Extracurricular Lobster

It's pretty silly looking back. I put "Art Club Treasurer" on my college, award, and scholarship applications like the title demonstrated leadership, fiscal responsibility, organization, and peer esteem. Lord knows, I hope Tim Geitner wasn't his high school art club treasurer!

Art Club was mostly an opportunity to mess around with eight or nine other students while listening to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" on a small turntable. At any time a good half of the membership served as officers. We spent most of our business meetings approving the purchase of officer pins for each other.

Our other activities were making rings out of spoon handles; drawing little chickens, owls, and frogs to sell; and manning the Art Cart sales venue. We actually found customers for our drawings of little chickens which were displayed on tiny easels we made from drapery pleater hooks.

At the end of each spring semester we organized an outing to a gallery and a restaurant to spend all our Treasury funds. All year we talked about eating lobster like it would be an initiation rite for the youngest members. Indeed, I ate my first lobster as an Art Club sophomore at The Knolls Supper Club in Lincoln. The next spring I ate lobster at Steinhart Lodge in Nebraska City.

As for the useful ability to make tiny easels from drapery pleater hooks, it's come in handy many times:








© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

A & Why root beer in Wymore?

Headed south from Beatrice, Nebraska on Highway 77 a strange, powerful, and mysterious force took over. I was still in control of my vehicle, but all I could think about was A&W root beer. Did that ever happen to you???

It's been years since I even had a root beer float. What was going on? By the Gage County town of Wymore I thought I might die if I didn't have an A&W.

Thank heaven Wymore has a local convenience store selling bottles of root beer, along with other more essential items. Wymore was a hub for Welsh immigrants who arrived in Nebraska to build railroads in the 1880s.

A & W was a drive-in with car-hops in the 1960s. I'm not sure, but I think the Lincoln A & W was on south 48th Street. In 1963 A & W drive-ins welcomed the arrival of the Burger Family. Papa Burger, Mama Burger, Teen Burger with bacon and cheese, and Baby Burger arrived on the tray hooked onto your car window. Root beers and floats arrived in heavy glass mugs or strange conical waxed paper containers.

For only a summer or two the A & W drive-in was our family spot. Moving up from a Baby Burger to a Teen or Mama Burger was a sign of maturity. Being able to resist the rare siren song of a root beer on a road trip would be superhuman.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

A-mouldering in the grave

Amy Stewart’s book The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms begins with a chapter on Charles Darwin's studies of worms. Darwin wrote The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits in 1881. Apparently, "vegetable mould" was the term for soil at that time.

Thank heaven, Darwin, and Ms. Stewart for that missing link of information! Growing up where Mulder Drive met Eastridge Drive in the early Sixties, life was simple if mysterious, and school was delightful. "Writing" meant printing in pencil on wide-lined newsprint. "Music" didn't require carrying a tune when we sang "the worms play pinochle on your snout. " We learned to read with Dick and Jane, and spent our fifteen-minute recesses climbing on the jungle gym and chanting, "I see London, I see France, I see someone's underpants." It was okay to get dirty if we were wearing our Play Clothes, but not in our School Clothes. At the pool we got our faces wet and blew bubbles.

On some level, we little kids knew that when we crossed into third grade life was going to get much tougher. We would have to learn the elementary backstroke and the breaststroke. We would start reading Childhood of Famous Americans biographies, and have to "carry" in addition. We would try to get pigs in the pigpen playing jacks with a golf ball on the concrete slap at recess. It wouldn't be a picnic, that was for sure!

Still, for fear factor, the worst was knowing we would be in Mrs. M and Mrs. S's Sunday School class. These two pillars of the church had been teaching third grade Sunday School since before Eve bit the apple. They ran the class like a miniature kiddie church service. The kids sat on wooden benches on either side of an aisle, and opened kiddie hymnals to sing "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" each Sunday. The goal must have been to prepare eight year olds how to behave in an actual church service.

If we didn't actually sing the verses of "John Brown's Body" as part of "The Battle Hymn," we must have acquired that knowledge at the same age:

John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
His soul goes marching on.

