Moving Memories

I was thirteen years old the first time I ever moved.  We were thrilled to have the opportunity to move into a house that our family had custom built.  It wasn’t a large home, just six rooms, but it had a bath and a half.  For the first time in our lives there would be two options for personal business.

I had been reared in a home that my grandfather built.  He had gotten a job at Kingsport Press.  He joyfully told the story of how proud he was to pay for this house as it was being built.  His pride was really evident when he got to the part where he talked about paying the “last dollar as they were driving the last nail.”  This little home was also six rooms, but had been built with no provision for indoor bath facilities.  Instead a “privy” was built close by as was the custom in that time.  Later the back porch was enclosed to make room for the bathroom and a laundry area.  This room would be fought over by all five members of my family as we went through the daily ritual of life.

The house was heated by a coal furnace.  As a young child I remember my father making the trip to the basement and making strange clinking noises which I listened to at the dining room grate.  I so much wanted to go down there with him, but was told I was too little.  Later I found that the basement was a dug out hole under the house just big enough for the furnace, a coal bin and some access to the new plumbing.  The stoker system allowed you to put coal into the hopper and if you kept the cinders cleared from the furnace itself, the stoker would feed the coal into the fire as it needed it.  The coal had to be purchased in a size that would fit through the system, about like large gravel.  The cinders were dumped into a bucket and carried out to be placed along the driveway where the water flowed off the road.  Coal heat was the warmest head I’d ever experienced.

I remember the gutters on the side of the house.  They were round, old and had holes in them.  As it rained the water would squirt out from the holes.  It gave me great entertainment to plug up the holes with my fingers and watch the water squirt out a different hole for as long as I held my fingers in place.  Later this whole game ended as the house was “improved” with asbestos shingles and new gutters and downspouts.

Because my grandparents had lived here, the yard was filled with signs of their lives.  Mammaw had planted “pretty-by-nights” beneath my sisters’ bedroom window on the dark side of the house.  They came up and formed almost a hedge along that section of the house, and true to their name, they bloomed about four o’clock in the evening and closed up by morning.  Mammaw’s yellow trailing rose bedecked the back of the big, hand-built garage shed.  The roses and peonies there made that ugly building take on new beauty each spring.

Irises were planted in several other places, along with silver maple trees, chinese elm trees, a large, old pear tree, and two golden pippen apple trees.  Rambling roses covered the bank along the upper yard.  As my mother hung clothes on the clothesline in that upper yard, I rode my tricycle around the apple tree and down the graveled driveway.  A four-lane highway had opened up behind the house about the time I was born, so my mother’s eyes were always carefully watching me to make sure I didn’t get too close to it.  My dad made me and my sisters a sandbox on the lower side of the yard, beside our swing set.  Here much time was spent playing until the cat discovered what a good place this was for doing what cats do in litterboxes.

When both sisters had graduated high school, we left this house, a place where many memories had been formed.  We traveled almost a mile and a half back to the back pasture where my family had been given two acres of land atop a bald hill.  Our new house was brick, had a double garage in the basement, and was heated by ceiling electric radiant heat.  Our air conditioning was a large attic fan that drew cool air in at night (along with bugs that could fit through the screens).  My oldest sister had married already and was living in Tennessee.  My second oldest sister (the middle child) lived with us for the rest of summer before enrolling at Emory & Henry.  My father would live with us only a couple of years before his mid-life crisis took firm hold of him and he eventually ended his life, purportedly over a girlfriend who was cheating on him.  The last couple of years was only my mother and me.  Then the week I went off to college, she remarried and we left this new house behind.

My grandmother died in the house she was born in, the house that stood next door to my first home, and not far from the second one.  She had moved only four times.  When she was married she first lived in Church Hill for a while, then a house came open on the home place and she and Pappaw moved there until they could build the house I lived in.  When Grandmother Ketron, her mama, died in 1956, Mammaw and Pappaw moved back to the home place to watch and care for Granddaddy, her “papa.”  This was an eight room house built by Grandmother Ketron’s parents in 1893 with proceeds from Grandpa Perry’s timbering efforts.  It included rooms that were moved across the road from an old log house that stood in where we gardened during my childhood.  The log house was torn away, but the kitchen wing formed an “L” on the back of the house.  In 1943 this wing was torn down from the back and rebuilt on the front as the highway was moved to the back of the house.  It was this road that was four-laned in the 1960s.  I lived in a room upstairs during the summers while I was in college.  I stayed there a whole week in 1996 when Pappaw Smith was dying.  It was the house where all the family gathered for Christmases and other occasions throughout my childhood.  Underneath the giant maples that composed what was then the back yard, I was told the stories of our family, stories that contained our values and morals.

 I moved after that to college, seminary, summer church internships, five pastoral appointments.  On one of those summer internships I met a lady named Mary Bass.  Mary lived in an old farmhouse similar to the one my grandparents lived in.  I loved to stop and see her, she was always so sweet and inviting, and I would reward myself with a visit to her after I had made several not-so-pleasant ones.  One day I learned she was in the hospital in Burlington, NC.  So I traveled up there and found her room and stood by her bed as she talked.  She was glad to see me, and she wanted to tell me about a dream she had been contemplating.  She had dreamed since being in the hospital of dying and going to heaven.  She said she could see a walled city and at the gate a lot of movement going on.  A field was between her and the city, and as she walked towards the gate she said she looked up and suddenly there she saw her daddy coming running out to see her.  Then she looked at me and said “Home, what a beautiful word.”  I didn’t see Mary anymore after that.  But her description of home has stuck with me through all the places I’ve lived during my life.

