When I was a young girl, Spring, Summer, and early Autumn Sundays were special times.
Early on Sunday morning, (but not too early !!!) were all about getting ready for church. We would have bathed the night before. While Mom fixed breakfast, we got dressed. We always had a 'big' breakfast on Sunday, usually either pancakes, sausage, and bacon or biscuits, sausage gravy, and eggs. Mom would pin a towel around my and Carol's neck, like a giant bib, so we wouldn't drop food on our church clothes.
Often, Mom would also put a roast in the oven and a pot of green beans on to cook so the food would be ready when we got in from church. If you really want to appreciate the amount of work that a wife and mother performed on a daily basis, think back to the sixties and seventies when most of the convenience foods and restaurant options we take for granted today were not readily available to most US households, not to mention microwaves.
We left for Sunday School at about 9:30, and were home usually by 12:30. After dinner, and the dishes were washed, we would get in the car and go.
Daddy loved to drive around the ridges and mountains, and through the verdant valleys, on days when there was good weather, no rain, not too hot or too cold. He familiarized us with most of the county we lived in (Tazewell), as well as Buchanan and Russell Counties. Some of my favorite meanderings were through the Cove, to Breaks Interstate Park, across Big A Mountain, up Jewel Ridge and down through Jewel Valley, and through Baptist Valley. This is not one trip! There are five separate Sunday drives represented in that list. When the riding was over, a favorite treat was either Ice Cream at Wilson's in Raven, or a chocolate dipped vanilla custard from King Kone in Richlands.
Going visiting was often a drive to my mother's parents, and would mean that Mom did not cook Sunday dinner, because we would eat at MawMaw and PawPaw's house. There were always a wide variety of people around the table there - aunts, uncles, cousins, friends ... inlaws and outlaws as PawPaw used to say. After food, and cleanup, there were rockers and chairs on the front porch where even if it were raining you could sit and enjoy the desultory conversation that ranged in topics from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Other destinations for a Sunday visit were to catch up with Uncle T and Aunt Connie, or Claude and Lyda Mutter, or the Hamptons. If we stayed home, we could walk up to Granny and Granddaddy's, or around the hill to see Aunt Ger and Uncle Cricket. Daddy sat in a lawn chair out front frequently, and Uncle Calvin would stop by and sit for a bit while they talked about things tht bored us kids but we had to listen in anyways. It was not uncommon for people that knew my parents to see us in the yard and stop to visit for a few minutes,
I wonder what ever happened to Sundays like that?
Thank you for sharing your fond memories of those days gone by. It was delightful to accompany you on that trip back in time. So much simpler, it seemed.
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