The most important things required to sustane life are air, food and water. We have a maximum of three minutes without air, being without food mostly depends on how much the body can feed off itself, but being without water usually causes the giving up of the ghost around a week or so at the most. I don't want to test any of those things.
As a child of intense curosity I did try holding my breath to see if it would kill me. It didn't, but I saw gnats behind my eyelids before I stopped and staggered about. Mama slapped my thighs into running. My little brother Buddy decided against his testing the theory so he suggested something more interesting for us to try, like hunting for rats nests in the corn crib.
Now as to water........
The best God had to offer came from the bowels of the earth in a stream to flow into the baptismal pool at Magnolia Branch.
I don't know the workings of nature and the earth's hydrolics but the natural springs I'm familiar with always seemed to follow the root system to the surface from a magnolia tree. The water is pure, cold, crystal clear and taste as good as God intended.
My earliest memory of drinking spring water was about the age of 5/6. We were at homecoming at--drum roll here, Magnolia Missionary Baptist Church, located between Stanley Road Crossing an Barnett Crossroads. Preaching, singing, invitation and blessings were behind as we headed to the outdoor table built to hold tons of what we came for..............Aunt Versie Smith's fresh grated coconut cake with marachino cherries on top.
God is good!
Adults fanned themselves and the babies, spread the vittles, hugged, laughed and told outright lies on holy ground there.
" Oh my word, I love your new perm".
"Why thank you Myrtice, I did a Toni this time".
The perm was self applied and time fried.
Lies were told and talked about back at the house.
"Did you notice her hairdo".
"Well did you see her dinners hanging all out as that big buck young'un stood at her lap and fed"?
"No shame in a two year old still nuss'in", ouote, Grandma Minnie Smith.
"That boy is spoiled and won't play with his cousins, I worry for him."
We eat chicken-n-dumplins, fried chicken, potato salad, butterbeans, sliced tomatoes, creamed corn and........................ you get my drift as it is June and the garden is showing it's self this year.
Daddy and his men kin gather on the tailgates to enjoy his lifelong deadly love affair with Prince Albert and talk nonsense. Mama and her sisters-in-law pack up, swat flies, and hold the dresstails of crawlers. They tell us cousins we can go the the branch and play in the baptismal pool.
The Heavens opened.
We could hear the piano tuning up for the afternoon singing by the Jorden's, the music was beautiful and the songs were spot on old time gospel.
Jesus came to church at Magnolia Misionary Baptist Homecomming that sunday.
Blessings of pure happiness flowed down on us that day of renewal..
The earth was on it axis, birds were quiet in that sweet afternoon of preaching, praying, singing and dinner on the grounds.
Yes, I said dinner on the grounds.
My place on earth was Blue Ribbon perfect.
Except,
the seams in my new dotted swiss dress was scratchy and the new socks had gone into the toe of my new "padding leather" shoes to allow raised blisters on my heels that burned.
Other than that,
shoes came off, sashes dragging behind, hair flying, skinny legs running downhill to the most beautiful place this side of Paradise..
The crystal clear water is burbling up in the dark knarly roots of the ancient magnolia tree. I flows up into a board walled baptismal pool. Sized to hold a tall fellow or a fat lady for haveing sins washed as white as snow. This day it is a community wallow hole for us to jump in. Cousins from Atmore, Flomaton and Jay would pile in and play.
That water never got muddy or even a suggestion of being cloudy. It was flowing up through the most pristine white sand this side of the Gulf of Mexico. It could be seen moving with the upflow of the water. Springs were under that old tree and all the way down Magnolia Branch to flow into Big Escambia Creek several meandering miles away.
That place was the vision I have of Heaven. I drank the water from a folded magnolia leaf because the ancient gourd dipper that hung on a tree nob was covered in green moss and I didn't want to get that slimy stuff on my lips.
I was a grimy chlld, but I had my standards.
I can close my eyes today and smell the air in that place. It smelled like Lux soap. It was as pure as God intended.
The water was COLD, clear and tasted like nothing I have tasted since. That springs head is now under a man made fish pond and I'm sad to know I'll never see it again, but if I have a choice on that "Great Getting Up Morning", I believe I will see it in some part of Heaven, because I felt as if it was a small place that we were given to show us perfection here on Earth.
You had to have been there.