As I get ready to travel to my next assignment later this month, I shall attempt once more to make home out of the house provided for the pastor of the church I’m going to.  I hope there are irises, and maybe a spot to grow some “pretty-by-nights.”  You know, you need some things to remind you of home.

Decoration Day

Decoration Day (Photo credit: MBK (Marjie))

Long before it became a day to honor the people who had died in war, the people of the hills of home would go each spring to the family or church graveyard.  They went in springtime after all the gardens had been planted, tobacco had been set, and flowers were in full bloom.  They visited the places where people they loved had been laid to rest in sure and certain hope of the resurrection.

Little family plots dot the landscape in the hills and ridges of Southwestern Virginia, eastern Kentucky, East Tennessee and southern West Virginia.  You grow up learning that there is value in honoring the dead.  Stories abound on the trek up and down the hillsides to these graves.  Flowers would be gathered to place lovingly on the graves.  Stones were wiped clean and if fences needed repairing around the graveyards, that was done, too, in order to keep the cattle out.

Dr. Ralph Stanley, whose “Hills of Home” Memorial Day festival on the top of Sandy Ridge in Dickenson County, Virginia each year honors his family heritage of old time mountain music, has recorded a song on his “Mountain Preacher’s Child” album that captures the emotion of this day.

Oh Lord, I’m so lonesome,

my wife went to heaven one year today;

Songbirds sing their sadness,

walkin’ up this hill on Decoration Day.

My children know not the reason

a fast train took their mother away;

On her grave we’ll place new flowers,

walkin’ up this hill on Decoration Day.

My babies ask me about her,

each night when they kneel down to pray;

Oh, Lord, I have no answers,

climbin’ up this hill on Decoration Day.

Later that night Dad took his own life,

worried and sick since Mom went away;

Left eight little children to face life together,

and walk up this hill next Decoration Day.

Early in Spring time when flowers are bloomin’,

they pick roses for their loved ones on their way;

But this year, there’s a new grave stone

standin’ on this hill on Decoration Day.

Twenty years later their children came to see them,

with roses in their hands you could almost hear them say;

It’s so sad to place new flowers

up on this hill on Decoration Day.

So, wherever your family is laid to rest this Memorial Day, go back in your mind to that place and find a way to get in touch with your feeling of connection with those who helped bring you into being.  And give thanks.

Cabbage and Hot Pepper

Grandpa Perry was from Louisa County, Virginia.  His family lived in the Green Spring Valley near Poindexter Store, we’ve been told.  They migrated to Sullivan County, Tennessee, settling somewhere between Blountville and Bluff City in the late 1850s.  He was the son of a brick mason who probably migrated to Tennessee for work.  He is said to have been proud to tell people he was “Scotch-Irish.”

He met and married a young lady who lived in the Waycross Community at the head of Stanley Valley in Scott County, Virginia during the Civil War.  They raised a family of three sons and four daughters who lived to adulthood.  When he was annoyed at something, he had the habit of saying “Switch-Take-It” instead of using vulgar words.  He was married to Elizabeth Ann Sandidge, who was one of the first members of Morrison Chapel Methodist Church in the Kingsport area.  He spent a lifetime supporting that congregation and attending after the war with his brother, against whom he had taken up arms during that conflict.  Morrison’s was a union congregation, meaning they contained people who had agreed to go to church together while dividing their loyalty between the northern Methodist denomination and the southern one.  One Sunday the northern, or “M. E.” preacher would preach, the next a southern, or “M. E., South” preacher would take the pulpit.  They took year about using each church’s literature in Sunday School (Sabbath School, in their parlance).

One day, sitting at the table in the kitchen of the home he had built in 1893 on profit from timber sales, Grandpa was waiting for Aunt Haste to get dinner ready.  She was cooking a pot of fresh cabbage, which had long been a staple in Perry family gardens.  She had chosen to season it with a hot pepper, probably a cayenne.  Grandpa, feeling his oats, said:  ”Haste, when you get through cooking that pot of cabbage, bring that pepper over here and sit it down next to my plate.”

“Oh, Daddy, you don’t won’t to eat this pepper, it’s very hot!”  Haste exclaimed, with the love of a daughter.

“Switch-Take-It!  I don’t care how hot it is, put it down here!”  Grandpa was demanding and mustered all the authority of his years and fatherhood.

Dutifully, Haste brought the pepper over, looked him straight in the eye, and laid it by his plate.  The rest of the family was gaining some mild amusement at this pending situation.  Grandpa Perry eyed the pepper with glee, placed it whole in his mouth, and began chewing.  The more he chewed, the hotter it got.  The hotter it got, the more he chewed, determined not to lose this battle with his loving daughter.

Directly, he spit the hot pepper out on the table, tears streaming out of his eyes, mouth sore with pain.  He looked the family over, frowned with his Scotch-Irish eyes, and declared:

“Now, blaze!  Consarn, ye!”

Red and White Carnations

On this Mother’s Day weekend, I am remembering the tradition in my home church in the West Carter’s Valley section of north Kingsport, Tennessee, of wearing a red carnation if your mother is living, and a white one if she has passed to her eternal reward.  Mother’s Day was a real red letter day in our church.  We would get excited to see which mom present would get the reward for being the oldest mother, the youngest mother, the mother with the most children, the mother with the most children present, the newest mother, and so forth.  Pastors would sometimes preach on the characteristics of good, Godly moms.

On the Saturday before Mother’s Day, my Pappaw would take me to White’s Floral in Weber City to purchase a corsage for Mammaw (white carnations with white ribbons) and one for my mom (red carnations with red ribbons).  We would wait while they were made, watching the workers put them together with skill and quickness.  Conversations would ensue about each worker’s mother and how they were going to spend the day celebrating or remembering.  Home with our proud purchases, we would place them in the refrigerator in their slick white boxes to await the next morning’s pinning.

