Brush Arbor Meeting

by Jerry Blackerby

I was fortunate to have known two sets of great-grandparents when I was young. One of my great-grandfathers, mother’s maternal grandfather, was born in 1850 in Roane County, Tennessee. He was the son and grandson of Baptist preachers. After reaching adulthood, he also became a Baptist preacher and has at least three generations of descendants that also became Baptist preachers. He wrote in 1916 in some family notes that there has been a continuation of the Baptist ministry in the family since the 17th century. I excerpted and rewrote the following from what an aunt wrote about grandpa.

Even though he was a preacher’s son and later became a preacher, he often indulged in mischief with some of his friends. Once during a brush arbor protracted meeting, with a long stick he and some other boys carefully removed a hornets nest from a tree, carried it behind the brush arbor and eased it under the backdrop cloth behind the preacher.

As the preacher was giving a loud and lengthy "hellfire and brimstone" sermon, the boys gave the hornet's nest a poke. Out swarmed the hornets and up the legs of the preacher's pants. Already worked up to a fever pitch in his sermon, the man suddenly screamed, "The Lord's in my soul, but the Devil's in my britches," and ran from the brush arbor as though it were the Devil.

The congregation was stunned into silence, then a few younger ones began to giggle and finally began laughing. It wasn't long until someone looked behind the pulpit and saw the hornets nest. The word of what had happened spread and people gathered to search for the culprits, but no one they questioned knew anything about it.

They assumed that whoever had done it had escaped before they realized what had happened. Little did they know that grandpa and his cohorts, who were helping so diligently to find the mischief maker, were enjoying every minute of that long winded preacher's discomfort!