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Burningtown News, Sunday, October 25, 2015 Good
Evening to All the People All Over the World, Please
remember the following in your prayers this week. Lucy
Mason Ken Shepherd Nell Duvall Welch
Lori Impagliatelli Harry Henry Melba
Martin Melba West Meredith Jones
Clarence Scott
GOD
& COUNTRY PLEASE BRING CANNED
GOODS AND THERE WILL BE AN OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE DONATIONS.
WHY
I REMEMBER GRANDMA I was sitting at home in my recliner crocheting an outfit for one of the older dolls in my collection, and for some strange reason my mind traveled back to the Good Ole Days and my Grandma Cordie Houston Welch. Most people have grandparents, or remember them when they were alive. We often think of grandmas as gray haired with a bun on the back of their heads, loving, sweet and, for some reason they always wanted to hug everyone. I'll have to admit that my Grandma Cordie was an unusual and very interesting person. Yes, she had the gray hair, plaited and wrapped around the back of her head in a bun. She was of average height, about 5 feet 6 inches, with thin arms and legs. But she was unique in that from her neck to her hips she was shaped like an egg. She wore the old fashioned dark silky dresses, always smelled like spices from the kitchen, thick stockings, and the typical black shoes that had little holes all over the toes. I noticed many things about Grandma when I was a child, but she was anything but ordinary. I often visited
her and Grandpa in their big weathered wood house on the hill above
us. And there are many things I remember about Grandma that I thought
were rather on the strange side. The house was 90% wood, including the
rough dark floor, the other 10% being the large stone fireplace in the
living room. The fireplace and the old kitchen wood stove were their
only means of heating the house. The living room was quite big, so Grandma
moved her bed and Grandpa's bed into the living room, which left them
with two empty back bedrooms. However, when I visited, I was never allowed
to go into the bedrooms, much less sleep there. They had a seat that
came from an old car that sat in the living room near the fireplace
and that is where I always slept. I was sure that seat was covered with
some kind of bristle hair material from some wild animal and the springs
were so hard I never made a dent in them. Grandma had another
idiosyncrasy that I wondered about. She never allowed anything on the
floor. I was sure she had built-in radar, for if a pair of shoes was
left on the floor, or a book happened to fall off a table onto the floor,
Grandma was there in a flash of lightening to put the object in its
place, regardless of where she was in the house at the time. Grandpa
had a walking cane he had made himself; a straight piece of wood he
had whittled out with a short strip of leather looped and nailed to
the top for his bent hand to hold the stick. There was a nail in the
wall near his chair and his cane was always hung on that nail when not
in use. And speaking of chairs, his was covered in some kind of old,
worn material, and even though it looked like it came out of Noah's
ark, there was not a hole in it anywhere. Grandpa never complained.
Grandma was not
a person who was real close to children and I remember many other of
her unusual ways. No one came into the house, sat down, made themselves
comfortable and had a nice chat. Everyone stayed outside on the porch
until it was dark unless it was winter time and too cold. When it got
dark, she would turn on the one old light that hung on the electric
cord from the ceiling in the middle of the living room. It was very
difficult to even tell the light was on, it was so dim, but Grandma
could read her Bible if she got her chair directly under the light.
Since meals were served before dark, whoever was there had no choice
but listen to Grandma read from the Bible. That was understood by anyone
who knew Grandma. The passage from the Bible that she read was always
her choice, and it was also her choice as to how long she read. Even
though Grandpa couldn't read, he often corrected her and had her go
back and read a verse over. She would fuss and quarrel, but would eventually
go back and read the verse correctly. When she finished reading, we
all went to bed, whether we were sleepy or not. Grandma kept her
house clean and was a good cook, however, when all her work was done,
she would go out on the top of the hill overlooking the valley to kneel
and pray. I am sure people two miles away could hear her in prayer.
When she got her daily prayer over, she went "loafering",
leaving Grandpa by himself even though he was crippled and very handicapped.