Sometimes our worship service included my mother and my two sisters singing a “special” in beautiful trio form at the piano in the corner of the sanctuary.  Sometimes my cousin Ramona would sing a solo, or Jeff Strong (now a Baptist preacher) would sing with his dad, Don.  The kids from Sunday School would read special poems or Bible verses to honor their moms.

I had “extra” moms in the church, ladies that took seriously their vow to surround the children of the church with a community of love and grace.  Some were Sunday School teachers, some were choir members, some were workers at different projects.  All were good cooks.  They sewed (like my own mother did, she used to take people’s sewing projects on, and earned a new piano by working to make things for folks), the quilted (my grandmother and her sister were part of the quilt circle that helped pay off the church’s debt by quilting for people in the church and community every Thursday for over two decades), they cleaned and decorated (fellowship doesn’t just happen at events, it happens in the processes leading up to and cleaning up afterwards), and they patiently prayed and hoped for each one of us to make it into adulthood with faith in God through Jesus Christ.  Sometimes their prayers were answered, and other times they found disappointment, but they never gave up.  These were the mothers of the church, the working backbone of the group, the cheerleaders and doers, and they accomplished great things, and left a legacy.

When I went into the ministry in Russell County, Virginia over two decades ago, I found people just like them, but in a different setting.   They were women who had come up on the rough side of the mountain of life, but were faithful, hopeful, strong and generous.  They too cooked wonderful meals and shared much in projects that showed the love of God in the community.  They deserved the accolades given on Mother’s Day.

I met my wife at this first appointment.  She was from a little community in the western end of Tazewell County, a place in the coalfields called Bandy, named after some of her ancestors.  Here, in a humble home by the side of Sinking Waters Road, she had been raised by a coal miner, now disabled, and his wife.  Her mother was a giving and caring woman, part of a group of ladies in the Bandy Community Freewill Baptist Church who worked, sacrificed, cooked, cleaned, prayed, worried, and loved every day.  This woman who never learned to drive, (and neither did her sisters), was so very giving and loving.  Not having much means in terms of how this world counts the value of things, she was rich in relationships and deeply caring.  She would invite people to share meals at her house.  It wasn’t long into my dating relationship with Tammie that her mom began inviting me to Sunday dinner.  You have never seen such a spread.  Every possible thing she could think to cook was on the table.  I found later that she tried to have each grandchild’s favorite food every week.  Even if they didn’t show, their food was present, representing her love for them.  I fell hard for her corn bread and fried chicken legs.  I once told Tammie that was why I married her, to get her mom’s corn bread.  Little did I know Tammie had made it for her mom.  Edith just grinned and took the compliment.  Attending church with Tammie’s mom has been a blessing for me.  Their choir sings the gospel songs with shaped notes.  Anybody can join them as they gather at the start of the service, sing, and go back to their seats in the church with their families.  Prayer concerns are shared with a common request being (mostly from the mothers):  ”pray for my lost children and grandchildren.”  A mother’s request surely get’s God’s attention.  Here’s to the moms at Bandy Community Freewill Baptist Church!

I have been surely blessed in this life, with my own mother and grandmothers, as well as the community of mothers and Godly ladies in the churches I’ve been blessed to be a part of.  I’m thankful that in meeting and marrying my wife, Tammie, I have had the opportunity to share in the life of her own mother who has now found her eternal rest in the arms of Jesus, and in the company of women who still make  up the Willing Workers at her home church, including her beloved pastor’s wife, Deanis.

I’m thankful for the new mothers in our family, our neices and cousins and in-laws.  My prayer is that this Mother’s Day you will know you are loved, blessed, and remembered.  Not just in red and white carnations, but in the praises of your children, may you be held in high honor this Sunday, as you fulfill your God-given role.

And I want to say a word about my wife, Tammie.  We lost our only pregnancy in 1999, but Tammie’s love for all God’s children is a great and tremendous blessing to me.  She has been a wonderful, loving mother to the child we took in back in 2006, who will graduate in June of this year from High School.  She cares deeply for the children as well as all the people in the churches I have served since we married almost 20 years ago.   I am so deeply thankful for her love and kindness she tries to show everyone.  I am humbled by her love each day of my life.  I praise God for her. She is her mother’s daughter and an example of strength and beauty in the church.

Whether a white or red carnation is yours this weekend:  Happy Mother’s Day!

Naming the Cold Spells

Every spring my family would mark the cold spells as they came and went.  They had beautiful names:  Redbud Winter, Dogwood Winter, Blackberry Winter.  We even had a little spell we called Raspberry Winter.  Then after the Tenth of May cold spell you could go barefoot until fall, and usually did as much as we could.  These “winters” were temporary cold snaps after Spring had begun.  They seemed to come with regularity.  Every time the weather went below, say 60 degrees, we would look to see what was blooming and name the spell after that flower.  Redbuds bloomed first, then dogwoods, then the berries.  So the progression of Spring moved through those waves of blossoms as the earth adjusted to its position with the sun.

It was tradition in our family to pay attention to the signs of nature.  Pappaw told that his grandfather always waited to plant field corn until “oak leaves were a big as squirrel’s ears.”  Planting usually began with gassing the tobacco beds in February.  A huge sheet of plastic was placed over the bed (about 10 feet by fifty feet), on boards nailed together.  Gas cans were placed beneath the plastic and opened up to release their chemical.  This treated the bed so when seedlings came up they had a good chance to mature.  We usually had the beds sewn by the time the “frogs started hollerin’.”

