Angel Bags

Teachers in our community noticed last year that some children were coming back to school hungry from the weekend. Someone from Angelville Church learned about it. That church started sending home Angel Bags with those children that the teachers were concerned about.

All the churches in our rural community are very small. (I mean like under 50 in attendance.) And there are no wealthy folk in our community that I am aware of. Many people have are doing well to be able to feed their own families. Obviously, fixing Angel Bags every weekend was too much for one small congregation. Soon other churches volunteered to help out.

Someone must be organizing all this, but it has all been done quietly without fanfare. Our village church was told that February was our month this year. One couple volunteered to take the Angel Bags we prepare up to the school on Fridays, and someone there must distribute them to the children. There are 26 children who will receive the bags of individual sized food products that children can open or microwave for themselves.

Tonight after a small group meeting, I was able to help pack the donated items into double bagged plastic grocery sacks that we’ve been saving for this activity. Since the kids will be off an extra day this Monday for President’s Day, we needed to pack extra this week.

I am sure I can’t remember all the items that we stuffed into the bags. There were Vienna sausages, cups of main dishes for the microwave, mac and cheese, fruit cups, fruit drinks, applesauce cups, gelatin cups, pudding cups, oatmeal packets, popcorn packets, Rice Krispie bars, granola bars, a bright red fresh apple, and so on. A large square table was filled to capacity when we started this evening, but fixing for that extra day reduced the supply on hand. Before next Wednesday’s packing night, we will have to donate again.

It would be good if all parents were able to feed their own kids, but some aren’t able. Some won’t. Regardless, the children are just as hungry whatever the reason for the food shortage in their homes. Fresh cooked food would be more wholesome than these in the bags. Many families in our community hunt to put food on the table, and many garden and can. Some parents may lack these skills or the health to use these skills.

Let me describe our community, which is built around our public grade and high school in the village of Crab Orchard of maybe 300 people. A highway that did go through the village was improved and widened and now bypasses it. But there are plenty of entries into our village, and it is safer now without that traffic. . The school and the library are the heart of the community. There are perhaps half dozen small businesses left in the village. There is a Baptist and Methodist congregation that have been there for generations, and about a year ago a man who had been in Africa came back and decided we needed another church and started one in a house on the edge of the village towards Marion. I do not know anyone who goes there, but I do like the three very simple lighted crosses they put up near their driveway and the cross on the barn there.

The post office closed over a century ago. The blacksmith shop and pool hall that were there when we came in 1962 closed decades ago. So did the gas stations. The two competing groceries went down to one until the owner retired. That store was replaced with a new building next door that sold some few groceries, where we could get milk, bread, or lunch meat in an emergency. We could also stop at one of the tables to join friends for coffee, sandwiches, pizza, or home-made pie. But that helpful place closed a few months ago, and so far no one has bought the building and restarted the business. A former cosmetologist studied for her catering license and now sells plate lunches in her former shop. We are grateful.

As I said, the school and library are what ties together the community, which is made up of country roads and some clusters of houses in many small neighborhoods. In early days when people traveled with horse and buggy, a school and church were needed about every six or seven miles or so. By the time we moved to our farm, those small country schools had consolidated into one unit with three attendance centers offering grades 1 through 12. .

Next the children all came to Crab Orchard on buses. A new building was added on to the old one, and finally we had a kindergarten. The Parent Teacher Organization that existed then started a Reading Center in the left-behind grade school building and was affiliated with the Shawnee Library District. After ten years, our Reading Center became our public library thanks to the hard work of countless volunteers. When the school needed to tear down that old grade school building to build a truly beautiful addition and new gym, the library moved up the road and now has its own location. The school is still crowded, however, with too many kids in some classrooms.

Surrounding Crab Orchard are these many neighborhoods with only the small rural churches left to remind people of the way things were. There’s Pleasant Grove Church and cemetery up near the village of Paulton., which still has some of the mining company-built homes and which has a congregation within the village. Further east is Mt. Pleasant Church at Poor-Do, and Bethel Church is in that vicinity. Angelville is north and east of Crab too.

On east and south in the direction of the towns of Carrier Mills and Stonefort are Coal Bank Church and somewhere over in there is Indian Camp Church, surrounded with beautiful trees and a serene cemetery. Just a few miles south of Crab is Ferrell Church started in 1909 beside an old cemetery already there. When membership at Ferrell got down to three or four elderly folks, it had to close. But a new group started a congregation in the building there a couple years ago with the modern name Lively Stones or something like that. Between our road and the highway is a parallel road where a Presbyterian Church and cemetery known as Shed Church still exists. I like to go there sometimes and meditate.

Because of the mines, roads and cemeteries were sometimes moved. Not being a native, I found it difficult to navigate to weddings and funerals in these little churches on country roads.They mean a great deal to the nearby residents, and I always liked going to them. There are many other churches nearby in Creal Springs and New Dennison and Pittsburg, but I think the ones I mentioned are the only ones in our school district. (Although I may very well have left out one or more.)

