The old farm bell, cast in metal and painted an earthen color to prevent rust, stood just outside the door of the Atkinson County home owned by Rowan Pafford at least a century and a half ago. Every day, somebody rang it to call the men and children to meals, to summons help, to bring people together for important news. The bell, measuring about a foot in diameter, was mounted on a tall pole in the yard and activated by a tug on the attached rope. Every farm family had one.
While this old bell, with its clanking sound, has stayed in the family by residing at the homes of different members, it was reactivated into service this year at the 101 annual reunion of the Pafford family on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, 2002. The bell is now mounted on a porch column at the Springhead United Methodist Church down a country road from Willacoochee. Founded by Pafford in 1850, the church also served as the community school. On reunion Sunday, a cousin rang the bell during different parts of the centennial celebration for this family. This century, the church was reactived and church members joined the family at this reunion.
With a loud to softening tone, it opened the church service as a call to prayer. With a very muffled tone, it tolled with the reading of the names of family members who had died during the year. There were five such announcements and five such ringings.
Afterwards, a loud, steady peal echoed across the grounds once again to call people to a covered dish dinner where family from Texas had spread out a colorful Mexican fiesta in the midst of good old Southern cooking. While the hot tamales and guacamole salad may have looked out of place next to the chicken and dumplings and field peas cooked with ham hock, they provided a delicious contrast to the more traditional fare.
And finally, the bell’s unmistakable metallic clanging summoned all to the front of the church for a formal picture of those attending the celebration of the annual gathering of this family for 100 years. We could not stand to the side of the church as the earliest reunion pictures had been posed in 1902 because a huge cedar tree now blocks any view from this angle for a photographer. In wondering why the earliest pictures had not been taken on the porch and steps where we now assembled, someone reminded us that the porch itself was added ten years after that first picture. Besides, the structure whose steps we now graced was erected in the 1880’s. It was not even the first building for worship located on this site near the headwaters of an ever flowing spring.
On the eve of her 92nd birthday, my mother-in-law was recognized, for the first time, as the oldest living female, the matriarch, of the Pafford family. As she stood, she introduced her oldest grandson. At age 49, he had flown from California to Georgia for the first time in his life to attend this gathering. All four of her children, three of her four living sisters, her widowed sister-in-law who bears the name Pafford, daughters-in-law, a brother-in-law, nieces, nephews, cousins, lots of cousins, and friends joined in the celebration.
Except for the noisy bell, the celebratory reunion seemed more somber this year. With a bouquet of red roses, blue stock and white daisies at the altar, we remembered that last year prior to September 11, we had seemed more carefree. And while many related tales of old reunions and traced lineage from Rowan Pafford through his 14 children to the present, everything else from the air conditioned facility to indoor plumbing, from modern transportation to elaborate ice chests for food preservation vividly reminded us that life never stands still even for a day.
During the sermon, the preacher exhorted the importance of searching out the good in others. “If you can’t see it,” he said, “clean your own glasses.” And so full of good memories, good food, good fellowship, and good advice, we bade farewell once again and headed back to our daily routines. And perhaps that was the real meaning in mounting the old bell. After all, its original purpose was not as an artifact, but rather as a practical tool used day by day to improve working conditions. While we enjoy and cherish the special occasions, isn’t life really lived in the moment?
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