by Gregor 41 Replies latest jw friends
I was at the 1963 convention in Melbourne. In the sheep pavilion at the Melbourne Showgrounds. Whole place smelled like sheep shit. Only recently did I realise that the smell did not actually come from the sheep manure but rather from the book counter.
I was only young but I can remember the blue All Scripture Inspired book was released. Is that correct?
Pope
Knorr's final pray was almost an hour long!...........everyone standing heads bowed..babies crying.
If I'm not mistaken......wasn't that the "Divine Endurance" convention?
"Divine Endurance." LOL.
Yes, I remember the Rose Bowl in 1963. Ice water in a jug, and wet papertowels got us through the heat. I was a veteran of the 8 day events by then.
My first was NYC 1958. Too young to remember it though.
My first memories of the conventions are of playing and sleeping on a small blanket under the seats. Then, as I got a little older, I remember my head bouncing off the back of my seat as I dozed.
Candlestick in the mid 60's was amazing. Blistering sun burns during the day, large colorful umbrellas. Freezing at night, wrapped up in a sleeping bag.
Selling Shastas at Dodger Stadium in '69. 117,000 on Sunday.
Baptised at Oakland Colliseum '73. International Assembly. I think there were 1500 baptized at that one.
Twickenham, 1975. The big year!
Because my family was part of a "mighty army" preparing for the end of 6000 years of mankinds existence, most memories of these conventions are positive.
I stood through some long prayers, that's for sure!
Watson
1963 "Everlasting Good News" INTERNATIONAL ASSEMBLY
(CONVENTION AND PROGRAM REVIEW: 1964 Yearbook pages 43-71 WT 10-15-1963 pages 629-637)
fokyc
My God!
I think I have just read why the WTBTS is a cult and JWs under mind control!
No ONE and I mean NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS would EVER put up with such ludicrous demands being made on them! The sheer insanity of it all is breathtaking.
The longest I remember is five days assemblies and I HATED them with a vengeance.
I remember a speaker going overtime during a Twickenham convention. When the brothers left their seats when the sessions finally ended ALL and I mean ALL of the toilets had been closed!!!
My God! The suffering people must have endured at these stupid assemblys!
The sessions lasted all day and many people would wait in line in the sun for food the entire mid-day meal break and then get turned away when the afternoon session started.had to laugh at this one. of course, there was more important food being dished up by the speaker.
I was there in Pasadina ,too. 7 at the time. WTS had printed up paper bumper stickers advertising it, but they didn't stick very well,many cars had 'em flapping. I remeber a lot of books being released, maily they Babylon book.
They turned people away from the food, knowing the lines were very long??? Now that wasn't very Jesus like was it? Wasn't it Jesus and his Disciples who fed the people so that they did not give out on the road from hunger? I would have packed up and left immediately if I didn't get to eat or feed my kids and I would have lamblasted the "brothers" on the way out of there. Lilly
The suffering people must have endured at these stupid assemblys!
It seems that the WT perhaps following the old Catholic method of penance for sin. You all must have really needed to suffer for that type of treatment! But seriously, what were they thinking?? Even Jesus looked after the physical needs of the crowds that followed him.
I wonder though if you were all getting some training in mind control. After all, how long can your conscious mind remain alert under those conditions? And for little children, whose attention span lasts, what, 30 minutes? So you tune out most of what is being said and just endure to the end. Then with eyes glazed over, everyone rises to their feet and chants "Yes Master, we hear and obey."
Yes, the Watchtower deprived me of my first week of high school education by scheduling the Pasadena convention the first week of
September. That arrogant scheduling, coupled with the cost of the trip caused some families in my Washington state congregation
to miss the spiritual banquet. Uncharacteristically, my family were among the casualties. Actually, we were still limping financially,
partly due to the 1950, '53 and '58 crosscountry treks to New York for the epic Yankee Stadium and later added Polo Grounds assemblies.
