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MAY 25, SUNDAY

By billybaba / May 26, 2025 / Uncategorized / Leave a comment

RIVER RAFT

At 10 in the morning Elke and I went to the beautiful old Lutheran church in the center of town which Kathe loved so much and where she sang in the choir. There were only about 30 people in attendance in the blue and white pews. The service was very different from Warren Wilson Presbyterian church. The Warren Wilson church has a large wooden cross suspended in the front of the church, which WWC students apparently object to, while this church has a large lifelike figure of Jesus being crucified up front. I didn’t understand much but delighted in the presence of the place.

Then the congregation was invited to go down to the Aller river for the sendoff of a raft of logs, for a reenactment of the way that the very straight pines in the woods around Celle were harvested and shipped to shipyards in Bremen in centuries past.

This reminded me that similar rafting of logs was done on the French Broad River before the railroad came to Western North Carolina, a time when the clear cutting of vast stretches of mountain forest was a major industry in the Marshall area.

For days a group of men had been putting together a hundred foot long raft of logs with a deck of rough cut boards. We were celebrating their departure on a four day rafting trip down the Aller River with a huge rudder and long poles with hooks on the end which they used to push off from shore in the harrow river to keep from running aground and getting stuck. The twenty or so men manning the raft were dressed in white and black uniforms with red scarves and broadbrimmed black hats and identified as the Flosser, river, group. Germans have many clubs, verein, and the rafting trip was sponsored by the Heimat (hometown) Verein who also had a booth selling delicious steaks and bratwurst along with beer.

First an amateur pickup band played and then a band with drums and trumpets in bright red uniforms marched down to the river and played with great gusto. The Bürgermeister (mayor) gave a speech and then the woman minister who had preached in the church said a prayer for the travelers and everyone recited the Lord’s Prayer, no division between church and state here. And then the crew leaned on their poles and the raft floated down the Aller. It was a fun day.