McCOMB - Don't take this wrong. I'm not advocating going back to the "good old days" before air-conditioning, television, automatic dishwashers and medicines that now prevent or quickly cure diseases that often were fatal or crippling to children and young adults.
But there are some aspects of the past that would serve this country well if they could be regained.
Specifically, I'm referring to vibrant rural communities and small towns, each with its own institutions, such as churches and schools, that drew people together.
I was reminded of this Sunday while attending the annual homecoming of the Sarepta Methodist Church and Community in Claiborne County, some 15 miles or more east of Port Gibson.
That's close to where my wife grew up, and her grandparents and great-grandparents are buried in the Sarepta Cemetery, which, like the adjacent church, dates back to the mid or early 1800s.
Virgie's parents are buried in Port Gibson, her mother long ago opting for the cemetery there, fearing that the one at Sarepta wouldn't be properly maintained over the years.
So far my mother-in-law has been proved wrong.
Descendants of people buried at Sarepta, including my wife's brother Sam E. Sorrels and his son, Randy, continue to keep up the cemetery, the small church building and the grounds, although there are no weekly services at the church.
Once a year, toward the last of April, they meet for church services, reminiscing about the past and enjoying an old-fashioned dinner on the grounds.
Some of those in attendance, mostly the older ones, still live in the community. Others live nearby. Judging from the children and babies in attendance, there's enough interest by young people to keep the Sarepta Cemetery Association going for future generations. I hope so.
You don't have to be in a nursing home to recall when churches like Sarepta had regular services and when rural communities, like Progress, Mars Hill and Friendship right here in the McComb area, had their own schools.
There was a sense of place and a security that is missing these days whether you live in town or the country.
As late as the 1950s my family didn't even have locks on our house in a rural community near Hattiesburg. By the next decade, however, my parents had dead bolts installed.
The reasons for the changes are too numerous and complicated to discuss in detail in a single column, even if I knew them all.
Mechanization of agriculture and the demise of the small family farm hurt rural communities.
Shopping centers and Wal-Marts ran smalltown merchants out of business. Better transportation and higher paying jobs, or the promise of such, moved people to the cities.
The list of culprits for the change of lifestyle, especially in Mississippi, could be a long one, including, just to name a few, mass communication, welfare, drugs, a diminishing work ethic. Society changes, often for the better, sometimes for the worse.
To tell the truth, neither me nor my wife is interested in moving to Sarepta, although we own property near there, part of my wife's ancestors' homeplace.
It's nice to go to church there once a year, sing "Church in the Wildwood" and eat homemade chicken pie and potato salad.
But it can get hot on a mid-day Sunday, even in April, without air-conditioning.
A bumblebee, flying through an open window on a muggy day and then circling the ceiling isn't the best part of a church service.
But watching the bumblebee, it's easy to reflect and to wish for a combination of the best elements of the past and present and an elimination of the worst.
