Sunday Memories

There are many fond memories and funny stories of my childhood in the south. But perhaps my fondest memories are of Sundays on the farm. Every Sunday I would rise to mama playing gospel music softly on the radio and the smell of biscuits coming from the kitchen. I would scramble to eat breakfast and don that Sunday dress, usually handmade by mama and get ready for church. Back then all ladies and girls wore dresses to church and no one would have dared to wear pants. I never saw anyone in pants in church until I was an adult and went to other churches. We were not allowed to even wear pants to school until I was in Jr. High. All my young life I attended the little Baptist church down the road from our farm. Just a small brick and white clapboard community church like the many thousands dotting country roads in communities all over the south. Sometimes daddy would go to Sunday school with us but usually us kids would walk the country road to Sunday school. Past the cow pastures and farmhouses by the little community store often stopping along the way just past Aunt Maxine’s house and skipping rocks from the bridge in the creek below, being very careful not to get dirty of course. Picking up coke bottles along the road as back then they were worth 2 cents and that would buy us 2 pieces of penny candy. We would stash our bottles in the bushes and come back for them when church was out. Sometimes we would cut through the graveyard and read the tombstones. I always carried my white leather bible with my name written in gold on it that mama and daddy had given me for christmas when I was eight. It was one of my prize posessions and I cherish it till this day. And every Sunday without fail Mr. Henry was there ringing the old bell calling us to Sunday school. He was as old as Methuselah and as dependable as winter. I had been on the cradle roll at this church and attended there until I got married and left home. The Sunday school class was taught by a local woman named Mrs. Abilene and her gentle lessons on christianity stay with me to this day. As I got older my favorite times were when I would be selected as one of the older girls to go and help with the babies in the church nursery. There were always cookies and punch and coffee after Sunday school and visiting to be done with the neighbors until church took in. The services were simple and the music just the traditional southern gospel hymns that were being sung all over the south. Just a small country church in a community off the beaten path with an age old message and the simple music of the times. There were no fancy floral arrangements but maybe one of the ladies would cut some roses or zinnias from her garden and bring in. No large choirs with fancy choir robes. Just  6 or 8 neighbors in their Sunday best struggling to stay on key. Once church ended we went home to Sunday dinner and maybe since daddy was home from work a fishing trip to the river. Sometimes we would get visits from family or maybe a neighbor would drop by. Once a year there was a church picnic on the ground and always Vacation Bible School in the summer. Year after year, Sunday after Sunday, that little church was ever vigilant over the moral and spiritual health of the community. That little church still stands not far from the home place. Still holding services every Sunday. A source of moral guidance and peace in a busy world. The kids don’t walk to church any more as the traffic is way too heavy. And time marches by, sometimes gently and sometimes not so gently. But by never the less and the little white church endures and the message remains as tenacious as it's people. Hopefully guiding a new generation in an old community down that right path and beyond.

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter