Debut at Pleasant Plains
A letter from Carolyn Robbins Winston
Marvin,
My recollection of Pleasant Plains Church goes back to the mid-thirties. At that time, it was a small, white church across the road from the large church that is Pleasant Plains today. [Timbers from the old 1870's church are now part of a house on California Road nearby. The Pleasant Plains School building remains, along with playground equipment alongside the site of the old church.] Also, the grounds are used for overflow parking when then there is a large turnout at the new Pleasant Plains [Church].
My Aunt Viola (Viola Hall Chavis) was the church pianist back in the thirties and she was, to the best of my knowledge, the pianist through the fifties. I left home in the early forties, but I know she was the pianist for a long time. She lived in a small house, just a few steps from the church, and could walk there in about 5 minutes. It was the only house close by in the mid-thirties and it sat just off the main road in a curve. Now, there are four of five houses along the small road that goes along the highway (including a small brick house that she later built and moved into). She sold the bungalow which was moved further down the side road about a mile.
My grandfather, James G. Hall (“Papa Hall”) was a member of Pleasant Plains and lived in Winton. Papa Hall was blind, old and walked with a limp. My aunt Agnes (Agnes Hall Weaver) lived next door in Winton and would bring him to church on some Sundays.
That particular year, in the thirties, my family and I lived with Mama Hall and Papa Hall in Winton, while our house on the outskirts of Ahoskie was being finished.
One Sunday, (the exact date is “fuzzy” to me now) my aunt Viola wasn’t feeling well and asked Aunt Agnes if she would bring me to church when she brought Papa Hall so that I could play the piano for her. I was all of twelve or thirteen years old at the time.
Aunt Agnes brought us in her 1931 Ford coupe. She led Papa Hall down to a seat very close to the front so that he could better hear the preacher. I sat at the piano with a hymn book in front of me that I had never seen before.
The old 1875 Pleasant Plains Baptist
Church building around
1950, shortly before its replacement.
Courtesy of Maria Pierce Williams
For several decades, Carolyn's aunt Viola Hall Chavis
was the pianist for Plains Church. At the end of each year, a collection
was taken up in appreciation for her service. She always signed the check
back over to the church. In the 1960's she occassionally filled in for
her successor, Delois Chavez-Ruffin. Mrs.
Chavis was also a fifth-grade teacher
at C.S. Brown School. I was
one of her students.
There was no choir, so the preacher and the congregation were the only ones singing. It wasn’t a very large congregation, nor was it a very small one. It seemed to fill half of the church.
|
Carolyn Robbins Winston, |
The preacher told me that the numbers of the hymns that we would sing were listed up on a small plaque on the wall. I located all three songs in the book in front of me on the piano and I turned down the corners of the three pages so that I could turn to them without fumbling though the pages when the preacher said “we will now sing hymn number ---.” All went well though the first two songs. I was not an accomplished pianist (I probably had only advanced to the second “book” as far as music lessons go) but I managed to play the simple notes in the book and the congregation managed to keep up with me or rather I managed to keep up with them. At leas we ended up together. After the second song, there came a spell of silence except for an occasional cough and a little shuffling of feet on the wooden floor (such as you only hear in these old fashioned churches.) I guessed they were counting the collection and gathering their reports for the next part of the service. |
All of a sudden, out of the silence, came this loud, booming male voice singing “Where He leads me, I will follow; where He leads me, I will follow...” It was Papa Hall, my old, blind grandfather. Now, mind you, this was not one of the songs on the schedule, but the congregation and preacher – although surprised – joined in and continued the song.
They were nearly halfway through the song when I started fumbling through the pages of the hymn book, looking for this particular song. I finally found it and joined the congregation and Papa Hall – over half-way to the end.
I’m not sure we were all in the same key, but we ended up at the same time. The service continued with no more unexpected musical numbers.
These many years later, it always comes to mind whenever we pass the little church in “Plains.” I remember the nervous little girl - all of twelve or thirteen years old - in a strange place, among strangers and with no experience at accompanying a singing congregation. But, at age 82, it is still a fond memory.
Your loving cousin,
Carolyn
[Now a resident of Newport News, Carolyn Robbins Winston and her husband, Major Curtis Winston, U.S.A. (ret.), retired to the Newsome-Grove/Brantley's Grove area outside of Ahoskie in a second home that her parents built.]