THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH MISSION

In the late 1990’s I began writing the following history of the founding of a Gulf Coast watering hole and gathering place, located in a fictional, 20th century, oil rich township named Pearly Gates, Texas – a history from which the title and inspiration for The Pearly Gates Archive was taken:

Anticipating the End Times, in the late 1920’s a Pentecostal congregation with an abundance of faith and deeper pockets set up camp on the infamous Promised Shore, a stones throw from Pearly Gates, Texas, intending to raise a sanctuary there to feed, house, and salvage the souls of the droves of ne’er-do-wells who had been drawn to the lure of the nearby Hell’s-a-Poppin’ oil patch.

Soon after arriving, the Pentecostals planted their church, like an ostentatious gilded lily, amidst the illicit gambling dens, saloons, and whore houses that occupied the grounds around it, and, on its inaugural day, they signified the purity of their intentions by unveiling a neon sign over its entrance, blinking out the words “The Search For Truth Mission”, over and over.

While the business of saving souls was brisk at first, within weeks, an epidemic of food poisoning, originating from the shelter’s kitchen, sent riffraff and Pentecostals alike packing, and, soon enough, the local sheriff would shut the place down completely. After which, for years, a succession of cheapskate businesses would operate from the premises, faring no better there than the Pentecostals had. 

Until, that is, Portent Hopewell, a local fortune teller next purchased the property, opening a juke joint at the location, selling an enticing brand of loud music, loose women, and cold beer, while also, among other things, predicting the futures of her customers when the need arose and time allowed.

Since in her initial planning she hadn’t yet settled on a name or accounted for signage in her budget, she decided with tongue in cheek to call her enterprise by the same name as the Pentecostals had called theirs, employing the original neon sign over the entrance that the previous businesses had never used but had also never bothered to replace. 

That said, on grand opening day, when she turned the sign’s switch, only the words “The Search For ruth Mission” had lighted as the “T” in truth failed to ignite. Determined not to spend anymore on improvements or repairs, she left this malfunction be. And, over time, regular patrons, along with Portent herself, simply chose to call the place “The Search For Ruth Mission”.

Portent was a magnet for tortured souls: a suitable complement to her talent for prognostication and her summoning of curses. To schedule a fortune telling appointment, she would require a personal photograph as down payment: one from which she would suss out the futures of her clients’ lives, resolving uncertainties, addressing sins, and making advisements along the way – following which, depending on the nature of her divinations, she would either celebrate or commiserate with participants over a complimentary beverage at the Search for Ruth Mission’s bar.

It was through these many and sundry, closely held exchanges that Portent became one of Pearly Gates most powerful and influential citizens, coming into possession over time of more incriminating gossip and confidential information than would otherwise have been available to anyone else in town.

Given the attendant successes of her various financial dealings, and her larger than life persona, it isn’t surprising that the practice of photography would become a popular local pastime in Pearly Gates. Everyone in town, it seemed, began to record and collect the happenings of their everyday lives with a broad range of cameras and expertise wherever they went, for years, through depressions, wars, distant travels, and the vicissitudes of family affairs, all the while wondering what Portent might have to say about their own, coinciding, attempts to commune with the dead or place curses on those who had at one time or another done them wrong. 

In response, Portent ever on the lookout for investment opportunities would found The Pearly Gates Camera Club and provide a dedicated space at The Search for Ruth Mission for regular meetings and for the purchasing of photography equipment, film, and darkroom supplies. 

It was out of this milieu that the Pearly Gates Archive came into being, local practitioners regularly contributing their work to Portent’s ever expanding collection. 

Over time, popular opinion embraced the belief that the images being donated had begun to transmogrify soon after they had been given, making accommodation somehow to more closely align with the machinations of yet untold futures, not unlike puzzle pieces, which Portent would then unerringly place into some exacting jigsawed rendering of things, in order to reveal nothing more or less than those specific fortellings which her supplicants, more often than not, had so often been most in need of knowing.