Next the lettuce beds and onion sets and cabbage were planted.  The lettuce was usually sewn in a bed defined by four boards nailed in a frame.  A piece of cheese cloth was nailed to the top so the rain and light could get through.  If it got cold, the frame and cloth was enough to help protect the young leaves.  Onions and cabbage could usually stand any cold snap, and could be planted as early as the second week of February.

There is a long held tradition in our part of the country to plant potatoes around Good Friday.  This date moves from year to year with the lunar calendar.  It is the Friday before Easter.  As I’ve been taught, Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.  This could put it from mid March to late April.  It is possible to get a bad cold snap between March and April.  When it has happened it sometimes kills the young apple blossoms, and can snap the first sprouts from potato vines.

As the Spring progresses the rest of the garden is laid off and planted.  After the tenth of May it is generally okay to plant everything that needs to wait until “all danger of frost has past.”  So, then beans, squash, corn, and what-have-you can go in the ground.  Tomato plants, too.  And of course, the transplanted tobacco seedlings.  We kids were sometimes told to wait until after May 15 to shed our shoes, but sometimes we took it a little early.  It was thought that we were in danger of catching cold if we didn’t listen.

When I served a church near Bluefield, Virginia, an older woman there told me that there was another cold spell in those parts that happened around the end of May or first of June.  It was called the “Sheep Rains.”  This was a spell that happened about the time the sheep were sheared.  It was several days in a row of light rain and cooler temperatures.  Of course, this is the county where a preacher once told me that in 1940 he was serving a church near the Indian Paintings and they had scheduled a revival for the second week of May only to cancel it because of snow.  The year he told me that it was in the 90s on Mother’s Day.  At home May was the month to get the tobacco planted and try to get the first mowing of hay put up.

We tend to mark time by the tragedies of life.  For even as life is going well, there are those unexpected twists and turns.  My childhood was marked by an event in April, 1977 when it rained for several days in a row.  The Holston River got out of its banks higher than we ever had seen.  Over in Clinchport, the water got up in all the houses of that little town.  Grundy, Virginia, also had devastating floods.  Our school became the lunchtime site for the Clinchport Elementary kids who were bussed from their home town to Weber City to attend school in the educational building of the Baptist Church.  They would walk the quarter mile down Jennings Street to our school to eat.  We were not allowed to play with them, but we watched them make that march down and back each school day, and were told to remember them in their losses.  So, the “Flood of ’77″ has become a kind of marker for our lives, and theirs.  Today there is hardly anything left of that town.

“The year Granddaddy died” is another marker.  1974, Granddaddy Ketron passed.  His farm was then divided and the herd was sold.  It changed relations in the family and we no longer got together for Christmas as we once had.

The “year the church burned down” was another I heard a lot about.  It coincided with the labor strike at the Kingsport Press.  1963, January.  Preacher Brown had gone to start the furnace to heat the church up for services.  When he walked across the parking lot to the parsonage, he heard a loud noise, looked back and saw the flames shooting up through the church.  This was very traumatic for our community.  The old church had stood since 1899.  It was the place where generations had been baptized, married, found saving grace, and had funerals.  That year brought change in the town of Kingsport with the strike.  It was never settled and it caused my uncles, my grandfather, and my dad to seek other work.  Retirement accounts dried up in thin air.  Our family must have thought God had left them in the events of that terrible year.  But we survived.  A new church was built and dedicated in June of 1967.  Livelihoods were found.  We moved on.

That’s the way it is.  We are used to tragedy coming even in the good times of life.  We expect, and even brace for it.  We mark the winters of life.  We wait for the warmth to return.  We move on.  May the warm sun of God’s love continue to smile down upon us through life’s ups and downs.

Going Native: Reflections on Mixed Ancestry

Mingo Chief Logan

When I was a kid our family took a trip to Cherokee, North Carolina.  I don’t remember much about it, except the long car ride, Dad fussing, us kids looking out the window wondering when and if we were ever going to stop.  The little tourist town was filled with the souvenir shops you expect in a place like that.  All kinds of “Made in China” things could be bought including little plastic feather head-dresses and rubber tomahawks.  I wanted to get my picture made with the Indian who sat in front of the big, colorful tepee, but my parents wouldn’t let me.

The place didn’t make much of an impression.  As a small kid, you are usually in the moment and don’t care what you’re doing as long as you get some attention.

Years later I developed a strong interest in genealogy.  I found out there was a tradition in my family of being descended from an Indian.  Doing more research over the past thirty years, I have actually found about three documented lines that descend from native American ancestors.  Knowing nothing about them, I’ve tried to learn about their lives, their tribal customs, and so forth.  And I’ve tried to consider what in my life now is influenced by their blood being in my veins.  My conclusion is inconclusive.

Every generation you trace back doubles the number of your ancestors.  You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great grandparents, and so forth.  My Native American ancestors are so far back their influence has all but disappeared, with the possible exception that I go on the war path from time to time when I get my “dander” up.

There are a lot of us with Native roots.  Many families have a “Cherokee” or some other ethnicity in our ancestral woodpile.  A lot of research in recent years has centered around trying to understand “Melungeon” and other “mixed-race” groups.  Research has opened up a multiplicity of explanations and influences that are grouped together and it really isn’t clear what it should be called.  Dr. Brent Kennedy, who gave this research a resurgence beginning in the late 1990s, has suggested there is more of this mixing than we might once have known.  It accompanies the history of our nation and the settlement of the continent by European groups.

Interesting studies are available on the history of Native American groups including some that focus on Pocahontas and her Powhatan people and how these native people interacted with the first settlers at Jamestown and subsequent colonial settlements.  From the very beginning there was marrying and coupling that led to children of mixed race being brought forth.  What is interesting about this is the strong denial of mixing the races that accompanied public policy in the early 1900s as a really restrictive racist movement developed, with roots in the Reconstruction era of American life.

