The most memorable breakfast I ever ate was back in 1966, on the morning of the dedication of the current Inman Methodist Church building.
My brother Rob and I spent the weekend with our Minter grandparents at the Po Farm, my grandfather’s name for the place where Joanne and I live now.
The house was little changed from the time my grandparents and my dad first moved into it in 1936. There was no plumbing, no central heat, only a few lights and wall plugs and a refrigerator that were added after electricity finally arrived at the eastern edge of Hill’s Bridge Road.
But at the time – and ever since – it was my favorite place in the world.
My grandparents also had a more modern house in downtown Inman – the white frame house just off Highway 92 on Hill’s Bridge Road. For the big dedication weekend, my grandparents had turned over the newer house to a former Inman pastor, Brother Estell Casebier, his wife Delois, and as I seem to recall, some young kids.
Sometime early on Sunday morning, my grandmother decided the Casebiers didn’t have enough food for breakfast. So she pretty much cleaned out the refrigerator and took the groceries we had to the Casebiers.
I’m not sure how my grandfather didn’t realize it sooner, but when my brother and I got up, the three of us discovered the shortage.
We were kind of stranded since my grandmother had left with the only vehicle available, but I don’t remember my grandfather being mad.
Pop scrounged around and found three eggs and a decent sized slice of hoop cheese. He fired up the wood stove and used an old percolator to boil the eggs. He divided the cheese into three equal pieces and melted it on a pie plate, the kind most people use one time and then throw away.
I remember seeing that cheese beginning to melt and run across the plate, with little bubbles on the edges.
It all tasted great.
We got dressed for church, and my grandmother soon arrived. She asked my grandfather if he’d fixed us breakfast, and he said something on the order of “Yeah, three boiled eggs and a hunk of cheese.”
There was no fussing; they put it behind them and we were off to church. As I recall it was a glorious day for our little church. But it was bittersweet for me because I dearly loved the old wood church that it replaced.
Copy of the newspaper article about the Inman UMC dedication ceremony.
I remember Brother Casebier had a speaking part, as did another Inman pastor, Bobby Partridge, who was one of my favorite pastors and friends until he passed away in December of 2023. (Rev. Partridge was a star left-handed knuckleball pitcher at West Ga. College and was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles, but chose to be a minister instead.)
I thought of the Casebiers often but, other than an occasional letter or card to my grandmother, I didn’t hear from them until 2017, when Delois Casebier’s name showed up on the prayer list in the Inman Informer. I believe she submitted a prayer request to the church newsletter herself.
I guess she had fond memories of her time in Inman if she reached out 50 years after she and her husband left for another assignment.
Unfortunately, there weren’t many more opportunities for my brother and me to have breakfast at the Po Farm with Pop Minter. His funeral was the first one held in the new church.