Religion: Jericho on Saunders Street

On narrow Saunders Street, in the shoddy suburb called Caraleigh at the southern fringe of Raleigh, N.C., stands the Windmill. Its dragon-green neon arms whirl day and night, its sexy carhops skip out in black slacks to take orders on the big, asphalt parking space, its gigantic jukebox, hitched up to outdoor amplifiers, drenches the area with blare: Pin Ball Boogie, maybe, or Jo Stafford’s plangent yearning for someone to Make Love to Me —and always plenty of hillbilly.

Presiding over the Windmill’s pleasures is 38-year-old ex-Marine Sam Bell, a hard and practical man.

God in the Bush Arbor. Across the street from the Windmill is a vacant lot.

There, early this month, came the local members of the Church of God, bent on a three-week revival for the healing of bodies and the saving of souls. They put up an open-sided shelter roofed over with sweetgum boughs, and covered the clay ground with sawdust. They filled the place with chairs and benches, put up a little pulpit and installed two big amplifiers.

Presiding over these preparations was handsome, hefty (6 ft. 2 in., 215 Ibs.) Douglas H. Poole, 23, a North Carolina farm boy who was wounded in Korea, saw visions there, came home to be a full-time minister of the Church of God. (“There are three Churches of God,” he says.

“This is the original.”) The revival got under way. Striding excitedly around his congregation, and sweating with fervor, Evangelist Poole shouted and whispered into his microphone. “I used to be a drunkard,” he would yell. “I used to curse and tell lies and all those things. But I’ve been saved! … If you come, you can find God around this old bush arbor … If you go home lost tonight, it’s not my fault.” His flock would begin to groan and shout, to shake and roll in the sawdust. Then a string quartet would take over, and the hymn-singing would send everyone into still more shouts and gyrations.

Pray for Sam Bell. Across the street in the Windmill, Sam Bell and his customers listened for several nights with mounting distaste. “It got louder and louder,” says Sam. “I couldn’t even hear the girls when they called the orders.” Finally, one night last week, one of the Windmill’s customers made a suggestion, and Sam Bell suited action to the word.

Into the big jukebox went another nickel, up went the amplifiers to full power, and out into the night blasted Bye Bye Blues in a mighty shockwave of sound.

“Glory be to God!” cried Preacher Poole into his microphone. “Pray for Sam Bell. Save Sam Bell. The Devil can only go so far. There’ll be no jukeboxes in heaven.” The faithful groaned and flung themselves to their knees; their own amplifiers rushed to meet Satan over Saunders Street with a full-throated Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.

Since the fallen walls of Jericho, there had hardly been such sound. Motorists stopped. People in town heard about it and jumped in their cars to go out and see what was going on. Finally, the portly figure of Wake County Deputy Sheriff Carl Benton appeared. When he managed to make himself heard, the decibel count fell to normal.

But Sam Bell was mad. “I got to protect my business somehow,” he complained to reporters. “I’ll help him build a church somewhere if he wants it, but honest to God … I got nothing against their religion—if they want to worship a telephone pole, it’s all right with me.” Said Preacher Poole: “We could put ’em in jail. I know the law. But we love everybody.” At week’s end an uneasy truce prevailed on Saunders Street. But both God and mammon—were profiting from the war of sound. Newly resplendent in a double-breasted blue suit, Preacher Poole moved with assurance among his biggest crowds.

And Sam Bell’s cash register tinkled happily with the hunger and thirst of curious customers, come from as far away as 80 miles to see the battle of Saunders Street.