Root Jumper by Justine Felix Rutherford Read Free Book Online Page B

four of us children and mother at home. I remember coming home from Dad’s funeral and going into the house. I couldn’t stand the quiet. I slugged my brother, and we got into a scuffle. My mother separated us and said, “Please don’t do that.” Anything was better than the deadly silence that seemed to be closing in all around us.
    My mother was soft and gentle, but I knew she was as strong as steel. I wiped away my tears and resolved to myself, “I’ll help my mom. We all will help Mom, and we will be all right.” My two older brothers, Alvin and Warner, were strong enough to work. They kept the farm going. We were all healthy and strong and able to work. I never heard my mother complain. She kept us together, sure enough.
    My mother always discussed things with us and told us what we had to do. The first thing we needed was a new team of horses and a new barn since the old barn was about to fall down. Roosevelt had started several farm programs, among them the Agriculture Extension Service. This group helped my mother. She was able to borrow four hundred dollars. This was a farm loan that she had to pay back, but she was given sixty dollars as a gift. With this money she bought a team of horses and built a new barn.
    In 1939, my brother Werner joined the CCC. He went to Parsons, West Virginia. He was in the Forestry Service. He received a salary of thirty dollars per month. He got to keep five dollars to buy cigarettes, washing powder, soap, and other necessities. The other twenty-five dollars he sent home to my mother. My brother Alvin kept things going at the farm until Werner came home from the CCC. Things began to pick up as the defense plants started to put people to work. Anyone who wanted a job could have one. We began to plan for war, but the Depression was finally over.

The Hill Churches
    “What a lovely bridge between old age and childhood is religion. How instinctively the world begins with prayer and worship on entering life, and how instinctively, when quitting life, the old man turns back to prayer and worship, putting himself again side by side with the little child.”
    Bulwer
     
     
    Most of our hill people were Methodists or Baptists on Spurlock Creek where I grew up. The church I attended as a child was Methodist. The preacher had four churches on his circuit, and he visited our church once a month. Everyone became excited and looked forward to the preacher coming.
    Each community usually had what they called a “one-horse preacher” to help fill in. This label was not necessarily derogatory. It could mean several things. It might imply that the man was not ordained or that it was an extra horse as was sometimes needed. I can still remember the preacher traveling by horse back or walking. Sometimes preachers walked for miles. I can’t remember my grandfather William Spurlock at all. Everyone called him Uncle Billy. All my life people have told me what a wonderful man he was. He didn’t preach, but he traveled around to other churches just to help out any way he could. I don’t think there is anyone left who remembers him today. I can still remember a couple of old preachers.
    In those days a man was not supposed to preach unless he was “called to preach.” By this calling, he was supposed to hear an audible voice directing him to preach. Some claimed to receive this call through a night vision. Some merely saw or experienced something they took as a clear message to carry the gospel to their fellow man. When the people were skeptical of a man who was allegedly called, they were apt to scorn him by calling him an “escapee from the cornfield.” This meant he was a lazy fellow who wouldn’t work.
    Normally, the people were very appreciative of their preacher. They paid their preacher to the best of their ability. Sometimes he was paid with a small amount of money, but vegetables out of the garden, buttermilk, eggs, chickens, and so forth made up the balance of his income.
    When it