SECOND CHAPTER OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST, BATTLE CREEK, TN

Last year, I wrote a piece about finding a small Episcopal Church near Sewanee that was tucked away on Ladds Cove and Kirby Tate Road with an address of Battle Creek, Tennessee. I posted pictures of the exterior and interior of St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church on this site. I was particularly interested in St.John’s because our good friend, The Rev. Dr. Susanna Metz, celebrates there every Sunday after she attends services at St. Mary’s of Sewanee.

This summer I received an e-mail from Dean Maurer of Arlington, Texas, telling me that his father, Fr. J. Dean Maurer, an Episcopal priest (now deceased) helped build this small chapel at Battle Creek and that his name is on the cornerstone of the church. Dean and his wife, Beverly, made a trip through Tennessee to view the church and stopped to lunch with us in Sewanee. They had visited St. John’s and had rolled the stone away from the red door of the chapel, just as we had done when we visited; however they didn’t encounter the huge white dogs that greeted us last year when we drove up. During lunch with the Maurers, we discussed a letter chronicling the progress of the building of the church in 1934, which his father had written in 1955, and I asked Dean to mail me a copy.

For those historians and church mice who love old churches, I am publishing the letter in its entirety. It contains interesting and amusing information about the lifestyle of Tennesseeans during the 30’s, including the type of ministry fledgling Episcopal priests carried out during this time. Here’s the letter that Dean e-mailed to me yesterday:

August 21, 1955

Mr. Warren Starrett, Jr.,
Woodland Apts.,
Sewanee, Tenn


Dear Mr. Starrett:


Yesterday I received a letter from Father Merriman asking me to send you information about St. John’s Church, Battle Creek. It has been more than twenty years since I built the little church there, but I think I can recall enough to give you a fairly good picture of conditions existing in the cove at that time, and some of the circumstances regarding the building of the church.


As a student at DuBose I took over the care of St. John’s Church in August, 1932. At that time we owned a two-story church building which stood on two and a half acres of ground near the highway. Vandals from down the highway came in and almost completely wrecked the building and its contents in the spring of 1934. Milt Tate gave us another piece of land situated nearer the center of the cove, so we sold what was left of the building, along with the land, to a Mrs. Ladd; and on August 7, 1934, I broke ground at the new location for the new building.


The church was built from stone gathered on our land and from the creek bottom. Water for mortar was hauled from the spring on Milt’s property, and I hauled four sacks of cement down the mountain each day in a trailer. Volunteer labor was used for everything except the actual laying of the stone, for which we hired two masons from on top of the mountain.


The wooden cross imbedded in the masonry above the front door is the cross from on top of the old building, which was placed there to preserve it, and to be a link of continuity of service to the cove; the first building having been built about the turn of the century.


By the first of October, 1934, when my Bishop sent for me, practically all of the stone work was completed, and only the floor, the altar, and the roof were left to be completed.


During the time I had charge of the Mission, the people of the cove were very faithful in their attendance at the services. They were all very poor, and practically the only means of livelihood was the making of moonshine back in the smaller coves leading into Ladd Cove. Many of the men served jail sentences from thirty to ninety days when the prohibition agents would catch them in the act of making liquor. Stills were continually being chopped up by the “big hats” as they were called by the natives. Practically no farming was done at that time because it was easier to make a living making moonshine – and a bare living was all they seemed to want.


When the original church was built, the members of OHC were in charge and the second story of the building was used to house the Fathers when they would come down for services. Also, I have been told that one of the Deaconesses of the Church stayed there for several months on one occasion working with the people. Father Claiborne, who was largely responsible for Emerald-Hodgson Hospital, St. Mary’s on the Mountain School for Girls, St. Andrews’s School for Boys, and Dubose School, held regular services at St. John’s for quite a while, either walking down the mountain and back, or riding horseback when he could borrow a horse. The students at Dubose took over the care of many of the surrounding Missions, including St. John’s, in the early twenties, and continued to serve them during the existence of the school.


We could not find a suitable stone in the cove to use as a cornerstone, so I picked up one along the highway on my way down one morning. I cut and letter(ed) it on a home-made bench in the grove of trees immediately behind the church. And at the time of the laying of the cornerstone, we did not have sufficient money to buy a copper box for the papers we wanted to place behind it, so we used a quart liquor bottle (probably the most suitable container for Ladd Cove at that time). The story naturally got out that we had placed a quart of Battle Creek liquor behind the stone.


