GOOD MORNIN, FRIENDS

A REMEMBERAMBLE OCTOBER 29, 2025

Happy Wednesday, friends. That made me think of this question, does your church still have Wednesday night prayer meeting or other Wednesday night service? Further, that question made me think of this, "do you have a church?" Church is so much a part of most rural southerner's lives that we do not ask if they have a church affiliation. We assume everyone does. In fact, had I asked: "if you have a church, does it still have Wednesday night prayer meeting, or other Wednesday night service?"

It would have jolted many of us to hear that question formulated and asked. For us, it goes without saying, the assumption that of course you have a church. It would be as if I asked, "if you leave home, and go out today, and if you decide to wear clothes, what style would they be?" For most of us, that would be an apt comparison. We were among those who were taken to Sunday morning Sunday School and "Preaching," were returned on Sunday night for "Training Union," or whatever your denomination called it, and thence to Sunday night service following it.

Our revival services began on Sunday Morning and services were "preached" by the visiting evangelist that morning, again that evening, and each night for the entire week that followed. It took six months to get our feeble brains to shut up already, with the "Just As I Am," endless loop that flowed like a high tide around in our head. You have never had a song stuck in your head that can come close to comparing to a non-stop "Just As I Am," brain wedgie.

I am not making this up, there have been actual Southern Baptist parents who threw a kid "under the bus," as they say, by whispering to one of their brood that had never yet, "gone forward:" you get on up there now, "GIT" and tell him you want to come to know Jesus," or the dairy Queen is gonna be done and closed up for the night and you younguns won't get narry'nanner'split to split!!" A Dairy Queen banana split, even divided six ways between eight younguns in the bed of an old pickup truck "of a Sunday night", still held great appeal for 'most any child of Dixie back then.

Okay, let me move forward a few years to tell you of how trucking could give you a curve ball, as far as odd loads go, from time to time. They could leave you wondering how folks came to need a load of something, from and to a place that left you scratching your head, as to the logistics of it. I recall once when driving for Greg Jarrell out of Collins, in Tattnall County, two drivers hauled loads of pine sawdust to Canada. At that time, Canada produced more pine sawdust than the US did.

As they say, it was like taking sand to the beach. But the one to top all such crazy logistics, was when another driver and I were sent from Collins, to Moncks Corner, South Carolina to a sawmill there to load cypress bark, to deliver to Plano, Texas for use as mulch at a daycare center's shrubbery. Here are the details of those two loads, we drove 190 miles from Collins to Moncks Corner to load at the sawmill. We loaded and passed back through Collins, which was of course, an additional 190 miles.

Then we drove the 1,000 miles from Collins to Plano, a suburb of Dallas. We unloaded the walking floor trailers we pulled, in the parking lot for the landscapers, and drove the 1,000 miles back to Collins. Of course this consumed most of the work-week, I don't mean to make it sound as if we did this nonstop. My point being, Georgia had plenty of sawmills that sawed cypress and sold the bark for mulch. But we had to make a 380 mile round trip to south Carolina to get it.

Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, each state we passed through, had sawmills sawing cypress, who sold the bark for mulch, and it was a very cheap commodity then. Cheap reminds me of tales of how many wealthy men were skinflints, and abhorred spending even a penny. Often those tales were apocryphal, and were urban legends oft-told, and ascribed to various individuals. One that both of my grandpas spoke of in that respect was a man who owned the bank in Kite, Johnson County long ago.

At that time, shortline railroads such as the Wadley Southern, ran combination trains, with freight cars making up the bulk of the trains, with a passenger coach in the mix also. In those days many people rode as passengers, short distances from nearby towns, to another for various reasons. Few had cars in the early 1900s, and buses were not yet available. It was told that the Kite banker did not live in Kite, but took the train to Kite each day. He had a horse for his and his family's use, at their home, and hated to buy feed for the horse.

He would go every afternoon to RR depot and feed store, to scrounge any hay, or grain that had spilled on the ground, bag it up and take it home for the horse. He was said to do many such skinflint activities, but the one I like best, told of his daily train commute. As I said, similar stories were told of other misers, so as I said, it could be mere legend. It was said that each day after boarding the train, the conductor came around to his seat to collect his fare for the ride.

It was told that each day for a long while, he produced a $100.00 bill, for which the conductor could not make change, as a $100.00 bill in 1920 say, would be equivalent to about $1650.00 today. Railroad company policy was that if a passenger tendered a bill the conductor could not make change for, the passenger rode for free. This kept up for a very long time, until one day when the banker offered his $100.00 bill, the conductor took it, pocketed it, and said, "thank you sir, you done rode this one up."

I hope it was true. By the way, I believe they said the banker was a Clark, but I could be wrong. Poetic justice can be sweet to see. By the way, I told y'all I was scheduled for heart testing at our hospital in Swainsboro today, but the tech broke her foot...and no, they did not have to put her down as in my story earlier today...so they rescheduled my testing for November 12.

Love y'all, and thanks for all you do for this man and his beloved pups. God is in it all.

..... Numbers 6: 24-26, KJV

..... we boyz three, babee conway, lil merle, & me