He's gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
He's gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
His soul goes marching on.

We also sang a dreadful parody with "teacher hit me with a ruler" that is too eerie to print in this age of school shootings.

The Online Etymology Dictionary redirects me from moulder to molder, but not to Mulder Drive:

molder (v.) "to crumble away," 1531, probably freq. of mold (3) "loose earth."

Thanks to a Library of Congress website for teachers I learn the John Brown song predates Julia Ward Howe's writing of the Battle Hymn:

The original version was a religious camp meeting song written in the 1850s and began "Say, brothers, will you meet us? On Canaan’s happy shore?" The song eventually spread to army posts, where its steady rhythm and catchy chorus made it a natural marching song.

Soon, though, a new version appeared that hitched the old tune to a more militant cause. When the abolitionist John Brown was executed in 1859, someone created a new, fiercer set of lyrics; the song now declared that "John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. His soul is marching on!"

By the time the Civil War began in 1861, the John Brown version of the song had spread throughout the Union army. Soldiers added new verses as they marched through the South, including one that promised to hang Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, from a tree. Meanwhile, Confederate soldiers answered back with their own version, in which John Brown was hanging from a tree.

The version that we know today came to be when an abolitionist author, Julia Ward Howe, overheard Union troops singing "John Brown’s Body" and was inspired to write a set of lyrics that dramatized the rightness of the Union cause. Within a year this new hymn was being sung by civilians in the North, Union troops on the march, and even prisoners of war held in Confederate jails.

Which brings me back to my moldy memories of third grade. That year we took a family road trip to Nebraska City to see Arbor Lodge and John Brown's Cave. I was very leery of looking into the cave, for fear of seeing his body a-mouldering. It was disappointing to find the cave was really a tiny basement under a pioneer cabin. There were no trains to be seen either, on this stop of the Underground Railroad!

JOHN BROWN'S CAVE

John Kagi, one of abolishionist John Brown's most trusted collegues, went to stay with his sister and brother-in-law Allen Mayhew. It was the early 1850's and the area was the Nebraska City area of Nebraska. Their cabin was very close to the Missouri River. Across the river was Iowa and Missouri. John Kagi, under the instruction of his friend John Brown, dug an underground room underneath the Mayhew cabin. It was accessible only from a ravine leading into a creek. The entrance was well camoflauged. There was also a hollow log put into the wall that lead to fresh air outside. This helped the ventilation when the entrance was closed up. This cave was to be used as a stop on the Underground Railroad. At night, slaves would cross the Missouri River from Missouri (slave state) to Nebraska (free state). They would hide out in the cave for the night. Mrs. Mayhew would bring them cornbread. After a short stay, they would be ferried across the Missouri River again. They would be taken a little more north to Iowa (free state), to another stop on the Underground Railroad. Or else, as more recent evidence shows, they would proceed toward Lincoln to hide out in Robber's Cave (see Nebraska haunted sites on Nebraska page). This cabin and cave are still standing where they were over a century ago. The Mayhew cabin is said to be the oldest standing building in Nebraska. It is open to tours and well worth the time.

And now, after this morning of mental mouldering, I may need to find Flashman and the Angel of the Lord at the library. The late George Macdonald Fraser's novel explains John Brown and the Underground Railroad better than any history class from third grade on.



---------------
Battle Hymn of the Republic

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
Chorus
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on."
Chorus
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
Chorus
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Chorus
While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.
Chorus
Our God is marching on.
-----------

Darwin, C. R. 1881. The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms, with observations on their habits. London: John Murray.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Daphne, Jenufa, J. Sterling, and the arrival of spring

Driving north from Topeka, Kansas on a chilly morning, Janacek's opera was the right choice for the Buick's cd player. The Daylight Saving Time sun was barely awake at 7:30, shining low on the east side of barns and old farmhouses, and spotlighting recent tree damage along U.S. 75.