My dad almost never had a steady job after sacrificing a good one for the '58 trip.
After vacation pioneering the first month of the summer of '63, I spent the other two months painting houses and doing janitorial work
with George P. I was determined to not miss the "Around the Earth" assembly and bought my travel package from a grossly overweight
brother I had not met before. The package included bus fare to Pasadena, hotel and daily transportation to the stadium.
The bus we boarded was an out-of-service Tacoma city bus, well-worn, but serviceable. The trip to L.A. was unremarkable, except for an
especially acrobatic two year old in a "sweetpea" feet enclosed pajama outfit who used the above luggage rack as a trapeze. Twice he made
it nearly to the driver before being pulled down. That performer would now be about 46 and probably beyond his gymnastic career.
We got to L.A. on Sunday morning, no time to check into the hotel, so we were driven straight to the Rose Bowl into a huge traffic jam, the
veritable freeway parking lot. I asked the driver if he would mind if I walked the rest of the way. He said he would not. Just be on the
bus after the sessions. I saw our bus pull in two hours later and took note of where it was parked. Some of the brothers and sisters had
trouble getting to the bus after the sessions, the last stragglers as much as an hour late. The normally jovial non-witness driver was
extremely irrated at this nightly annoyance. He asked one of the JW "preachers" to address the group. Jim Hughes took that responsibility
and firmly laid down the law.
Our hotel was a condemned building on Figueroa Street where the new Los Angeles Music Center was to be built. Entering the lobby, I heard
shrieks and gasps as the JW's saw their rooms. My own prissy aunt and uncle met me at the door, saying they weren't staying there. I
actually had a key to two rooms to check out and took the one with two twin beds and a clawed bathtub. Each bed had an undersheet and a
patchwork bedspread. When I got back down to the lobby, I saw the fat brother who had sponsored the trip. He was listening to an old sister
gripe him out, threatening to "call the Society". He turned to me and asked: "Are you leaving too?" I told him I liked the room. Putting
a hand on my shoulder, he said: "Thank you, brother". I was more than satisfied with my 80 cents per night room.
We got to the hotel very late each night. I usually spent a few minutes talking to the night desk clerk who was full of stories about
thwarting robberies and kicking general ass. He mentioned a choke hold that would put me out in seconds. I told him to try. My next
recollection was breathing into a bottle of smelling salts as he lifted me up, laughing. I cut out the horseplay after that. With no tv
in the room, I used the third story wooden-framed window as a tv screen, peering down on Figueroa Street. When an argument turned into a
knifing, I ran down to the lobby. The desk clerk told me to not to worry about it.
Between sessions, I blew off standing in a cafeteria line for an hour and just walked around. So, when I got back to the hotel, I was usually
hungry. I walked down Vine Street to a Chinese restaurant that was closing. They served me a large plate of leftover rice for ten cents. I
made it back there twice more just at closing. They probably thought they were feeding a runaway or homeless boy. During my latenight walks
I ran into leather-jacketed, cigarette-dangling juvenile deliquent who wanted to know what I was up to. I told him about the assembly. He
told me he had met several "cool Jehovah Witness chicks."
Before each session we were given a basic botany lesson: "The berries on the beautiful oleander bushes around the Rose Bowl are poisonous.
Brothers and sisters, do not allow your children to eat the oleander berries."
The assembly itself was a veritable book fair. I had just enough money left to purchase all the releases: "Babylon the Great Has Fallen!
God's Kingdom Rules!", "All Scripture Is Inspired of God and Beneficial", the large annotated NWT, the fat, green edition, and, of course the
brochure "Everlasting Good News Around the World". A lot of new light for one assembly.
The school principal was not too pleased with my absence for the first week of school. The old battle-ax who taught world history and wore her
Catholicism on her sleave tried her best to flunk me, giving me D's on essays that I used to always get A's on.
But I may have gotten my money's worth on the Pasadena trip. In life experience, if not in religious truth.
tms
