Celebrating the Temporary

Paula Severe

Description

In Celebrating the Temporary, Paula Severe recounts her life as a mother, daughter, teacher, and traveler.

Being the wife of an itinerant United Methodist minister required packing and unpacking on short notice. Paula was an avid public school teacher, and each move meant finding a new job to fulfill her passion for teaching children.  Soon after the fall of Communism, she was among the first in a team to visit and meet local Russian people who had never seen an American.  Her travels in Central Europe representing the Oklahoma United Methodists helped raise funds for pastors’ salaries as congregations struggled to survive Communism.  Her stories are humorous, poignant, and peppered with moments of grace and humility.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Vie de famille
• Parentalité et Éducation des Enfants
• Christian Living
• Relationships
• Philosophie et théologie
• Family

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 14 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977263797
• Langue: English

Extrait

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Celebrating the Temporary A Memoir All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 Paula Severe v4.0
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
Cover Design by Art Severe © 2023 Paula Severe. All rights reserved - used with permission.
Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
1 To Live Life Twice
2 Civil War Years and Carrie Nation
3 Family Roots
4 My Hometown
5 Black and White
6 The Little White Church
7 Hopscotch, Horses, and Dreaded Red Rover
8 During WWII
9 Oklahoma Tornadoes
10 Aunt Pearl and the Red Dirt Farm
11 Chickens, Rabbits and Cousin Waltena
12 Henry and Florence Church
13 Grandma’s Will
14 Siblings
15 Teenage Memories
16 Road Angel
17 Preacher’s Wife
18 Parsonage 101
19 Nurtured in So Many Ways
20 The Concrete Bathtub
21 Cutting Corners
22 The Great Chicken Murder
23 Artie Severe, Get Down from That Sink!
24 Nothing Like Parsonage Life
25 Mr. Miller Decides
26 The Day of the Flying Ants
27 Children of Labels
28 On the Road Again
29 Rowley’s Gift of Confidence
30 Pilgrim in a New World
31 What Do Crows Know?
32 Bad Words
33 Dear Daddy …
34 Learning to Do the Right Thing
35 Fifth Grade Girls
36 The Rapture is Coming
37 Teenagers in the Aldersgate Years
38 Two Doors Down
39 Classroom without Walls
40 History Lesson Illustrated
41 The Methodist Strippers
42 On Being a New Grandma
43 Coaches’ Wives
44 Bad Words, Revisited
45 Double Trouble
46 Turtle Race
47 The Long Goodbyes
48 Crows in Mourning
49 Green, Glitter and Gold
50 From Grandma’s House to the E.R.
51 Mrs. Severe, Will You Get Up?
52 Making New Decisions
53 What They Taught Me
54 Robbed!
55 The Feel of Home
56 Grandma Overload
57 Behind the Iron Curtain
58 To Russia with God’s Love –and a Barbie Doll
59 My New Russian Family
60 A Surprise in the Russian Countryside
61 "But We Don’t Smile"
62 Across the Volga River
63 Conversations with Margret
64 Home by Way of Moscow
65 The Awakening Spirit
66 Return to Russia
67 The Russian Faithful
68 Sisterhood in Christ
69 To Hell and Back
70 Into Ukraine
71 Bulgaria and Pastor Beslov
72 Mariela’s God Incident
73 The Murrah Bombing
74 Must We Live in Fear?
75 My Unplanned Journey
76 I Asked for This?
77 In an Irish Pub
78 Evening Respite
79 Old Recipes
80 Blessed
For

David, love of my life, Sherri and Artie, children of blessings

Christine, Mark, David Evan and Taylor Grandchildren of brilliance

And eight awesome great grandchildren: Madison, Jack, Manakai, Sam, Emily, Azlan, Macie and Rumi

Special Thanks to writing coach, Carolyn Wall, and our Dead Writers Class for constant editing and encouraging.

