Prayer chapels. These two rural roadside buildings competed for passersby’s souls. One belongs to a church, the other was a nightclub.

The church was built in 1867 and it served farmers and coal miners. The nightclub dates to at least 1931. It served the same crowd in addition to travelers and city dwellers. New owners converted the nightclub into apartments after World War II. Some locals found that very convenient.

“I got married in the church across the street and you could do your wedding over there and honeymoon across the street,” one man told me earlier this year. The life-long resident, in his eighties, quickly added, “I did not do that, but I’ve heard different ones talk about it.”

I asked another longtime resident if the nightclub across the street, with its liquor and dancing, ever caused any friction with the church. “Oh it’s Methodist. I mean we’re Methodist. We’re Scottish. We drink. We dance. It’s not like it was, you know, Baptist,” she explained.

Most folks still alive who remember the nightclub are in their eighties and nineties. They were children with children’s memories of a place they could not go to. But, they could hear the music. One man, now 80, explained, “They wouldn’t let me over there. I mean I heard the music. I went to that church, you know, that’s the church that I went to as a kid.” His family moved away when he was about eight.

The nearest city is about six miles away. For much of the time the nightclub operated, entrepreneurs from the city and another a little farther up the highway rented the building where they hosted bands and served refreshments, liquid and solid. There was dancing and some history was made. But if you’re driving down the highway, there isn’t much there now to catch your eye and your interest. Yet, if you’re persistent enough the stories will flow and the juxtaposed buildings might just inspire you to dig just a little deeper ….

© 2021 D.S. Rotenstein

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