Canning in the Summertime.

In my early childhood (late 1920's) there were no electric refrigerators and, of course, no freezers nor frozen food. In the summertime ice wagons came daily to sell ice for the ice box to keep food cold.The only way to preserve surplus food was canning or drying.

During the summer our large iron stove would have to be fired up with "stove wood" to make fig and pear and peach perserves and apple jelly. Mama would dry apples and peaches for winter pies and make applesause, peach and pear perserves and pickles.

In my early teens we finally got an electric refrigerator. I remember one of our neighbors who was visiting, when the refrigerator was humming, she said in awe, "It's making more ice."
We had a beautiful little peach tree in our back yard near a street where little boys passed by and some of the little boys could not resist the temptation to pick some of the peaches. My mother loved children, including little boys. She had five sons, two of which were grown and married in my early memories. So Mama would go out and kindly tell the little boys to help her watch for the peaches to get ripe and to please let the peaches stay on the trees until they were ripe and she would share with them.

Nevertheless, "boys will be boys" as they say. By the time the peaches were ripe , there were usually few peaches left on the tree. But Mama always found enough, on the yard side of the little tree, to make a few quart jars of some of the best peach pickles I ever ate.

My mother would also make a year's supply of jelly...by taking apple and other fruit and peach or pear peelings to boil and strain the juice. She also canned green beans, tomatoes and vegetable soup in large quantities.

I have seen Mama stand at the stove canning and preserving summer fruits and vegetables with sweat pouring off her face. She would have a towel around her neck like a scarf to wipe her face as she stood at the hot stove.

This would make the whole house hot. So we escaped to the porch or yard as often as possible, as did all the neighbors.

One of the advantages was that with no television and no air conditioning one got acquainted with neighbors. As long a Mama lived, she had neighbors dropping in to visit, even in the television and window fan era in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies. Mama, born March 6, 1885, died December 7, 1973. My father had died in 1932.

The Civil War Parade.

The first parade I ever saw was a Civil War Parade! I may be one of few living to tell this tale? I love a parade, as I mentioned in a web post written during Lent about the first “Palm Sunday Parade.”
The Palm Sunday Parade, tells about Jesus entering the city of Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem, people began to gather and they began wave branches of willow, and myrtle and palm. These people hoped Jesus would save their generation from the heavy yoke Rome had placed on them.

But Jesus came to save all people, Jews as well as Gentiles. He came to save, not just that generation but every generation from the heavy yoke of sin. So the cry of "Hosanna" became "Crucify Him" a few days later!

Mattthew's story of the Palm Sunday parade is more vivid than my memories of the first parade I ever saw.

The first parade I ever saw was a Civil War parade! I was a small child watching as the parade passed down the streets in our small town!

I remember it as a small parade...nothing like the Civil War Parade in the picture above. The Civil War Parade in my small Southern hometown seemed to feature the soldiers who had answered the call to arms and the few who survived to come back home to Georgia.

In those 1920- 1930 days we referred to that tragic "Civil War " as “The War between the States." Today when we watch Congressional hearings on television, we think we are still at "war between the states." Sometimes when we hear the south patronizingly dismissed as "the Bible Belt" we are reminded we are still engage in a "war between the states."

The American Civil War (1861-1865) was seen by many as a "states rights" issue. Less than 10 percent of the people in America's southland were slave owners. Most of the slave owners were Caucasion, but records reveal also a few African Americans and a few Native Americans also were slave owners.

The main thing I remember about the Civil War parade of my childhood was that it moved slowly as it passed our house .

Two elderly Civil War veterans with long grey hair were sitting on chairs in the back of a slow moving truck. There were some horses and wagons in the parade.

Those two elderly Civil War soldiers were not waving and smiling ( in the late 1920's) but looking rather serious as the parade went past our house. (Hopefuly they has been waving and smiling earlier! )

I asked Mama, "who are those poor old men?" "Those elderly men", I was told, were among the last of the disappearing Civil War soldiers. They and their comrades had “lost the war” that had ended in 1865.

These men had probably seen many of their brothers maimed and killed in an "uncivil " war of "brothers fighting brothers." General Sherman is quoted as saying, "war is hell ." After Sherman's march through Georgia, who could deny the truth of Sherman's words.

Many of the Confederate soldiers had never owned nor probably ever seen a slave. My grandfather, Col. William Baird, a Methodist "exhorter" and teacher, like most people in the South never owned slaves.

They had been called to arms and had returned home to see their countryside devastated. Many of their schools, church buildings and homes had been destroyed.

At age 86, I am the youngest and the only living granddaughter of Colonel William Baird, an Army Officer in the tragic "Civil War."

My father, Benjamin Wilson Baird was the youngest son of Col. William Baird and his wife, Mary Marks Baird. I am the youngest of the 11 children (nine of whom lived to adulthood) born to Wilson and and Ieula Ann Dick Baird. My father, Benjamin Wilson Baird was 63 when I was born. Col. William Baird was wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness in North Carolina.

