Back on Track

Exhale

Well, it’s been a little crazy over here for the past 24 hours, due to some vexing website issues. My web host, which is very good overall, experienced the rare occurrence of a room air conditioner going out, which caused some servers to overheat. All the affected servers had to be shut down in order to prevent hardware damage and data loss until the AC could be repaired and the room temps optimized.

But, finally, this post is evidence that things are once again working properly. I’m breathing more easily now and am getting “back on track.” In fact, I thought I’d backtrack in this post to review a few of the photos taken at Shallowford Square during the morning of the recent snowfall in Lewisville.

Experiment

While I made sure that I photographed the more typical and familiar scenes of Shallowford Square, I was also hoping to find some shots that were different, and that would capture some perhaps overlooked moments of beauty at the Square. I think I found a few.

The photo shown above is one of my favorites from the snowy morning. I like its simplicity and mood. (By the way, those are not my own footprints. Someone else got to the Square before I did.)

As an experiment, I’ve specially enhanced three photos for you to take a look at — well, actually six photos in total, because I decided to create both color and black-and-white versions of the shots. So, if you will, please continue to the NEXT SECTION, and see what you think. CLICK to check out the other snow photos

The Tie That Binds

Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.
— “Blest Be the Tie That Binds”

Three congregations came together Wednesday evening at Bethlehem AME Zion Church for a Community Thanksgiving Eve Service.

The visiting congregants came from Brookstown United Methodist Church and Olivet Moravian Church. Some of them became part of the combined choir, while others found their place of worship alongside each other in the pews.

Reverend Doug Rights, from Olivet, shared a scripture and the opening prayer; and Reverend Chip Webb, from Brookstown, gave the Thanksgiving Eve message. Administering communion was Bethlehem’s pastor, Reverend Beverly McMillian.

Across the congregation, the faces were black, white, young and not-so-young. Yet though diverse in many ways, they were united in worship, communion and fellowship.

To see more photos of the service, as well as a few photos taken in the fellowship hall, please visit the Bethlehem AME Zion Church photo gallery. At the end of the gallery, there’s a close-up of a very gracious lady, a member of Bethlehem AME Zion Church, who is 99 years old.

Bygone Days

Scenes such as this make me think of a time when the family farm was a common sight. In days gone by, the livelihood of family farmers depended on the manual labor of the entire family — adults and children alike.

Families worked together on their farms to cultivate and harvest any number of crops, or to raise and care for livestock and other farm animals. Their work days were typically long, and their duties often required them to work extensively in the extreme heat or cold.

Although I never worked on a farm myself, I grew up around farmers. My grandfather’s flour and feed mill was the destination of farmers who either sold their grain to the mill or had their grain ground into feed for their animals.

As a child, one of my distinct memories regarding farmers at the mill is of my brother and me helping farmers’ children shovel grain from their truck beds into the grain pit at the edge of the mill’s porch through which grain was carried to a storage bin inside the mill.

Jumping into the back of those large grain trucks offered a way to have fun, and I still recall the exhilaration of my bare feet sinking down, down into the sea of grain.

The best part of shoveling the grain into the pit was when the bed of a truck that had a hydraulic lift was slowly raised. That’s when the remaining grain would start rapidly falling into the grain pit — and we’d hang on for dear life as the truck bed reached its peak! It was simple, clean fun. Well, actually it wasn’t exactly clean, because we could be pretty dusty by the end of the day!

From such childhood experiences at the mill, I developed a lasting affinity for farmers and their families. They were authentic and unpretentious. They were hard-working and fun-loving.

With the demise of many family farms, I lament the passing of a way of life that has embodied the very best of human qualities and vocations.

A Closer Walk

Although they live in Winston-Salem, you can often see Betsy McNichols and her father, Col. Robert F. Steidtmann, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), age 92, walking around Shallowford Square. Betsy says the short drive to the Square and the fairly level terrain there make it an ideal walking location for them. The “1938″ emblem on the Colonel’s hat commemorates the year he graduated from Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia.

Update

Update on 4/23/10: Earlier this week, I spotted Betsy McNichols walking by herself at Shallowford Square and learned that her father passed away on September 11, 2009 at age 93. Col. Steidtmann was buried in a family plot in an old cemetery in Lexington, Virginia. (General Stonewall Jackson is buried just up the hill from the Colonel’s grave.)

Col. Steidtmann served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II at Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Guam —  and later fought in the Korean War, earning the Legion of Merit with valor for “Exceptionally Meritorious Conduct.”

The weather was beautiful the day the Colonel was buried. And, Betsy said, just as beautiful was the sight of more than 10 U.S. Marines in full-dress uniform standing at attention near the gravesite. Betsy knows her father would have been proud of the service, which included a 21 Gun Salute, with Taps played by a sailor in dress whites.

Betsy still lives in Winston-Salem, but she continues to walk around Shallowford Square regularly as a tribute to her father.

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