NEXT - ELKINS & SHENANDOAH
n 1942, Annual Conference met at our home church, Vienna, W. Va. I was returned
to the Freemansburg Charge, but was struggling with the conviction that I
needed more education. I had asked about a student pastorate in the Southeast
Ohio Conference, so that I could attend Otterbein College, at Westerville.
One month after Conference, I received a wire offering me the Harrisburg-Pleasant
Corners charge, 31 miles from the college. After much prayer, we were led
to accept the offer, and resigned reluctantly from a happy pastorate to return
to school after eight years as full time pastor.
Memories of the Freemansburg Charge include the Sunday morning, Dec. 7th,
1941. 1 went to the door at the close of the service, and Ernest King, who
had baby-sat with the children while his wife came to church, came running
across the street and told me that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.
When Elizabeth heard the news, she went around to the back of the church
and shed a few tears.
Even though it was a student work, I received $100 more salary than the work
at Freemansburg paid me. I arranged my classes to attend college on a Monday
- Wednesday - Friday schedule. I stayed at home the other three weekdays,
spending them in study. I did my pastoral calling and sermon preparation
in the evenings. Our son, Marion, had to change schools for the last year
of high school, attending at Grove City.
Howard was in second grade, and had only to walk next door to the schoolhouse
in Harrisburg. Gasoline was rationed in those war years, and I was allowed
only a "C" ration card. Many times it would not last for the 186 miles I
had to drive weekly. It was necessary to catch the bus at 5:30 a.m., change
buses in Columbus for Westerville, arriving just in time for 7:30 classes.
In spite of my heavy schedule, and having been out of school for so long,
I managed an "A" in all subjects except one. This was French II, making a
"B" in that one for the first semester only, then bringing it up to an "A"
and graduating magna cum laude.
Since I had only 3 semester hours to complete for the A. B. degree in June,
1944, I enrolled at Ohio State University in the Political Science Department
for the fall term, completing the 3 hours at Otterbein by writing a thesis
for honors, using the subject, "The Jews, and Their Prospects for a Just
and Durable Peace." So I had the unusual experience of getting two degrees
in three months, getting the A. B. at Otterbein in June, and the M. A. in
Political Science in August of the same year.
Elizabeth was a loyal and a devoted wife during these busy years, working
full time to help us pay expenses. The first year, she worked at J. C. Penneys
in Columbus in dress sales; the second year as sales person for the National
Biscuit Company. The next year they reverted to their pre-war practice of
using only men for this work, so she taught first and second grades boys,
from 6 to 15 year-olds, at the Orient School for the feebleminded.
This year was interrupted by the necessity for a serious operation in February.
I had preached for a revival meeting in the United Brethren Church in Elkins,
W. Va. (my home community) in 1941. 1 felt a definite leading from the Holy
Spirit to go to that very small congregation to lead them in the building
of a new house of worship to replace their very dilapidated one. I wrote
of this feeling to Dr. T. L Miles, the conference superintendent. He and
the Bishop concurred, and assigned us there at conference time in September,
1945.
It was an eventful year for us, since our older son, Marion, after finishing
high school and one year along with me at Otterbein and working one year
at the Goodrich Tire and Rubber Co. in Akron, Ohio, had joined the navy,
and was sent to do submarine patrol duty on the North Atlantic. This added
to our very heavy burden of the graduating year, the new assignment and the
move from Ohio back to West Virginia.
Since I am leaving Ohio, this is a good time to divert to a more humorous
vein. I found a strong contempt among native Ohioans for my home state, especially
on the part of those who had never visited that state.
My French teacher, Dr. Gilbert Mills, was from Buckhannon, W. Va. Once, while
studying a French play, an old French king had a court maiden come to him
on the throne, and gave her a pinch of snuff from his gold snuff box. One
of the girls in the class said, (in English) "Dr. Mills, they still rub snuff
down in West Virginia." Professor Mills said to me, 'They have us there,
don't they Brady?" A student who worked in a local grocery said, "You'd be
surprised how much snuff we sell right here in Westerville at the local grocery
store." Several girls spoke up simultaneously, "Oh-h-h no! Not in Westerville!"
Prof. 'Buckeye' Altman stated in my English class: "People still live in
log houses with dirt floors over in West Virginia." He had never been there.