Most of my contemporaries are three generations removed from the Civil War. My husband had two great-grandfathers in the Confederate Army. However, although I was four years younger than my husband, I was only two generations removed from the tragic toll of that war. So I am perhaps among the few living granddaughters of those " disappeared " Civil War soldier.

I thought of that Civil War Parade of my early childhood with it's few surviving elderly Civil War soldiers this week while reading about the fading away of our American World War II (1941-1943 ) generation.

My generation! My husband , Charles Shaw and my brothers Jackson Irvin Baird and John Thomas Baird, and many childhood playmates were off to World War II. My husband and brothers lived to come home. Three of my school classmates were killed; Homer Cook, Carroll Adams and Neal "Red" Cole. God bless their memory and the memory of all these young men (and the few women) who went off to fight a war they hoped would be the last war!

These World War II soldiers, part of the generation labeled a few years ago as the "Greatest Generation" are also now "the disappearing generation."

Family History: Typhoid and Kudzu

Picture above is Dr. Joseph Chambers' house and hospital at Inman in Fayette County, Georgia in early 1900's. I grew up hearing about our accomplished Chambers relatives.

My mother, Ielua Dick Baird (3-5-1885-12-7-1973) 's father, Charles Dick, died when she was a baby and while her mother was pregnant with her youngest brother. So she and her seven siblings were raised in a house on the farm of their maternal grandparents, Bogan and Mary Chambers Mask. (More details are on my blog post about school in the 1890s).

My mother (as a poor widow struggling to raise a family by working as a weaver in a Textile Mill) used to tell us children that we came "from good stock." That was at a time when the word "egalitarian" was yet to be spoken.

I grew up learning in school ( and it was written in our school books ...early 1930's ) there were three classes of people: (1) The Upper Class, (2) The Middle Class and (3) The Lower Class. People socialized with their own class as well as their own race.

When the segment about "Classes of People" was taught in our Civics school class, one little boy said to the teacher, "We are middle class, aren’t we?” The teacher looked uncomfortable. I remember realizing the teacher thought we (most of us in the class were children of unskilled laborers) were not middle class but part of the lower class.

While most of the workers had little to no opportunity for education or learning skills, the work of many, including what my intelligent mother did as a weaver in the Cord Weave Shop was far from unskilled.

As I told in another story, long after my mother retired, officials in the textile mill would send a car to her home to ask her to come back into Ospry Mill to teach others how to thread the looms for the various widths of cloth, a skill that apparently few other had learned. The cord weave department, as the name implies wove heavy material of various widths for tents or to reiforce tank and airplane tires.

The accomplished Chambers family included the "good stock" ancestors of which Mama was proud. Even though the Mask family, the Dick family and the Bairds were "good stock" also. Or so we thought! As a matter of fact, most of our neighbors were hard working people of intelligence and high morals.

Unfortunately, Southern families had kept going downhill in educational and financial opportunities after the destruction of the War between The States.

Mama's Chambers great grandparents had died before she was old enough to know them but she grew up knowing and revering Uncle Daniel and Aunt Rebekah McLucus as well as Grandpa and Grandma (Bogan Mask and Mary). They were hard working farmers, managing large farms and leaders in church and community. Bogan Mask was also a Methodist preacher who did not "own" slaves but was said to have bought one slave in order to gain his freedom.

One of the stories Mama told about her childhood was on Sunday afternoons when she and her siblings would watch for any young couple riding in a horse and buggy dressed like were on their way to get married. She said many Sunday afternoons she and her sibings and other children would run to Grandpa's house and take turns peeping in the widow and excitedly watching as Bogan Mask performed weddings.

Mama told me that her Grandma Mary Chambers Mask was a small slim woman who always wore a neat little bonnet on her head and a long dress and long clean apron.

Dr. Joseph Chambers was said to be a top graduate of Emory Medical School in 1899. He was remembered by Sara Jane’s Grandmother Overstreet as a very kind man. She said he had two professional claims to fame. One was his work with typhoid. He figured out that human waste needed to be buried at least 18 inches down in order not to spread typhoid. That was a big deal at the time.

His other claim to fame might not be considered a good thing by Kudzu haters. It is said Dr. Chambers was the first to have Kudzu imported from the Orient in the 1930s after farmers had lost about a couple of feet of topsoil. Kudzu would (and does) grow fast and hold the dirt on the land. It was very necessary. Unfortunately, it got out of hand with no natural enemies in this area.

But in the 1890's the topsoil did not wash away either with kudzu to hold it. Dr. Chambers was a doctor by profession and a farmer by interest and necessity.

The Tree Planting.

