Homecoming
A hundred and twelve Augusts
How a church of seventy feeds three hundred people on one Sunday afternoon, and why nobody has ever counted the pies.
Loretta Hicks · Church clerk
Homecoming starts on the Saturday before, when the men mow the cemetery and the women bring the plastic flowers up in laundry baskets. Every grave on the hill gets decorated, even the ones whose families are all gone.
On Sunday the parking lot fills by ten and the cars line the road back past the low-water bridge. The service runs long, because there's always a special singing from a family that drove in from Dayton.
Dinner on the grounds
At one o'clock the tables go up under the maples. Fried chicken, soup beans, chicken and dumplings, deviled eggs, stack cake. Brother Harlan returns thanks and then the line starts at the end nearest the cemetery.
You can tell who's been gone longest by how long they stand at the stack cake.
We've never counted the pies. Somebody suggested it once and was told to go get another plate.
If your people are buried on the hill, or ever sat in these pews, you're expected. Bring a dish if you can. Come anyway if you can't.
