Tinney Chapel Today: April 2008

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Tribute Song about Tinney Chapel introduced today at Remnant Sunday School 04-27-08

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TINNEY’S CHAPEL
By Tommy Frank Thompson, baptized here at age 8 in 1958.
Tune along the lines of SING ME BACK HOME by Merle Haggard
SOUNDS OF CHILDREN LAUGHING, THEN THE CHILDREN SING A CAPELLA “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so, little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong”
KEY OF D, D A7 G

There’s a Chapel in the country, I was raised there as a child,
Every Sunday we’d put on our meetin’ clothes
My dad was always workin’, but my mama never missed
We’d load up that station wagon and off we’d go

Well I left that little chapel so many years ago,
And my life has been a winding, troubled road
But now the circle is unbroken, I’m back here once again
Up there in the choir singin’ with my friends

Well they call it Tinney’s Chapel, and it’s stood a hundred years
It’s a refuge where this sinner goes to pray
Now my brothers and my sister and my mama are all gone
But I know we’ll all meet up come Judgment Day.

Life was all so very simple, times were hard but never bad
Or maybe now that’s all that I recall
But this little country chapel is an anchor holding strong
In that church my troubled days are now long gone

Well they call it Tinney’s Chapel, and it’s stood a hundred years
It’s a refuge where this sinner goes to pray
And now the circle is unbroken, I’m back here once again
Up there in the choir singin’ with my friends
(c) Copyright, Tommy Frank Thompson.

# posted by Joe Dan Boyd @ 4/27/2008

Tinney Chapel Worship 04-27-08

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# posted by Joe Dan Boyd @ 4/27/2008

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Tinney Chapel Worship 04-20-08

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# posted by Joe Dan Boyd @ 4/20/2008

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Anna & Trent Wedding Shower at Tinney Chapel

Photography by Peggy Boyd.
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# posted by Joe Dan Boyd @ 4/19/2008

Friday, April 18, 2008

They Cut Down The Tinney Pear Tree

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TINNEY TALK, Observations by Joe Dan Boyd

AMBROSE TINNEY WAS A PLANTER in every sense of the word. He came to Texas in 1883 from Alabama, heart of the Old South, where tillers of the soil were less likely to be called farmers than planters, a noun dripping with descriptive dash and not at all reminiscent of American Gothic, Grant Wood’s pitchfork painting. Above all, Ambrose Tinney was a planter of cotton, reverently dubbed, by 1940s author Ben Robertson, a heaven-given crop.

“AMBROSE TINNEY OWNED LOTS OF LAND and had enough kids to work it,” quipped one of my cousins, the late Jimmy Joe Newton, a great-grandson of Ambrose. Residential headquarters for the Ambrose Tinney farm was an unpainted monument to frontier architecture, located at the intersection of what is now FM 312 and County Road 4620.

IN THE NORTHEAST QUADRANT of that unpaved intersection, dusty in summer, muddy in winter, Ambrose planted his orchard, just a few yards from the sprawling farmhouse, where my brother Tommy and I were the last children to be raised after the death of our mother, Dolly. There, Tommy and I feasted annually on small but sweet apples, firm but substantial Indian peaches, tart red-skinned plums and unbelievably delicious golden pears in a majestic tree that towered above all others in Ambrose’s now long-gone traditional farm orchard.

WHEN FULL OF LEAF AND FRUIT, the Tinney Pear Tree provided sustenance, shade and solitude for two young boys who liked to climb trees, discuss dreams of days yet unborn and bask in the nuances of a Nature that we probably then took for granted as something of a divine birthright. It was as if the tree gathered up our thoughts, and drew up our souls for us, as in Daniel Beaudry’s great poem, Breath. It was a time when all seemed right with the world, thanks to the foresight of Ambrose Tinney, our planter-grandfather.

WE HAD NOT YET LEARNED TO APPRECIATE A JOHNNY APPLESEED approach to life that was inborn with our grandfather, who died long before either of us was born. In time, we came to understand how much his planter’s vision embraced our community, and our personal lives: Elsewhere on County Road 4620, Ambrose had planted both the school, Vernon, and the church, Tinney Chapel, that would shape our destiny.

# posted by Joe Dan Boyd @ 4/18/2008