The original plan called for a burial ground surrounding the church, and I see they have carried out this plan. Milt Tate was to have the first choice of lots because he had given the land, then others were to choose their lots as they needed.


Both before and during the building of the church, the people of the cove were very hospitable, sharing the little they had. We started work each morning at six, and I had breakfast each day with the family who lived next to the church – I can’t recall their name, but it was something like Wyman; then each day at noon I would take my dinner with some other family in the cove – they took turns feeding me. I never got tired of fried chicken but once in my life, and that was the time!


Either in 1935 or early in 1936, there was a broadcast on a national hookup which mentioned the little church, telling of its beauty and something of the conditions under which it was built. I did not hear the broadcast, but Father and Mrs. Cole told me of it when I visited on the mountain in the summer of 1936.


I was greatly disappointed in the front doors of the church. We cut red cedar logs and took them to a mill in Tracy City to have them sawed into boards for the door. Due to my leaving, the man who owned the mill took advantage of them and substituted cheaper materials for the doors and used the red cedar for himself. Some day I hope the doors can be replaced with red cedar from the cove as was intended.


Some of the named I can recall in the cove are Willie Ladd, Milt Tate, Bayliss Ladd, Arthur Mayfield, Dave Tate, John D. Tate. Most of these men gave their time on the building as they could get away from their stills.


Of course, there are many other things which will come to me from time to time, but these are about all that I can recall at present. If there is any specific information which you might desire, please write me and I will do my best to give you any information you may want.


Hoping the above will be helpful, and with every good wish for a successful and fruitful ministry, I am

Faithfully yours,

Fr. J. Dean Maurer

P.S. At regular intervals, either Father Merriman, Father Cole, or Dr. Richards would go to the Mission on a Sunday for a celebration of the Holy Communion. They also would go for Baptisms and other services which required a Priest.

WHAT’S COOKING IN COOKEVILLE?

I’ve seen Cookeville, Tennessee advertised on PBS several times during my sojourn at Sewanee, and yesterday we set out at 9:30 a.m. to see what all the hoorah was about. We traveled northeast through McMinnville and Sparta, Tennessee where nurseries abound on every other hill and arrived near lunchtime in this city that is about ten times larger than Sewanee.

Cookeville touts itself as home of one of the finest universities in the country, according to brags about it in local brochures. Actually, the university was ranked #8 among outstanding universities of the South for two years by the U.S. News and World Report. However, the real draw for tourists is the historic downtown area where several galleries exhibit the work of some of Tennessee’s best artists.

On Broad Street, where art is offered on several blocks, we climbed the stairs to a second-story gallery called The Afternoon Gallery and Studio, owned by Sandra Bos. Sandra renders portraits, pet paintings, and “pieces of color,” as she calls her impressionistic work. Although we interrupted her work on a portrait in which the face hadn’t been completed, she welcomed us and we spent almost an hour chatting about art and writing. We discovered that she has a yen to write, and I’d like to be a painter. After talking at length about the writing process and the daily discipline required to produce a novel, I finally told her she’d get more satisfaction from her art and should follow that passion, rather than take up writing.

Sandra has taught art 25 years and offers classes for teenagers and children, often displaying their work in the Afternoon Gallery. She says she teaches the real principles of art, “like how to see color and shape and value.” While we visited, Celtic music played in the background, and Sandra told us that she listens to selections from her library of CD’s while she paints. We described Phillip Glass’s music to her, and she got excited about adding a new performer who might inspire her and her students to paint bigger visions.

We also discovered a mutual love of California. Sandra lived in Paradise, California near Lassen National Forest for many years before moving to Cookeville 14 years ago to be near her children. She laughed about being a “big fish in the small pond of Cookeville.” Her work gives added dimension to a forward-looking city that has been sponsoring art walks every year and encouraging artists to feature their work in a renovated downtown area on the west side of Cookeville. I bought a journal with a cover on which one of Sandra’s portraits appears, but I really coveted one of her impressionistic paintings, a scene of a vegetable garden in Italy. Sandra was worth the trek over to Cookeville on a humid, 90-degree day, and we plan to visit her again next year during cooler weather.

