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Porterdale Mill on the Yellow
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Porterdale Mill on the Yellow
River |
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DOWN
MEMORY LANE |
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The little Church at the edge of Porterdale brings back many memories. Yes, the one with the three tiny rooms attached. In Daddy’s last years there, the Church drew huge crowds and we had many very good visiting preachers. I think I attended Sunday School seven or eight years, or it might have been longer without missing a Sunday. I was real proud to have that gold star by my name for perfect attendance for the month and had twelve stars at the years’ end. The visiting preachers brought along a lot of good singers, and I am sure this is where I developed my love for gospel singing. Not too many years ago I wrote down the names of all the gospel songs and hymns that I could recall, and I had well over one hundred. If you folks recall any of Junior Popes’ songs, he got most of them from some of the visitors. We had preachers come there from all over the country. Back to Sunday School, an extension to our Senior Sunday School Class was what we then called, Young Youth For Christ. Anyway we got together on Sunday afternoons and did things together, either at our Church or would go visit a near by Church. One of the events that I really enjoyed was when we quoted scriptures from memory. If we were alone we chose up sides among us. If we had visitors it was us against them. Each side lined up and the head of the line quoted a verse and if they got it right they would go to the end of the line for another turn. The side or team that had the last person standing was deemed the winners. Something like spelling bees. It was interesting that whoever was first always quoted Saint John 11:35 “Jesus wept”. The shortest verse in the Bible. That was always followed with Genesis 1:1 and Revelation 22:21 the first and last verses in the Bible. Of course I was always ready with my specialty. I had gotten into some kind of trouble and my punishment, issued by Mother, was to memorize Ephesians, Chapter 6, Verses 1-10. All you young folks should read these verses or for that matter all you folks that have parents still living. I still remember those verses after all the years. Sundays were always a great day, we had Sunday Morning Worship, Sunday School, Afternoon Youth Meeting, and then Sunday Night Church Services. Another very important thing about Sundays was that the Preacher and his family always got invited out to someone’s house for Sunday dinner. And you know everyone always done their best when the Preacher showed up for dinner. Speaking of getting invited out to eat I should mention that occasionally we got invited out for breakfast. J. W. and Sister O’Kelley would invite us to have hot buttered biscuits and sop in some very good home made chocolate syrup. Boy was this good. I have learned that Ruben O’Kelley, their son, still makes this syrup every New Years Day. I have been invited to show up and I will have to seriously think about going to Covington, Georgia on a New Years’ Day. |