@paden-cash?ÿ ?ÿ
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This would be a great time to give us a rerun of your infamous Easter Sunday sunrise service with the folding chairs and a few stinging critters.
I love re-runs nowadays.?ÿ Here you go.
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"EASTER HORNETS"
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There's nothing more inspiring to a small flock of Christian worshipers than Easter Sunday (pronounced Sun' dee) services held in the great outdoors. Other than the Christmas program this was THE big event of the year at the Pilgrim Congregational Church where us Cash boys learned our Holy Reverence.
I'm not sure of the attendance. In our sanctuary, on the wall to the right of the pulpit, hung the official scoreboard that told, among other things, of total members and how many showed up last week. As a small child I realized it was all hype though; the numbers never changed. I remember counting thirty something heads one Sunday. The next Sunday the scoreboard still proudly proclaimed 110 in attendance. I just assumed the remaining attended in spirit only.
But attending Easter Sunday was compulsory. It was such a big deal that the Saturday before all the men folk would show up to dig all the folding chairs out of the basement. This also required a bit of repair and oil for most of the chairs that hadn't been out since Christmas. And like all good Christians that survived the Great Depression chairs beyond repair were salvaged for good parts to keep the flock comfortable. After the big outdoor service we all would put on a pot-luck feed bag with a buffet line set up under the port by the side door. It was always a grand affair. Momma Cash loved it because she not only didn't have to cook on Easter Sunday, she didn't have to wash dishes either.
The outdoor services were held on the north side of the church with the chairs facing the traditional east. The north side of the church was a gradual slope down to an old 20 x 20 wooden by a creek we called "the annex". The annex was usually used for Boy Scout and CYF meetings and it also housed all the softball team's gear...and it was the bone yard for all the salvage folding chairs and tables. Sometimes the ground was a little soft for folding chairs and over the years the chairs migrated closer to the parking lot. But one thing that never changed was the "grand finale" at noon on Easter Sunday: "Christ The Lord Has Risen" being the last hymn (number 302 in your hymnal) as a 10' long 4 x 4 wooden cross (painted in the finest gold paint to be had at the Otasco store) was raised by a few gents from laying on the ground and slipped into a permanent steel pipe base buried in the ground. As the congregation sang (all six verses because of the gravity of the day) folks would single file to the erected cross as our makeshift Calvary and toss their obligatory offerings into a brass offering plate at the base of the cross. As a child the significance of the worship escaped me, but it did signal that chow was fixing to occur.
And as it had happened for all the Easter Sundays of my life; Reverend Bradshaw began the hymn in slightly flat song and gave the signal for the "resurrection of the cross". As we sang our hearts the few elders assigned the task did so with a military precision reverence. But this one time it didn't go so well....
As the elders hoisted the cross there was one man that was in charge of centering the base so the cross could slip easily into the pipe as the other gents lowered it carefully. I remember watching the man in charge of centering stand up immediately, turn to run like he was on fire, and then immediately drop to the ground and begin thrashing around. The two "amen" widows that always sat on the front row were convinced the Holy Spirit had taken hold of him. The men holding the cross weren't so much convinced of the Holy Spirit as they were there was a nest of hornets that had occupied the buried pipe over the last year.
Reverend Bradshaw attempted to protect his flock in a manner of which Moses would have been proud. His song volume doubled and he smiled as he spread his arms and waved to direct us all away from the horrible entomological carnage that was occurring at the cross. His smile turned to horror as he started swinging his bible to swat at the attacking hornets. Chaos ensued.
I'm not saying that your run of the mill Christian is an inherently 'starchy' individual. What I will say is nobody ever comes dressed to Easter service prepared to run for their lives. Old women with heels on soft ground is a formula for disaster. Old men will symbolically attempt to help their women folk until they themselves fall prey. Most of the men made it to safety a few yards ahead of their spouses, eagerly waving them on to "hurry". Momma Cash was lucky enough to get Pops to wake up and herded all her brood, including your truly, to the safety of the parking lot.
It was a horror eclipsed only by the sinking of the Titanic or possibly the final moments as the flaming Hindenburg settled to the ground in New Jersey. Oh, the humanity...I do remember people will scream and howl with a lot more passion from a stinging hornet than singing a hymn.
Someone quickly made it to the mower shed by the annex and retrieved the jug of Malathion. It was soon determined there was no time to fill the galvanized sprayer. Men were volunteering for kamikaze duty to douse the nest with insecticide from the available Dixie cups. They really were the true heroes.
