You know what it's like when a song is stuck in your head and it's playing over and over? Just the other day I had a melody repeating in my personal square noggin. I identified the culprit as the Danish Hiking Song from my days in vacation Bible school at church some 40 years ago. One little song and I was deluged with memories of growing up as a Solvang Danish Bethania Evangelical Lutheran.

I have that church in my genetic code. My great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, and cousins have been married, buried, baptized, and confirmed there. I am treading in family footsteps.

My musings start with warm days in the Parish Hall. (Vacation Bible school took place during the summer.) We studied Bible stories, made a plethora of arts and crafts, put on theme plays, and, my favorite part, sang. All the different classes got together in the great room to do our youthful warbling.

I never attended any other Bible schools so I don't have proof, but I think most of our songs were unique to our heavy Danish/American atmosphere. Besides the rousing Hiking Song (hustle up you lazy, good-for-nothing-sofa-lovers), a few of my other favorites were: Tovishk‰ (Tovishka, Tovishka, castles in Tovishka), The Ash Grove (the ash grove, how graceful, how plainly "tis speaking), and The Crafty Crow (high in a tree I heard a crow). I could go on and on. I would absolutely love to get my hands on one of those old songbooks.

Around Christmastime we had a large party in that same Parish Hall. Cookies and punch were the refreshments served during a festive evening of dancing and singing. To lead the first dance, a king was chosen from the boys and one of the girls was named queen. Later we held hands and circled around the Christmas tree and sang carols. A number of the carols were sung in Danish; it took a little phonetic mimicry from me to join in. Naturally there was a great deal of polka-ing going on. You couldn't be Danish and not know how to polka.

Even though my family lost our use of the Danish language by the third American-born generation, I remember it having a prominent place in our church. English sermons were at 8 and 11óDanish at 9:30. You could always hear Danish being spoken at church or during church functions. I cannot separate the cadence and guttural sounds of the Danish language from my childhood memories.

I blame my many hours in church for my fetish with hair. When my mind wandered during sermons, I became absolutely fascinated by the intricate crowns of braided hair, a style worn by some of the elderly Danish ladies. There were no fake braids in this church, these women used their own hair. Some of their braids must have been a yard long. I decided at a tender age that obligatory over-50-short-hairdo was not for me. I wanted one of those crowns.

Suspended over the center aisle of the chapel was a large model ship; we children each had our theories of what this ship was about. In later years I learned exactly what the ship in our church represented, but that explanation did not stick with me like our imaginings. I thought it was God's personal toy boat; other children believed it was the Mayflower that brought the Pilgrim's to America, or maybe Noah's Ark; the best: that it was a model of the actual ship the Vikings had used to sail to Solvang.

The focal point of our church was the graceful statue of Jesus in an apse. He had such a kind face; we knew we could talk to him. As children we had all heard the story of how his arms descended and his head bowed during his creation. Well, as children are sure they are the center of the universe and everything that happens revolves around them, we were sure this miracle happened just so he could welcome and reach to us. As a matter of fact, nobody has ever convinced me we weren't right.

This is only the tip of my Bethania Lutheran Church related memory iceberg. Snap shots of people and events are frozen for eternity in my mind, but the impression I am left with is not cold. It is of being surrounded by the warmth of love.