"Jenufa" is all about raw, chilly light focusing on damaged individuals in a claustrophobic rural village. The tragedy of the opera differs from that of my immigrant ancestors, but every listening gives me new insights into their experience.

Plus, in the opera/drive-time category, "Jenufa" fits exactly the easy 127 mile trip. The recording takes me right to the entrance to Arbor Lodge State Historical Park in Nebraska City.

The park isn't really open this early in the spring, but people were walking their dogs on the grounds, and the driveways weren't blocked. The park is now encircled by the properties of the Arbor Day Farm, the Lied Lodge Conference Center, and the Arbor Day Foundation.



I love the juxtaposition of the statue commemorating J. Sterling Morton, the early Nebraska journalist, statesman, agriculturalist, and conservationist behind the sculpture of the Greek wood nymph, Daphne. It's been way too long since I consulted Edith Hamilton's Mythology!

Edith gives a short take of the Roman poet Ovid's version of the Greek nature myth. Daphne was a young huntress with wild hair quite uninterested in suitors of either Olympian or mortal variety. When the god Apollo caught sight of her, he decided she needed a beauty and fashion makeover, but then she would be just the perfect girl for him. Wise girl, Daphne fled from Apollo's attentions, and, with the assistance of her river-god father, was transformed into a laurel tree. This isn't really the best time for me to recount my own dang Apollo's demands for beauty and fashion makeovers, not to mention pierced navels, but Daphne has my complete sympathy.

Founded by J. Sterling Morton in Nebraska in 1872, National Arbor Day is celebrated each year on the last Friday in April. J. Sterling Morton's home, a 52-room neo-colonial mansion offered lovely reflections of bare trees in the leaded windows.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Arbor Lodge from a distance

It is easy to look back at a marriage through a distorted lens. How could I, moi, have been so totally wrong about choosing a mate? Thinking about trees and Arbor Day eventually led me to search out the photo album of courtship and newlyweddiness (take that, Stephen Colbert!). The color photos taken with my Kodak Brownie Starmite have browned and faded in the "magnetic" album pages. Still, they show a happy, creative young woman enjoying hiking trips and outings with her intended. I can tell you about the cucumber and cheese on whole wheat sandwiches, the dried cherries from the food co-op, and the "plain label" beer on these roadtrip picnics. My painting professor could tell you about the saving and wiping out, the letting go of the "precious", the uniting and defining, the underpainting and glazing. A marriage that created our three amazing sons could not have been entirely wrong. It might be time to alter my mental self-portrait, maybe fade it a bit, but tinge it with some ochre sunshine.

Arbor Lodge is a Nebraska State Historical Park at the Nebraska City home of J. Sterling Morton, the founder of Arbor Day. Fontenelle Forest is a natural gem in Bellevue, Nebraska.

And in the nicest way, take a hike.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

A Congregational Celebration of Complementary Colors

Although it might be bad luck to proclaim it, autumn seems to have finally arrived in North Texas. True, we can wear sandals and capri pants for another month or so (as long as they aren't white). Maybe, though, just please-please-PLEASE, we won't need air-conditioning.

I love fall. It has always been my favorite season. I love the contrasts, the tang and tartness, and relish the increase in my energy. More than spring, autumn is a time of promise. Maybe it's the gratitude factor. I'm so diggity-dog filled with joy and thankfulness each six a.m. when I walk out the front door into the crisp air to find my newspaper that my whole day is colored with optimism. Between classes I step outside to watch the lopedy-dopedy-dope flight of thousands of Monarch butterflies headed to Mexico in no particular hurry, and thank heaven for forces and patterns way beyond my understanding.

I strain my eyes to spot the highest orange butterflies against the piercing blue sky. The energy is in the vibrating boundaries between intense opposites. I admit to teaching about complementary colors through experience, not through science or theory. I want kids to have their very own Oh, Wow! moment when they paint with orange and blue. There's all that energy created by completing the whole in a composition of opposites. I love showing them that artists modulate the values and the dominance of the opposing forces to create extremely satisfying works of art. I love showing photos of landscapes with Nature's own color lessons. I pray that my students occasionally look away from the obnoxious animated farting warthogs and belching squirrels on PG-rated dvds playing above the back seats of their SUVs, and turn their gaze out the window to a bright cobalt sky, pale peach ripples on water, or shadows of darkest violet.

