever he was this boy could sing!  He sang the song with a passion as if he himself had been the sheep in question.  How he could have any voice left to preach after that song I had no idea, but he began.  No Bible thumper he.  He just talked, and as he talked it came to me that this preacher was the boy I had known as Sonny Hartay.

         He told the story of his own life, how he had begun.  He talked about how badly he wanted to learn to read, how worthless he perceived himself to be.  How his stepfather's farm was seized by the bank, scattering the children to various foster homes.  He told about the young minister and his wife who had fostered him, led him to know the Lord and transformed his life.  He then proclaimed to the gathering that God still lives to transform lives and adopt people into His family.  The sermon was the best I ever heard.  I wouldn't have thought Sonny had it in him.  I was one of the many who made our way to the front of the tent to pray with Sonny that night. 

         Hershey was then in his sophomore year at college.  It was hard going for him because he did not have much of a background of schooling to start with.  But he graduated and was ordained.  If some people wonder why my special name for my husband is Sonny, this should explain it.