In good prairie settler fashion the women folk quickly made a makeshift triage in the basement of the church where our social meals were usually held. Everyone with bites and injuries were being seen to and doctored. Luckily there were no fatalities. Reverend Bradshaw (and quite a few others) looked like they had been in a bar fight. And the young folks were given the task of ferrying the foil covered dishes of chow down to the basement so we could eventually enjoy our communal meal in relative safety. And although the basement was a bit stuffy that time of year, we all eventually sat down for our Easter meal.
With a swollen face Reverend Bradshaw got us all to bow our heads and thank the good Lord above for not only the good fellowship and groceries, but for delivering us all from the swift retribution that boiled forth from the bowels of hell in an attempt to destroy our Holy worship. He made the point the devil lost this one and the righteous prevailed. Preachers are good with picking up on those things.
On the way home Pops made the point that sitting too close to the front of the congregation could be dangerous. He dropped back a few rows every Sunday after that.
Mental home videos.?ÿ Seeing it as clearly in your head as if you had actually been there.?ÿ Of course, I must substitute images of the fine citizens who attended our little church back in those days.?ÿ A significant number of whom were born in the 1800's.?ÿ Those who had memories of three or more wars and the Great Depression.?ÿ People who understood that the special glass deviled-egg-holding plate was more precious than the children.?ÿ The children could be replaced with new babies but great-grandma's deviled-egg plate was irreplaceable.?ÿ The chocolate cake with pecan halves very neatly arranged around the top so that no matter how you cut a piece you would get a pecan half or two (courtesy of Pauline who always supplied this dessert).?ÿ The little glasses used for water, tea and Kool-Aid that had started their careers across the street at the little two room school house and were discovered to be too fragile for common school children to use daily.?ÿ The church ladies in the basement waving through the open windows to signal it was time for everyone else to join them in the basement for the feast.?ÿ And the food.?ÿ Oh, the food.?ÿ Betty always had the best green beans.?ÿ Not just because they were planted early enough to be fresh but because they were cooked in water from their well which had it's own special twang for some reason.?ÿ Marcella, with six kids in her house, knew how to make large batches of things come out tasting just right.?ÿ Of course, Jimmy would sneak out and capture some kind of early season snake to surreptitiously sneak in and release at the most inopportune moment.?ÿ Reverend L.W. Biddle (no one ever knew what the L and the W stood for) at nearly 80, himself, would offer a prayer dedicated to allowing the hottest hot dish to cool to edible temperatures.?ÿ The ice box in the kitchen was a genuine ice box of unknown age.?ÿ It was pre-loaded by the ladies with homemade ice cubes brought in quickly and dripping.?ÿ The standard song of the day was all four verses of The Old Rugged Cross on page 306 of our hymnal, Church Service Hymns.?ÿ Following the meal, most of the kids ran across the street to the school playground to see who would be the first one to be so critically injured as to require some other kid to run back to the church to retrieve family members.?ÿ Some years a softball game would get started with everyone from six to 86 participating as best they could.?ÿ Watching Robert's mother, Lena, attempting to take her 330 pounds of humanity around the bases after a powerful hit was, uh, something different to behold.?ÿ Invariably one of the older middle-aged gents who had made a point to wear a tie with his Sunday overalls would make a desperate slide into third base but be called out by Reverend Biddle, who was always the umpire.
You are spot on. I would give a month's earnings just to sit down with a plate of the food I remember. My mother had a few pieces of her finest kitchenware that was specifically for toting her cooking to the church functions. Using it for everyday chow was seriously frowned upon. And I do remember all of the "old folks" that were, as you noted, probably born well before 1900.
One thing I remember from those services was hats. Everybody wore hats. Except the men folk always took off their hats indoors (or some matriarch would knock it off your head). The women folk always had a fine selection of hats, especially at Easter services. And I'm sure you remember what my grandmother always wore to church...what she called a sun bonnet. You don't see those anymore unless you happen to catch an Amish service or social.
My mother's mother was big on wearing hats.?ÿ Pill box style is what I think most of them were.?ÿ She said she had to special order them because she was a size or two larger than what was generally kept on hand at the "gettin' place".?ÿ My mother very rarely put on a hat, but, she had a nice collection of them for certain occasions.
