For some reason I associate food with almost every event in my life. Church being one of them; am I the only person that is thinking of food when the preacher is winding down. The last song the one that is supposed to get you to let the whole congregation know you sinned some the week before. Not always did I dwell on how hungry I was in front of the sermon. There were actually times I had been bad and or went up to pray for something I wanted. Once it was to get to go to church camp. Daddy still didn’t let me go after I made that trip down front on Sunday night. He knew there was a boy not God wanting me to be gone from home a week. Really think about it how many of the greatest romances of your life were kisses behind the church? In the south with as many churches as we have that was the place for most first kisses. Umm, I wonder if maybe the invitation song at one time I was thinking more of kisses instead of food.
Just as I am, that’s my favorite. I can’t sing every song that great, but that one I sound pretty good. Fleetwood Mac Dreams is another song I can sing; well I think so anyway. Oh and there is Carley Simon’s- You’re so Vain, I can sing that one also. I used it as a lullaby for my babies. When they were older they heard that song on the radio for the first time; not realizing that I was really singing them a rock and roll song. Today they all consider You’re So Vain one of their favorite songs. One of the gifts I have given my girls; the love of seventies music. I really think that everything I have a passion for others should get just as excited about as I do. Life is full of things that I have great passion for. It is ever better when you have a passion and can get someone else to enjoy it as much as you do; like the taste of homegrown tomatoes. It really ticks me off there are some people that don’t like tomatoes.
The meal after church at Bethlehem Methodist on the first Sunday was to die for. It was a dinner on the grounds. The church was one room. There was a dimes store picture of Jesus in the Garden of Gathsemane hanging by the pull pit. The seats were made of rough wood, not solid carved as in most churches. They were in strips nailed together with gaps between each strip of wood. It hurt like crazy if you sat on a spot that was not together great when your skin was pinched between the strips of wood. Forget about getting home without runners in your hose.Someone had cut the ends in the shape of a chair placing them church bench length apart. Then they nailed the strips onto the chair shapes. These were what we placed the dinner on the ground food on. Putting two of the benches together with the backs facing out; to get the food you reached down into the seat part of the bench over the bench backs. Grandmother, Aunt Mae, Ofie, Cofie, Zokie and Opel were the leaders of all that went on at Bethleham. They I guess could be the church elders, per say. The dinner was held on the first Sunday for a reason. A preacher only came once a month. The first Sunday was when the men of our community around Edgar Newton’s Store would attend church.
The class room was in the back for me the kids. I was the only Sunday school attendee on most of the Sunday’s. The teacher was Ofie. She was a small sixty something year old lady that dipped snuff. Maybe that is why I can still feel a little special sometimes instead of my not-good-as everyone else, usual way I feel. I was the only one in that class getting all the attention from Ofie. I only was not just the only student I was the only young lady. If I got a new dress the ladies all told me how pretty I looked. I was the prettiest little girl at Bethlehem Congregational Methodist Church on County Road 50 between Lexington and Rogersville Alabama, not far from Whitehead, Alabama. Whitehead was just up the road from Tonnersville. That was something that made me very happy as a child. I could wear anything I had and be the most fashionable person there. The names of the communities around us then are just a few things that make me smile today. The names of the ladies at church even make me giggle, right now. It is funny and true, really, this stuff can’t be made up.Those were really their names Ofie, Cofie, Zokie, and Opel. Opel, played the piano, by ear. Sounded good to me then. If I could hear her play today I wonder if it was as good as I thought then. They were sisters that lived on the hill by the church. Cofie was the rebel of the girls. She came to church about as often as the men and was divorced. Divorced in that day was not so cool. This is something else I gathered from being such a nosey little child. Well, I was nosey and forget the Gospel of John. I percieved everyone and everything basically according to my grandmother.
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