I was a student at Emory & Henry College in the 1980s when a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan was going on in the Bristol, Virginia/Tennessee area.  An organizer moved there who was adept at getting press coverage.  Only, the reporters found out he had a mixed racial background and belonged to an ethnic group the Klan was against.  They had a field day with this news and he was kicked out of his own hate group.

There was a time when you had to hide your ancestral identity if you had anything other than European roots.  Persons with any other genetic heritage were considered in some degree of lesser status than the “majority” of the population.  Therefore families like mine had to hide their roots, whitewashing them with stories of origin that were nothing but fiction.  Because of the intense scrutiny they were under, many took the secrets of their family’s origin to their grave.  Documents were destroyed, and history was forgotten.  It was a way to survive.

In the present age it is not so big a deal to be honest about one’s roots.

So, I continue on my journey to recover the past.  I am not planning to “go native” in my dress, or my spirituality, but  hope to learn and appreciate the contribution such people made to the family tree.

As a Methodist minister, it is somewhat ironic to me that one of my Native American ancestors left his tribe in the late 1700s to be taught the faith of the “white men” as he called them.  He was later listed in the census as a Methodist “exhorter,” or lay preacher.  So even though there was not continuity down to my time (his children joined Baptist churches), I feel some sort of connection with him.  And I appreciate his willingness to follow his own path.  Maybe that’s his contribution to my genetic heritage.

I also appreciate the struggle of these people who sought a place to live freely, even as they were forced to relocate from ancient tribal lands due to the continual westward advance of European groups, in which I have the majority of my ancestral background.  There is evidence that these groups kept hovering in what Europeans considered “undesirable” places:  hill country, hollows, mountain ridges, and along narrow stream beds.  They traveled from the coastal plain up the rivers to places that we today call Louisa County, Virginia, and later Patrick, and Henry Counties in Virginia, and Stokes, Surry, Rockingham, Wilkes and other Counties in North Carolina, and back to the mountains of Virginia and East Tennessee, some going on over into eastern Kentucky.  Through time they intermixed and became lighter and more like their European neighbors.  They lost all vestiges of their previous lives.  They adopted English names and language and Christian religion.

I don’t understand everything about them.  Many facts about their lives are forever lost.  I don’t need to know everything.  I just want to honor them.  They contributed to who I am today.  Not exclusively, not overwhelmingly, but in some part, in some way, I would not be who I am without them.

Confused, Bewildered, and Embarrassed

To hear the name “Bockie” in my home was to pause in reverence, then to cackle with laughter.  Bockie died a full seventeen years before I was even born, but his presence lingered far beyond his mortality.  Bockie was so named because Mamaw Smith couldn’t say “Mark” when she was a toddler, so “Bockie” it was from that time on.

Joseph Pendleton Mark Perry was Grandmother Ketron’s brother, one of the sons of William M. Perry and Elizabeth Ann Sandidge Perry, reared on the same home place I was fortunate to grow up on.  He was a farmer, a hard-worker, and a very religious man.  Now the fact that he had been out under a tree during a thunderstorm in his early youth, and lived through a lightening strike, is not a fact that is related to his religion, but it does explain his odd ways about faith.

Bockie was a regular at all the services and Sunday School up at Morrison Chapel, just across the state line from the home place.  He was known to lay down on his back in his pew and pray out loud with his hands raised toward heaven.  He talked in simple sentences, and seemed almost childlike in the purity of his words.  Occasionally he was known to start a parade in the little church, as he would lead the children around the pot belly stove, singing some glorious song to their and the congregation’s sheer delight.

Then there was the night he got confused.  You have to know that to be a Methodist in the Southern Church in Bockie’s day was to be strongly evangelical and completely committed to entire sanctification, or holiness.  The area of East Tennessee in which this congregation was found, as well as the neighborhood across the state line, were known for strongly held, but deeply divided beliefs when it came to politics, religion, and especially personal salvation.  And because a state line ran through the community, the issue of “demon rum” was one that caused much consternation.  Especially in the era of prohibition.  The Virginia side was “wet,” while the Tennessee side was “dry.”  That didn’t mean that Virginians wanted or tolerated or wanted to be seen partaking of alcohol.  But it did mean that bootleggers had a ready source of income if they knew how to work it.

Well, this particular night, Bockie went to a revival.  His home church was on a hill overlooking Carter’s Valley, and he knew that.  But being somewhat “touched” his mind didn’t always reason completely.  And this night the revival wasn’t at his home church.  It was at the Baptist Church, on the hill across the valley, opposite the Methodist Church.  That wasn’t a problem, as Bockie knew the same God was present in both places, but there was a problem.  You see, Bockie got so happy during the service that on his way home he turned the way he always went, to the left at the bottom of the hill.  But, he had started at the wrong church to turn left.  And instead of making his way to the State Line Gap and on home, he wandered down the valley to the river, finding the darkness prevalent all around him and knowing absolutely nothing about his surroundings.  He was lost.  It was dark.  He was not at home, and it was getting cold.

He darted into a barn for shelter, and found some hay where he made a bed for the evening.  He slept soundly, rejoicing that the God who had met him in the revival had cared for him enough to help him find a place to be for this bewildering night.

Meanwhile the family was beside themselves.  Everyone was waiting for Bockie to come home.  Telephones didn’t exist at this time in the area, and no one knew how to contact him or where he was.  They just knew he had gone to meeting and was not back.  And night came and they went to bed worried.

Next morning the family sent out a search party.  They hunted up and down the valley, and asked people if they had seen the beloved Bockie.  Finally they made their way to the barn, thinking, “What if he got lost and wound up here?”  Sure enough they found him, confused, shaking sleep from his head, not knowing where he was or why the family had shown up.  Nerves were put at ease as the family embraced him and started back home.  Bockie couldn’t help but describe how good the meeting was at the Baptist Church.