I can state positively that conditions are no more primitive in West Virginia
than in southern Ohio. In fact, the dirtiest home I was ever in was on the
highway, 13 miles southwest of Columbus. I was asked to visit a sick man
in that house, and found a dying man, lying in a bed with two hens roosting
on the head of his bed. Chicken lice were so thick that I had to keep stamping
my feet to keep them front crawling up my shoes to my body. I never saw anything
that bad in my home state!
Once I did have a similar experience, but not quite so dirty, I went home
with some young folks to stay all night during a revival. We were seated
around a stove in the living room, when I distinctly heard a pig grunt. When
I looked up inquiringly, the father said, "Oh, you're lookin' for Samantha.
She's layin here by my chair. She grunts when I scratch her back." When bedtime
came, I followed two big teen-age sons between two beds in a tiny room, to
a ladder nailed to the back wall, We climbed to the high loft, and I went
to bed in a sagging mattress between the two boys. It was in March, and snow
was blowing in where the mud had fallen out of the 'chinks' between the logs
in the wall. We had only one old World War I army blanket over us. In spite
of their body odor, I was glad for the heat of the two bodies before morning!
Another experience was unforgettable. I had been warned not to go home with
one family, but one night during a revival, we had a very heavy rain. Besides
myself, only one other person showed up at the church, a young man from that
home. I read a scripture lesson, and had prayer before the young man said,
"Now, Preacher, you have to go home with me tonight. There is nobody else
here." Well, we walked for a mile up a steep hill in the red mud.
I had been warned. The odor was almost unbearable! The boy hung up his lantern
and said, "Hey, Paw, guess what we have for breakfast? Preacher!" "Put him
in your bed. You can sleep on the cot," said 'Paw. Man and wife were in a
bed in the 'front' room. (The woman weighed over 400 pounds. She wanted to
be baptized by immersion, but the pastors were all afraid to try to lift
her out of the water.)
The son picked up the oil lamp from the table and led the way up a steep
stairway to the second floor. It was a "story and a half house, with the
sloping ceilings common to such. These were four teenage daughters, lying
in two double beds in a room without partitions. The boy put down the lamp,
took off all his clothes, and lay down on the cot.
"You can have my bed there," he said, indicating another double bed. "Do
you blow out this lamp?" I asked. "Hope, we leave her burn," he replied.
What was I to do? I had to get into my pajamas in some way, and while the
girls all had their eyes closed, I had no way of knowing if they were asleep,
or "playing 'possum."
Because of the slope of the ceiling, the bed would go no closer than three
feet to the wall. I bent over, after having turned the lamp down as low as
I dared crawled back in the space behind the head of the bed, and changed
my clothes. I came out, turned up the lamp, put my shirt over the dirty pillow,
and crawled into the filthy sheets. In a few minutes, I felt something crawling
on my back. I caught the insect and crushed it between my finger and thumb,
and from earlier experiences, knew from the odor that I had caught a bedbug.
I fought those bugs all night until about 4:30, when the early June daylight
gave me relief. When I threw back the covers, A whole battalion of bedbugs
scurried for cover into a hole in the old straw mattress.
At six o'clock, the alarm sounded downstairs, the old man's feet hit the
floor, and he began to sing, "Going Up to Jerusalem, Just Like John." One
of the girls said, "Let's get up and go downstairs, maybe he'll shut up."
I politely turned my back, but could have saved the energy, for when I went
downstairs, I knew that all of the girls had slept in their clothes, from
the many wrinkles.
"Well, I sung the cooks up; now I'll sing the preacher up." the father said. He sang all the way out to feed the pigs.
The girls called, "Breakfast!" and we sat down to biscuits, sorghum molasses,
fat-back pork warmed until it was just quivery, and black postum. (The father
said drinking coffee was a sin.)
I thought, "I like sorghum, so I'll eat some on a biscuit and wash it down
with postum." I asked a hypocritical blessing on the food and picked up a
biscuit. I tried to break it open, but my fingers slipped off. On the third
try, the gummy interior finally strung out and it broke open, and inside
was curled a long black hair. I said, "You'll have to excuse me. I didn't
sleep well last night, and I don't feel well this morning." It was every
word true! I went out behind the barn and lost even my dinner from the night
before.
I drove the 26 miles back home that night after church. When I told Elizabeth
at the door about the bedbugs, she made me take off all my clothes on the
front porch. I even had to leave my suitcase outside. Needless to say, I
never went back to that house to eat or sleep again!
Such are the fortunes of those who would serve the Lord in West Virginia
in the earlier days. I found that conditions were worse near the Ohio River
than in the mountain areas of the state.
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