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4B • SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2003
Ladies — Logtown	Continued	from	Page	IB
who loved it. With their help other remembered places,
I have seen the Logtown reclaimed by the dense they remember, not as an	green tangle,
overgrown patch of woods	All but Sister Acker, who
but as a thriving communi-	hails from Gainesville, had
ty, filled with a spirit of	been born in Logtown, as
goodwill and fellowship, had most of their parents where neighbors of all creeds and colors lived together in harmony. And like them, I felt a sadness when I had to leave it to come back to the world outside.
“Oh it was a beautiful place ... Logtown,” said Sister Lillie Sams, the wife of 53 years of deceaseARev.
Robert Sams and daifflhter of tavern owners Mmnie and Oran Moultrie. “Black and white got along like peas in a pod .... there was cooperation and everybody got along ... we were all together, not like it is now.
Even now when we meet in the store or someplace we hug and talk about how we miss the togetherness.”
Today, Sister Sams,
Sister Mary Acker, Sister Lillian Rogers and I take a rive through the woods ast the places of their ^outh, and of course to the cemeteries, the center of activity these days in the ost communities.
Another friend, Sister Vlildred Wheat, daughter of Sarah Vaugn Keyes and Joe {eyes, couldn’t make it out or today’s drive.
It was hot and steamy 'rom the intermittent rain, jut the ladies wanted the windows down to take in the good air, they said.
“You can cut off that air (conditioner),” said Sister Rogers as she rolled down her window when we turned down the road toward The Point.
The ladies know that the air will make them remember, as it always does. And later, under Sister Sam’s carport, with the help of homemade orange cake,
Sister Wheat would remember too.
As we drove along, the ladies pointed .out the long	married a bunch of us were
ago lost locations of friends	dlit walking at night and
lynnes, their churches, and	someone covered in a sheet
ran out from the church to	ly’s gravesite under the
scare us ... everybody ran off	cover of an umbrella. Out of
and left me and I was so	the car, we looked over fam-
scared I couldn’t move ...	ily gravesites. Sister Sams
someone said, you better go	headstone was already
back and get your wife. It	erected by her husband, the
turned out to be my sister Rev. Sams.
The name on the stone reads Lilly Moultrie in the place where will be when she returns home for the final time.
“Back over that way was one of the main fishin’ spots,” she said pointing over the hill toward the river. “You could catch all the perch you could want. My mother used to ride her bicycle from out here to the river in Logtown and to the post office ... we used to walk all around here, there were fishing spots all over, and across to a place called Possum Walk.”
We decided to take a drive to the river and on the way discussed the Baptisms of emersion that took place regularly and still do at the Pearl River at Logtown. Sister Wheat and Sister Rogers were both recently Baptized again.
“Right over there was a Viola (under the sheet).” garden for the whole com-Sister Sam’s father munity, by Bogohoma owned Moultrie’ Bar, but he Bridge,” said Sister Sams, ran it like a church, she “You could get green beans said, and allowed no cursing and cabbage, in his establishment. He At the river we stopped to was strict, very strict, but fill empty plastic bottles at wasn’t baptized as a the artesian spring. Christian until just before Somebody had broke of the he died, she said.	spigot, but the water still
She remembers the first bubbled up. It could have time she tried to drive.	been liquid gold for all the
“I ran into a big tree by excitement the ladies got the bar.” she said.	out of being able to taste the
Girls didn’t do like they spring water again. On the do now, she said, you pretty way back to the main road much went to church and we spotted a giant palm tree came back to the house ... that no one remembered there was no running seeing before, a reminder of around back in those days, a long ago home garden that Her mother Minnie was a was built in that spot, seamstress and she sewed It has been a good day. real good and used the • “We regretted having to money to send her kids to move, we regretted it but school.	there was nothing we could
When we got to the ceme- do about it,” said Sister tery at The Point it was Sams. “We got little or noth-... raining and we had to^wait ^ ing and notv whgtt wevwej£ig, till the shower passed to get" supposed to ,get ,...it put us out of the car. Another 'all in a lot 6Pdebt“I‘'would friend was visiting his fami- go back today if I could.”
Sister Lillie Sams, left, Sister Mildred Wheat, center, and Sister Susie Burton dressed in their Sunday best. The women grew up together in Logtown and remain friends and sisters in spirit today.
and grandparents, and all had married boys that they had, for the most part, grew up with. They had grown up together, and played together and prayed together at the Big Mt. Zion African American	Methodist
Episcopal Church in Logtown, sisters in spirit and neighbors all their lives. And later, after the exile, to Pearlington, Sister Sam’s husband Robert, had continued the ministry at Greater Mt. Zion as Reverend for 40 years till his death seven years back.
“We courted for years and years,” said Sister Sams. “He was always a scary man ... it was very dark out there honey, so dark, and he would come to court me and he was scared to walk back home and my mother would have to take him home.
One night after we were.