Salem Church has been a Possum Trot landmark since its construction more than 80 years ago.
In the interim, it has sheltered Presbyterian and Holiness services, as well as at least one generation of schoolchildren. Perhaps irresistible, its role as a social center has diminished.
The Salem Presbyterians were the first to break the rigid custom of seating men and women on separate sides of the aisle, and in the 1880s and ’90s the church often served as the site of picnics, box suppers, candy-pullings and all-day singing.
The present Holiness congregation still holds four services a week, but this organic function in the life of the community undeniably has come to an end.
Plain Building
The building itself suggests a Quaker meeting house, with its simple arrangement of pews and slatted chairs and its plain exterior lines. A piano and drum provide musical accompaniment during services, except when the din of passing trains drowns them out, and a large electric fan cools the congregation in summer.
“My daddy used to be a deacon of the church at Pilgrim’s Rest,” Tom Couch, the preacher at Salem, explained, “but it’s died now. They advocated predestination, and I never did agree with it. I was rocked in the cradle, but they never could get it down me.”
A huge man who is known among older resides of Possum Trot for his almost legendary strength, Couch recalls the valley in its very early days.
“I can remember mighty well the first car that run along these roads,” he said with some pride. “We were playing int he yard, and Momma said she heard something sounded like one of them automobiles. We were all out in the road when it passed.”
“I remember back fifty years ago when I hauled cotton. They run it with mules then. Lord, O Lord, they got so many different machines now. Machinery’s took the place of people. One man is working over a hundred acres when it used to be that a man would make a good living out of seven or eight acres.”
Injured In Accident
Couch usually stays in one of several chairs in his yard, because of an accident which partially paralyzed his legs at the cotton mill where he once worked. Neighbors stop by to talk, and a beagle puppy named Popeye often noses about in the vicinity.
The family farms only to fill the deep freeze for winter, and Couch’s son-in-law owns acreage nearby, of which he does not intend to plant crops.
“He owned timber and hade it pushed off,” Couch explained. “He’ll sow it in grass to make a pasture.”
A timber company bought most of the available land in the area ten years ago. “In a lot of the country where there used to be people, thick with settlers, there are hardly any now,” he said.
“It’s strange for companies to own land that people used to own.”
Apt summaries of the most heart heartbreaking changes that have come to Possum Trot: “Machinery’s took the place of people,” and “It’s strange for companies to own land that people used to own.”
Still Preaches
Tom Couch still preaches at Salem Church, but he doesn’t hold with the hard-shell Baptist theology he was “rocked with” in the cradle. Couch lost partial use of his legs in a factory accident, and now likes to sit in one of several chairs in the yard. His family still does enough farming to fill the freezer.
SERVED AS SOCIAL CENTER– Salem Church, still used for weekly services, once provided Possum Trot with its social center. It was the scene of picnics, candy-pullings and other community events. Today, Possum Trot lacks the Cohesiveness it had as a pioneer rural community, and its residents turn to Jacksonville and Piedmont for civic identity. (Tom Evans photo)
THE ANNISTON STAR, THURSDAY NOVEMBER, 1968
Salem Church Remains Possum Trot Landmark
By: Tom King
FIFTH OF A SERIES
