Restoration

 I own a 1950 Plymouth Special Deluxe.  People are always asking, “What is it and what year is it?”  It is a beautiful automobile.  Another question asked is, “Can I take some pictures of it?”  Usually the photographers are women.  Young women, most often Hispanic, want their picture taken with it.  I tell them go ahead.  I do worry about their boyfriends.

Lots of men my age salivate and drool and have to see under the hood.  Young hot rodder give a thumb’s up, blink their headlights, or try to buy it.  I tell them it is not for sale then they offer a ridiculous low price.  I usually them that their will buy them a look or the offer might get you the wheels.  Old timers say, “You got a lot of money tied up in the car.”  Some will ask where I found it and bought it. 

As of this article, I have been driving the Plymouth over sixty years.  That’s right.  I started driving it when I was twelve.  Mama taught me to drive it.  Back then it had a flathead six-cylinder engine, a three on the tree shifter, and a clutch.  I can still hear mama fussing and sometimes cussing me when releasing the clutch and the Plymouth hopping and jumping.  

Trying to shift from first gear to second was even more exciting.  I kept trying to shift it up and going into reverse.  The grinding sound was loud, but momma was louder.  I knew how to shift our Farmall Cub tractor.  It was a stick shift on the left with the gears marked and moved a whole lot slower.  I eventually got the hang of and started driving it. 

The Plymouth has been in the family since 1957.  Mamma’s brother worked was a body shop in Brent, Alabama.  I never knew what Uncle Gerald did in repairing it.  I never found any evidence of a collision.  He sold to his dad, my Grandpaw Chapman.  It was baby blue, two-door sedan.  My fondest memories are Grandpaw driving the Plymouth to our house on Saturday mornings brings us groceries because dad was out of work, which meant out money and out of food.  The Plymouth was quiet and sounded like a Singer sewing machine running.

Grandpaw became disabled due to his age and could not drive anymore, and daddy bought the Plymouth from him.  Daddy drove it to work each day for a few years.  The Plymouth had approximately six-eight thousand miles on it when a rod started knocking in the flathead.   Daddy asked, “Do you want a car?”  Boy did I.  Hot Rod magazines tantalized and owning a car was dreams come true for this fourteen old.  You read that right, 14.

Plymouth behind me

We had used the Plymouth for everything one would use a farm pickup to do.  We hauled firewood in the trunk.  Pulled farm equipment and pulled logs using chains connected to the bumpers.  We used the bumpers push and pull a wide variety of stuff.  There were bent, gouged, and scraped.

I started driving the Plymouth to school, to the store, and to church.  I bussed football players home, drove girlfriends' home, and when I got a driver’s license, I drove it to work at Hiwassee Land Company for two summers.  The first summer I earned enough to paint the Plymouth crystal blue on honor of Tommy James’ song “Crystal Blue Persuasion.” I drove it to the prom with plastic over the passenger window.   The second summer I had rolled and tucked interior installed.

During the years between age fourteen and eighteen, I replaced the flathead with one from a 1953 Plymouth Coronet.  I replaced the transmission and rear end, never bought new tires.  I never had the front end aligned.  I bought old junk Plymouths for ten to twenty dollars and used the good tires from them or picked up good ones in trash dumps.

When I graduated and later married, I drove it to work.  I drag raced it when challenged.  The brakes were bad, and it would not start when hot.  We always had to push it a few a few feet, jump inside, push the clutch, shift in first gear, and pop the clutch.  When it rained, was foggy, or a rat peed on the distributor it would not start.  My hot rod dream was to build it up from the ground up. 

Back in July 2012 our house in Jemison, Alabama burned.  I was Director of Missions in Linden two hours away.  Angela, my daughter, had the fire department pull the Plymouth out of basement storage and away from the house before it completely burned.  That’s when I carried the Plymouth to Linden and started six years of restoration.

Because the Plymouth was so unfaithful, I had named her Jezebel.  After the fire and restoration, I named her Phenix in honor of the mythical bird that rose from the ashes.  Phenix has a 3.5 Dodge hemi engine and automatic transmission, fat boy front end, 9” Mustang rear end, four-wheel disc brakes, high end vinyl bucket seats, power tinted windows, chrome mag wheels and tires, and painted Porsche Meteor Grey.

