Sunday, October 26, 1997
Strange items in silent auction
By Ken Ellsworth / Abilene Reporter-News
TEXAS MIDWEST -- You never know when a mayor or chamber of
commerce executive director or another community leader might
need a head of cattle, so I should not have been surprised to
see one for sale in Abilene this past week at the Texas Midwest
Community Network conference's silent auction.
The auction items were all lined up for display on a bunch
of tables and were being sold by numerous area chambers of commerce.
Of course, the particular head of cattle I mentioned as being
for sale was not standing on the table, as you may be imagining,
but her pictures were there instead. She was a cute Limousin heifer.
Born May 30, she was being offered by the Coleman Chamber of Commerce
and Agriculture. The pictures showed her hanging around in the
pasture with her mother and her young friends.
The minimum bid was $250, but nobody had bid when I saw the
display, so I do not know if she sold.
It goes to show, though, you never know what you might find
at a silent auction.
But the Colorado City Chamber of Commerce was not to be outdone
by a mere heifer. They were trying to sell a singing Christmas
tree. The thing was green and about three feet tall. It actually
had eyes and a mouth with red lips.
The tree's label said it was a talking Christmas tree, not
a singing tree, so I ask Charlie McCollum, of Colorado City, why
the label did not say singing.
She laughed. "Oh, I was just too busy putting it out to
realize it could sing," she said.
Well, honestly, it was hard to call that noise singing, even
giving it the benefit of the doubt for being a tree.
"But if you think this is odd, you should have seen what
we had last year. It was a frog that croaked 'Jingle Bells,' "
McCollum said.
I said I could not imagine.
PEW THEOLOGY
ALBANY -- Last Saturday I sat on an old church pew in the park
in Albany. The three 99 year-old pews, which had come from the
original Presbyterian Church in Albany, had been placed in the
park for old timers to sit on and share old stories in celebration
of Watt R. Matthews Cowboy Day.
The day, of course, was set aside to honor the memory of Watt
Matthews, the noted rancher who passed away in April.
The person that I sat down next to, though, was not an old
timer at all, so he stood out sitting there with a full dark head
of hair without a trace of gray.
He also stood out because he was reading, which was an unusual
activity that day when everybody else was talking, singing, eating,
riding horses, shopping, and listening to music.
He was reading a big stack of theology books. One of them was
titled The Princeton Theology. Princeton, of course, was Watt
Matthew's alma mater.
"Goodness," I said, "what are you doing with
all those theology books?"
"Well, I have to preach a sermon tomorrow," he said.
He said his name was Alec Ream, and he said he was the interim
pastor at the Matthews Memorial Presbyterian Church in Albany,
filling in until the church could find a new pastor.
There was a chance, he said, that the writer of The Princeton
Theology and Watt Matthews had crossed paths. The writer, B.B.
Warfield, a Princeton professor, had retired the same year Watt
graduated, 1921.
Ream also showed me another book called the Short Catechism.
Watt Matthew's mother, he said, used to read out of the Short
Catechism as she and little Watt drove into town on Sundays in
their buggy to go to the Presbyterian Church.
It became clear to me that the pastor was absorbing all he
could about Watt and his times for the next day's sermon.
But it was not just the books. Watt and his mother could very
well have occupied the very same pew on which the pastor now sat.
So I started wondering what the pastor might also have been
absorbing through the seat of his pants and whether or not that
was his intent, but I did not ask.
This column covers the cities and communities of this part
of West Texas. To contact Ken Ellsworth, call (800) 588-6397 or
(915) 676-6777, or write to P.O. Box 30, Abilene, TX 79604.
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Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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