By Bill King
I remember the days when we ate with folks…in their homes. Back when I first began serving in churches, church members would often invite the pastor over for Sunday lunch. I even served at a church once that had a signup sheet in the foyer for families to pick a Sunday to have the pastor’s family in. This has become another one of those things from years gone by that has gone by the wayside.
When I served as pastor of White Springs Baptist Church in Rainbow City, Mrs. Ruby used to treat us regularly to her homecooked, all-American country lunches. When Mrs. Ruby put out a spread, she cooked up enough food to feed Pharoah’s Army…and most of the Israelites. She had a table that was about the size of Noah’s ark, and it was always loaded to the hilt. That table must have had some awfully strong legs to hold up under all that load of vittles! My own legs were not as strong because not long after that overload of lunch, they shot out from under me, and my feet flew up for an afternoon nap. When we stayed to visit for a while after lunch, I sometimes slipped right into my slumber right then and there!
Mrs. Ruby’s husband, Brother D.E., was a retired pastor himself. I guess they had a special place in their hearts and in their home for ministers. Several times each year, they not only had me in for lunch but our entire church staff and sometimes another area pastor or two as well. It was more than country cooking; she used homegrown vegetables right from her own backyard. Brother D.E. was quite a gardener. He had running pole beans that grew so high he needed a step ladder to pick them! He grew all kinds of vegetables like squash, okra, tomatoes, green beans, butter beans, and such. They all ended up on our lunch plates. I needed sideboards to keep it all onboard! He also grew wonderful rattlesnake watermelons. Every summer, they would invite the entire church down for a watermelon cutting. Mrs. Ruby would also cook all kinds of cakes and pies and, at Christmas, cookies and candies. Brother D. E. always ate a large piece of pie and then said, “That sample was so good, I’ll think I’ll have a piece.” Once, I said something about the sweet potato pie being some of the best I had ever had. He said, “I grew that right in the garden.” I wasn’t sure if he meant the sweet potatoes or the pie itself!
One time, they invited a neighboring pastor, who had not been raised down South, to join us for lunch. If my memory serves me well, he grew up in Connecticut. Many of those Southern vegetables were new to him, including turnip greens and collard greens. Well, we all knew that the best part of greens, cooked with a little ham hock, is the juice that cooks out from them. That juice is known as potlikker…at least it is in the South. Brother D.E. asked our guest pastor if he would like to have some potlikker. The pastor turned a little red and said, “No, thank you, sir. I never drink the stuff!” Of course, we almost fell out of our chairs laughing. Brother D. E. managed to quit laughing long enough to say, “You don’t drink it, son…you pour it over your cornbread and eat it.”
Those meals were quite memorable, but the best memories of all were all the fellowship and laughter around that big ole table.