Later, we backtracked Highway 40W and turned south on Hwy 56, searching for the Appalachian Center for Craft. We had some trepidation about crossing the Hurricane Bridge over Center Hill Lake because road workers were only allowing one car at a time to cross the corduroy tarmac of the bridge, and trucks weighing over 18 tons were stopped. I envisioned my blue Honda plunging into the lake, but we crossed successfully twice. We turned onto a hilly path bordered by oaks, sweet gum, maples, and other hardwoods into the forest surrounding the Appalachian Center for Craft.

The Center, a satellite campus of Tennessee Technological University, is a rustic-looking complex of galleries, studios, and exhibits located on 500 wooded acres near Center Hill Lake. The school has 100 students who can obtain a BFA from TTU or a non-degree craft certificate in clay, fibers, glass, metals, and wood. In April, the school sponsors craft demonstrations and live music for visitors from throughout the country. It’s an amazing center for studio workshops offered year-round. We were tempted to buy some of the pricey handmade items created by 100 regional artists, but our pocketbooks wouldn’t support a purchase. Just as we made our exit, a bus pulled up and unloaded an army of “Red Hats,” and we sped away before the red-hatted crowd of older women enveloped us.

So what’s all the hoorah about Cookeville? It’s the same everywhere in Tennessee – arts and crafts! P.S. I also saw a small display of poetry in one of the galleries in downtown Cookeville. Perhaps Sandra’s quote on the cover of the journal I bought typifies the spirit of Cookeville: “Art is not a luxury; it is a necessity.”

SWEET FEET

Of all the household tasks I dislike, vacuuming floors is at the top of the list. I’ve owned every type of vacuum known to clean – uprights, canisters, drag-alongs and push arounds, all of them with no get up and go unless you hurl them about and say nasty words when you’re untwisting the cord from around your ankles while moving them from room to room. Even the ones touted to clean the dust and dirt with the greatest amount of suction and cleaning power have been unable to improve my humor on VAC DAY every week.

However, yesterday, the U.S. mail brought me a new vacuum – a strange-looking, saucer-shaped, refurbished robot vac–one that I’ve named Sweet Feet because she substitutes for my feet and back while I sit in a chair and watch her antics. Sweet Feet hums along cheerily and obsessively cleans under beds, tables, negotiates corners, patiently brushing one spot on the wood floor sometimes long enough to make me declare: “I know the floor isn’t that dirty.” To top it all, she speaks 16 languages including the English default.

Every time I pick up Sweet Feet and move her to another site, she protests vociferously and her belly button turns a violent red color. Otherwise, her smiling face is green and she’s on go all the time. She’ll run at least twenty-five minutes before you have to charge her battery for another run.

This morning I went into the dining room where she sleeps and all her lights were out; she was really asleep. Her personality is such that if you awaken her suddenly by pressing her green belly button, she doesn’t scream at you. She’s quickly up and doing, scurrying under chair legs, racing up and down on the patterns of the Orientals, and if she senses dust on your clothes, you’d better get out of the way because she’ll immediately head for you.

I do think that Sweet Feet has a bit of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, however. She cleaned one rug yesterday until the fringes began to fray and started to chase me when I dared move her on to dustier territory.

I’m not a lazy housekeeper but I have to admit that Sweet Feet outcleans me any day of the week, and all she requires is that you clean her brushes and empty out the five pounds of gunk she has gobbled up from your floors. Due to the evidence of all that gunk, she has destroyed my reputation as “Tidy Idy” that I’ve maintained amongst family members for nigh on fifty years.

One warning: if she gets near steps, shut the door leading to the steps. Yesterday she was cleaning fast and close to two steps and fell down on her head, and I hope she was speaking in German when I picked her up because I don’t think she was saying “do you have more work for me to do?”

The skinny is that she has a sister robot who can mop floors, and I’m thinking about hiring her. There’s also another sister robot but she charges more per hour – her claim to household efficiency is that she fetches things for you.

But I’m happy with Sweet Feet. Just watching her gobble up all that dust under the beds and zoom out with a smile on her face makes me wonder why I’ve put up with lug-about vacuum cleaners all these years. This morning I went to church and when I returned, she had cleaned three rooms without any supervision. I found her in the bathroom, sleeping beside the scales after all that output. I think the implication of parking herself beside the scales was that my house was in such dusty condition, she had lost weight from all the exertion.