Fall is all about the vibrating boundaries between the catsup and mustard on the steamed hot dog from the chilly football concession stand manned by those long-suffering band booster parents. It's the bee-busy mauve blooms against the 15" tall light green leaves of Sedum spectabile. Five more weeks, and autumn will be shiny wet cadmium yellow leaves against pale lavender drizzle. Then it will be time for hooded sweatshirts, plaid flannel, and corduroy.
Glory hallelujah!



To everything there is a season... This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it:

Let our hearts lift up like hot air balloons at dawn and float over the early youth soccer games played on the chilly, dewy city parks & rec fields. Let our spirits alight between sweet-smelling hay bales next to impressive sun-warmed pumpkins for sale in the parking lots of suburban mega-churches.

Let us call up our maturing sons on their cell phones or Skype and feel humbled in conversations with self-sufficient young adults. Allow us to cherish the knowledge that each son belongs to something far greater than their parents' clueless efforts.

Let our souls rest and replenish on river sandbars with 4-H recipe oatmeal cookies and the college football game on a transistor radio. May each of us be fed by the memory of church youth group road trips in rusty pale blue hot rods to Waubonsie State Park across the Missouri River in Iowa.

May we leap and dance with Frisbees and tamborines. Let us be jubilant with vibrating color boundaries and homecoming mums. Aunts Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy will remind us to buy a half-gallon of icy Nebraska City apple cider and a jar of clover honey on the way home!

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

I danced in the morning when the world was begun
I danced in the Moon & the Stars & the Sun
I came down from Heaven & I danced on Earth
At Bethlehem I had my birth:
Dance then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, said He!
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said He.

Looper Doopers

The last two weeks have brought me powerful clues that it is time for some in-depth reexamination of my childhood in the mid-1960's. As psychoanalysis isn't in the budget, blogging will have to do for now.

Planning my trip to Fort Worth to see the world premiere of Bruce Wood's ballet, "Dust, Texas," I realized I could squeeze in a visit to the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. The museum has a very open definition of "cowgirl" as a spirit of courage, self-reliance, trail-blazing, connection to the land of the American West, and of what my co-worker calls the attitude of "Git 'er done!" Cowgirls include Dale Evans, Patsy Cline, Georgia O'Keeffe, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Sandra Day O'Connor, Annie Oakley, horsewomen, trick riders, stunt riders, singers, photographers, and real branding iron ranchwomen.

I've logged countless hours in the dusty saddle myself--approximately eight, but it seemed like many more, what with the horse flies. I've worn saddle shoes with anklets if that counts. Moreover, I have a deep and abiding love of scruffy plains and canyons, an interest in the history of the American Frontier, and enormous respect for the influence Laura Ingalls Wilder has had on generations of American children, male and female. I've got a little bit of the self-reliant "Git 'er done" attitude when it comes to shower tile repairs and uncooperative Buick headlights. I also had a fringed leather shoulder purse in about 1970. Therefore, I am proclaiming myself a cowgirl.

Of course, the Cowgirl museum has a gift shop. Of course I had to scope it out. One never knows where the idea for an art class project is hiding. That's when I was blind-sided by the deluxe metal hand weaving loom and hook set! Holy moly, it's a potholder loom!

Weaving potholders got me through some rough patches in the Sixties. I bought my metal loom at Fisher's House of Toys in McCook, Nebraska for under a dollar on a hot dry weekend. Bruce Wood may have his "Dust, Texas," and James McMurtry, Jr. has "Levelland," but McCook, Nebraska is the dustiest place on my personal Earth.

