Pleasant Memories

Recently as I was looking through old pictures I came across this picture of the parsonage where we lived in 1961-1964. It was the third home for my husband and me. Our second son was born during that time, however, none of our children remember this home.

This picture is not from the time when we lived there. It was taken a good many years later when my husband and I were visiting the area again, but much of it looks the same as when we lived there.

We had been pastoring a small congregation in the valley, and living in a rented farmhouse with no indoor bathroom, just a path to the little house at the edge of the property. We were asked to take on a second congregation, on top of the mountain (Laurel Mountains Ridge), and they owned their own parsonage which had indoor plumbing. My husband became a Circuit-Riding Preacher then and we moved to this lovely home. All the woodwork in the house had been painted chocolate brown and though I really love chocolate, I wasn't fond of the darkness it gave the indoor atmosphere. I asked to repaint the woodwork, a lighter color, but was denied because the former pastor's wife had just had the dark color painted before they moved. It was too soon to repaint.

The community was named Skulton. The location was in a very windy place. Those were the days when we used starch in our laundry of white clothes, --shirts, pillowcases, table cloths, etc. Sometimes the wind was so frisky that it blew the starch out of the clothes.

Winters there brought huge snow storms, --much like the ones we have here in the snow belt where I currently live.

Memories of the days in this parsonage are good memories. I wish that somehow my children could share the memories with me, but they were all too young, and the youngest one wasn't born until after we moved away, so it's just me to remember this place now.

You can't tell from this picture, but all around this parsonage the land was used for cow pastures. It was almost like living on a farm. I liked seeing the cows in the pastures.

Pleasant memories, indeed.