The Journal: News of the Churches of God

From Connections: The time is right for a COG museum

The writer is a college student who works part time designing and creating logos for backpacks.

By Trey Cartwright

BIG SANDY, Texas--I hope you all had a wonderful Feast of Tabernacles in your respective congregations. I had a pretty good one myself. I kicked it right off with a gift from a fan. (I have one apparently.)

The first day of services the festival coordinator, Jeff Booth, walks up to the podium with a little wrapped package with a bow on it and says the immortal words, "Would Trey Cartwright please come up here."

After humbly making my way to the front of the auditorium in the Sumner Suites Hotel in San Antonio, I calmly accepted the package.

Hmmm, I thought. I hope it's something edible, I forgot to eat breakfast.

It wasn't any kind of food; it was something even better. I was presented with my very own blue-and-white, plaid, fuzzy blanket. Wow! I was pretty near speechless.

What makes all this rather creepy is an incident that had happened a few days before the Feast of Tabernacles, on the Feast of Trumpets. I went to a Rosh Hashanah celebration at some friends' house with no inkling of the events that would unfold that very night. I was presented, at said party, with a pair of vintage Green Feast of Tabernacles Bumper Stickers. They even came with the original paperwork: documentation that told of how The Work would curl up and die a slow and horrible death if you happened to park in a Red Sticker spot.

Are these two isolated events actually part of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy?

For those of you who don't remember, I wrote a rather off-the-beaten-path article two issues ago in which I mentioned both the bumper stickers and the venerable fuzzy blanket. Yeah, I think there must be a conspiracy at work here.

The blanket and Feast-sticker incidents got me to thinking: If I can just subtly mention an object in an article and people fall all over themselves to give it to me, what would happen if I just blatantly came right out and asked for stuff? I could probably start a small museum.

So without further ado I present Trey Cartwright's Treasure Hunt for Famous, and Sometimes Infamous, Church Stuff. It is sponsored by The Journal: News of the Churches of God.

Subscribe. We know where you live.

Here's what the museum needs to get off to a worthy start:

A set of red or orange festival parking stickers. Gotta catch 'em all.
A Moffatt translation of the Bible.
A pair of sunglasses worn by Stanley Rader.
Here's one for you teens. Find a copy of your parents' The Missing Dimension in Sex, preferably one with margin notes, doodles and the good parts highlighted. (Older versions were called God Speaks Out on the New Morality. Don't ask how I know this.)
Find the actual missing dimension in sex. (That's funny; it was here yesterday.)
A videotape of Bing Crosby falling into the orchestra pit at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena in 1975.
A small container of molten bat earwax.
A glass darkly. If you can't find glass, I'll settle for onyx or platinum.
A Booth City booth from the Big Sandy campus
A WATS-line phone.
A wide-margin Oxford Bible with Sept. 18, 1975, written somewhere in the margin.
A 1964 Imperial.
A volleyball, basketball or football with "YOU" written on it.
A curious visual aid used in a YOU Bible study.
A metal folding chair.
A honey bear container from an AC dining hall.
A Ten Commandments plaque from Kendon, Inc., Winnsboro, Texas.
A pair of keys from Ross Jutsum.
Some carob chips.
A scale model of Swan in Flight.
A complete set of the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
An LP of the fourth Led Zeppelin album with "Stairway to Heaven" on it.
A copy of Golden Earring's "Radar Love."
A timer from a Spokesman Club.
A Rapidograph.
The head of Big Beak.
A blue 1-W uniform.
A "Captain of 10" badge or sign.
A 1966 Envoy.
A control panel from a black helicopter.
Leftovers from a potluck.
A map of Petra
A Lego® soldier. I lost it at the Feast in Tulsa in 1989.

Well, there's my list. Feel free to make your own lists and send them to The Journal's HQ along with your subscription request. If you're good we might print them.

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