Love Feasts and Cherries in Curryville

Curryville Road will take you into beautiful country with bountiful fields and bring you to the village of Woodbury. The Woodbury Church of The Brethren is on the first road to your right. Our church joined that church for Love Feasts. Love Feast was held once each year. There was a little bowl of delicious beef and beef broth over bread. That was called the sup. The unleavened communion bread and a tiny cup of grape juice was our reminder of how Jesus became our Savior when he died on the cross. If we had been baptized, we could participate in the feet washing. That was something that brought us to humble ourselves as we knelt by a wash basin and gently lifted warm water over another’s feet. Then we caressed dry their feet with a white terry apron we had tied around our waist. The ritual ended with a hand shake and a kiss on the cheek. I liked that service. It was like a time for me to check myself as to whether I could wash anyone’s feet, no matter who they were. I remember how mother fretted one time because she was not going to be able to go to Love Feast. She had to make something right with someone first. I never knew what that was about, but it told me mother took Love Feast very serious. So I did, too.

Our tour now returns to Curryville Road and to Fluke’s Orchard. Leonard and Laura Fluke were very kind to us. Dad worked in their orchard and we got many bushels of fruit from them to can. I enjoyed listening to dad talk to Mr. Fluke about the trees and the new methods to keep things from ripening too fast and all manners of important things. I picked cherries there many summers and enjoyed being there with all the beautiful fruit trees. We were paid so much per each pound we picked.

Orchards were very special to me. Perhaps because I knew so many people with orchards who permitted me to play there and to enjoy the fruits as I pleased.

On the corner of Curryville road and the Cross Roads road, lived Joe and Annie Snively. Their children were Bob, Don, Hazel and Jeanie. I often stopped and played with the girls.

Curryville was my playground and the molder of my character. The beauty of it all is that the molders were loving, welcoming and validating.

“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.”

– George Bernard Shaw