Before I forget (which happens all to frequently these days) I'll share a few more interesting tidbits from our two year experience being a (student) country preacher and family in the 1960s. We were urbanites with a civil rights background one week and living in a parsonage in the deep south the next.
- DEATH - A man had died the day before we arrived. So on our first day we visited the home of the deceased. Not only was his family gathered - but he was there in a home made coffin in the parlor. No funeral home had been called. They buried him the next day in the graveyard next to the church.
- PROTOCOL - The farmer down the road (way down the road) was introduced to us as "Mr. Smith." His wife was introduced as "His Second Wife, Martha." For the next two years I rarely heard her referred to by any other title. They had been married over 30 years. One day I was wandering in the grave yard. Two huge grave stones, one for the original Mrs. Smith and one for the Mister were side by side. "Second Wife Martha's" stone was cross ways at the bottom.
- VOTING - A racist (his description) ax wielding Lester Maddox was running for governor against Bo Calloway. We voted in the church building. Absolutely no privacy. Every person there knew how we voted. But if that wasn't enough, when the weekly paper came out they recorded the count. 87 votes for Maddox, 2 for Calloway!
- WATERMELONS - We were always grateful for food left on our doorstep. Sometimes I didn't know what it was (like black eyed peas) but in watermelon season we were given way, way too many. By the time we left there were melons buried all over the back yard.
- GIVING - We learned quickly that it was an insult to refuse a gift. One Christmas eve we stopped by the home of a very poor farm family. A shack really. He gave my husband a new one dollar bill. She gave me two tiny, round soaps that she'd wrapped in old tissue paper. We were both almost in tears as we left their home. As we were riding along on the way to Christmas eve services I noticed that bubbles were coming from the mouth of our # 1 son. He thought the soaps were cookies.
- CARJACKING - This county was known as the "carjacking county." Not unusual to see cars chained to trees and fence posts. But some of our parishioners were in on the carjacking as well. Since we were on a 4 party phone line my husband asked that we have a private line as he occasionally heard "confessions," etc. They turned him down but for a pretty good reason. No body else had a private line.
- COLA TRUCK - When the leading cola company in that area had deliveries for the tiny town ten miles away the black guy riding shotgun had to step out of the truck outside the city limits and wait for the truck to return.