My father was a firm believer in wearing hats and caps of all sorts, routinely.?ÿ Never inside, though.?ÿ Everything from a big straw hat for Summer work in the fields to heavy caps with "ear bobbers" for Winter work.?ÿ Fedoras and sailor (boat?) hats for general socializing.
The rule of thumb on grabbing a hat before leaving home was "You might need it later, and your arm isn't long enough to reach all the way back here to get."?ÿ It might never get put on, but it was there, just in case.
Wonder if the Easter Bunny has an adequate mask and has wiped down all of the eggs with Purell.
Speaking of Easter eggs, here's another Easter tale I found in the archives.
EASTER EGGS
After an illustrious career as a juvenile delinquent my oldest brother Cole eventually became a "man of the cloth". His "transition" years were spent as the youth minister at our local church. And being the wheeler-dealer he always was, he still was able to con his younger brothers into taking care of HIS business. One I remember all too well was the mowing chores at the church. Somehow he was always able to get Holden or me to either help him out with the grounds keeping chores at the church...or better yet, get us to take care of it without his presence.
One late Spring afternoon I wound up at the church taking care of his mowing. The church had an old shack we called the “annex” that was way in the back and at that time was the local Boy Scouts meeting place. Everything between the Scout shack and the church was nice Bermuda grass and got mowed regularly. Somehow I was conned into mowing around the back of the shack that sloped down to a creek. By late April or early May the grass was pretty tall. It was quick work however because we never raked or bagged "the back part".
I remember being cutting along with a 3.5 horse Briggs roaring at top throttle, thinking I'd be finished pretty soon, when something so horrible happened that I still can't describe it....I had mowed over a stash of weeks old Easter eggs that had been hidden but never found from the Sunday School Class's Easter egg hunt. Before I could recognize the smell that hit me like a brick, I was gagging. I turned and ran back up the slope with my hands over my mouth...gurking the whole way. I left the mower running..
I was up by the church's water spigot washing off my face when Cole pulled up in his old junk pickup. He could hear the mower running down in the creek and started chastising me for leaving it running. As little brothers do, I told him if he wanted it finished, do it himself. He was shaking his head and calling me names as he headed to the back to finish.
I was sitting on the back of his pickup watching him as he started pushing the mower..and low and behold..he must've hit another patch of rotten Easter eggs! I watched him cover his mouth and try and back up the hill with the mower. In his haste he slipped in something and fell back down. In a second he was running back up the hill toward the water spigot....He had, however, managed to shut the mower off before he retreated.
When he started washing his shoes off I could tell he had rotten egg goo all over one pant's leg. I could also tell from his gaping, drool dripping mouth he had gotten a good hit of the smell. He was starting to gag. He also promised to "whip my ass" for laughing at him. Oh...the memories.
We managed to finish up AND get the mower washed off before we put it up. He left his pants and tennis shoes back at the church and put on an old baseball team uniform for the ride home. You could still smell that horrible mess...
He's retired now and lives up in Colorado Springs...doesn't even preach anymore. I talked to him today to wish him a "Happy Easter". I asked him if any of the grandkids had an Easter egg hunt...
"Not on your life" was his reply. I could tell by the tone of his voice that 55 years had not erased that smell from his mind.
Mine either.
No Easter eggs here.?ÿ Just lightning, thunder and storms.?ÿ Winds up to 50 mph this afternoon.?ÿ A great day for both a sunrise service and an egg hunt in the park after lunch. HA HA?ÿ Chance of snow early Monday.
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I would say: BAH, HUMBUG! but I think that's supposed to be reserved for late December.
This will be an Easter to attempt to remember.?ÿ BLAH!
The highlight of the day was discovering a problem with the brakes on the 2012 Jeep Liberty.?ÿ Took it out yesterday for a nice drive.?ÿ Back out today, head for the road, 60 feet later the rear right brake locks up.?ÿ Stop, back up, look at skidmark in the gravel, pull forward about 40 feet and it happens again.?ÿ Back up again, look at the new skidmark, take off again, make it about 200 feet and, yup you guessed it.?ÿ Back up, slowly head back to the house, 30 feet from garage and................
Hope you weren't nursing a cup of hot coffee when it happened.
ABS sensor/ controller? Does the vehicle sit for long periods?
Thankfully, no drinking was involved.
Normally, it travels a bit over 50 miles every weekday but has not recently. We did take it out on Saturday for a hour or so with no problems of any kind. The good news within the bad news is that this started in my own driveway, not forty miles from home as I pulled out onto a highway. That would surely have resulted in a rearender.