Mamma, Daddy and I kept an eye on Grandpa and took care of him. Grandma Cordie would
head down the trail from the house to the road. I'm sure she had no
idea where she was going, for she didn't plan ahead. It depended on
who came by in a vehicle and stopped to give her a ride. She would go
see one her sisters if the traveler happened to be going in a direction
where one of them lived. One time she was gone for almost a week and
Daddy began to worry. He set out looking for her and found her at my
Great Aunt Becky's over on Burningtown somewhere. It never dawned on
Grandma that someone might worry about her, or that maybe she ought
to worry about leaving Grandpa alone. However, Grandma
was a devout Christian and went to church every Sunday. I believe I
once told about the time the stick holding up the window behind where
she sat fell, right in the middle of the preacher's sermon. When the
window hit with a bang, Grandma jumped up, threw her hands in the air
and yelled "God of Egypt", her favorite by-word, when she
thought no one was listening. Everyone in the church broke into laughter,
and even the minister lost it and closed his Bible. After this startling
disruption, I doubt he could remember the rest of his sermon, even though
Grandma denied to her dying day that she had used her by-word in church. I think it would
be wonderful to have had a warm, cuddly grandma who was always there
to kiss our hurts and hug us to make the pain go away. But I think it
was more interesting to have Grandma Cordie as a grandma. She always
kept us guessing, and we never knew what was going to come next when
she was involved. She loved her Lord, but when she decided to loafer,
she had an art of forgetting everything and everyone in life but whoever
she ended up visiting, when she got there. WHY
ADAM ATE THE APPLE When I joined the Navy, I was six feet, two and weighed 135 pounds. In boot camp, my company commander told me not to turn sideways because he might miss me at muster. After I arrived in San Diego, a new buddy who worked out at the gym encouraged me to go with him. On my first day, I was having trouble bench pressing sixty pounds. The base Chaplain who worked out regularly, laughed at me. That did it. I set a personal goal to bench press 300 pounds before my enlistment was up. The Chaplain could bench pressed 500 pounds. It took four of us to spot him. (Spotting is safety backup in case the man can't get his weights back up to the bar.) As time passed,
I caught the personal defense bug and decided to join the base boxing
team. Our instructor was so fast that it was difficult to see his hands
move. At one time, he had been the Golden Glove champion of Illinois.
I had to give him credit; he worked hard trying to teach me the basics.
After a couple of months he called me in and explained the facts to
me. "Roy," he said, "you do the right moves, but you
just aren't fast enough. If I put you in competition, you're going to
get clobbered." I decided to take his advice and drop out. Even
so I learned enough to defend myself a little better. One evening, I
got into it with a sailor from Connecticut who made a habit of belittling
Southern folk. After a serious tussle in which he lost, I made him apologize
in front of a group of onlookers. That was the second and last fist
fight I was ever in. I had lost the first one. Shortly after that,
I joined the precision drill team. Things went well, and I was looking
forward to my first exhibition drill. But alas, a few days before that,
I was transferred to Yuma, Arizona for temporary duty. Since there was
no drill team in Yuma, I learned to ride horses. One day, I accidently
rode my horse into an irrigation ditch and had to ride him a long way
before I found a place to get him out. My exit point turned out to be
in the middle of a lemon grove, and the owner thought I was out to steal
lemons. I had to convince him that I didn't want one lemon let alone
a whole grove. Back in San Diego, I continued my weight training. My
biggest supporter was now the Chaplain. Bored with the base gym, I joined
Vic Tanny's Gym in downtown San Diego. The entrance door had a 200 pound
weight hung on it from the inside. It was geared so that it took quite
a bit of strength to open it. Everyone who got in through that door
got a standing ovation from the members inside. For those who couldn't
open the door, there was another door without a weight. Guys who entered
through that door got booed. I was determined to go through the weighted
door, and I did, but it took me the better part of a year. Vic Tanny's had
an employee named Beth. She was a blonde and had a figure that most
women only dream about. She also had a brain that few women would care
to have. Blonde jokes hadn't been invented then, but I've always suspected
that they originated with Beth. The gym had a big picture window that
looked out on a busy sidewalk. It was Beth's job to hang out in front
of that window in her leotard and draw customers inside to join the
gym. The women who joined wanted a figure like hers and the men wanted
Beth. I don't think I have to explain why. The gym's manager would tell
us on the sly that she was too dumb to come in out of the rain. One
day, it was raining, and Beth was standing outside in her leotard. The
manager came out into the gym and saw her through the window. "See,
guys, I told you," he said and went back into his office. In Key West, I took
up water skiing. I drank half the ocean before I got up on the skis.