Then someone told him, “Bockie, do you know whose barn this was?”  And he began to look around, wandering just where he was.  In the full light of the morning, he still didn’t know.  ”Bockie,” they said, with fained consternation. “Are you sure you were at church last night?”  Bockie nodded with concern.  ”Well,” said one, “you spent the night in a bootlegger’s barn!”

Embarrassed, he returned home determined to look around him the next time he left church, so as not to get into the wrong “spirit.”

You Had Grandparents, I Had Mamaws and Papaws

One of the most comforting things in the life of children are loving grandparents.  Some of us were given a tremendous blessing in childhood, that of having close access to living grandparents.  All four of my grandparents were living until I was well into adulthood.  They all four died within 6 years of each other.

In my family grandparents were known as “Mamaw” and “Papaw.”  That’s pronounced with a short “a” on the first syllable, as in “bat.”  Memories of these people and their influence continue to bless my life.

From Mamaws we found nourishment.  The name alone conjures up memories of time spent in old kitchens.  In Mamaw Smith’s house there was a flour bin in one corner of the room, an old electric stove with two ovens, and a small black wood stove for heat.  A metal sink cabinet was placed under a window so she could look out while washing dishes.  You could always find a leftover biscuit from breakfast on the table, near a jar of home-made jelly.  I don’t know how old I was when I discovered where the spoons were kept (old, antique spoons with lots of decoration, yet faded finish), but I know I became quite adept at making jelly biscuits when I went in that kitchen, and that from an early age.

There was a sound that emanated from her kitchen.  A sound of laughter amid cooking noises.  It was a common custom for the women of the family to gather in the kitchen, where Mamaw was ever working.  Canning beans in the summer, dressing hog meat in the fall, making elaborate family meals in the winter, and coloring Easter eggs in the spring.  There were occasional comments about aches and pains from an overworked body, but I never heard complaints about all this work of food preparation and canning and preserving.  But plentiful laughter reigned in that room.  It was the meeting place for the family.  It was where guests were entertained, ranging from family to preachers, to farm hands, to strangers.  I have even seen the boot legger sitting there, talking over cattle prices with Papaw while Mamaw cooked the day’s rations.  Conversations were punctuated with Mamaw’s comforting cackle.

On the other side of the family, a different kind of house, but a similar kitchen, with a different Mamaw, no leftover biscuits, but a jar of cookies in the pantry closet, the door of said closet large enough to hide behind while chewing, so that grandchildren could be spoiled without parents’ intervention.  No wood stove, but heavy grates that spewed forth warm air from a big furnace in the basement.  Being a Baptist, this Mamaw talked more than laughed, cataloging the latest news on each family member as she called roll while working on the next meal.

Papaws on the other hand were men of wisdom.  Having lived many more years on the earth, they knew how to do things and liked showing their grandchildren things.  One was skilled at animal husbandry, caring for cattle, horses, cats, and could take wasps out of the house without killing them, letting them crawl on his finger without getting stung.  The other was a mechanic, skillfully taking things apart, analyzing each part, and repairing, putting back together and bragging about how well things were made.  The one would take us on walks to the pasture field, salt the cattle (by throwing salt on exposed rock “licks” and call the cattle to come partake), fix the fence, show us the creek, take us by the store for a “dope” and a piece of candy, and get us back in time for the ride home.  The other would set up croquet in the back yard, show us how to play, keep us from going into the part of the basement where the secret “spirits” were kept, and fix our broken toys.

I didn’t know my Mamaws and Papaws even had names until I was almost grown.  They were comforting laps to sit on, people who were on your side no matter what your parents thought you had done wrong, sources of joy and keepers of the history and heritage of the family.

Having reared children during the Depression years, they knew the value of money and tried to teach us grandkids to care for things.  They hated to see you throw something of limited value away, for fear you might need it later.  For this reason the toys they kept in the closets grandkids were allowed to play in, weren’t the best, or the newest, but we made do, as they taught us to use our imaginations.

Summer wasn’t summer until you wore “Mamaw’s black beads.”  Now, that isn’t a reference to cross-dressing, although you could accuse us grandkids of that, as we found things to put on in those closets, but “Mamaw’s black beads” was when you were out playing and got dirt mixed with sweat in the crevices of your neck.  It was a proven sign that you had enjoyed yourself thoroughly in the heat of summer at Mamaw and Papaw’s house.

On this Easter weekend, I have memories of standing outside Mamaw’s house, in front of whatever shrub was in full bloom, dressed in my best suit and tight, shiny black shoes, getting my picture made with mean sisters, bossy cousins, and everyone else in the family.  So many pictures I couldn’t see after the flashes were finished.  But glad to be finished with the pretty part of Easter, we were able to tear off our ties, change our shoes, shed coats and sometimes shirts, and get busy hiding and finding eggs all over the yard, stopping only long enough to eat jelly beans and chocolate bunny ears.  Wearing black beads and needing naps, we made the long journey home complete with baskets of cracked, colored eggs we would keep for weeks in our treasure troves.  Just a word of advice, don’t eat those things after the third day.  Take my word on that.

Thank God for Mamaws and Papaws.

A Maundy Thursday in the Coal Fields

Coal miners don’t have time for theory.  They want to know the facts, and they want to know them as plain as you can make them.  Under the ground you depend for your life on facts that will help you do your job at great risk to yourself and those around you, and get you out of the ground safely with a day’s quota of coal as your satisfaction.  It doesn’t matter how hard the work is, each lick you hit is how you’re paying for your house, your car, your vacation, and your daughter’s wedding dress.  And depending on one another is crucial to your success.  The crew has to communicate and show each other respect under ground.