I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree." I thought of Joyce Kilmer's well known poem this week when Ann Long, a friend from Grantville sent me a photo of the Methodist parsonage in Grantville where I had lived ( 1990-1993).
Ann wanted me to see a picture of the tall Tulip tree that had been only a tiny sapling when we planted it in the front yard of the house while I was pastor of the Grantvile First United Methodist Church.

On my Web Log, I have planted a few poems that I ("a fool like me") made. But Kilmer is right, "only God can make a tree."

I used the term "we planted." But I did little more than watch that Spring day when Ann Long and Kathleen Ray, brought their Sunday school class of little girls to the Methodist church parsonage to plant the Tulip tree.

Here they came...Ann Long and Kathleen Ray, (a former Missionary and talented teacher) with hole diggers and shovels and ferilizer and a tree small enough for primary age children to plant. The four to six years old girls, included Mandie Crews, Sarah Hunter, Katie Hunter, Sarah Bonner, Cathy Smith, and toddlers Morgan Crews and Annalee Hunter.

As the tree grew, so grew the children. The six year olds are now in college and the children who were toddlers then are now seniors in high school.

The picture of Grantville United Methodist Church to the left, shows the proximity of the church to the parsonage as it looked in the 1990's when I lived in the wonderful little town of Grantville. (1990-1993). I could write a book about my three years living among those beautiful people until I reached the age of mandatory returement.

One memorable Sunday while there, we saw a miracle when the Grantville church family had worked with me to filled the sanctuary and the balcony to overflow in celebration of the church's Sesquecentenial, 150 years in service to God and the world.

The parsonage is a beautifully furnished and comfortable home provided for the pastorial family. We could walk out the front door of the pastor's home, a few feet across the road into the back door of the church building.

I could also walk down the hill every early morning to pick up church mail and any personal mail. The Post Office was a quick gathering place for all of us on our way to work. I talked with Baptist deacons who were gracious enough to welcome me to town. "Grace" does make us gracious enough to love one another even when we have different understandings of a Christian woman's place in the church.

The Grantville UMC parsonage was also conveniently located to City Hall. During my three years as a resident of Grantville, I walked down that hill to "open with prayer" many of the city hall's monthly meetings. Go you agree, Kilmer's poem has a place in this tree planting story?

"I think that I shall never see.
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree. "

-- Joyce Kilmer

Remember

When I was working on a degree at Georgia State University, I also earned a certificate in Gerontology for work done with the aging and did an internship at a large complex for retired people.

The Retirement Complex included single houses for older people who wanted to get away from the upkeep of larger homes with lawns to maintain. Also included was a six story building of apartments for people in need of assisted living. Then there was a Large convalescent center for those who needed nurse care . The complex also included a large building with fenced yard for patients with some sort of dementia or Alzheimer’s.

At the Convalescence center, one of the activities I tried with the clients was a poetry class every Saturday morning for 6 weeks for those who wished to try their hand at writing poetry.

Many of these senior citizens had arthritic hands and could not hold a pencil. So, with a large yellow tablet, I acted as secretary, They would tell me their poem or story. I would write their stories down in poetic form and read it back to them and to their classmates.

One seriously disabled lady who was confined to a wheel chair had been for many years a nurse. Her poem was about her childhood going back nearly 90 years. She told about her love for climbing trees as a child and about her mother calling her to dinner one day when she was on the highest "limb of the tallest tree " on their farm.

An elderly man, a Mr. Roberts, told me his poem and as he did so, his face lit up with joy in the remembering. He said:
"Everything was not good
In the good old days.
Everything was not safe
In the good old days.
One day when i was…
About that high…
Not more than four years old
I took a big stick of dynamite
Out to the railroad track nearby.
My father used dynamite
To clear our land for plowing.
Dynamite made a loud noise.
I wanted to make it
Make a loud noise.
My mother looked out and saw me
My mother trembled
As she came to get me.
She was afraid to call me
My mother's hands trembled
As she reach out to me
And took the dynamite."

Mr. Roberts smiled broadly as I read his poem back to him and to his classmates. As I looked at him, I saw an old man in a wheel chair but I also envisioned more. I saw a small precocious boy, a child who had loving parents, a father he wanted to emulate and a mother who would risk her very life to protect him.

By the gift of memory, this disabled and elderly man was a young child again. I suggest that in Mr. Robert's earlier memories, he thought primarily of the danger he had encountered in this childhood escapade. Now, elderly and disabled, the smiling Mr. Roberts was remembering a young mother's love for him and her bravery on his account.

He was now remembering his story to people around him now who had been strangers until they were all brought together in a large nursing home. The telling of his story gave him added status in his own eyes as well as in the eyes of his new cohorts who heard his story

One Sociologist, working with the elderly suggests we hyphenate the word remember to "re-member" to distinguish it from ordinary recollection or reminiscing. Re-membering is more than "Backward, turn back O man in your flight. Make me a child again just for tonight."