A family heirloom

The Phenix is a conversational starter.  It is an opportunity to tell of God’s transformational power.  It is a display of how something can change when loved and given a new start.  That’s what God does with us.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (I Corinthians 5:17 KJV)

Now for a little Bible humor:

What automobile does God drive?

Plymouth Fury - Behold, I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury (Jeremiah 32:37 KJV)

What was the official car of the early Christians?

Honda Accord - And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all in one accord in one place (Acts 2:1 KJV)

A King James Bible KJV and /Casserole Dish

Baptists in Alabama are known for preaching and teaching the Holy Bible, spring and summer revivals, homecomings, Southern Gospel singing, and “dinner on the ground.”  My good friend Kelly from Demopolis said that when he “got saved,” that he was told he had to get two things.  First he had to purchase a King James Holy Bible and a large casserole dish to be a Bono Fide Baptist.  Baptist folks love good preaching.  Most are disappointed and discouraged if you don’t “step on their toes.”

Sunday dinners are prominent times in the church.  When my home church, Union Springs Baptist Church Randolph, Alabama, had dinner on the ground it was outside under the big oak trees on homemade concrete tables. 
There would be meats of fried chicken, beef roast, pork barbeque, fried pork chops, pork ribs, and meatloaf to name a few. Salads were potato salad, congealed salad, poke salad, pear salad green bean salad, and green salad.  The list continues with mashed potatoes and gravy, fried taters and onions, baked potatoes and the fixings, and French-fried potatoes.

Every spread had green peas and butterbeans, bacon topped baked beans, and green beans.  The table always had turnip greens and collard greens, both cooked with lard and/or bacon with homemade pepper sauce to doctor them up.  There had to be cornbread for them too.

The bread table had yeast rolls, homemade and handmade biscuits, brown and serve rolls which were faithfully burned on top, sour dough bread, Mexican cornbread, and usually broccoli cornbread.  Some poor soul would have white loaf bread.  Finally, there had to be buns for the barbeque and possibly hamburger patties.

The dessert table was place of delicious beauty and gluttonous debauchery.  Some brought store bought cake mix cakes and store-bought icing that semi qualified for homemade, made from scratch cakes with homemade icing, again some poor soul would bring a Wal-Mart or Winn Dixie grocery store bought cake.  There would be Italian Cream cake, frozen coconut cake, carrot cake, chocolate cake, banana cake, strawberry cake, and the good old yellow cake.  My sister Diane makes the best homemade from scratch red velvet cake.  One Sunday I ate strictly from the dessert table.

Pies included home peach and apple cobblers, homemade lemon meringue pie and lemon no meringue pie, cherry pie, pear pie, ham and egg pie (Not a desert), mince pie, and those out of this world diabetic overload pecan pies made with Golden Eagle sopping syrup.  My sister-law makes the best million-dollar pie. Boy those were days.  Most ladies today bring Sunday dinner to church in a bucket or box.

When I think of yesteryear, most of the good cooks have passed away.  I can say that my sister is one of the few church women that continues to cook the old fashion way.  At her church, her dishes are the first consumed with all the envious women wanted to know what makes my sister Diane’s dishes better.  They all cringe and turn up their noses when she says she still cooks with lard.  No one in my sister’s family is fat!  in good old Chiton County vernacular, Ain’t nothing no better than French fried taters cooked in lard.  Ump, ump, ump!

When I reminisce about the cooks at Union Springs there is Ms. Betty Joe Pate’s fried chicken.  Eat your heart out KFC.  There was Ms. Nola Dutton’s chicken and dumplings.  Ms. Deenie Smith cooked the best homemade macaroni and cheese.  My Aunt Annie and Aunt Katherine made the best biscuits that the Pillsbury Dough Boy envied.  It is sad.  All these delicious cooks are gone.  Some futuristic ladies did acquire their recipes but in Chiltonian words, “It ain’t the same.”

My friend Kelly received some very wise council when he was told to purchase a large King James Holy Bible and casserole dish.  Baptists love Koinonia, the Greek word for Sunday dinner on the ground.