Eventually I learned to slalom and go up the ski jump. Now, I said that
I went up the jump, and I did. How I landed was usually another matter.
Most of the time, I went in one direction, and the skis went in another.
This was the second time I drank half the ocean. Determined, I kept
at it. I finally got to the point that I could make a good jump and
continue on the skis without falling in the drink. The day I tried to
go up the jump backwards was the day I gave it up. I landed upside down,
and hit my head on one of the skis. I was so addled, I thought I would
drown. I went back to San Diego a few days later, and my ski jumping
career became a memory. The Chaplain jogged
every morning at 5:00 a.m. with the Marines. I decided to join them.
Now, I was running three or four mornings a week and going to the gym
four times a week. Deciding that I wanted more flight experience, I
went over to another squadron and asked if I could get volunteer flights
in P2V Neptunes, Naval patrol bombers and anti-submarine warfare aircraft.
They wouldn't let me because I hadn't had survival training. Commander
Bill Armstrong finagled me in with a group of officers. I had to spend
three days in the wilderness with only a knife and a fishing line. There
weren't any fish in a hundred miles. My partner was an ensign named
O'Hallihan. It turned out that I was in better shape than he was because
of all the exercise I had been doing. We decided to pass on the snakes
and lizards and just go hungry. On the eve of the second day, he pulled
two lifesavers out of his pants cuff. The marines who searched us had
missed his stash. O'Hallihan gave me one of them. To this day, that
was the best piece of candy I have ever eaten. A few months later, I
got to see Hawaii from the air in a P2V. On Tuesday before
my discharge on Friday, I benched pressed 300 pounds at the base gym.
By that time, I was a muscular 205 pounds. On Thursday at Vic Tanny's,
Beth said she would kiss me if I benched 310 pounds. I strained my gizzard,
but I made it. As Beth kissed me over and over in the back room, it
dawned on me why Adam ate the apple. When it comes to women, men are
just plain stupid. -- ACTIVITIES OF THE
WEEK
(LG here helping
to get the news out to our friends and neighbors.) GT and MF went to
see John Henry Fouts this week. They had a nice visit and found him
feeling pretty good. MF and LF are really enjoying GT's retirement! CHIMNEY TOP READY TO BE PAINTED
GT recently constructed
a new chimney top for MF and LF. GT painted it and will install it sometime
this week. Man, MF and LF are really enjoying GT's retirement!
MONARCH
Burningtown News, Sunday, October 25, 2015 Good Evening to All the People All Over the World, PRAYER REQUEST Please remember the following in your prayers this week. Lucy Mason Ken Shepherd Nell Duvall Welch Lori Impagliatelli Harry Henry Melba Martin Melba West Meredith Jones Clarence Scott Linda Campbell Pamela West Bob Bryson Sue Martin Oweila T F Sue West Beatrice Deweese Wayne Powers Charles West Obituaries Charles Cabe- Funeral services will be held 3:00 P.M. Monday, October 26, 2015 at Cowee Baptist Church with the Rev. David Powell, Rev. Jason Smith, Rev. Ronnie Branson officiating. Burial will follow in the church cemetery. The family will receive friends 1:00-3:00 P.M. prior to the service at the church. Ray Pendergrass- Funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. Tuesday, October 27th in the Chapel of Macon Funeral Home. Rev. Tommy Fouts will officiate. Burial will be in the Tellico Baptist Church Cemetery. The family will receive friends from 6-8 p.m. Monday, October 26th at Macon Funeral Home.
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