At least once a year, we try to get to William C. Rice’s Cross Garden on CoRd 82 in Prattville, Alabama. Here are pics from our latest visit, in January:
Astounding how many of these have been lost (hate seeing these for sale; Slotin sold one in November for $450 (although it may have been legitimately acquired originally, terribly likely that the majority of these were not)…to see how these have fared both in quantity and preservation, see my W.C. Rice Cross Garden set on Flickr for pics from years past.
This all began in many ways when he was healed by the Almighty of an ulcerated stomach:
…on April 24, 1960—”in a house trailer, down in Fort Rucker. Sunday morning, about two o’clock.”
…“Next thing I know, I come up out of the chair, and I spit tobacco all over that refrigerator, and I started preaching.” Rice never had another taste of tobacco, and was never bothered by ulcers again. “G-d borned the spirit in my flesh-body when He saved me that Sunday morning,”
He began preaching, and building what we now know as the ‘Cross Garden’ in the mid-70s. A really, really nice piece about W.C. Rice and how he got started, complete even with an image from the days when he would take out full-page ads in the Prattville Times and Centerville Press, is here.
The chapel he built:
A series called ‘Strange Universe‘ (1996-1998) aired this visit with W.C. Rice, which was produced in a rather unfortunate, purposefully creepy way:
…but *much* better, albeit without a visit with Rice himself, is:
//player.vimeo.com/video/24084747
The Cross Garden of Prattville, AL from J BraIy on Vimeo.