 

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship (Koinonia) to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Acts 2:42 KJV

 

Before I forget it, there are several men at Union Springs Baptist Church that are great cooks.  Heedy, James, and my brother David have their world-famous barbeque chicken halves and quarters made with a secret special sauce over a fire of hickory wood.  As they say in the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, “The secret is in the sauce.”  My brothers David and Glenn have perfected the cooking of a whole hog which happens at Union Springs Baptist Church each year.  Ya’ll come!

Entertaining Angels

 While pastor at Gallion Baptist Church in south Alabama, I received a request from a pastor friend.  He needed a favor.  He had booked a young lady for a concert and to make her trip she needed another church to book her for a morning service since my preacher friend had her for a Sunday night. 

 I was not a promoter of replacing Sunday morning worship services for concerts with the excepteing homecomings.  My pastor friend insisted that I have her and then proceeded to tell me about this young lady.

 He said that her name was Stephanie Leavins from Florida.  His voice filled with excitement, I listened to what was an incredible story. He said has Muscular Dystrophy and can only move her head and big toe on her right foot.  I could not believe what he was telling me.

I had known my preacher most of our lives.  His dad and a brother were also preachers.  His mother used to ride to work with me and he eventually went to work with us.  He was also almost my brother-in-law.  He was a good friend, introduced me to Gallion Baptist Church, and was a neighboring pastor.  He was also very persuasive and very effective at it.  I gave in to him and booked Stephanie.

Booking Stephanie had to be one of the best decisions I made in the ministry.  My pastor friend did not realize the ramifications of me having her first.  She was amazing.  Stephanie and Libby and Earl, her mom showed up on a beautiful Sunday morning.  I met smiling angels that morning, one which drove a pink motorized wheelchair using her big toe.  That was only the beginning of many wonderful and marvelous miracles with Stephanie.

She zoomed out of the van and down the church sidewalk and spun around just laughing.  Earl just shook his head and Libby smiled.  I finally had the opportunity to meet this precious family and begin a journey that would span twenty plus years.

Sitting in that pink wheelchair was a motionless body adorning a beautiful lively smile and a voice that sung like an angel.  The first thing I heard was “Bother Bobby!”  I would hear her say many times, especially after I became a Director of Missions.  When Stephanie needed a place to minister, she would call me and say, “Brother Bobby I love you.”  She would tell me that she was in my area and needed another church to book her.

That first time she ministered at Gallion was astonishing.  She had never eaten with her mouth at that time.  Libby fed her through a feeding tube.  That amazed me simply because at that time the courts were involved with Terri Schiavo who at age 26, went into cardiac arrest at her home in St. Petersburg, Florida. She was resuscitated but had severe brain damage due to lack of oxygen to her brain and was left comatose.  Terri Schiavo’s family argued in favor of continuing artificial nutrition and hydration via feeding tube.  Terri’s feeding tube was removed in March 2005 and subsequently died.

 Born April 3, 1977, Stephanie was not supposed to live.  Libby, called her special angel by Stephanie, fed her, bathed her, and helped her graduate high school.  Stephanie ministered again at Gallion, and it was the first time she drank water through her mouth.  I was with her when she experienced the exhilaration of tasting and swallowing chocolate candy.

Back to that fist Sunday, I learned she did not have a diaphragm yet could sing like an angel.  She wanted me to hug her, whom I did, and it felt I was hugging a “sack of taters.”

I do not mean that derogatory but other than her head moving she was not responsive.  We always enjoyed picking and playing with another.  She once asked my wife if she could kiss me on the lips.  I was reluctant but my wife insisted.  I kissed an angel with bright red lips and she squealed.  She loved lipstick, makeup, and jewelry and had beautiful blonde hair.  Every finger had a pretty ring.

Not having the ability to move her arms, her left arm fell from her wheelchair and dangled.  She made eye contact with me, and I rushed to the stage to place it back on the wheelchair arm.  She wisecracked, “What tender love and care.”   I blushed which made her laugh.

During another song, her arm fell again this time losing a ring from her ring finger.  Once again, I approached her and with tenderness lifted, her lifeless arm back on the wheelchair.  I stooped down and picked up the ring.  She said, “Well?”  I gentle slid the ring on her finger.  I remember that angelic voice saying, “I do, I do, do.”  The congregation laughed and gave an ovation.

Each time she ministered for me, I had grown men with tears in their eyes say, “After hearing that girl I have no reason to miss work. She inspired me.”  The only to believe her miracle was to witness God’s hand of grace and mercy on her.  She did me. 

