A UMC with the KJV

The first order of business for today was DUMP & REFILL the tanks. On any American made RV the procedure is basically the same.  Only the attachment locations may be different depending on your RV manufacturer.  All of our attachments are in one basement compartment at the center of the driver’s side of FROG. The compartment holds the outlets for the grey water tank at 75 gallons = used wash water, and the black water tank at 45 gallons = used toilet water.

There is also the inlet for the fresh water tank of 110 gallons = drinkable. Well, we don’t drink it.  We used bottled water.  City water goes into the tank through our filtration system alright but who knows what evil lurks in the fresh water tank itself, considering the heat we live in, and the temps the tank itself rises to in the belly of the FROG.

Also in the compartment is a hot & cold shower hose for washing up or just rinsing off outside the coach, and a hose inlet to the grey and black water tanks for the NO MUSS FLUSH.  That’s simply a way to shoot city water once a month or so into either of those tanks with hose to clean out any hardened or sticking material  remaining after they have been dumped through the still attached sewer hose to the on-site dump station inlet. Pity the poor RV’er who forgets to leave the sewer hose attached when they do this!

We met such a one early in our journey. They had been full-timing for only one week with their new fifth wheel trailer when they hooked up the hose to the NO MUSS FLUSH without the drain sewer hose attached and the water pressure quickly filled their grey & black tanks. The black, being smallest, first. And then where did the water go? 

They told us they first saw the black ‘stuff’ shooting straight up out of the toilet air vent on top of the trailer roof and when they went into the trailer black and grey water was shooting out of each appropriate, or now inappropriate, drain.  There were DAYS of cleanup.

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We were able to dump and refill only 2 miles from the Cracker Barrel we had camped at for several days. The Tom Sawyer RV Campground at West Memphis, Arkansas, is right on the Mississippi.  The usual cost for this service for a dry camper (boondocker) like us is $10.00. At an average of once a week, with the average full hook up campsite being $30.00, we save about $200.00 a week by camping ‘rent free’. There is that retirement budget being tweaked again!

 

 While the dumping and filling proceeded I walked to the bank of ‘Old Man River’ and got some shots of distant Memphis to the north and a tug-steered barge hauling grain south to New Orleans from the loading plant just above the campground. 

When we later drove past the plant we counted over twenty huge grain tractor trailers waiting just to dump their freshly filled farm loads at the plant. The grain would then fill the rows of barges lined up on the banks of the Mississippi , all waiting to follow the first we saw down to the Gulf of Mexico, and who knows where next.

We hitched up TOAD to FROG and took I-40 to the east side of Memphis where we picked up US 64.  We also picked up lunch!

The Steak and Shake chain has proven to be the best by Mona’s standards for milk shake quality, and Mona has HIGH milkshake standards.  But a steakburger and real milk milkshake is loaded with fat and calories (TY Keith, Walt & Kathy! ) SO we share the meal just like we share any other. It fills Mona up and it fills up my calorie counter.

An 18 wheel driver, Mike, saw us park our rig along the street and me walk around the nearby Fairfield Inn  to be sure we could get out of the parking space I wanted to choose. He knew what I was doing as he said later when Mona was giving him a tour of our coach, “I have to get out and check my turning radius  too.”  “But, “ Mona said, “We can’t back up like you can with TOAD hitched on.”  Yes friends, I seem to have learned that lesson in one take.

We drove on east after lunch another 80 miles to the quiet farming community of Michie, Tennessee.  Well, actually a bit north of it at the intersection of Ode Moore and Chambers Store roads.  There sits the 124 year old Lebanon United Methodist Church. And we now sit comfortably parked by its cemetery. We hope these interred neighbors are as quiet as the last bunch at Primrose UMC.

Lebanon UMC wasn’t here when the battle of Shiloh raged 6 miles to the north in 1862, but nonetheless it sits on ground that Confederate General Albert Sydney Johnston marched over and camped part of his army on going to meet General Ulysses Simpson Grant, and it is ground Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard marched south on when he chose to leave the field after the death of Johnston and the arrival of a second US Army under General Don Carlos Buell.

Don’t you just love those 19^th century names? Its like their parents, at the moment of their births, each said the same thing, “He’s going to be a famous general so we have to name him…”

Pastor Jim Rogers came out of his parsonage to greet us and we ended up talking for 45 minutes before we even parked the coach.  Two pastors, right?  And Mona got in some words too, I think.

Jim has been here at LUMC just two months but already has a well attended Wednesday night Bible Study going for this 50 attender church (he has two other churches as well, for a total attendance of just under 100). All three of them are evangelistic, orthodox Bible churches. King James Bible too.  Not the type of UMC you find everywhere.  But this is farm country and conservative in many ways. 

Pastor Jim invited us to join tonight’s Bible Study and we enjoyed a very good lesson from Genesis 8.  I loved the way Jim tied it to the words of Paul in Romans 8. And the theme was consistent: Love God and He will always love you. Stop loving Him and He will always be ready to take you back, no matter what. You can count on it! But sometime, there WILL be an end. Count on that too.

Tomorrow, Civil War immersion for me, and Mona says she’s already deep into a new book!

-Ken