Applebox Chairs

Back in the early fifties, I was about 5 or 6, I watched my dad make little chairs out of apple crates. He got the crates from the Safeway Grocery store in Pine Bluff where Bro. Elton Jones was the produce man.  I spent the whole day helping dad make those little chairs. My job was to be the first to sit in the chair as soon as it was ready (guess I was the chair tester) then he would paint each one a bright color. He used red, green, yellow and blue. I would test the chairs again as soon as the paint dried. That was one of those special father daughter projects and we had a good time making those little chairs.
As the story goes, we eventually left Pine Bluff, and dad pastored other churches, and the chairs we made together became a memory to cherish. They stayed at the “Dew Drop United Pentecostal Church“, which later moved and became “Peace Tabernacle” which is now “Whitehall United Pentecostal Church“.

In 1981 Gary became pastor of DeWitt United Pentecostal Church, and changed the name to “Apostolic Church”
The first Sunday at DeWitt I took a little tour of where we would be for many years to come. As I opened the door to one of the Sunday School classrooms I was very excited to see several little bright painted chairs sitting around a small table, and yes they were made out of apple crates! I asked the person with me “where did these chairs come from?”  well, when the Dew Drop church moved....Bro Tolbert, who was the pastor at the time, donated those little chairs to the DeWitt church. I felt like I was home.  Hallelujah!