The last time I was with her was a divine appointment.  I was visiting my brother’s church in Baldwin County, Alabama and he said that had a special guest for the morning service.  As I walked in the auditorium Stephanie yelled, Brother Bobby, I love you.”

 

Stephanie on January 5, 2025, just a few days ago Stephanie gained a perfect body.

 

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares (Hebrews 13:2)

 

For more on Stephanie:  www.stephanieleavins.com

PS:  Stephanie had a special wheelchair she used for deer hunting.  She bagged a big one.

Snow and Birth: God's Artistry

When I checked the time this morning, January 14, 2025, it was 10:22 and my mind went back to January 18, 1976.  It was a cold, fourteen degrees at 4 AM, morning and my firstborn son entered into the world at 10:22 AM.  It was a Sunday morning full of joy, hope, and the uncertainty of the future.

Back then fathers had a room to wait for newborns.  We were not allowed in the delivery room.  There were several dads nervously waited for the Stork’s delivery.  One by one, nurses retrieved dads to meet the arrivals.  Suddenly, they called for Mr. Hopper.  I jumped to my feet and entered my wife’s room where little Andy Lee Hopper lay on his mother’s stomach.  He had a yellow hue.  I jokingly asked her, “Where did you get the little Asian baby?”  

As she hugged Andy tight and forced a smile, she said he was yellow jaundice.  She said they are going to put him under some lights for treatment.  Andy was so cute laying with only a pair of colored glasses for clothing.  I would stand at the babies’ window and soak in the moments that seem as only yesterday.  Forty-eight years later, I have collected scores of precious memories especially those of birthdays.

January 18 typically involves cold and usually snow.  Snow in Alabama is rare but around the third week in January the probability increases dramatically.  There was snow last Friday, the 10^th and the immediate forecast for next week calls for more snow and frigid cold.  Snow is God’s way of blessing us with snow on Andy’s birthday.  His first snow was his first birthday.  We did not keep a record, but we did a big snow on his sixteenth birthday and several in between.

One snow birthday, a neighbor, now an aunt had a Honda three-wheeler.  They were outlawed later and a rare find today but fun especially in the snow.  Andy had the best time laughing as he slipped and sledded in the winter wonderland.  I can still see his rosy, red cheeks, laugher, and smile atop the big tired, red, motorized tricycle. 

As he got older and Three-wheelers outlawed, Honda added a tire and created four-wheelers.  His aunt and uncle surprised him with pulling him on a plastic kiddy swimming pool behind the four-wheeler.  He looked like Santa on a sleigh.

Any lives in San Antonio, Texas now.  I doubt that he will get snow there on his birthday but if we get it here it will be a time of reflection.  Snow and birthdays are God’s miracles.  Each snowflake and each birth are unique.  Once a baby and the hope and fears of another generation, he became an artistic man.  The first-born grandson of the Hopper family is followed by a sister, brother, and 49 cousins.

I remember daddy holding his first grandson at Granny Hopper’s wake.  The joy he had is priceless.  Momma loved Andy so much that love still radiates in our memories.  If they could only witness the increase that began with Andy, they would be proud.

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater.” Isaiah 55:10

It began with you.  Happy birthday son!

Love dad

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Back when the Hopper boys, David, Glenn, and me, were growing up, daddy got us two burros.  They were wild and hard to catch and even more difficult to ride.  On one particular day my baby brother Glenn decided to take the family John Deere 1020 tractor and chase the burros.  He chased them with a disc hitched to the tractor.  He was having fun using the John Deere as a horse.  We were creative e and named the John Deere, John

There was a place in the pasture where water from the highway and hillside drained.  It was damp, not muddy until brother ran across it several times in pursuit of the uncontrollable and untamed burros.  John went down in a soft spot.  My brother was stuck.  Daddy, David, and I went down to help.  The first thing we did was unhitch the disc.  Our utility vehicle was a 1950 Plymouth Special Deluxe.  We used the Plymouth to haul firewood, pull the John, and all the other things people would use on a farm to pull the disc away from the tractor.  Then we used the Plymouth to try to unstick the tractor.  All we tried was vain attempts of futility.