" Re-membering" is the reconstructing of one’s members, the figures who properly belong to one’s prior selves. Through re-membering, a life is given shape and form and extends back into the past and forward into the future as an edited story. Without re-membering, we lose our history and ourselves.

The Lord God of Israel knew about the value of remembering long before the Sociologist found out about it. We read way back in the book of Deuteronomy, how Yahweh kept telling the children of Israel to re-member:
"And you shall remember all the ways
which the Lord your God has led you
these forty years in the wilderness. That
he might humble you, testing you to know
what was in your heart..." (Deuteronomy 8:21)

The Israelites, stand on the "verge of Jordon" with slavery and forty years of wilderness behind them and the Promised Land in their sight and they are told , to remember their story, to remember their roots which included their spiritual history. They were to recite it as a witness and to respond by giving "the first fruits" and to respond by rejoicing.

They were to remember their history and teach it to their children. So we see them standing in the door of the Promised Land recounting their history....and it is a beautiful liturgy. They are reciting "A homeless Aremean, about to perish were our Fathers and we had bad times...we were enslaved…we were oppressed. But we have a God. God brought us out and gave us this land."

The people of God were to began their worship by remembering "all the ways" the "Lord their God" has lead them. They are to remember they are no longer a "no people" but are "God’s people."
I learned in working with the elderly there is a difference in the mental and emotional health of persons who just recollect or reminiscence about their past and those who re-member.

The great stories of life, the great deeds of God have been kept alive in memory. People remembered and told, and retold. They marked the place. They made a sanctuary. Sometimes a simple reminder would be set up like a stone or a circle of stones, later a church building.

So the great truths of God were passed on from generation to generation by those who had found Christ in that place. Or as Elton Trueblood says, "in finding God we have a place to stand while we look for ourselves." No person really finds himself or herself...We do not find life now and forever, until we first find God through Jesus Christ. It is God who wants to re-member us, to give us shape and form and meaning and salvation.

The Giles's Girls and Quilt Making.

When I think of quilts, I always think of the Giles sisters.

My mother had cousins she and her siblings called the "Giles girls." Three of the girls never married. One of their specialties was quilt making. In one of the bedrooms in their country home (near Fayetteville) there was a stack of beautiful quilts that reached all the way to the ceiling. Not just an eight foot ceiling, but a country ceiling! And the platform that held the quilts was just a few inches off the floor.

When I went with my family to visit as a child, we were always awestruck to see such a mountainous stack of quilts. And they were folded only once, and the corners matched perfectly

Whenever anyone mentioned the Giles sister, someone would say, "I wonder whatever happened to all those quilts." I do not know. With no children nor grandchildren to wear the quilts out sleeping on the floor, they may be heirlooms in some home.
Hopefully some of the neices or nephews have them.

Mama loved and respected her Giles cousins and had played with them as a child so we visited as often as possible even though we lived some distance apart.
I remember them in our home a few times. The family lore is full of stories of the perculiarity of the "Giles girls." On one of their visits to our house, we were all sitting around at bedtime in the "sitting room - bedroom."

The slop jar had already been brought in. I do not remember all the circumstances but my four year old nephew was asleep on one of the beds. Lula said to Mama, in her slow speech typical of the Hollywood stereotype of the Southern drawl, "Eula do you think it would be alright for me to use the slop jar with that little boy in the room."

But life goes on. God bless the memory of these quaint Giles sisters who so facinated us in my childhood.

The Giles sisters were perfect housekeepers. Their country house was said to be so so clean one could "eat off the floor." I am sure no one ever did!

Annie (1885-1975) and Lula (1882-1956)were in charge of the cooking and Pearl (1888-1978)did much of the work in the large garden. They raised their own vegetables for year round use. They canned vegetables and dried fruits for winter use. I remember sitting at their table one time as a child with bowls of vegetables and a huge platter of fresh sliced country tomotoes. I do not remember much about the rest of the menu, but no doubt they also had fried chicken and perhaps another meat dish as a typical "company" dinner in the rural South.

Their mother, Aunt Elmira (Elmira Mask Giles 1854_1940)) was a sister
to Mama's mother, Elizabeth Mask Dick. Elmira and Elizabeth were the daughters of the properous (for the times) farmer and Methodist preacher Bogan Mask. They could (and did ) trace their (our) family history back to the Revolution. Family history was important as "Class" was valued in the South with so many other things "gone with the wind" after the Civil War. It is strange and of little importance to me now but my mother told us on more than one ocassion we "came from good stock."

One of the Giles daughters, Odell, had married, and their only brother had married; but Annie, Pearl, and Lula never married. When Mama and her sisters, Aunt Molly, Aunt Cora and Aunt Fannie visited together, they sometimes remarked about how "pitiful" it was that the Giles girls had never married. Marriage for women was considered of utmost inportance then. So it follows that many of the Women's liberation generation rebelled in the oposite direction.

