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A year ago Christmas, December 24, 2005, Gavin Johnson
was on duty in southern Iraq. An air national guardsman on his second
tour in country, member of a security unit, he was thankful to be relieved
from his post for a little while in order to make a phone call. Back at
quarters he shed helmet and body armor and placed the call to his grandpa,
Kenny Johnson, in Walsh County, North Dakota.
Grandpa Johnson was waiting outside North Trinity Lutheran Church, also
known as the Swede Church, for Gavin’s call. He held his cell phone
up, and over there in Iraq, Gavin heard the bells of North Trinity pealing
a Christmas greeting. Grandpa was on duty, too, and God was in his heaven,
after all.
Gavin told me all this on Christmas Eve of 2006, sitting in the sanctuary
of North Trinity, while once again the bells rang out. As I write of it,
I am seized repeatedly by feelings of inadequacy, not just the usual ones
that come with being Lutheran, but specific ones having to do with my
inability to capture for you what went on there. I have sound recordings,
high-resolution photographs, video files, notes and sketches, but all
this data does not sum up to what happened.
Colors, for instance. The landscape was bleak on a gray afternoon, snow
cover half-melted, but with dusk came forgiveness in shades of peach and
aquamarine. Inside the church foyer, blue flame from a propane torch and
yellow light from a bare bulb made the white tongue and groove walls creamy.
The outside porch light illuminated the colorful parkas of folks standing
between the church and the cemetery like they were ghosts outfitted by
Eddie Bauer. Flushed by chill, warmth, and emotion, even pale Swedish
cheeks became prairie roses.
Sounds, of course. The bells pealing for forty minutes or more, trucks
and cars coming and going, feet tramping in and out, exclamations of recognition,
a few sobs. In cars parked around, and among people standing around, multiple
conversations of which only half is heard, as cellphone callers work through
lists of family members and former neighbors, re-establishing ties with
kin and friends. (Some of those dialed answer to hear the bells and talk
a bit, while others refrain from picking up, so that the bells of North
Trinity will be captured in their voicemail, and they can play them for
family gatherings on Christmas Day.)
And then the stories. Sitting in the sanctuary with Kenny Johnson, Marjorie
Kulberg, and Shelley McCann, we heard how the calling custom began. “There
was a lady who was living behind the church here in the early years,”
Kenny recounts, “she would stand outside and listen to the bell.”
In 1972 this woman, Nellie Almen, was living in California, and Kenny
had a new mobile phone in his pickup. As the bell tolled that Christmas
Eve, Kenny rang her up to hear it. “From there on,” he says,
“it mushroomed.”
Nowadays the church, which officially closed in 1953, is busy only at
Christmas Eve, Memorial Day, and one Sunday in June for a reunion service.
The June service echoes an annual celebration Kenny remembers from back
in the 1940s. There would be a worship service, a meal, and then a day
spent picnicking on the grounds. There would be homemade ice cream, and
a banana bunch would be hung in a tree, the fruits sliced off and sold
individually for a nickel.
“I come out here good times and sad times,” says Shelley. “It’s
been a comfort to me for years.”
“My parents were buried here, I’ll be buried here,” chimes
in Marjorie. “It’s important to have this history.”
And may I say, long may it ring. Here in Walsh County, in Iraq, in Connecticut,
in Pennsylvania, in Oregon, in California. This is North Trinity calling.
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prior permission from Plains Folk.
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