We used to be a coal mining community, and we still have a few mines, but many people now have to work at other jobs. Working in the mines was dangerous and dirty, but benefits were good and these jobs were coveted before the mines started closing. Many families had to move out years ago when mines started closing

Over a year ago, the Maytag factory in nearby Herrin closed. Many of those employees got assistance to retrain at the community colleges, but that help has timed out. And the degree doesn’t help if there are no jobs available. The big warehouse facility that used to hire 600 people recently closed in Marion—our large town to the west.

People with jobs are doing well for the most part. Our people are thrifty, and the houses are neat and nice. I rarely see an old car on the roads, and I can’t remember seeing anyone stopped with a flat tire. Many families take it for granted that they own both a car and a pickup truck. Many refugees from the city or even nearby towns have moved in our area because the small school or the rural environment is attractive to them. . Some newcomers live in mobile homes on an acre or so of land, and some live in very fine homes in housing developments. Most don’t need Angel Bags, but I am glad people are generous enough to see that the kids who do can have them.

"Ate Up With Softball"

A few years back, one of our son Gerry’s cousins pronounced him “ate up with softball.” No one argued. What with his own coaching and his three daughters playing on various teams, their family spent much time at the ballpark. Consequently, so did Gerald and I. And also his siblings and their families when time and location allowed them to attend and cheer the three daughters on.

Starting with watching Tara play summer ball at age 7 or 8, then Erin even earlier with a coed team, and finally Geri Ann on the diamond, we often filled our spring, summer, and fall calendars with dates of the various games since school teams were added when the girls reached the age for that.

Their mother Vickie, who had also played softball, coached some of the early teams, but then Geri Ann was born. Vickie became an expert at watching her older daughters and keeping Geri Ann happy at the same time. I remember Gerry saying once when Geri Ann was about two that she had already attended 2000 games or some other hyperbolic number.

By the time Geri Ann was ready to play, the local park teams started at an even earlier age. I know her buddy and teammate Allison was a tiny three-year-old when I first watched her play—so Geri Ann must have started playing at four. They didn’t keep score with these kids, but no one competing for a state championship could have been more determined and competitive than Allison. Home runs were frequent, and balls in the outfield required movement by committee. Daddies were ready to comfort any hurt or disappointed player—whether it was his child or someone else’s. We have photos of these kids playing, but I don’t need them because the mental “photographs” still exist, and they make me smile.

We have a large collection of lawn chairs from those days, and I still wear some clothes I rushed up to the dollar store to add to my original clothing at one spring all-day tourney at Johnston City. (The wind was much colder than I expected.) I have watched ball in winter coats and gloves with a blanket added and also watched with sweat blurring my eyesight. I have frozen on the aluminum bleachers and come home with a sun burn despite sunscreen.

One of the results of Gerry’s family moving from nearby Johnston City to Georgia, where Gerry is assistant softball coach to Lu Harris-Champer of the Georgia Bulldogs, is that our social life has diminished locally. Of course we had already gone to California, Georgia, Michigan, Alabama, Iowa, and other away places to watch the granddaughters as they progressed to college ball. And then after her college graduation, Tara began coaching, and we had to see her games when they were close enough and we had the time.

With Erin at Texas A&M last year, we couldn’t go to many of the games, but we discovered we could watch or more accurately listen to game tracker on the computer and sometimes even a video of the game. Thus, Gerald and I found ourselves in his office eating meals and cheering as we watched.

Well, the college softball season started this weekend, and we were at his computer watching again on Friday and Saturday. Texas A&M was hosting a tournament there, and Vickie was in the stands to cheer Erin. Gerry was at a tourney in Cathedral City, CA, with the University of Georgia team. (Geri Ann was in friends as she had a high school basketball game to play.) Gerry's games were not on game tracker that we could find at least. We had to keep up with his team by phone calls or emails from the Georgia website. Both of “our” teams won their two Friday games, and both split yesterday.

I was relieved they did not play today, so we did not have to rush home from church with Gerald getting the game going in his office downstairs while I hurriedly fixed us a bite to eat and carry down. We were having a Valentine potluck after worship at church today, and I am really glad we didn’t miss it.

Shirley Butler had outdone herself making the basement dining room absolutely gorgeous. She has great talent for decorating. (Her daughter’s wedding reception in our outdoor pavilion was the prettiest fairyland I even attended.) Adding to the fun was a beautiful birthday cake for our interim pastor’s wife, also named Shirley, who had driven out to join us. The cake featured bright red roses and a black piano in honor of this Shirley’s talent. (She plays at her church in town, but she frequently manages to come to our six o’clock evening service. When she and Kim Barger play together, I feel as if this must be what the music in Heaven will be like.)

Barbecue and Italian beef sandwiches from Patrick and Tina Barger’s new restaurant in Goreville was our featured main dish. The aroma was wonderful when we went down the stairway, and the sandwiches were as good as they smelled. As always there was a multitude of congregation-brought side dishes and desserts.

