Dragging an entire family, including babies and young children to three or four day meetings in an outdoor stadium, living in a seedy motel room for the week.
Get aload of this:
When I grew-up in the 'truth', we attend our DC - for 7 and sometimes 8 DAYS. Sessions used to go to 9PM. Even our Circuit Assembies used to start on Friday evening and run late into Saturday evening, two full weekends per year.
One year, my parents couldn't afford to stay close to the DC, so we traveled over 100+ miles each way - every day! Not many cars then had air conditioning and were not as reliable as today, so I remember breaking down on the side of the highway on one of the days.
I recall the Society having a rooming department where, if you had a DC in close proximity to your home, they'd hound encourage you to open your home to allow Witnesses from outside of your area, to stay with you for the DC. Once, JW relations allowed other witnesses to stay with them and the visitors expected breakfast before getting ready for the day and also asking if they could stay for a week following the DC, to sight-see as they were on vacation.
It's hard to remember all the particulars but I remember that there was field service on at least one of the DC days. Your congregation 'group' would meet at the Assembly at a predetermined location and then everyone would go & blitz the city. I don't recall ever going in FS during an assembly and I believe many others didn't either although many did.
The stadiums were generally outdoors where often, the only seats were in the direct sun with no overhead covering. You'd often get sunburned in 90`F heat, bird pooped upon, drenched in the rain and pelted with sand when the wind kicked-up. Everyone had to have umbrellas and generally carried plastic garbage bags to wear over your suit/dress if it rained.
Often the seats would be so hot, you'd burn yourself sitting on them, if you were lucky fortunate enough to rate a seat. Sometimes you'd get the hard wooden benches or if you were really late, get to sit on the hard concrete ground, picnic style, so you'd better hope you remembered to bring blankets. All the time, you'd better be dressed as a good little dubbie, pretend to pay attention and not complain that you were too hot, hungry, uncomfortable or had to pee. Don't forget, there was a quiz the following week at your hall, so you'd better write something down incase you were put on the spot to give an answer.
I know this has been mentioned plenty of times in the past, but the closing prayer would last as long as a talk, all the while you're standing, swaying foot to foot and generally muttering under your breath 'hurry-up, Amen already!'.
Washrooms (especially women's) had long line-ups where it would often take 20+ minutes just to get into the room.
I can recall a local venue being directly on the international airport flight path, so planes would routinely fly low on their approach, deafening all in attendance.
Through my teenage years, all the teens would parade themselves on the ramps into the stadium, and show-off their latest fashions. If you didn't match their fashon standards, you couldn't be part of their clique (not that I wanted to hang around with snots snobs) and were considered a nobody. Some of you will know of this location as I've read about this same experience and location mentioned here previously.
The sound systems were often too loud and the echo made understanding anything said, an exhausting excercise. It didn't seem to matter where you'd go in and around those buildings, it all seemed to echo. One year, I noticed that the best sound was far out in the parking lot.
Early-on, hot meals were available at the DC for both lunch and dinner. Line-ups were so long, you often got the 2nd rate items with little time to eat before the sessions restarted. After the days became shorter, lunch was only available, then they cut out hot meals and offered items such as crappy burgers, ice cream, fruit bags and soda all dispensed from de-centralized stands. I know of a few people that had gotten food poisoning at the DC including my (now) S/O who was violently ill on the last day of an 8 hour away DC.
As I got older, food was cut-out alltogether and you had to bring your own. In doing this, food got better (and available all day) although it meant having to lug more stuff in and out or going off premisis as we usually did. Venues also got better, often at indoor, air conditioned arenas. The number of days was also reduced to the three or four days you mention.
After we were married, our 'assigned' DC was again an 8 hour drive away, even though there was a DC only about 2 hours from home. Being good little dubbies, we went to where we were assigned and only used the Societies list of 'Approved' places to stay. After calling virtually all of the places listed, we were only able to find 1 room, about 45 min. from the DC. After traveling all that distance, the 'approved' place was a dirty, dump of a room that you could rent by the hour, above a bar where the bathroom was shared by all the rooms on that floor. Needless to say, we got on the phone and were lucky to find another, more suitable room for 1 night and then another place for the remaining 2 nights. We drove staight home after the Sunday session.
'We' have not attended a DC now for upwards of 10 years. I believe many witnesses are still 'priviledged' to clean the DC venue top to bottom, a week or so before attending as 'delegates'. Talk about slave labour! We know of JWs that told us about going to redecorate and plant flowers OUTSIDE of the DC venue. WTH! Gotta present a good appearance to the world you know!
I don't know how we all did it then. When I think about the last time I attended a DC, it was an exhausting and demoralizing experience, even though it was ONLY three days. If you haven't experienced anything longer than a 3 or 4 day DC that finishes at 4 or 5 PM, consider yourself lucky. You have no idea and need to understand that for some of us, the GREAT TRIBULATION has already occured.
Being a JW is truely a unique experience, compared to what most people in the 'World' need to go through.
