79 Sixth Street 32320 correction

79 Sixth Street

Like life itself, living in a rectory is a blessing and a curse all at the same time for a clergy family. Before the new brick church was built, the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church rectory sat right next-door to the old wooden church on W. Beach Drive. The back door of the rectory lined up just a few steps from the back door of the church, the sacristy door. This was very convenient, because the only bathroom on the property was the one bathroom in the rectory, which parishioners rushed in and out the rectory back door to “excuse themselves.” At least once in my memory of Rectory Tales, the priest was so careless as to step from the bathtub without having thought to lock the bathroom door, just as an Altar Guild Lady burst into the bathroom. 

We lived in the rectory at Trinity, Apalachicola fourteen years, Linda, Tass and I did. Our dear friends the McMillans, in the Methodist parsonage next block, had the curse part a lot worse than we did. Jackie McMillan would sometimes turn around in her kitchen to confront a stranger, a vagrant, asking for food. Happily, we never had that. With the Methodists, moreover, “moving day” came once a year and all the pastors in the Conference who were moving that year moved the same day. You stepped out of your old pulpit one Sunday, packed your clothes and drove to your new assignment, and stepped into your new pulpit the following Sunday. None of this Search Committee nonsense, the ecclesiastical authority made the assignments and that was it. No taking your furniture either: you didn’t have any. The furniture in the Methodist parsonage belonged to the parsonage. From what I saw it was often donated furniture that was “too good to throw away, the parsonage can get a few more years use out of it.” At least in the Episcopal tradition when we moved we moved lock, stock and barrel. So you had a home of your own to take with you.

I loved living in Trinity’s old rectory. It was next door to the church. Great for the small Wednesday evening Bible studies and the fried mullet suppers that went with them. Great for convenience, I even put my office in the rectory for part of our tenure, off the front porch with its own outside door. Bob Horn had the Apalachicola Window Company at the time and had that end of the porch closed in for me with floor to ceiling windows. It was light and airy, and I could see everything and everyone coming and going. 

Those Sunday mornings when I stepped into the pulpit during the sermon hymn and my sermon notes weren’t there I only had a few steps to run out the back door of the church into the rectory, grab them off my chest of drawers in the bedroom upstairs, and back in the pulpit before the next verse finished. Our rectory was built in 1900, a beautiful, charming home. It was a couple blocks walk to town, no need to drive to the Seafood Grill. Three or four blocks to the post office. When we moved there in 1984 the A & P Supermarket was a block away. Franklin Ford was a pleasant four or five block stroll every evening with Nicholas, my grandson, when he visited. We had a walk every night before bedtime. When he was little I pulled him in a Red Flyer wagon.

Nicholas‘ parents worked and so I drove to West Palm Beach and picked him up the day school was out for the summer and took him back the Sunday afternoon before school started for the fall. At least a week at Christmas vacation and again for spring vacation. He was granddaddy’s boy. Everybody in town knew Nicholas. He loved watermelon, and Dot and Wallace Hill brought watermelons from their farm when he was visiting summers. We would chill them in the parish house refrigerator and cut them open on the back stoop of the parish house and eat them together. One time when a watermelon was plump, ripe and well chilled and we planned a cutting, I had a meeting come up at the last minute. When I got back from my meeting the watermelon was nowhere to be seen. “Where’s the watermelon, Nicholas?” “I ate it.”

The rectory had been added onto, a master bedroom upstairs in the back. Unfortunately, the house was not designed or constructed for a room there, and the back wall sagged into the kitchen between the north south corners and slanted substantially down toward the east, as any rolling marble would happily prove. The family room also had a closed in extension and water poured in at the beam where the new part joined the old. 

For most Episcopal priests these days, a parish offering a rectory is a deal breaker because tax laws make living in a rectory most unattractive financially. And a minister in a parsonage never has the opportunity to grow an investment in his own home. But it worked for us.

The rectory curse for the Wellers was in the constant knocking at the door. Hungry folks wanting food from the food pantry. Transients needing gasoline to get them on to the next town. More transients stuck in town overnight and needing a motel room, a flat tire fixed, an old tire replaced. Locals needing a liquid gas bottle filled on a winter day, help with the electric bill. One o’clock in the morning a deputy sheriff knocking at the rectory door with a transient family needing food and a room and gasoline and a tire repaired. Ten o’clock at night a drunk pounding the rectory door wanting counseling to help him overcome his alcoholism. A deranged transient obviously used to bullying his way, asking for money and when I offered food instead, stalking away from the rectory door screaming curses at me. The anxiety of leaving our teenage daughter in the rectory alone for even a little while. 

People with extra kittens leave them on the rectory porch, especially if they know there's a little girl living there. At Christmas people bring to the rectory the most delicious treats imaginable. When harvest comes the rectory is loaded up with fresh tomatoes, fresh picked corn, figs, persimmons. When casting is good an old pickup truck rolls up to the rectory with fresh caught mullet, cleaned and ready for the pan.  

For better or for worse, a rectory is a wonderful home.  

Father Tom

+Time