Aunt Cora pointed out that the reason the Giles girls did not marry was because their papa, Uncle William Giles )1859-1826) was so "peculiar." They said Uncle Bill Giles was "curious".

This did not mean the dictionary reference for the word as eager to learn or inquisitive.
Uncle Bill, they reported was " flat out cure-rus" which meant strange.. He would never let his daughters date. It was said that he "ran off" every man who showed an interest in courting one of his daughters.

It seems that the youngest daughter, Odell had "run off and got married."

When Cotton Was King.

King Cotton was taken off it's throne in the South by the Boll Weevil before 1922. My cousin Aubrey Simms told me a family story in 1995 about remembering the very evening in 1922 when my father told his father that they were moving off the farm.

Aubrey recalled. "Uncle Wilson said to Papa, 'Jay, I've decided to go to Porterdale and get a job in one of the mills there.' " Jason was the son of Papa's sister Margaret (called Maggie) and her husband Ben Simms. They and my folks lived on neighboring farms in the Oak Hill (Georgia) community.

Aubrey said his father replied, "Uncle Wilson, I will never do that. I will go to sharecropping before I will raise my children in a mill town." Aubrey said that Cousin Jay was very much opposed to them getting a job in the mill and especially living in a mill town. (It was a"step down" in the world of class and race. ) Apparently, Papa thought this his only option.


Mama always said that the boll weevil ran us off the farm. The farm was in the community of Oak Hill. (Oak Hill is in Newton County near the Henry County line and also near Rockdale County

Cotton had been king in the South, and farmers made their living by raising cotton. When the tiny boll weevil infested the cotton plants, King Cotton forever lost its throne in Southern farms. Many farmers lost their whole year's wages.

My father was in failing health when he got a job in one of the textile mills in Newton County (Porterdale) and moved his family into that “model mill town” in the fall of 1922. I was born the next year.

The first house our family lived in after moving to Porterdale was on Laurel Street which is a street behind the Osprey Mill Plant. However, it had the advantage of being near a lush woods and the Yellow River.

Osprey Mill was a large brick building and one of the three textile plants in Porterdale owned by Bibb Manufacturing Company. One of the buildings was called simply, “the Old Mill” and the other, “The Welonie."

The Bibb Company also owned the houses in Porterdale and keep them in good repair. They were generally considered “nicer” than the houses in some other “Textile Towns.” It was "parternalistic" but after Sherman's march through the South and the destruction of the Civil War, most of the people in the South (Caucasion and African American) had few educational or economic opportunities.

It was Laurel Street where I was born and where Leon (my three-year old brother)
died in a measles epidemic. Leon became sick with measles as did I. I was about seven weeks old and had a mild case. Leon's ended in pneumonia and death. Just recently, Sara Jane Overstreet, in family research, found the certificate of Leon's death.

I read it and cried for my brother and my parents in their great sorrow over the death of a three year old son. I decided to publish his death certificate in memory of James Leon Baird's whose life was short but always celebrated.

We must have lived on Laurel Street several years. My brother Charlie (about 7 at the time) told me he remembered the family's grief at Leon's death and Mama being put to bed (she had a 7 week old baby) and her heart- breaking sobbing.

I have one memory of being in the kitchen of that house when I heard a crash coming from the front of the house. I remember going into a front room (I was about 2 or 3) and seeing my doll (a doll with a china face and stuffed body) broken on the floor. I looked out the open door to see a little girl, one of my playmates, running across the road to her house.

I do not remember the little girl's name. She may not have been a regular playmate. Apparently breaking the doll was traumatic for her. In my mind's eye, I see her running away wearing a light-colored dress and bloomers. Bloomers were much like some of the playsuits children wear today - a roomy undergarment with elastic not only in the waist, but also at the legs, which came down nearly to the knees with a somewhat shorter dress over it. I do not remember any reaction of the family over the broken doll on the floor on Laurel Street.

I also have a vague memory of walking in the woods behind Laurel Street holding my father's hand and picking wild flowers. Wild flowers were the only ones I would pick.

My mother told me that in our late afternoon walks down the street when I was a tiny child, I would always stop, bend over, and smell all the flowers near the sidewalk but I never picked one. We were taught not pick flowers from gardens not our own.

I suppose I learned then what I was to write about in a poem about flowers later, we do not have to own flowers to enjoy the sight and smell of them. "All that I see, belongs to me."

Wit's End Corner

My mother was still in her forties when my father died after being bedridden for a year. My father was a man of strong faith and knew the heartache and possible hardships his wife and children would have to endure after his death.

A few days before Papa died, he gave my mother a poem entitled "Wit's End Corner" he had cut out of a monthly magazine and gave it to Mama and told her to keep it to read. Both my parents were readers. As tight as money was during the depression, they continued to subscribe to publications.

I thought about the poem sometime ago when reading a story about a musician who played keyboard and sang at a Starbucks shop near Times Square in New York.