The more we tried to free the tractor, the dipper it got.  Daddy decided to use a power pole to free John.  We slide the pole under the front of the rear tires and chained the pole to them.  Daddy assured us that when we moved John forward that the pole would raise John up and out to firmer ground.  It seemed like a very intellect solution to a dumb attempt to corral wild burros with a tractor.

Being the oldest and more experienced at helping daddy in easier said than done situations, daddy gave specific instruction for freeing John.  “Get on John and put it low gear.  Idle John down and slowly ease off the cutch.  Be careful and stop John when it picks you up and out.”

Sounded like a plan to me.  Something happened that would be the start of a long and challenging attempt to lift up John.  I did exactly as instructed.  When the rear tired started to rotate the pole, it became a giant twelve feet scoop and John was sinking deeper.  When we finally surrendered to the gravitation pull of the earth, John was so deep that the seat was below ground level, and I had step up to the surface.  The whole episode looked as a giant ice cream scoop in a giant bucket of chocolate ice cream.

For days neighbors would offer to help free sinking John.  Neighbors used tractors, log trucks, chains, cables, and the like but John was on a journey to the center of the earth.  More rains came and John was an attraction site for everyone traveling County Road 50.  People laughed, joked, and made fun of the Hopper Folly.  Garden time was coming, and John’s rear went lower, and the front went higher.

Finally, one of our neighbors owned a landscaping business.  He said, “When we get some day days, I will help ya’ll get that tractor unstuck.”  That day finally arrived and Larry, our neighbor appeared on the crime scene with a large Massey Ferguson tractor.  It had a large bucket on the front.  Larry had us put a large log chain around John toward the rear.  I dug around in the mud to put the chain around John.

Larry put that big Massey Ferguson bucket direct over John and lifted the bucket.   His tractor strained, shacked, and finally up came John.  I will never forget the sound freeing John.  It was a sucking sound similar to the sound a commode makes when flushing.  Larry put John on dry ground.  Larry said, “You would never get that tractor out by pulling.  The earth had suction on it.  Pulling it straight breaks the suction.”

Daddy got rid the burros.  We never did ride them, but the Hopper boys became very good defensive football players that honed their tackling skills on wild burros, Welch ponies, and later on loose hogs.  We never used John to chase livestock after the sinking fiasco.

I have shared this story many times in sermons.  When I studied Greek, I learned that Peter walked on the water when Jesus bid him to come.  He did the impossible until he lost focus on Jesus and he began to sink.  Sink in the Greek, katapontizo means to drown.  The less Peter focused on Jesus the more the earth overwhelmed and sucked him down.  An experienced fisherman and swimmer was drowning.  When Peter called on Jesus, Jesus lifted him having power over the gravitational pull.

My Greek professor explained that katapontizo was the concept of the pulling down which reminded of the Hopper boys and John.  The professor reminded the class that we do not sink in sin, sin draws us especially when we take our eyes off Jesus and focus on circumstances

 “But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.”  Matthew 14:30 KJV

At a Sunday dinner after sharing the John Deere illustration, a man approached me and told a related story.  He said that from the Tuscaloosa Waffle House he witnessed a dozier preparing the ground for a Shrimp Basket Restaurant.  It started rain and the construction company left the dozier on site.  It rained for several days and when they tried to retrieve the dozier it was stuck. 

 

As he had breakfast each morning he said that he watched the dozier slowly sink.  He said that the last thing he saw was the exhaust pipe sticking up as the dozier journeyed to the center of the earth as I had referred in the sermon.  He laughed and said just remember when you eat at the Shrimp Basket there is a large dozier underneath.

WINTER STORM WARNING

The National Weather forecast for the American Southeast for January 10, 2025, predicts a winter storm.  There is not anything more devastating and initiating panic for people in Alabama to hear than WINTER STORM WARNING.  Alabamians just do stupid stuff and create shortages, chaos, and waste.

 

Having lived in Illinois on the Wisconsin state line, I experienced snow, lots of it.  When I started kindergarten in 1958, I experienced a snowstorm for the first time.  I opened the car door to have violent winds blowing snow.  Daddy had gotten me a bag of cheese curls for a snack and the wind ripped the bag from my hands and scattered those delicious cheese curls in the snow.  The yellow against the white was etched in my mind.  It was beautiful and overwhelming at the same time.  My bag was gone with the north wind and my little heart broken.  I started to cry.  Daddy said it would be okay and handed me another bag that he had bought for him.  I figured that the Abdominal Snowman had a yellow treats in the snow that was very deep for a small boy.

