Other Bells "Just like at Camp"!
 

The old bell at camp has for a long time, been a symbol of the encampment. It has been used to mark the beginning of various functions about the camp, and alerted campers to baptisms about to take place. Most of us have never seen a bell of this size up close other than camp, and one wonders where it might have originated from. It is pretty much an oddity, out of place in this rustic wilderness with a mysterious background history and personality.

[ As a kid, I remember encampments where the other kids stole the clapper out of the bell during the stealth of night. The welders among the camp soon fixed that problem. One year during the 70s, the Senior boys got really ambitious, and were able to pick the bell up off its mounts, load it into a pickup, which shuffled the bell down to the baptismal site where it was set down in the silt and gravel of the Pecos River. Shortly after that, welders affixed the closed covers over the pivot points of the bell as it is today. I was always afraid some little kid was going to get their finger in that thing eventually, anyway.

So now the kids are just left with painting the bell and decorating it during the night while hoping to avoid being caught. Usually, every encampment sees three to five iterations of painting and toilet papering during the week. Of course, every year starts off the camp with the bell being painted the traditional silver. ]

When I first read the short information about the bell in the "History" document (see it on this site), I realized that there was some information there that gave birth to some new curiosity for me.
From the history, this is all I had to go on:

"The first bell, from an old hotel in Ozona, was presented to the camp by H.W. Baker.
[I wish I knew where this one was located now...]
It was later replaced by a larger bell that had been donated by the Sterling City Church
of Christ. The bell became a symbol of the camp, for it has, and does, play and integral
part in the everyday operations. From the 6:30 a.m. wake up to 11 p.m., when the lights
go off, the clear bong-bong-bong of that old bell signals every event."

... And this little tidbit, from the research notes:

19. Other reports say the bell came from Mertzon, Irion County, TX. The present bell is a # 34 YOKE.

Well, as you can imagine, my curiosity about the bell has stirred. There was enough information in the "History" document to make me take a little different route back to Merkel following camp this 2001 year. The road took us through the little town of Sterling City (oxymoron, by the way, not a city, not sterling...)

Our first target, of course, was the local Church of Christ, which has been highly rumored to have been the entity which donated the original bell to the camp. No, I didn't expect to see a bell there, but I did hope to spot a concrete pad or a mount of some sort for the bell; maybe even talk to someone who knew something about it.
Well, We didn't even make it across the tracks to the side of town the C of C is on, before something caught my eye:
another bell just like the one at the encampment.
It was actually off to my left and visible only at an angle of about 8 o'clock from my driver's side position - it's any wonder I saw it at all from the highway.

The Other Bell
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(opens in a new window)
The Other Bell
Click on this to see a larger version.
(opens in a new window)

This bell is located at the Primera Iglesia Bautista La Hermosa in downtown Sterling City (trans.-'The Beautiful First Baptist Church').
I was met by the local preacher, Gilbert Perez, who was very kind and who of course wondered what some idiot was doing at his church taking pictures of an old rusted out bell.
His family had been monitoring my activity from their safe vantage point across the street...
I explained who I was and the story about my search for the origin of the camp bell and how it had brought me to Sterling City. He seemed happy to hear that there might be some historical interest in the bell, but unfortunately, had little information on the origins of this other bell. He did mention that the bell was, as I suspected, originally used to call worshipers to services across the town, and to bring people together during danger or tragedy. He also stated that it had not been rung even once in over the last four years (his tenure in this location), to his knowledge. It was very evident from the condition of the pull-rope which was tangled around the pulley and falling to pieces that Mr. Perez wasn't kidding. Even the base-plate is of a height that it is not easily reachable from the ground by my 6'0" stature. It pretty much confirmed to me that the bell has been long silent as it stands vigil over this small congregation of Spanish-speaking Baptists.

As you can see from the photos, this huge and heavy bell is not mounted on the safety of a short concrete pad a few inches above terra firma as is the one at camp. It is mounted at what I suspect is 8 feet above the ground-flush concrete base on 4 poles. One thing I noticed that was very striking (pardon the bell-pun) -
The poles themselves are very close in their coarse texture to the 6-inch poles that are used to hold up the main framework of the Pecos River Encampment's Tabernacle. In fact, the resemblence is too close to be coincidence, and just deepens the story of the encampment.

The look of the bell's undercarriage (a photo which the people at the photo section of our local W..M... store were brilliant enough to NOT develop for me, even though the image on the negative is perfect) says that this bell is, in fact, very close kin to the camp bell-it's identical. This bell is enscribed on the top brace with the words: No.32 YOKE (as opposed to the camp bell, which says: No.34 YOKE)

Well, it was an amazing find. I don't know if the number on the yoke indicated the size of this bell or the top brace "yoke" of the bell (I couldn't measure it) or if it was the number of the one manufactured (as if it were a serial number of sorts identifying each bell in order of build).
If you know this, throw me a bone, because I'd like to know.

The rest of our excursion to Sterling City was uneventful. Our visit to the local Church of Christ site revealed nothing that would lead us to believe the bell from camp had been located there at one time or another. Across the street from their relatively new building is the old former worship site, used now as a family center and storage. I was unable to locate anything out of the ordinary that would point to a bell mount. I wish I had been able to meet with some of the members there to ask more about their involvement in the origins of the encampment bell; however I have come to the humble conclusion that there was just a very hard-working bell salesman through this territory many many moons ago, back before telephones united us so thouroughly across the towns as they do today. Those days, the tolling of the iron bell called together all those hearts which made up their community.

Well, these doggone things just keep turning up everywhere. I have spotted these, but I know of two more that I haven't got photos of yet.

Rotan High School


Paint Rock, Tx Community Center

Thanks for visiting the site and God bless,
Joel




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