It's 7:30 p.m. on Monday night, the day after Easter, and the rough parking lot of Lockwood Skating Palace is packed with cars, their recent occupants lined up a good 20 feet outside the roller rink's doorway. A steady stream of buses and minivans pause in the drive to disgorge dozens of smartly uniformed kids -- epaulets, ascots and white gloves at the top end; matching tees and skirts and slacks at the median -- arranging themselves for inspection. They appear to range from six to 20 years of age, making the single-file formations look like the graph of a public opinion poll in profile.
These are drill teams and youth groups associated with local black church congregations, and though many of them will sooner or later strap on a well-worn set of wheels, they're not here to skate. Tonight, and once a month, is Gospel Night at the Lockwood Skating Palace. The drill teams are here to perform a half-time show/talent contest/testimonial of faith on the roller rink floor, and nearly all of them will go home with trophies.
Inside, the roller rink looks like something designed when people were shorter. The low ceiling turns the building into a shallow drum, and even when nobody appears to be talking, the room rumbles. To the right, a concession stand serves pink lemonade and chili cheese fries, and flat orange booths border a bank of video games. To the left, the wall is divided into cubbyholes already half-filled with sneakers, and two overworked young men deliver a selection of beat-to-hell skates to a clamor of little hands. The skating floor itself looks like it was unloaded from a truck and dropped there on the carpet. It's not a large rink, and the line of off-center columns down the middle and slap-able rafters make it borderline claustrophobic. The wooden floor is ringed with a padded waist-high rail, just the right altitude for kiddie skaters to stop themselves by rolling full speed under the bar and hooking it with their arms, like tiny inverse aircraft carrier landings. All around the perimeter of the rink, little legs shoot out into the air like petals around a sunflower.
Behind a half-wall of Plexiglas in the far corner, Jo Ann L. Chase-Jones makes up last minute schedules on a clipboard pad. Chase-Jones is a local promoter of gospel concerts, and the promoter responsible for Gospel Night at Lockwood. The idea behind Gospel Night, which Chase-Jones says has been up and running for seven years, is the one you might expect from a church-affiliated promoter in a violence-plagued area: keep the kids off the streets, give them something social and competitive and community-positive to anchor their young feet against the temptations of crime culture and easy violence.
"If we don't do something to keep these kids off the streets, we're going to lose a lot more of them," she says with a visionary zeal. "You've got to keep 'em motivated, and you've got to keep them excited."
Hard to say how well it works, but the 500 or so kids here tonight sure aren't elsewhere, and they're quite obviously not bored. A painted sign on the back wall warns that "Fighters will be put out" -- a warning that in this environment seems ridiculously unnecessary.
Chase-Jones takes the mike and asks the skaters to clear the floor for the performance. At least that's what it looks like she says, because the floor clears, even though it's impossible to tell, since the P.A. overpowers the room like a sonic boom through a shredded paper speaker.
At the left side of the rink, the first of two Mt. Calvary Baptist Church drill teams have congregated, wearing military-style black berets and uniforms with gold piping and scarves, white gloves and belts. This first team is called the Babyrettes, and they're short. A teenage team leader marches them out onto the rink floor, where they step in formation, slapping hands on thighs and snapping forearms at attention, twirling and kicking and barking things like "Ten-Hut: Jesus!" in high, laughing voices. At one point, the line turns 90 degrees to the left, except for two little girls who turn the same distance the other way. The team leader cracks a grin and turns them around by their embarrassed shoulders. When the Babyrettes finish, the dense crowd packed around the railing cheers like a war has been won.
The Mt. Calvary Young Adults are next, and they're even tighter, and funkier, in their routines. The response is deafening. Mt. Calvary will take home a trophy as tonight's host church.
Geraldine Foreman directs the Mt. Calvary drill teams for pastor Maurice A. Johnston, and her Christian Soldiers, as she calls them, are "40 strong." They've been marching for three years, last month they won the attendance trophy at Lockwood, and they're one of 40 drill teams under the umbrella of the Gulf Coast Drill Team Association and performing regularly in front of congregations and church congresses around the state. In June, they'll travel to Phoenix to perform for the National Baptist Sunday School Congress. The drill teams, says Foreman, are the church's tool "to teach discipline, bible verses and meaning, and sacred songs."