Looper doopers were the weaving loops for making potholders, or "hot pads" as we called them. Cotton loopers were bulky and dull in color, like tops cut off of socks. Nylon looper doopers were available at the Ben Franklin on Cotner Boulevard in Lincoln, with smoother weaving action and brighter colors for the mod Sixties sensibilities. My maternal grandmother gave me a crochet hook, and taught me how to bind off the loop ends to finish the hot pads I wove. That was the finest moment of our relationship. The crochet hook is broken, but it is still in my embroidery basket.



I produced many hot pads in my most productive golden looper dooper years. To the best of my recollection, I never sold my wares, but gave them as gifts to everyone I knew for Christmas and birthdays. Two other women in the museum gift shop recounted their experiences as potholder artisans/door-to-door salespersons on dusty roads in Texas and Oklahoma. Peddling hot pads for two bits were their entries into the world of entrepreneurship. One recalled telling her mother that she couldn't do her homework because she "had so many orders to fill!" A third woman told sad tales of loom frustration and potholder envy in her Kansas childhood. We were all laughing and experiencing hot pad catharsis at the hot flash phase of our lives.


Levelland - James McMurtry, Jr. - 1995

Flatter than a tabletop
Makes you wonder why they stopped here
Wagon must have lost a wheel or they lacked ambition one
On the great migration west
Separated from the rest
Though they might have tried their best
They never caught the sun
So they sunk some roots down in the dirt
To keep from blowin' off the earth
Built a town around here
And when the dust had all but cleared
They called it Levelland, the pride of man
In Levelland

Granddad grew the dryland wheat
Stood on his own two feet
His mind got incomplete and they put in the home
Daddy's cotton grows so high
Sucks the water table dry
Rolling sprinklers circle round
Bleedin' it to the bone
And I won't be here when it comes a day
It all dries up and blows away
I'd hang around just to see
But they never had much use for me in Levelland
They don't understand me out in Levelland

And I watch those jet trails carving up that big blue sky
Coast to coasters watch 'em go
And I never would blame 'em one damn bit
If they never looked down on this
Not much here they'd wanna know
Just Levelland
Far as you can point your hand
Nothin' but Levelland

Mama used to roll her hair
Back before the central air
We'd sit outside and watch the stars at night
She'd tell me to make a wish
I'd wish we both could fly
Don't think she's seen the sky
Since we got the satellite dish and
I can hear the marching band
Doin' the best they can
They're playing "Smoke on the Water", "Joy to the World"
I've paid off all my debts
Got some change left over yet and I'm
Gettin' on a whisper jet
I'm gonna fly as far as I can get from
Levelland, doin' the best I can
Out in Levelland - imagine that

Degauss, De Goss, degreased, and out of Degas

How long have I been sitting here staring at the DEGAUSS FUNC. RECALL^ on the computer monitor? In my funk I can't recall. It could have been the whole dark, rainy weekend. I don't have the faintest idea what Degauss means, or how it might function if I got up my nerve to push one of the buttons.




While I was in Lincoln I did a major degrease recall func^ on the light fixtures in the kitchen and dining room with Mr. Clean. And boy, that bald guy can dance.



My dad's house is in better shape than my crazy condo. Back home in Plano I was inspired to do a refrigerator Degross Skunc recall^ before I bought groceries and the rains began.

It's possible the young man in this photo is my great grandfather, Paul Goss. I drove through Auburn, Nebraska on Thursday. Something twinged in the lost junior high locker combination Goss recall^ func of my memory. Paul's father, Albert Goss, was a photographer in Auburn.



I'm not older than dirt, but I am older than Etch-a-Sketch. True, if you shake me a bit I tend to erase! Etch-a-Sketch is a mere forty-six years old.



One entry found for degauss:

Main Entry: Pronunciation: (")dE-'gausFunction: transitive verbEtymology: de- + gauss, after Karl F. Gauss: to remove or neutralize the magnetic field of - de·gauss·er noun

Ever wonder what that "degauss" button on your monitor does besides make a buzzing noise and cause the screen to go crazy for a second? Though that's its main purpose, the degauss button has another useful feature. To understand it, you'll first need to know that the earth has natural magnetic fields. The magnetic charges from these fields can build up inside your monitor, causing a loss of color accuracy. Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with ...

