As written by Reginald (Marcel) Henry, USA
SCREEN IV
Pappa was brave to move with his family into the then small, unpopular Seventh-day Adventist congregation of a religion which called for a radical change of lifestyle and urged its membership to live the teachings of the church and of the bible on Sabbath, and, without easing up, on Sunday through Friday and to Sabbath again. It was a very different, all encompassing religion, in its teaching, in its faith, and in its practice of religion, from that of Pappa’s Ramble Baptist religion, as well as from Mamma’s Somerset Methodist Church. And Pappa remained a Seventh-day Adventist for the rest of his life, 1945-1968. He was brave, as it can be seen, in that he had a substantial and terrible disqualifier for Adventist church membership, especially in such a small, conservative, all-seeing, "unforgiving" community. The disqualifier was, he smoked all those church years, though he tried to conceal it! All those years, except just the last couple years of his life, Many times when he was a smoker, a pocket of his trousers would go up in smoke because he quickly dropped his lighted cigarette into it when someone burst into view suddenly.
His wife and children, nonsmokers, were simply repulsed by the trace of nicotine which could never be fully erased however hard he tried. He tried harder on Sabbath mornings by scouring his mouth with soap bush or with carbolic soap. None of the family knew that nicotine as a companion was a dominatrix so enchanting, so possessive, and so destructive, in relation to its victims. Neither did they know any one who expressed any understanding of the nicotine habit and sympathy for him at the time.
In his church life Pappa had the opportunity of blessing the little congregation by the use of his tonic sol fa tutoring skills. Tonic sol fa itself was a way of teaching sight-singing of music. All the information to put the lyrics of a song into music and to bring the lyrics back out in song melody was based on the modulation of the tonic sol fa scale of notes starting with moveable do. The full scale was, do, re, mi, fa , so, la, ti, do. From these eight notes many a country church and many a concert hall rang with joyful and harmonious music. Tonic sol fa was invented in England and became popular in the colonies. A capella is the current music training and producing format that comes closest to tonic sol fa. Pappa’s musical input at the Somerset Seventh-day Adventist Church gradually faded when younger musicians joined the church and brought with them their mastery of the tonic sol fa mode, as well as their mastery of instruments like the piano, the organ, and the flute. Among these new member musicians, was Pappa’s own gifted and outstanding first son-in-law, Septimus.
On his way to and from church, Pappa would select one of his boys to carry his bible. That allowed him to practice his usual and quite as memorable walking style when he was empty handed. His style was to fold his arms behind his back and step slowly and carefully as if he were measuring his steps.