10/24/2019
Awoke this morning to the melodious memory of “I Will Survive”—by Gloria Gaynor. Back in 1978, it was a big hit and has “survived” all these years in the deep recesses of my mind. I’m thinking of all the little items we have to remember to do to get this house ready to sell, then to remodel the one to which we’re moving: maybe that’s why “I Will Survive!” is the SIMH: an attempt at assuring myself we can get through all this—guffaw!
Tomorrow morning, as early as I can get away, I’m headed to Navarre, FL for the last scheduled Bible Conference of the year. Hosted by Bro. Byron Wiggins and his congregation. I think this is the 6th annual, since the area’s restart of having an annual conference. This is the general area of the coastline which Bro. E.C. Moore had annual conferences from 1980 to about 2007, or so. I always enjoy going to this conference, partly because we lived in Mobile for 7 years (from ’79-’86) and attended all those conferences sponsored by Bro. Moore.
It might be possible, on this trip down, to visit some old friends in Mobile. I’ll know about that later today. Either way, I’ll leave as early as possible to “scout around” looking for possibilities along the way. You might ask, “possibilities for what?” Well, we have a store to move and a big building to fill with furnishings, equipment and inventory. Looking at variations-on-a-theme stores help fill in blank spaces, sometimes just in my mind, others with finds which can be used. This is also fun to do (for me.)
For the next couple of months I may make other comments about things in the above paragraph. There are many experiences which come from going places and looking for needed stuff, everything from filler pieces to essential construction necessities. Some things are hard to find, some are plentiful. It’s great to look for and find resources, the where, when and how to find it makes good story material.
Many years ago, one of my grandsons and I went on an alternate hwy route to get to one of my bible classes. we found some interesting things. We saw the oldest live oak tree in the country—closest estimate was around 700 years old, as I recall. We went to a small beach in a city park we didn’t know existed, we scrounged around in an antique store till we found something we made the executive decision to buy. It was an old farm dinner bell! I’d always wanted one, he’d never seen one, so I bought it. When I got it home I began to plot my way toward getting it up on a pole where it could be rung for a reason.
This caused me to study about church bells ringing: who started that tradition and why. I was fascinated by it. European cathedrals many hundreds of years ago (I toured a couple of them built in the 13th, 14th centuries) had the privilege of having early versions of carillons which were played for the communities to know the hour was drawing near to come to services. But, in the American founding days, small towns consisted of 1, 2, or 3 congregations though very often there was only one church building, even more often that was also the one room school!
On Sundays, the first congregation to use the building would call their attendees with a certain pattern of bell-ringing (a farm dinner bell was the most common); when their service was over they would ring the bell with one short cadence, so that the second group would come and ring for theirs to hear it was time to show up: repeat as necessary! Pretty cool, huh?! I wrote a one page synopsis of this and sent it to the local paper for the oped page. Yep, they printed it.
Well, I never got my bell hung up. So I brought it to Alabama, I think I’ll put it when we finally move.
Thanks for reading, the Elder
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