PLEASE PASS THE TOMATOES!

By OLIVENE GODFREY

For the most part, I like summertime but there are a few things such as the fly, the little two winged insect that I dislike, to put it mildly. One recent day, while I was resting in my recliner in the den, the first fly I'd seen this summer had somehow got in the house, and was bothering me. I finally got up and found my swatter and killed the fly.

When I resumed resting, my mind flew back to a time I had almost forgotten when I was about ten years old. My daddy was a Methodist preacher who also worked at a regular job in Chattanooga while he studied to become a full fledged pastor of a church. Meanwhile, he served as pastor of a charge, which consisted of five small rural churches in east Tennessee.
He preached part time at each of the churches and conducted revival services at each church during the summer.
My sisters and I had an unusually sheltered childhood and I for one was fascinated by the revival services in the little white frame churches. Perhaps it was the writer inside me that
watched and listened intently to the people and their actions.

The revivals were held in the hottest part of the summer and there was no such thing as air-conditioning in these churches.
A local funeral home supplied the churches with card board
fans to stir up a little breeze. There were no screens on the windows and young men, who I thought of as the "sinners"
roamed about the church yard during the services and occasionally one or two would sit on a window sill and look inside the church
sanctuary while a few women would shout with joy and the men would sound off with loud "Amens" during the sermon. My twin sisters were about six and they would stretch out on a pew and sleep through the services.

During the revivals, different church members would invite us to eat supper at their houses before the services started.
We enjoyed some delicious meals at those dinners. But, while my mind wondered back, I was reminded of the church member who invited us to his house for supper one night. He was a good, Christian man and was a humble man who seemed so proud that we had come to their house that night. The house was a modest one with cats, dogs and chickens wandering about the dirt yard.
As we entered the small house, the man and his wife and children seemed so proud that we were there. We entered the small dining room where bowls of food was on the table. Our eyes were on the swarm of flies that hovered over the food and I was a finicky eater and I wondered what on earth I would eat. Being polite children, at least among strangers, we knew we had to eat some of the foods that didn't look appetizing. The man and his wife were beaming and then we all spied the large plater of red fresh tomatoes. All of us piled our plates with the fresh tomatoes and took small helpings of other food which we picked at during the meal. Somehow, we made it though the dinner and after that, over the years, we would remark on the flies and tomatoes of that supper.

QUOTE: "Always remember money isn't everything--and always remember to make a lot of it before talking such nonsense."
Earl Wilson column