That’s why it doesn’t pay to get too sissified in how you set up worship when you lead a coalfield church.  Plain words are good enough, no need for too much theory and speculation.

So, it was with total disregard for the context of ministry that I set out one Maundy Thursday to lead a special service at a little church on the mountain side.  I was going to have communion because that is what Jesus did on the day before the crucifixion.  That was simple enough, but there was this passage in John 13 that talked about footwashing.  I mentioned it a few times and the people nodded in recognition and talked about how they had seen it or heard of it but weren’t sure they wanted to do it.  But being hardheaded like the rock that holds coal in the ground, I was determined to make some kind of washing part of the service.  In the politically correct atmosphere of the seminary I had gone to it was told to us that you didn’t have to wash feet, as that could be somewhat crude, getting down there and being so close to the feet of people you don’t know all that well.  So it was suggested there that one could have a hand washing instead.  I listened and thought about it and this particular year for some unknown reason I decided to have a hand washing service.  We would pour water in a basin and wash one another’s hands.  No need to worry about socks and hose getting in the way, and we could stand so our aching backs wouldn’t be a factor.

All went well as we went through the motions of this innovative worship.  I was smugly self-satisfied that I had done something cutting edge in my little mountainside church.

But then he got up.  This man, fresh from the coal fields.  He had showered off quickly on his way to church that evening, but the rims of his eyelids still had black on them as he stood up and said, “Preacher.”

You never really know what is going to follow that address.  Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad.  Sometimes it’s just a question or a comment.  But it always brings something.  And sometimes it brings revelation.

“Preacher.  Would you mind,” asked this coal miner.  He was a couple years older than me, a stout man whose back was breaking from the intense labor in the mines, but he still walked with dignity and was truly seeking God in this service.  ”Would you mind if I washed . . . your feet?”  

I stood speechless.  I really wanted this service to be meaningful, but wasn’t sure anyone had gotten much out of the handwashing thing.  It was, after all, a compromise on the text.  Coal miners sometimes don’t like to compromise.  That’s why labor relations can be so tentative here.  But I stood and felt a pounding in my chest as he looked at me with fierce determination.

“Of course you can.”  Those words came out before I knew it.  Soon I was moving the basin and a towel to a chair where he could do this thing.  I was taken with the words of Jesus we had read earlier.  ”And Jesus took a towel and put it around his waist, and bent down and washed his disciples’ feet.”

By now the church was on full alert.  This was a spontaneous moment and they all knew it.  The Spirit comes in such moments.  I sat in the chair and began to take off my shoes and socks.  He bent down and washed me.  I felt complete and total humility.  I felt bad for taking liberties with our worship that night in order to satisfy the sensibilities a few had expressed.  This was what the Lord had done for His disciples, and I felt as awkward as Peter, who said “not just my feet but my head too.”  Jesus had to hush Peter for interrupting.  This washing was meant to be a symbol of how they were to act when ever they were together.  Servanthood is about loving each other, humbling oneself before each other in the community and being willing to do even so basic an act as to wash the feet of those around you, a job usually given to a servant or slave.

Tears accompany humility.  There’s no keeping them back.  I came to lead worship that night, but found that the Spirit sometimes blows in and leads us.  When he finished I told him I wanted to wash his feet.  Several others did likewise that evening and we felt the love and grace of God in this simple act of washing.

“Maundy Thursday” is the day Jesus gave a “new commandment.”  That’s what the root word of Maundy means, “Commandment.”  This could well be called “New Commandment Thursday.”  I now know that I’m going to pay closer attention to what Jesus says about servanthood and loving one another.  A coal miner taught me.

Disappearing Towns: Morrison City

I was raised on the Virginia side of an unincorporated community by the name of Morrison City.  It was a small village to the north of Kingsport, Tennessee, which was built up in the 1930s and 40s as a “bedroom community” of the industrial town to its south.  Morrison City was named for a pioneer by the name of Peter Morison (whose descendants refuse to add the second “s” to his name).  Peter had fought in the Battle of King’s Mountain with other pioneers of that time, and was granted land by the state of North Carolina in return for his valiant service to his country.

The little community had once been called “Flatwoods.”  The Morison homeplace was in the midst of a stand of virgin Pine forest that covered several acres to the south of the state line gap.  Several families settled in a nearby Tennessee community which came to be called “Bell Ridge,” after a hill upon which a school had been built, and whose bell gave it that name.

Smith H. Morrison and wife, a descendant of the pioneer Peter Morison, after whom Morrison City took its name

The community of Morrison City took shape at the crossroads of Carters Valley Road and the Gate City to Kingsport highway.  The highway was State Route 23, and moved through the community in three distinct routes over time.  The old routes were given names like “Tenneva Street,” “Echo Drive,” and “Lynn Garden Drive.”  Tenneva was a name that incorporated the presence of both states.  Echo reflected the parallel nature of the road once Tenneva had replaced it.  Lynn Garden honored a community across Kyle Hill, closer to Kingsport, and was named to pay tribute to one of Kingsport’s earliest leading families, the Lynns.

Carter’s Valley stretched from a hollow in Virginia’s Scott County all the way down into Hawkins County, near Rogersville, Tennessee.  Settlements in Carter’s Valley were among the first in the area in pioneer days.  Lynn Garden and its predecessor north/south corridor roads separated “West” Carter’s Valley from “East” Carter’s Valley.

