Monday, April 7, 2014

Sherry & Jack’s Life continues in Rutherfordton until the next Phone call…

Rutherfordton was an older established church. Wonderful folk, but as usual for the older congregation, set in their ways.  That has always been fine with me.  Even if church is aging out and not growing someone must be there to visit, console and bury when necessary.  Everyone who is dedicated enough to attend and support a church deserves the attention of a dedicated pastor.  We tried to be.

moms-pecan-pie-lpecan-pie-qs-mdn

(And I do love Pecan Pie!)

As I mentioned our church had a lot of folks with the first names of Brother and Sister.  Sister Hensley could make the BEST pecan pie I ever ate.  We had some young folk, one was Ethel Buff, a young nurse was very sweet. I remember one time several of us were in the fellowship hall just enjoying conversation. We had a sweet older lady, Sister Arrowwood. She pronounced it “R-wood.” Ethel says to her, “Sister R-wood, you do know your name is really ‘Arrow-wood’ don’t you?”

“I have been R-wood for 75 years and I will be R-wood when I die.”

Ethel smiled and said , “Yes ma’am.” 

At service times, I always drove around a picked up some of the senior citizens who attended. Well after the fellowship hall and SS rooms were completed, we settled into a routine. One of the things we would do every couple weeks was go to the ‘Flour Mill’ on a creek just outside Rutherfordton and get stone ground corn meal as it had been ground for over a 100 years.

stone ground meal

We picnicked by a creek and went swimming at a creek that flowed out of Lake Lure.

We were pretty happy. Our families were within 60 miles and we visited often.

Then one day my overseer called. Would you be interested in starting a new church? We have located a good potential area, and all we need is a young man to start the ball rolling.  The General Church will back the loan; you would be building in the New Hope area of Gastonia.  Interested?

“Yes Sir,” I said pretty quickly.  That was within 6-7 miles of both our parents.

“I will arrange for your replacement in three weeks, you need to tell your church next Sunday.”

In the next three weeks we toured the New Hope area and looked at the couple places suggested I preferred 5 acres with an old auto repair garage (with junk cars out front, wonder why?), and an old frame house on it.  They said OK and negotiated the purchase.  In Three weeks we were living in dad’s cabin (15 miles away) on the Camp Ground, and I was beginning plans to remodel a greasy concrete floored garage and get a couple junk cars moved.

We loved the area.  We set in with all we had to make a success of this challenge.

Nite Shipslog

PS:

In Gaston county fish restaurants in the country or on the river are called Fish Camps.  Our location was with a rocks throw of two of them.

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1963_Ford_Thunderbird_Convertiblebook2_2

1963 T-Bird and the ‘63 Pontiac

63A1

the 1963 Lincoln Continental.

9 comments:

betty said...

I think it takes special people to plant/start a new church and I am sure there were challenges with it; looking forward to reading the next installment. I think everyone with a large family in the south has a Sister or Brother in it; I know hubby's mother's sister was named Sister. I like how you would go and "gather up your flock" on Sunday mornings!

betty

I'm mostly known as 'MA' said...

You certainly moved around quickly there. What a challenge that would be starting up a new church. I actually know where Gastonia is. I went through it when I visited with one of my sons on the way to the airport last week. How strange is that. What an adventure the two of you had.

Chatty Crone said...

Holy cow you got to start your own church??????????

I LOVE pecan pie.

shirl72 said...

We had a first cousin they called
Sister. That is also used at
Belmont Abby (Sister). The Church
you build is a beautiful Church
I think of you every time I pass.
Well Life is moving on as you leave
miles behind. Brother you have been
there and done that glad you are
retired.

Elizabeth said...

Your blog is like a book that I cannot put down !

Mevely317 said...

With that sort of camaraderie, was it difficult to break the news of your leaving to R-wood, Ethel and the others?
I don't know; perhaps they tended to be more philosophical in those days and just wished the best for you and Sherry.

Love the image of the pie. Sure makes me long for another bite of mom's 'special' - made with 2 kinds of Karo syrup and coconut. What I'd give to find that recipe again! Memories!

Paula said...

You and Sherry have had such an interesting life. I have enjoyed reading about it so much.

Louis la Vache said...

The mention of pecan pie made «Louis» wish he had a slice of the pecan pie his mother made. She always had a nice, flaky crust. She used lard in the crust. Shortening didn't make the same flaky crust. Her filling had just the right amount of caramelization of the sugars. She would use nothing but Azar pecans. Azar is/was (?) a company in El Paso that specialized in pecans and they did package a high quality product.

Those are some fine looking '63s you show there! Few cars have ever been built that equal the '61-'63 Lincolns in beauty (the '53-'54 Studebaker Starliner is one of the few...) The Lincoln and that Thunderbird you show actually shared the same body shell. They were built in a plant Ford built just to produce the unitized body shared by the T-bird and Lincoln at Wixom, Michigan.

TARYTERRE said...

That pie sounded good. Moving always has it's moments.