I had taken baked beans because at our last gathering our friend Eddy Wiley was there all the way from a not-so-close village hoping I’d brought the baked beans he liked as a teenager. And that I have taken especially for him many times since. I like to send the beans and left-over German chocolate cake home with him. But that day I had not fixed them.

Of course, today when I did fix them, Eddy wasn’t there. (No one had thought to send him word.) So I sent the remaining ones home with someone with kids since Gerald and I can’t eat them. Some of the left-over cake was used on the plates Shirley Butler was fixing for shut-ins, and I left the rest in the car, so we wouldn’t be tempted here at Woodsong. It will be delivered to Katherine’s family tomorrow. But we will be eating a barbecue sandwich tomorrow. Shirley was encouraging everyone to take sandwiches home. I couldn’t resist that. All the food sharing is part of the fun and fellowship in our village.

Also tomorrow we’ll have to get softball game times off the schedules and in our minds for next weekend. Some folks might say that Gerald and I too are “ate up with softball.”

Sadness

I really did come downstairs to my computer to blog Wednesday night. But first I checked the emails, and there was a paragraph I wrote to a speakers’ newsletter that had been picked up by another writer. (The speakers’ newsletter is free, but we are supposed to “pay” for it with a tip occasionally, and I had sent my first tip to the newsletter.) Excited that someone had liked it, I forwarded it to our kids.


We have a family yahoo group, where all of us get our emails. A couple of our children were online and started emailing in response. This is one of my favorite things because usually it is late at night and everyone is a little slap happy. Naturally I think my children are very witty, so I love it when they start emails flying back and forth amongst us that crack me up.


After a couple funny responses, suddenly our son came online and asked if we knew that Mark Mocaby had had a massive stroke and died in Tupelo, Mississippi. The flurry of emails increased but went from being silly to being very sad. Mark, 47, was in Jeannie’s class, and she had thought so much of Mark. Evidently everyone did—the kids in the classes above him and below him in age. Mary Ellen remembered that all through high school, Mark had been in love with Mary Ann from Mississippi—much to the dismay of the local girls.

Once again I was tired and now sad and I forgot all about blogging. Our email grief expression was still continuing today. Mary Ellen, who had wanted to come to his funeral, had found out it was in Mississippi tomorrow, but Mark would be buried here at Mt. Pleasant up in the Poor-Do neighborhood, but we don’t know when.

Then as Gerald and I were finishing lunch, our next-door neighbor Scott phoned. A terrible accident had happened in our neighborhood. Scott and Sonja saw the fire truck, ambulance, and Air Evac helicopter go by, but Gerald and I had not. They had followed and like several other neighbors had been led to our dear friend Chester Turner’s farm. Chester, a widower who lost who only son shortly after the Viet Nam War, is a community favorite.


At 90 plus years, he still rides his horse to the Sikeston Rodeo over in Missouri each year. (Of course, he has some assistance and watch care from his very special horse-riding buddy Robin Roberts, who despite having her hands full with her in-laws’ illnesses and her photography studio, cannot stand the thought that anyone can not still ride if they love to do so as much as she does.)


Estes Hosman, a friend of Chester’s son and now like a son to Chester, had come over to help Chester cut down a bad limb from a tree in the back field. Chester was urging Estes to stop and let the wind complete the job when Estes said he would make one final attempt to cut through. He succeeded, and the limb somehow someway bounced up and hit him and killed him.

Neighbors and friends were pouring in throughout the afternoon knowing they could do nothing to ease Chester’s grief but at least he was not alone with it. Some, of course, were going to be with Estes’ wife Cheryl. Our neighbor across the road, who had gone through school with Estes and Cheryl, phoned sobbing to make sure we had heard the sad news.

In a small rural community like ours, one of the things I have observed is that everyone has so many connections to everyone else. Thus, when a tragedy like this happens, a multitude of people are deeply affected. Not just Estes and Cheryl’s classmates, but all of the classmates of Estes and Cheryl's two daughters, Jamie and Lori, will be grief-stricken for their friends.


Just as the entire community was devastated a few decades ago when Estes’ father was a victim of a coal mine disaster. Other miners in our community risked their lives trying to get his body out until they were forbidden to continue. He remains entombed there. And then we were grief stricken when Chester and Maribel’s only child was killed in a car accident after safely surviving Viet Nam. Later the community was saddened when Estes’ mother died of cancer. The ties and relationships between people in a rural community are varied and deep.


Our Mary Ellen had to call her friend Stacia in Oklahoma because Stacia used to baby sit Estes and Cheryl’s daughters. Of course, she was saddened for her classmate Bruce, Estes' nephew. Our son Gerry, who was friends with both Chester and Estes, immediately said he must arrange to come home even though he was at the airport getting ready to depart for California and fly back tomorrow. Oddly, before he got on the plane, he had a text message that the tournament was called off, and suddenly he was free to drive back home and absorb this loss and see if he can work it out to come up.


Crab Orchard community is a sad place tonight, and I am only too aware that life is often short and very precious to those who love those lives.