Floppy Hats and Funeral Home Fans

All of my family went to the First Methodist Church.  I remember Big Daddy would always kneel down right where he was sitting and pray when the time came for prayer.  Many a time he was called on to pray and pray he did.  It was prayer from the heart of a simple, hard working man who loved God.  It showed.  Tom Scott was a fine man.  Ask anybody who knew him.

I remember Momma and I would always go to Sunday school and church on Sunday morning and Sunday night.  Daddy seldom went to church with us, but if he did go, it would be to the evening service.  He and Uncle Aubrey usually went fishing on Sunday.  (I got the distinct feeling that Momma didn’t like that.)  She would make me sit on the seat beside her in church for the whole service and be still.  That wasn’t easy for me.  I’d squirm and turn around and look at the folks behind us and she’d pinch me hard right on the leg.  Big tears would well up in my eyes but I didn’t cry out.  I knew better.  That hair brush was waiting at home if I so much as moved a muscle again. 

I can see “Ms. Nan” now,  playing “Onward Christian Soldiers” with such a flourish!  Her floppy hat would just bounce up and down on her head and she would bounce up and down on  that piano bench in perfect time!  We all marched in from Sunday school with our little weekly picture lesson leaflet in hand and took our places in the front rows for Assembly and announcements. Then we'd go find our parents and wait for real church.  

Of course, there was no air conditioning in the summer.  Everybody had the funeral home fans and if you were lucky, you’d get a seat near the window.  But we usually wound up in the center of the row in the center of the church.  Bees, yellow jackets, and flies found their way inside and I had one eye out for the nearest exit if one of the stinging kinds came my way.  All the ladies wore big wide brimmed straw hats with flowers on them which probably attracted the insects inside.  They should have thought of that before coming to church endangering little girls like me who were scared to death of bees.

All the ladies that sang in the choir had the floppy hats too.  You know how older ladies sing and their heads kind of bob as they sing?  Well, you get the picture.  Bobbing heads, floppy hats, flowered gauzy dresses, makeup streaked with sweat,  Funeral Home fans swatting away -  well, those were the sights I remember from my seat out in the congregation sitting beside my Momma just wiggling and squirming, dying to get out of there and go swimming or splurging with Uncle Waitus.

Sundays were mostly a day for visiting with folks.  They either came to visit you or you went to visit them.  Sometimes the Preacher came home after church to Biggie's house to eat one of those awesome fried chicken dinners with all the Scott family extensions.  But other than that, on Sunday there was not a whole lot of action going on.   As I grew older, the rules relaxed quite a bit for everybody.  Things began to change and I guess that was the beginning of things to come as we know it today.  In retrospect, I’m not sure that was a good thing.  Maybe we should have left things as they were…….