I should be picking up and tidying and making this place look, finally, Christmassy. But I don’t want to. So I’m thinking about a Ghost of Christmas Past.
It was 1961. I had just turned ten. The Methodist Youth Fellowship was going caroling. In Fentress, the MYF was more a Methodist-Presbyterian-Baptist-Whatever Fellowship, and the Baptists came from Prairie Lea, two miles south.
We weren’t just going caroling. We were going caroling. We were going to cover miles of territory. Very exciting.
We gathered behind the Methodist Church. Cullen Myers Dauchy—Hi, Cullen!—brought a big truck from the Dauchy Gin Company. There were bales of hay to sit on in the back.
I think Cullen was fifteen that year. He might have had a drivers license.
People in Fentress were kind of loose about unlicensed kids driving then. I was driving before I was eleven. Population was sparse, and there were few cars on the road, and we didn’t see a law enforcement officer from one year to the next, so if you were careful, it was easy to stay out of trouble.
My mother delivered me to the church. Eleanor Barber delivered Sally and Ann. They were twelve and nine, respectively, and we were all in the same Sunday school class. Sally was the teacher. Ann and I were the students. Classes comprised reading the lesson, doing an art project, and playing ping-pong. We sometimes met on Saturdays to draw maps of the Holy Land to hang on the walls of the classroom.
We got on the truck. It was pretty full. I don’t remember everyone who was there; I do remember Patty and Lela Kay Hardeman, and probably Carolyn and Sandra Smith, and some teens from Prairie Lea. I imagine Joe Dauchy, Cullen’s dad, was there, because he loved to sing. I don’t think there were any boys.
When Sally and Ann and I were safely loaded, and our mothers were about to leave, someone, probably Patsy Kimball, director of MYF (and teacher of Everything at Prairie Lea School), said, “Y’all come, too.” I think Jim Miller, the minister, seconded the invitation.
So Mother and Eleanor climbed onto the truck. As she was about to ascend, Eleanor turned to Mother and said, “It’s amazing what a woman will do to get out of the house.”
And so Cullen started the truck and we headed out. First we crept through Fentress.
Did I mention that the night was cold? I mean, cold. Riding in the back of a big, old truck, even one moseying up and down narrow streets, it was cold.
And it was blissfully dark, no street lights, no neon signs, only moon and stars and porch lights that came on when we began singing.
When we got out on the highway and Cullen put his foot down on the accelerator, and the wind whipped by, it got colder. It was fun to stand up and look over the high wooden sides, but we spent most of the trip huddled on the hay bales.
We serenaded Aunt Laura and Uncle Joe, a mile or so north of town, and then went down the gravel backroad for a mile or two to sing to Aunt Nettie and Uncle Marvin. Then we went back down the highway and out FM-20 to the Manns’. And maybe to Barber and Olga Smith’s.
After that, we might have gone down to Prairie Lea. Or we might have stopped at the Hardemans’ to thaw out before ending up at the church. It seems like we went farther than we did, I’m sure. Mostly I remember cold.
The thing I vividly remember is that every quarter-mile or so, somebody in the back of that truck mentioned that Cullen and Reverend Miller were warm and toasty in the cab, and that they possibly had a heater. I think there was some feeling that Reverend Miller should take his turn at freezing.
I’m afraid the thought gave a rather Grinchy glow to our Christmas spirit.
But we had a whale of a good time.
Merry Christmas!
M. K. Waller 