 

When I started the first grade, momma received a list of things that were required for men to attend South Beloit Elementary.  Momma had never been out of Alabama.  The list was foreign to her.  I had to have a snowsuit and snow galoshes.  Believe it or not I walked to school in the snow.  First time I wore my new galoshes someone stole them and replaced mine with an old worn pair.  Momma was not happy with those Yankees.  Snow was part of living up North.

 

Back in Alabama, snow, which is more ice than flakes paralyze.  Stores run out of milk, bread, and cold cuts.  It was 1985 when a winter storm paralyzed central Alabama.  It was a Wednesday night, and I was returning home from conducting a Prayer Meeting for a pastor friend who was out of town.  The rain fell and temperature dropped as rain turned to sleet and ice.  I can close my eyes and visualize the windshield wipers as they moved pushing the frozen Slushy.

 

Nothing really accumulated and we went to bed.  Around three in the morning there was an eerie silence.  The electricity was off.  I heard from time sounds as a shotgun shooting in the woods.  I looked out the bedroom window and it bright white.  Going to the back deck of the house I stepped into snow, about a foot deep.  The sound was limbs from a pine ticket breaking under the weight of the snow.  As daylight came, my neighbors and I discovered that electric power lines were down everywhere.  It was not good for all of us with total electric homes, but I did have and use a fireplace to help heat the house.

 

From Wednesday night to Sunday afternoon, we had no power.  We mattresses and cover to the great room where the fireplace was.  I used it to cook meals.  My son Andy and daughter Angel loved it.  They said it was like camping.  I moved all the refrigerated food to the snowbank on the back deck.  County water continued and I heated water in five-gallon buckets by the fireplace.  By Sunday power was back.

 

That Friday night I decide I would take a bath.  My wife asked how I would do that.  I told her like I had for most of my life.  We did not have and inside bathroom until the spring of my senior year of high school.  My family washed in a foot tube with water heated by the potbellied stove.  She laughed until I appeared clean, shaved, and hair washed.  Saturday night she asked if I could heat her some water.

 

The next year, 1986, we had another winter storm.  It was almost the same scenario but worse.  Fearing another winter storm people went crazy.  We had an extra frig in the basement.  Living in the country you buy enough food stuff to last a week or longer.  I asked if we needed anything, and my wife said a gallon of milk.

 

One again it was a Wednesday night, and I went to the local Wally World (Wal-Mart) to buy a gallon of milk.  I went the store, and I encounter pandemonium.  People panicked. There were people pushing a buggy of milk and pulling another full of break.  I stopped amazed and puzzled.  The store was out of milk.  Pushing and shoving everywhere.  Frighten people ran and screamed.  I thought just what it will look like if the world was ending.

 

Suddenly a man yelled, “Winn-Dixie has a truck load of milk!”  I imagined it looked as did the Hebrews when they left Egypt.  I went to the car and drove to Winn-Dixie where a tractor-trailer loaded with milk was unloading.  It was the same as Wal-Mart.  I got a gallon of milk, out my index finger in the handle, threw it across my shoulder, and proceeded to the checkout line.

 

I man pushing a full buggy of milk and pulling a buggy of bread stopped me and asked, “That all the milk you gonna get?”

 

I replied, “Yep, all I need.”

 

He reminded that there was a winter storm coming.  I told him that this is Alabama and how long does snow stay on the ground especially since the ground is not frozen, three maybe four days.

 

It did last for four days.  A neighbor went to check on folks in our country community.  He found a family that had made fun of our country/backward way of life.  The Birmingham transplants did not have any electricity due to down lines, no water because the pumping stations had no power, and no heat trying to burn green logs in a fireplace.

 

My neighbor invited the family to his house where his wife had a hot breakfast with biscuits, hot coffee, and a warm house.  After thawing out and returning home, my neighbor gave them some dry wood, showed them how to start a fire with kindling.  From then on the Birmingham transplants had a different attitude toward county folks.

 

Nowadays I question what has happened to common sense?   I like what a fellow Alabamian said, “A country boy can survive.”

 

 "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."  Matthew 24:22