The original Carter’s Valley road ran a little further north, separating the present Morrison Chapel Church from the Morrison Chapel Cemetery.  The cemetery was part of the original grounds given to the church by a descendant of Peter Morison.  George W. Morrison stated in the deed of gift that it was “for the love and affection I entertain for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,” that he was willing to give the land to the church.  The deed describes a church building standing on the property, giving credence to the idea that this property had been a place of worship in the Morrison family for some time previous.  The Morison/Morrison family members are buried there along with Colonel John Anderson, who maintained a Block House fort in East Carter’s Valley as a stopping place for the people who traveled Daniel Boone’s famous Wilderness Road trail.  These Scotsmen were staunch Presbyterians in their day, but the Methodists won out in1851 when George deed the place to the church.  However it wasn’t until 1857 that members were recorded as having joined the church there.

Morrison Chapel in the 1880s

Perhaps the Methodists won out because a daughter of the Morison/Morrison family, Nancy, married a circuit riding preacher, the Reverend Samuel Patton, who had come to the area from Alabama, and was known for his fiery defense of the Methodist doctrines.  In 1823 he married the young Nancy and they settled on a farm called “Springplace” about a mile down Carter’s Valley to the west of Morrison City.  Their home was a double two story log house with dog trot. It stood in place until the mid 1980s when it was dismantled and moved, although it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places at the time.  Patton was a close friend of Governor William G. Brownlow (also known as the “Fightin’ Parson” of the Methodist Church), whose vitriolic pen helped shape unionist sentiment in east Tennessee and southwestern Virginia during the Great War.

The first families farmed just enough to feed their families.  It wasn’t until after the Civil War that they tried to make money in the valley.  W. T. Larkins began a large logging operation and cleared several hundred acres.  There was a sawmill placed along the north-south road at the state line that operated into the early twentieth century with a steam engine for power.  Soon the acreage was cleared and larger farms appeared.

Lumber Crew in the days of W. T. Larkin

The logging operations enriched the early farmers and helped them build larger homes to accommodate their growing families.  Later a General Store went in near the sawmill at the state line, and was once run by Tom Galloway.  This store carried the goods needed by the folks in the neighborhood.  Flour, sugar, fabric, and other things kept people supplied.

School was held at Morrison Chapel’s log church house until one could be built at Bell Ridge.  Later they moved the school closer to the bottom of the hill, and in time it became a large two room building with plenty of room for the children who spanned ages from 5 or 6 through 14 or 15.  The school was a source of pride in the community and became a central hub for community activity as well as a place of origin for many courtships.  When the school became a public entity, the county built a larger brick building nearby and added on to it as the population grew, using the school up until the late 1980s, when the county closed it and a local church bought it to operate a Christian school in its facilities.

As industrial growth in Kingsport began to take off, lots were laid off in the community at the crossroads of Carter’s Valley and the Kingsport/Gate City Road.  The Carter’s Valley road was moved to the bottom of the valley, where it accommodated more lots.  Soon with rising population more businesses popped up, and new churches were formed.  A new community was being born.

State Line Baptist Church was built on the hill opposite the Methodist Church, and across Carter’s Valley, to the south.  This church was at the entrance to the Bell Ridge School’s new building.  It stood on the hill for many years before building a larger facility closer to West Carter’s Valley Road in the early 1970s.  At one time it was the largest church of any kind in the area, and maintained a large bus ministry, as well as a Christian School.

Morrison City Mission was a non-denominational chapel built in the early 1940s on Tenneva.  Some folks say it was put in to keep alcohol out of an area business.  The law said liquor could not be sold within so many feet of a church, so the people against the selling of such beverages built a church near enough to a business that had applied for such license in order to keep the community “dry.”  Whatever the origin, the church grew into a pretty substantial church by the time the highway took the building in the late 1970s.  It now stands on the north side of West Carter’s Valley in a new brick structure.

Morrison City Mission in the early 1950s.

An Apostolic Church was formed and occupied a building at the corner of Tenneva and Carter’s Valley.  They, too, were made to relocate when the new highway came in the 1970s.  They moved to John B. Dennis Bypass and renamed their church.

In 1943 a new pastor was sent to the Methodist Church, as their pastor had been called up to go to war.  The new pastor held a tent revival at the corner of West Carter’s Valley and Chapel Drive.  The result was a great number of folks converted, and he decided to take them and form the First Freewill Baptist Church of Morrison City.  The church was built on West Carter’s Valley Road to the south of the Morrison Chapel Cemetery.

Businesses in Morrison City included W. D. Sensabaugh’s store, at the corner of Tenneva and Carter’s Valley.  Lee’s Barbor Shop, Parker’s Grill, and some fruit stands and monument companies also occupied lots in the community.  When Lynn Garden Drive was built further east from Tenneva, the business district began to dry up.  New businesses popped up on the new fourlane road.  A building stood for years facing Lynn Garden from the west, with only three walls, the fourth wall, the front of the building, never being completed.  A Bassett’s Dairy Bar was built on the corner of East Carter’s Valley and Lynn Garden.  Several businesses were near it going north bound on Lynn Garden.  Fruit stands and fireworks places popped up and closed out from time to time.

W. D. Sensabaugh's Store

In the 1970s property was bought up for the new US 23, which becomes Interstate 26 at Kingsport.  The heart of the community was replaced with asphalt.  The businesses that were taken were never really replaced.  The school was later closed, two churches were relocated.  Several houses were torn down, with residents having to move away.  Morrison City disappeared as a community and is only a footnote in history.

The north bound lane of the new road enters Lynn Garden Drive at the state line near where Peter Morison’s log house once stood along the creek.  A metal wall lines the southbound lanes of the new route, a sound and visual barrier blocking any sign of a community.  But it remains in the memories of those who knew it.  A “welcome to Kingsport” sign greets folks about where that never-finished building once stood.

Bell Ridge School