It was a cold day so a large group had crowded inside the shop to enjoy the warmth and the music. It was a fun time and was beginning to be a profitable day for the musician as his basket for tips kept piling up.

The music was mostly from the 40s to the 90s with a few original tunes thrown in. During an emotional rendition of the classic, "If You Don't Know Me by Now," the musicain noticed a lady sitting nearby singing along with him and swaying to the beat.

After the tune was over, she walked over and said, "I apologize for singing along on that song. Did it bother you?" "No," the musicain told her. "We love it when the audience joins in!" Then he added, "Would you like to sing up front on the next selection?" She accepted his invitation. She was told to choose a song and asked,"What are you in the mood to sing?"

Finally she asked, "do you know any hymns?"

He replied; " Hymns, sure? I cut my teeth on hymns. Before I was even born, I was going to church." Then he added, "How about 'His Eye is on the Sparrow'?"

The lady was silent for a minute but then told him, "OK, let's do 'His Eye is on the Sparrow'. "

She slowly put down her purse, straightened her jacket and faced the center of the shop and began to sing:
"Why should I be discouraged?
Why should the shadows come?

The audience of coffee drinkers was transfixed. Even the noises of the cappuccino machine ceased as the employees stopped what they were doing to listen. The song rose to its conclusion:

"I sing because I'm happy; I sing because I'm free
His eye is on the sparrow
And he watches over me. "

The applause crescended to a roar and continued while the musician embraced his new friend and told her she had "made his day."

She told him, "Well, it's funny that you picked that particular hymn. " "Why is that?" , he asked. "Well ,"she hesitated again, "that was my daughter's favorite song". "She died at age 16 with a brain tumor two days ago."

She smiled through tear filled eyes as the musician hugged her. She said, "I am going to be okay. I'm just got to keep trusting the Lord and singing God's song." She picked up her bag, gave the musicain her card, and then she was gone.

My mother sang "His Eye Is On the Sparrow" and other hymns in the kitchen as she prepared meals and cleaned the house. Her loud and happy singing in the kitchen sometimes embarrassed me as a teen ager when I would have friends over. Today it is one of my happier memories.

The man ended his story by saying, "When you get to your wit's end, you'll find God lives there. "

Those were the words my Father told Mama. When she died at age 88, the hand written poem , was still in her box of keepsakes. The poem is in her handwriting and now in my keepsakes. She must have copied from a dog-eyed printed copy frm the church newspaper.

Wit's End Corner
Are you standing at "Wit's End Corner
Friend with troubled brow?
Are you thinking of what is before you,
And all you are bearing now?
Does all the world seem against you,
And you in the battle alone?
Remember-at "Wit's End Corner"
Is just where God's power is shown.

Are you standing at "Wit's End Corner
Blinded with wearying pain,
Feeling you cannot endure it,
You cannot bear the strain,
Bruised through the constant suffering,
Dizzy, and dazed, and numb?
Remember-at "Wit's End Corner"
Is where Jesus loves to come.

Are you standing at "Wit's End Corner"?
Your work before you spread,
A mountain of tasks unfinished,
And pressing on heart and head,
Longing for strength to do it,
Stretching out trembling hands?
Remember--at "Wit's End Corner"
The Burden-bearer stands.

Are you standing at "Wit's End Corner"?
Then you're just in the very spot
To learn the wondrous resources
Of Him who faileth not:
No doubt to a brighter pathway
Your footsteps will soon be moved,
But only at "Wit's End Corner"
Is the "God who is able" proved.

Poem by Antoinette Wilson

Fishing in the Yellow River

FISHING IN THE YELLOW RIVER.

All four of my grandparents died before my birth. However, my maternal grandmother {Elizabeth Ann Mask Dick (1845 - 7-3-1921)} lived into old age and died only a few years before my birth.

My mother told me a few stories about how hard her widowed mother worked to provide for her eight children after their father's untimely death when Mama was only 18 months old and her mother was pregnant with 8th child, son Irvin Dick. Her mother never remarried and they lived in a house on the large farm of her Maternal grandfather Rev. Bogan Mask (10-27-1821 - 8-28-1898).

My sister Vera told me about Grandma Dick, in her old age, visiting on occasion and how much Grandma loved fishing. Grandma would tell Vera and Mary to be good and help Mama with the housework and kitchen chores and she would take them fishing after dinner.

Vera told how she and Mary would do as Grandma Dick asked and help get all the household chores done. To quote Vera, "As soon as we cleaned up after dinner, Grandma would turn to Mama and say, 'Eula, I believe I will take the girls down to the river. They want to go fishing so bad!'" Vera added, “Grandma sure liked to fish."

Mama sure liked to fish, also! Perhaps she learned the secret of catching fish from her mother. Mama usually came home with a long string of fish. We either cooked the fish she caught or gave them to others to cook.

