Page 58 - barefoot-in-the-sand-remembering-the-waning-days-of-the-hopewell-community-(1998)-bruce-c-gragg

Barefoot In The Sand: Remembering the Waning Days of the Hopewell Community (1998) Bruce C. Gragg 54/123

SCHOOL DAYS—AT BAY CREEK

There was a time of great rejoicing and relief as the long war was
over. Besides normal school events held at night by lamp light,
schools often were opened up for anything of community interest. This
was before the move to remove any kind of reference to God or any
thing religious from all government or school buildings. A guy
calling him self some type of evangelist got Miss Josie’s permission
to hold a community revival at school. It was while he was busy
building a pulpit from a bench and scraps of lumber, I began to talk
to him about what he was doing and a lot more questions. During the Q
& A I ask him if he was one of those "Holy Rollers." Needless to say
that was not what I should have asked, I thought it was most
appropriate. Matter of fact "Miss Josie" scolded me right there in
the classroom with everyone listening. In the second grade we had to
brown bag lunches; however, we did have hot lunches, cooked by Leona
Melton in the third grade. Our favorite meal was a vegetable soup she
made, it was "gooooood." We always wanted "seconds." At Easter we
were to take Easter Eggs for an added treat for lunch. I came up with
the idea of coloring a special "Easter Egg." Actually it was a wooden
egg, we used as a nest egg in the chicken house. Someway, someone
found out I carried it and it appeared at my place for lunch. My
scheme sort of went a little awry. I guess that proves something can
go wrong even for the best of us. I had gotten the idea of doing this
from Uncle Carroll, he had taken one of our new wooden nest eggs and
colored it to look just as real as possible, then he added it to the
basket of eggs. This was for a church Easter Egg Hunt at Hopewell.
Billy Jack Waldron innocently got it, and in a short time was back to
trade it in for a good egg. Everyone near got a good laugh when it
came to light what had been done.

When Uncle Curtis would come home for a weekend or on leave he would
always tease us and ask how were things at "Bay Creek"or . is it
"Little Creek" now, and how is our teacher. To tease he would make it
sound like what ever he was asking about was on the wrong side of the
road. Then he would just laugh at us trying to answer his question
right. He knew very well we would not be able to give him a response,
but he would get amused at us trying and start laughing and start
shaking watching us squirm. . He was a career military man thus the
infrequent trips. It meant so much to have him there we would put up
with his teasing, any time. It had gotten to a point we would try to
figure out what he would teasing about even before he would get
there, we waited with very anxious anticipation.

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