Jesus ... knocking at the door, holding a sheep, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Martin Luther King, looking appropriately statesmanlike.
Mahalia Jackson in choir robe, hands folded, looking prayerfully upward.
If you're around my age and grew up attending a predominantly black church, you know where I'm going with this.
Yes, it's Let's Talk: Church Fan Edition!
I grew up fanning and fiddling with these pieces of cardboard on a stick. Ubiquitous in old-school churches in the days before air conditioning became standard, they always seemed to be in limited supply. Keeping children from playing with the fans and tearing them up was the challenge of many an usher.
These fans recently came to mind via Pinterest, the social-media site bearing myriad images that users can "pin" to virtual boards. Pinterest is a lot like YouTube: One can find just about any obscure thing one thought one had imagined -- or perhaps tried to forget -- from days gone by. When I stumbled upon old church-fan images on Pinterest, I was promptly whisked on a trip down memory lane.
Old-school church fans were usually issued by funeral homes whose information was printed on the reverse side. Not all those fans were funeral-home originated. A few other companies put them out, too, as did politicians running for office. I remember a 1970 campaign fan that advocated Winthrop Rockefeller for governor, Sterling Cockrill for lieutenant governor and Jim Sheets for secretary of state.
But the funeral homes were the most frequent distributors of the fans that ended up in my hands on Sundays. As a child I was intrigued by the aforementioned images and other standards of the day: The Last Supper. Quaint, old-school church buildings. Cute little church girls by themselves or with cute little boys.
My favorite images were various incarnations of the church family: an extremely well-dressed mother, father, young daughter and/or young son, looking appropriately pious in front of a stained-glass window. My favorite among the family images was this especially hot-looking '70s husband/father with helmet Afro, a thick suit, tie in a check pattern, a football player's torso and a sweet-faced wife whose modest white outfit is topped off with a matching, jauntily tall hat. This particular image is part of a vintage church-fan collection owned by Songwriter's Hall of Famer Allee Willis, whose credits include The Color Purple musical, the Friends sitcom theme, Earth Wind and Fire's hit "September" and the Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance." Willis' collection is the subject of a 2013 feature at Blazenfluff.com.
Church fans still abound with updated images, many of which are reminiscent of old themes: Jesus, the Last Supper, quaint church buildings, Martin Luther King. (If you want a real update of King, get the fan that bears his monument in Washington.) This style fan is also a popular party favor for special events, including weddings ... and funerals, where the fan is not simply distributed by the funeral home, but bears a "celebrating the life" image of the deceased.
It has only been recently that church fans ceased to be a part of my Sunday-morning life. These days, attending a racially integrated church that specializes in casual Sundays and whose air conditioning calls for a jacket if not a blanket, I can make it without a church fan. But as a middle-aged hot flasher, I could use one just about everywhere else.
As of late, my fans of choice are the folding fans. The advantages to these are obvious: They bear an elegance that goes back to the 19th century and before, when they were common accessories; they can be matched to outfits; they cool quite well during frequent, involuntary trips to the devil's kitchen; I bear no childish urge to tear them up; and there's no stern-faced parent or church usher waiting to confiscate them from me lest I do. But as a co-owner of other personal collections -- the two biggest being dust and books -- I'd love to have an old-school church fan collection like that owned by Willis.
Or maybe collecting the newer church-style fans isn't a bad idea. That LeBron James fan touted online might be hot right about now. Or that U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters fan ...
For you fans of email:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 07/08/2018