Many afternoons, when the weather permitted, Mama (Ieula Ann Dick Baird 3-6-1885 - 12-6-1973) would finish up the housework; and she and a neighbor, Mrs. Parnell, would head for the Yellow River with Mamie (Mrs. Parnell's daughter) and me in tow. Mamie and I sometimes fished, but often just explored the woods, picked wild flowers or dug worms. We had learned to talk quietly so as not to " scare away the fish."

I never missed an opportunity to go on one of these fishing expeditions. (The photo to the left is the Yellow River dam at Milstead near Georgia Hwy 20 in Rockdate County. My husband Charles Shaw told me stories about growing up swimming in that area of the river 16 miles by road travel from where my mother was fishing in the same yellow River in Porterdale Georgia) .

There was one problem with me going with Mama fishing in the Yellow River? Among the lush vegetation near the Yellow River bank where my mother and Mamie's mother fished was an abundance of poison oak and ivy. I had long since learned not to touch the "three leaf " poison plant.

Have you heard the lines:

"Leaves of three...Let it be!

.Leaves of five...Let it thrive!"

Although I avoided the plants touching my skin, wore long sleeved shirts and overalls and came home to bathe in Clorox water, I often broke out into a painful, itchy rash from being in the vicinity of the poison plant.

One Sunday Morning

My husband Charles Shaw had been a pastor in the Methodist Church for thirty five years when he had a second heart attack which left him with heart damage. He had to retire from his work as a full time pastor.

About a year later, Rev. Harold Gray, a District Superintendent (an Elder who helps with seeing that each church in his district has a pastor) called one Sunday morning and asked Charles if he would go to preach at a small United Methodist Church, whose preacher could not continue. Charles said "yes" and he and I drove about 22 miles to the beautiful Rico United Methodist Church in Palmetto Georgia where about a dozen members were present, not knowing whether or not they would have a preacher to with them that Sunday.

Neither the Church nor the Bishop ever sought a replacement so Charles continued to pastor and preach at Rico for over a year. Attendance and membership grew with Charles as their gifted preacher and loving pastor

Two of those Sundays Charles asked me to preach when he was not able. The First Sunday in Advent in 1986, Charles preached his last sermon, suffering a fatal heart attack three days later.

Two weeks after my husband's death, I learned the Rico congregation had made a request to the church cabinet that I be appointed as their pastor. So I stood there to preach my first sermon as a pastor only three Sundays after my husband had stood in that same pulpit to preach his last.

Even though I had been on the periphery of ministry a long time, the role of pastor was a new one! When I was called and asked to take on the pastorate; First, I was surprised that they would call a woman pastor. Second, I knew I would continue in ministry in some way as long as I lived because of my strong sense of calling. (My husband an I had recognized my call earlier) Third, this was the open door the Lord wanted me to walk through!

I learned also that the Lord does enable those whom He calls. The Lord blessed us richly as I continued to serve the Lord in that place nearly four years while I enrolled and finished seminary, (Emory's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta). I drove back and forth the 30 or so miles three days a week for three years to earn the Master of Divinity degree and enjoyed the classes and the learning opportunity. But my love and top priority was preaching and serving Christ and the people in the Rico community.

The Rico United Methodist Church (photo above) is located in the beautiful open
countryside and is only a hundred yards or so from the Providence Baptist Church, (photo to the right).
When I first went to Rico, I was interested to learn that the Baptist and Methodist congregations join together for worship services at least three times a year and also cooperate with each other in other ways.

For example, each has an annual homecoming and both congregations come together for the fellowship dinner after the Worship Service. They attend each other’s weddings and “showers” and other special services. Why so much fellowship across denominational lines? When I read the Rico Church History I found at least one answer.

In 1902 when a man by the name of Shannon gave an acre of land adjoining the new Baptist church to build the Methodist Church he said, “The Baptist and Methodists should cooperate on earth as well as in heaven.” Then in 1954 in an updated history this story is re-told with the comment, “It is said that there is no place on earth where Methodists and Baptists cooperate more than in the Rico Community.” So, at least for the old timers in the area, they took pride, perhaps even “un-Christian pride” in recounting their history of cooperation.

One of the joint ventures between this Baptist and Methodist congregation is a service at the Masonic Hall on the third Sunday of each September. I have not polled “the whole world” but I suspect there may be no other “place on earth” where Baptists and Methodists unite for a Sunday Worship Service in a Masonic Hall.

This includes the two pastors preaching in alternating years. The Masonic Lodge is equidistant from the two churches, in a triangle with the three buildings near one point on the triangle. The Masonic structure is a little nearer the Methodist than the Baptist, a fact that I understood was pleasing to some of the Baptists who considered the Masonic movement a work the devil.

It was my turn to preach. I had been a pastor less than a year and was a student in seminary. I had put all the time I could in preparation and felt it was not near enough. The Baptist preacher would lead the singing and the pastoral prayer. After Sunday school both congregations walked the few yards to gather for this service. All of our Methodist people were present.

