sunday night pie suppers in freeport, tx

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. (Acts 2:46-47)

When I was a little boy in Freeport, TX, going to the Freeport Church of Christ, we had what we called Pie Suppers after church on Sunday nights. I don’t really know why that term came to be applied because it was mostly sandwiches and desserts.

But there were a lot of them. I was on a lot closer level to the table at that time, of course, being young. And I would stand and look at all the stuff. It was great. There were sandwiches galore, probably thousands of them (at least to my eight year old mind) and pies and cakes by the hundreds.

A lot of food for a church of about 150 people. But it sure seemed that way.

The best thing was, it meant that I could eat all I wanted and there would still be a lot left over. And I tried my level best to do that very thing.

Pimiento sandwiches, tuna salad, chicken salad sandwiches. Ham and cheese, baloney and cheese, deviled ham, ham salad. some with lettuce and tomato, all on white bread (no weird brown breads in the 1950’s) – it was great.

Pies, cakes, cookies, toll house bars, fruit salad, jellos – all for dessert. Tea and coffee for drinking.

The kids would run around afterwards and play under the Community Center where we met. It was up on stilts, this being Freeport and right by the levee that separated us from the Gulf of Mexico. We ran around, had a good time, as I got older, we would stand leaning on cars and talk, trying to impress the girls.

In retrospect, it was an almost idyllic time.

Of course, this was the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the bomb drills in the schools (a desk was guaranteed to protect you from a nuclear bomb), the world falling apart over there.

But over here, it was great. No real crime, no drugs yet, the Beatles hadn’t even come to America yet, rock and roll was still suspicious.

And on Sunday nights, once a month, all the sandwiches and pie you could put into your little eight year old mouth.

That was a happy church, as I remember, one that liked getting together, for any reason.

A church that plays together stays together, to augment an old phrase. But it is true.

We are on a journey to Heaven and we help each other on the journey. And one way we help each other is to eat together and just in general learn to like each other. Life is hard alone. But together we will make it.