Remembering church in East Tennessee

The following remembrance comes from Wilma L. Jozwiak and was posted on the Appalachian Americans Facebook page. I think that it's well-written, good history, and a good read.

In general, church in the summer in East Tennessee was torture. By the time Sunday School was over and services began, the sanctuary was a miserable place. Air conditioning was unknown, and little girl legs beneath Sunday dresses stuck firmly to varnished pews. Viewed from above in the balcony (not that little kids got to sit in the balcony), the sanctuary was a sea of funeral parlor fans attempting to move stagnant air. In the summer, ministers had no difficulty convincing the flock of the dangers of hell fire.

In East Tennessee, women wore posies to church on Mother's Day. The average temperature on Mother’s Day in Rogersville, Tennessee is 82 degrees, but even on the hottest days of spring in East Tennessee, the humidity usually guarantees morning dew. I remember the cool touch of moisture as I slipped bare footed through the grass at my aunt Nettie B’s side on the mornings of Mothers Day.
We headed for the garden, tucked at the end of the garage in the back yard of Grandma’s house. It was Mother’s Day, and I got to help make the posies.

Women whose mothers had passed wore white posies. That meant my grandma, whose own mother was many years gone. Choices for her were white roses or white iris, filled in with babies breath. I agonized over the choice, but gave in to the sweet smell of the roses. My mother, Nettie B, and I all had living mothers, so we could choose from the vivid colors. I was a sucker for iris - to me, the wooly track down the curving purple petal was exotic and beautiful. My mother loved daisies, but they were white, so we chose blackeyed Susans for her. Nettie B loved the bright colors of the pinks, so we cut different shades of rose and red to make her posey. Together, Nettie B and I cut the flowers with Grandma’s sewing shears, and added bridal veil spirea and a fern frond to each. Nettie B finished off each posey with a white or red ribbon pulled from her stash of reclaimed Christmas wrap. Each posey went into the fridge to wait until we were dressed for church.

Later I had corsages and a bridal bouquet created by florists, all worthy of note for their professionalism, but it is those Mothers Day posies, created in the relative cool of an East Tennessee morning, that live in the freshness of my mind.
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