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Perry Methodist Lenton Service 6 March 95

Memories of Perry Churches.....

...Aunt Bertha White, Aunt Margaret Bradbury...choir loft...me paying very little attention. Keith and Merle Waters paid even less attention but I was always the one who got in trouble. ...Aunt Margaret complimenting me on having a two-track mind because I could answer the questions without paying a bit of attention. ....Then they’d ding that black bell and we’d break it up. We always wanted to get old enough to ding that bell. ...J.D. Liehr talking a long time out on the front walk before he came in. When his brother Leonard attended, they talked so long they missed most of church. ....I remember Dad hiding the collection plate as it came through. Lyndle Waters looked forever to find it. .....We used to look for reasons to get out of going to church. None of them ever worked. Thought we had it made when we started going horse-back riding with Lyndle on Sundays, but Lyndle went to church, too. ....Miriam Lipcaman getting so mad when I said we should paint the chruch doors red. Miriam never understood me. ...I remember the big Boom you could make by jumping off the stage after you said your memory verse. .....Sign going downstairs to the basement always said “Duck!”...funny, because we always had chicken.

G’ma and G’pa revival service....Morriville.....

South Prairie..John Mart counting heads...after us...slowly.... John Mart...the only person I ever saw wearing a tie with overalls. White, long-sleeved shirt, tie, and overalls.

The Coonridge Article. ....Bringing in the Sheaves....

The Perry Churches..... Churches coming together....thought it was normal.

Alma Reeves: the only Catholic I knew. She had to leave town to go to church. For a long time, I thought we made her leave. Didn’t know what a Catholic was...I guessed it was a person who came from Hawaii.

Church of Christ...they didn’t didn’t have a piano. I couldn’t imagine that. I remember when one of the Woods kids got married. Two trumpets stood outside the doors and blasted inward. Seemed to sort of go against the spirit of the thing but I thought it was pretty funny. I can remember Thorton Reeves speaking there...and Jim Brim...and Wendall Mathis. That church could really sing. We usually only went there for funerals so I’m sure it was a happier place than I remembered. Let’s try one accapella for the Church of Christ...Amazing Grace.

The difference between a Presbyterian and a Methodist... One had trespassed and the other debted. Dad said we were farmers so we were on the side of the debtors. One had a preacher who lived right in town...the other had one flown in every other Sunday. One sat in a big circle and the other sat head-on. Methodists sang the Doxology slower. (But they had a bigger offering....maybe the Presbyterians rushed the Doxology too much.) Always wondered how fast they sang it down at the Church of Christ without any piano to hold ‘em back. Methodist used newer hymnbooks. Pres: had two old ones: one peppy blue one for SS and one deadly brown one for church. From the Peppy Blue...every other Sunday we’d sing BLESSED ASSURANCE. The Presbyterians didn’t talk as much before church and when the prelude started, they shut up entirely. The Methodists talked right up until church and only got louder once the music began.I now play for a Methodist church and can attest that this is a world-wide custom. The Presbyterians got better seats at the Wagon Wheel because they got out of church earlier. The minister knew that Elmer would get up and leave at 12-noon, no matter where we were in the service...Even if he had to sit out in the car and wait for the rest of the family. The Methodists ate in the second shift. I don’t think the Church of Christ ate. Maybe it’s because there was a juke-box. I’ve always been an advocate of minority rights. I think perhaps this was because I was a Perry Presbyterian. The Presbyterians’s basement was always more crowded than the Methdists for Sunrise Service breakfast. I always thought it was because we had a bigger crowd. Then I returned years later and found it was because we had a smaller basement.

...The Methodist Preachers....I didn’t know ‘em well. But I saw more of them than I did the Presbyterians... ...The first one I remember some strange fella......All I remember of him is that he once counted the number of peas on his plate at Norma Dixon’s cafe. He told her that the Griggsville restaurant served him more. ...Then Arnold DeSutter.... the straightest back I ever saw on a preacher.. And the first one I ever saw smile....except for the visiting Presbyterian, Duff Tucker, from Mt. Sterling. He’d always suck the air in between his teeth before he’d say anything. He was the first preacher I played for. Sucked the air in, smiled, and said, “Don’t worry, boy. Just keep practicin’.” Mom played at the Presbyterian church and Carolyn Elledge at the Methodist. Mom would practice the hymns as I was trying to sleep in on Sunday morning after a late-night Maddics concert. Mom would stop and interrupt the minister when he called out a hymn she didn’t like to play. And I always thought Carolyn was so cool to be a church person. She was funny. She joked. I thought she should have been on Broadway, or television, or Pittsfield or somewhere. I learned several wrong things watching the Perry musicians. Mom always had a good time playing. Years later I watched the two Struass girls play together and it always looked like they had so much fun. And Barb Thiele...and Vivian Smith. Like Harold Gerard...ever watch him play the piano? When I moved away, I found out that most church pianists don’t smile. And Mildred Smith who played with her little finger tucked under. I thought that’s the way you were supposed to play...until she told me she stuck it in a windmill bracket and broke it. It wouldn’t straighten out. Learned to play the trumpet by watching Jimmy Zimmerman.Held the trumpet crooked. I thought everybody did. Found out he had trouble with one eye and he had to. He played “Oh Holy Night” at our church and I clapped. Nobody else did. I learned to play the piano from the band director, Frank Neil. He couldn’t play the piano. I grew up thinking you didn’t need training to do something...In fact, I’m still doing it.

The Perry Churches... When I think of.....The people who are with Jesus right now because of the Perry Churches and the people in them. The thousands who’ve gone before and built these buildings, and brought their kids to Sunday School, and filled the sanctuary with the aromas of their potlucks, and showed generations and generations that we are all one in Christ. I’ve never lived in a community since that time where people worshiped together so freely and so happily. You always appreciate a community if you’re part of it. But I think you can learn to appreciate it even more if you move away. I can’t think of a greater heritage that a community can give its young people than what they find in their churches. ---The Bible contains the word of God, but the church contains the people, struggling to live it out on a day-to-day basis. ---The Preachers are knowledgeable and we appreciate what they’ve given us, but it’s the people who must keep things going from one generation to the next. I would not know Jesus Christ were it not for my family, the people of Perry, and its churches. That’s a debt I can never repay. I’m somewhat of a hypocrite. When we get a preacher who insists on singing the old, traditional hymns, I look out at the young people in the congregation and think, “No...let’s make this more interesting and exciting.” Then when I’m alone and I have my choice, it’s always the old hymns I hum.

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.