With special appreciation for daughter, Sherri Brown, for pictures and loving care, And to son, Art Severe, for his expertise in perfecting the finished product, and especially designing the book cover.
1
T O L IVE L IFE T WICE
In 1989, Communism began to fail. Chunk by chunk, the Berlin Wall came down. Three years after that I found myself with twenty-eight other people from St. Luke’s United Methodist Church journeying to Ulyanovsk, Russia.
From Oklahoma City, we traveled across nine time zones, and arrived in Helsinki, Finland, only to learn that we had missed our connecting flight.
The Russian Aeroflot sent to take us to Moscow was a World War II transport relic of a plane -- one thin sheet of metal with no sound buffers, the seats worn and frayed. We boarded in quiet unease. The thunderous engines drowned out voices. Fear enveloped us.
Before take-off, the pilot invited our pastor, Bob Long, a recreational pilot himself, into the cockpit. To his credit, Bob kept quiet about what he saw. There was no radar with which to navigate and no radio connection with the Moscow airport.
My life was not always so fraught with peril.
Sometime after my marriage and children, Mother shared her early hope for my life. She said, "I always thought you would be a missionary and I would go with you wherever you were sent." I was shocked. Mother had presented programs for the Women’s Society of Christian Service, before it was the United Methodist Women. Perhaps her own dreams were unfulfilled.
Some of Mother’s hopes for me may have come to fruition. Being a minister’s wife was a "sent" profession. And having my own children and teaching were clearly callings.
2
T HE C IVIL W AR Y EARS AND C ARRIE N ATION
When the Civil War broke out, my grandfather, James Henry Carmony, served the Union Army for three years, around Shreveport, Louisiana. When the war ended, he took a boat up the Mississippi River to the family’s home near Swiss City, Iowa. That’s where he met and married my grandmother, Phoebe Ann Frakes. Daddy was the fifth child, and grew to be a wonderful storyteller, remembering so much of early day Oklahoma, and his life before and after it became a state. I thank him for his stories and wish I had asked more questions.
Around 1885, with their four children, Rue, Fred, Armitie, and James, Jr., they headed for Harper, Kansas, oxen hauling their covered wagon. Grandfather Carmony rented a small hotel for a home and leased farmland on which to raise wheat and cattle. Crops were good but the Carmonys grew lonesome for their kinfolk back home.
In the next few years, his relatives came west and made the land runs into Oklahoma Territory. Some came in 1889, staked and recorded claims, and stayed the required time to hold their allotments. When the weather warmed, they built homes, barns, and silos. But in the western part of the state, the scarce timber had to be felled, cut, and hauled over long distances by train or wagon.
My daddy, Willie, was born in 1892 in Harper, Kansas. His dad, James, made the run with a brother-in-law, Earnest, in the 1893 Cherokee Strip Land Rush, leaving Willie, with his mother, sisters and one brother, to do the necessary farming. At precisely twelve noon on September 16, 1893, a cannon’s boom unleashed the largest land run America had ever seen. But, on the way, Grandfather’s horse stumbled and fell. A broken collarbone ended his trek.
Two friends, who were sisters, had made the earlier run and built a log house, but now didn’t need their two pieces of land. The ladies offered their claims to Grandfather and his brother-in-law. James and Earnest made it to the land office in time to file their papers.
In 1897, in Woodward County, Grandfather built his family a fine 16’ x 24’ log house. He and Earnest hauled logs from the sawmill across the river and dug water wells. The following January, he returned to Harper, Kansas, to fetch Grandma and Daddy, leaving his son and daughter, Fred and Mittie (Armitie), to get in the wheat crop. Eventually, when summer came and harvest passed, Grandfather went back to Harper, Kansas, taking Willie with him to sell the farm equipment, and bring the cattle down to Oklahoma Territory.
Daddy was barely six years old when he rode with his father by train to Kansas. Returning with the livestock was an adventure as the Cimarron River stood full to the bank from a heavy rain. Several cows had calves that couldn’t keep up, so they put the calves in the wagon, but still couldn’t cross. A widow who owned that farmland allowed them to bring the cattle up into her pasture until the river went down. For three or four days they camped out on the banks.
It may seem like the new cabin was small, and it was, but, by then his sister, Rue, had married and lived in her own home. Mittie had the only bedroom and, for five years, she shared it with the school marm.
Willie slept on the floor, except on cold nights when he crawled in with Mittie and the teacher, at the foot of their bed, between their feet. Other times he slept in the barn. The teacher eventually married and, by law, had to resign her teaching position.
Young Willie also slept there when Carrie Nation came, carrying a hatchet, destroying local bars...
The Carmony family hosted the Methodist Circuit Rider preacher when he rode through, bedding his horse in the barn. Young Willie also slept there when Carrie Nation came, carrying a hatchet, destroying local bars, and speaking for her Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The family had been friends with her in Kansas. Willie gladly gave up his sleeping space because Carrie made especially good biscuits.
His was a truly early Methodist family. His mother prepared Sunday dinner on Saturday because Sunday was a designated day of rest.
3
F AMILY R OOTS
The one-room schoolhouse Willie attended went only through eighth grade. But as it turned out, he rode his horse into the town of Seiling for high school, which was held in a church. Parents got busy and collected money to build a new school, hired teachers, offered classes, and charged each student $10 a month. Daddy was within a year of graduating when he decided he more urgently needed to earn money. He was eighteen years old.
He had loved performing in plays, memorizing poetry, and reading western literature, especially Zane Gray novels. I have a yellowed newspaper clipping telling of Mother and Dad acting in the same high school play in Seiling, Oklahoma. Mother was six years younger, so they must have recruited Daddy to come back and fill in. All his life, he quoted poetry he had learned as a boy.
Being t