One family had even postponed a vacation to “support Ruth” in my first attempt to preach to the Baptists. We had about an equal number from each of the two congregations. They were seated in clusters in what could be described as a “theater-in-the -round.” I do not know if this arena style is typical of Masonic structures.

Rev. Glenn Dow, the Baptist minister, was seated on my left on the slightly raised stage at the wall in front of the entrance.

We were into the service and our Methodist Children’s Choir was singing when a man came to the open door and motioned for Dow. It seemed like an eternity before he returned to the platform visibly shaken. He walked to the podium and said, "I have a very sad announcement to make. I wish it could wait until after the service. But in my judgment it needs to be told now. There has been a terrible accident out on Garrett’s Ferry Road. It was Charlene Lewis (a member of Providence Baptist) and her children on the way to church. The children were rushed to Grady...Charlene is dead...it is time for prayer and they need prayer . . .we all need prayer. Let us pray.”

There were audible gasps and cries all over the building. I found myself in tears. I had met Charlene and her two young daughters just eight days earlier at a wedding shower at our Methodist church for a Baptist friend. She was young and very much alive.

The shock of sudden death is staggering. We were all reeling. My mind was in turmoil as I was bowed low listening to Dow and silently praying for the grieving congregation and for myself. What in the world could I say?

Painfully I struggled to remember some of the sermon notes folded in my Bible. Would it be appropriate? The scripture I had asked Dow to read was Paul’s account in Romans 4:1-11 of Abram’s life of faith and a few verses in Luke 15:3-7 about God’s love for one lost sheep. I was to tie them together with the thought that God loves us and has a place and a plan for each of us. God’s laws are not just written in the Bible, but are also written in our bodies and our psyche. When we come home to God we are coming home to Truth.

Should I try to explain why an “all powerful" and “all loving God” would allow a young mother to be killed on the way to church? We did not know at the time that the only child of a neighbor had also been in the car and killed. A drunken man had driven his car on the wrong side of this peaceful and picturesque county road.

I do not remember Dow’s prayer. I do remember thinking he was handling it well. I had and still have great respect for this man of God. His pastoral care and concern was evident. Rev. Dow finished the prayer and sat down like a man whose sentence was served and looked expectantly toward me.

It was all too soon my turn to speak. I could not just “be with the people.” I knew if there were to be any ultimates to be spoken by a human being, for God’s sake and for ours it must be said. I was not adequate but I knew the Eternal God was with me in a powerful way.

It was not a funeral. It was a Sunday Morning Worship Service. But we were crying for Charlene and for our own humanness. I said something like this; “I met Charlene at the shower for Linda last week. I remember her as vivacious and friendly.” I turned to my right where several persons were sobbing. “I grieve with you. I am so sorry…so very sorry. I grieve for all of us in trying to understand how a loving, all powerful God would allow a young mother to be killed on the way to church.

“We know, of course, thousands of persons drove to church safely today and every Sunday drive to church without accident, but that does not make it easier today. And in our humanness, we take our safety, our life for granted. We only stop to question God when an accident or sudden death occurs.

God has given us freedom. We are in a highly mechanized, fallen world and it seems to me many persons' lives are cut short needlessly. I remember a few lines I read some time ago: “The grass withers, the flowers fade…you and I die. How I wish it were not so. How I wish things were different. But if things were different, it is entirely possible that we would not possess whatever it is...we wish would never die.” (that phrase had stood out in my reading a few days earlier and seemed important to me)

Moses wrote in Psalm 90, “A thousand years in God’s sight are but as a day when it is past and as a watch in the night.” It seems to me that measuring the length of life in the light of eternity - whether we live a hundred years or just twenty or thirty years - we have only a brief time. This is why it is so important to learn from God. The eternal God is our dwelling place and underneath are the everlasting arms. This is why what we do at church is of supreme importance.“

Before beginning the sermon I also said a few things I had planned about my respect for the Baptist church and a few words about my call as a woman. Very few! When faced with the mystery of death, the disputes between denominational understanding and between the place of men and women in the church seemed insignificant. (BTW. This Baptist pastor invited me to preach at his church and we had Bible studies with both churches participating. When I finished seminary and was sent to another community as a full time pastor, I had the same type of relationship with the Baptist pastor and his congregation. God bless these dear men and women of God. They may have a different understand of the Lord's call for Chrisitan women in the church but were respectful and loving.)

It has been one of the heartwarming and faith building experiences of my life to look at the sermon the Lord gave me during that week. I did not know what would be happening on that Sunday morning but it seemed evident the Lord did. From the opening story to the final illustration, the sermon spoke to all of us in the crisis situation in which we found ourselves that day.

Everyone stayed to complete the Celebration of Worship until the last amen of the benediction. Then they came forward in tears to put arms of love around Dow and around me and each other and to say affirming things about the service and about their faith.