Church was part of my life from the beginning.  We attended Bradford’s Chapel Methodist Church in what was then the Milstead Community.  It was the only Church in the Milstead Community.  There is a cemetery there, and many of my ancestor’s are buried there.  My Daddy joined there on profession of faith in 1944. 

Like many rural Methodist Churches then and now, it was on a Charge, named the LaPlace Charge.  The LaPlace Church is another Church on the Charge, and was the first Methodist Society formed in Macon County.  When I was born, I believe that there were six churches on the Charge, including Bradford’s Chapel, LaPlace, Neal’s Chapel, Union, Mt. Meigs and Chisholm. 

Worship services did not occur at Bradford’s Chapel every Sunday in those days.  “Preaching” only occurred on the fourth Sunday of every month. I have to confess that I was not wild about the preaching, but I made it through.  But Sunday School was different.  The Church building had been erected in 1868.  It was a typical Methodist Preaching House with two front doors, four walls with windows, a side door.  There may have been a back door; there is a backdoor now.  But that is where the pulpit was located.  There were no Sunday School rooms.  There was no bathroom.  There was no running water.  That’s what it was like when I was born.  It has been remodeled and updated since.

Mr. Frank Pierce was Sunday School Superintendent.  After a general gathering, during which we sang songs, and had a responsive reading out of the Cokesbury Hymnal, we divided into classes.  Mr. Frank would have the morning prayer, kneeling at the altar.  At the close of the general gathering, Mr. Frank always said, “The students will retire to their places and the teachers will take charge.” That’s exactly what he said. Every Sunday. 

Mrs. Emma Sheppard was the matriarch of the Church.  I think she had mothered 12 kids who were older and younger than my parents.  She was the kindergarten teacher.  I loved it.  She always had cool aid and cookies!  We met in a tent like structure in space separated out of the big rectangular preaching space with a cloth divider for walls.

After classes we would reassemble for a final song, and reports from the classes.  Then Mr. Frank would call on Mrs. Sheppard to dismiss us with prayer.  I don’t remember the whole prayer, or even if she said the same thing every time.  But she always ended the prayer the same way: “Watch over us, care for us and keep us, and at last in heaven save us, in Christ name. Amen.”  The unique thing was that she always ran out of breath and had to stop and inhale at the same place: “and at last in—(inhale)—heaven save us….

One special memory is vacation Bible School.  I suspect that I attended several, but this one is fixed in my memory.  Ms. Maryann Sheppard, the wife of Hoyt Sheppard, came to the Little House in her blue Mercury, and carried us the vacation Bible School.  Workers were there from Huntingdon College to help teach.  I am sure they taught us something about the Bible and Jesus.  But what I remember is learning the dove soap would actually float, and you could make a toy duck out of it.  It had a paper head, of course, and for the life of me, I can’t remember what made it float with its head upright.  Maybe we put thumbtacks of the bottom, or something like that!

The memories are absolutely beautiful, and if you think I am poking fun—forget it.  I am crying as I type.  These are precious memories, the name of a song we often sung.  That was my barefoot start to a lifelong career in lay work in the United Methodist Church, and a very good one.