The Day an Angel Sang at Shanghi Baptist

By Dale Short In his famous "Sonnet to Google," the great William Shakespeare wrote, "How do I love Google? Let me count the ways..." OK, so maybe I've got a couple of details wrong, but if The Bard were around today I'm pretty sure he'd pen a similar tribute. For people who make their living by writing, Internet search engines are not just a godsend, they're a miracle. They're the greatest invention since libraries, and that's saying a lot. (True, everything on a computer is placed there at some point by a person, and human beings are the most fallible and inaccurate bunch of creatures anywhere--except that, where written information is concerned, they're the only game in town. More about which at a future date.) Case in point: just this week, I found the answer on Google to a question that had haunted me for more than 40 years. When I was 12 years old, a visiting pastor and his family came to Shanghi Baptist Church to preach, and (far more to my liking) they were also a gospel trio. One of the hymns they sang to open the service was a song I'd never heard before or since: "On Zion's Hill." The harmonies sounded a thousand years old, or at least a hundred, and the words of the chorus were "Someday, beyond the reach of mortal ken / Someday, God only knows just where and when / The wheels of earthly life shall all stand still / And I shall go to dwell on Zion's Hill." The song sent chills up my back that kept coming in waves. It was beautiful and scary in equal measure. I'd never heard anything like it. In retrospect, another factor that might have come into play was that the preacher couple had a 12-year-old daughter who was, like her parents, exceedingly pale-complexioned and tall in stature. In the morning light from the stained glass windows, the blonde curls that tumbled around the girl's severe pink face made her look like an angel from a painting by Botticelli. Whether from stage fright or whatever, the girl seemed petrified to be at the podium and her wide, red-rimmed eyes looked everywhere but at the audience. When the last note echoed away and the preaching started, I was too stunned to take in any of the sermon, or even to remember what the family's names were and where they were from. I felt as if they had been specially sent to give me a secret message about the end of the world.

I spent the sermon time in a deep reverie, inventing a legend about a captive angel who was rescued from her cruel (this part was just a guess) parents and carried to freedom by a tall, dark-haired youth (well, technically, short and darkhaired) from a distant village who would make her eyes quit being red-rimmed and make her unafraid to look people in the eye and smile at them, and together this unlikely couple would get to the bottom of that troublesome end-of-the-world business once and for all. Or at worst, face the Apocalypse together. The End. For decades after, I perused the corners of libraries--especially at religious colleges--for information about who wrote the song, and when, but with zero results, until I almost convinced myself I had imagined the whole thing. Then suddenly this week, on a site called something like "Answers to Hymn Questions," the answer popped up--along with the complete lyrics of the song. "On Zion's Hill" was written by James Allen Crutchfield in 1923. Who was Crutchfield? Where was he from? What other songs did he write? So far I'm batting zero, but I'm still optimistic. Please drop me a note if you can shed any light on the mystery. Especially if you can shed any light on the other question, too: Whatever happened to the angel? ### (Dale Short is a native of Walker County. His e-address is dale.short@gmail.com. You can find his columns, books, photos, and public radio stories at carrolldaleshort.com. His weekly radio show "Music from Home" airs Sundays at 6 pm on Oldies 101.5 FM. For information about his upcoming photography workshops at Woni's Bookshelf in Sumiton, call the store at 648-6161.)