To scare bad magnetism, it is useful to know the dance moves for the Funky Chicken.

Power Series

In the last two weeks I've had the great luck to see paintings of powerful machines. The Dallas Museum of Art is showing paintings by Charles Sheeler known as the "Power Series". Sheeler made the paintings on commission for Fortune magazine in the late 1930's to celebrate mankind's attempts to harness nature. The images are of an old-fashioned waterwheel, a coal shovel, a steam turbine, a hydroelectric power turbine, an airplane propeller, the wheels of a locomotive, and electrical power transmission towers at Boulder Dam.

Sheeler referred to himself as a "Precisionist". His paintings show no brush strokes, and are closely related to his photographs. They are completely unlike my own artistic tastes, and yet I've always been fond of them. This piece is owned by the Dallas Museum of Art, and always holds my attention:



As the daughter of engineers I visited construction sites, industrial plants, hydroelectric dams, and noteworthy architectural sites as a child. I was well aware of the construction of Interstate 80 across Nebraska. The highlight of any trip to McCook, Nebraska, with the Interstate construction detours, was a visit to the bridge over the railroad tracks at the train station. Watching trains pass beneath the bridge was as much fun for me as it was for Harry the Dirty Dog, by Gene Zion and Margaret Bloy Graham. I thank the Out of Lascaux blogger for these images of Sheeler's paintings.



Now it's time for a different Power collection, painted by a five-year-old boy. Here are two tempera paintings from Sam's "Three Machines" series. How terrific that his concepts of machines include both grid structures and radiating energy!

Family resemblance

"Who are those cowboys on the refrigerator?," my middle son asked. "I look so much like that guy in the middle."

That guy in the middle is Ben Kilpatrick, a member of the Wild Bunch. My son figured the cowboys were ancestors, not the Hole in the Wall Gang.

I always count Butch and the Kid as family even if they never write or send Christmas snapshots. I first met them at my grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary in McCook, Nebraska. They were showing downtown at the picture show about thirty-six years ago. An assortment of young cousins went to see them, and my life has never been the same. It is still my all-time favorite movie.

My middle son is much like Butch. He's affable and generous and just keeps thinking. My youngest son is Sundance, the handsome sharpshooter. My oldest is most like the "colorful" miner played by Percy Garris. For nearly thirty-five years I have imagined myself as Etta Place, even though lately I've been more likely to be cast as Ma Barker.

Someday when I'm rich I plan to visit Bolivia.

Tea for the Tillerman

A dear teacher/friend gave me a darling pin to wear at Easter. It is an embroidered version of a sugar egg. Yellow and green lazy-daisy stitches and pearl beads on white felt capture the look of the icing flowers on a sugar egg. Blanket stitch holds the two pieces of felt together, with a tiny bit of stuffing in between, and looks perfect as the icing holding the two halves of a sugar egg together.

My friend didn't know that I had real life experience making hollow sugar eggs with little bunny scenes inside. It was thirty-two years ago, but still a special time in my life, and with lessons in patience and respecting others' surprising abilities.



As a high school student in the early Seventies, wearing white kneesocks with my Dr. Scholl sandals and mini-peasant dresses, I belonged to the First Plymouth Congregational UCC Church choir. That is a miracle in itself, because I can't sing worth diddly. Our choir was directed by a wonderful, positive organist and composer, C. Richard Morris, who personified acceptance and the word "enthusiasm", Greek--to be inspired by a god, or a god within. He managed to take us on two choir tours in the Aprils of 1971 and 1972. We traveled by bus around Nebraska to small town and country churches in Ainsworth, Thedford, Hyannis, Scottsbluff, Grant, Curtis, McCook, and Hastings, among others. These were educational trips for snobby kids from the Big City of Lincoln, Nebraska. We stayed in church family homes, or spread sleeping bags in Fellowship Halls. We met and flirted with farm kids, and took travelogue rides through the sandhills in rancher pickups and big family sedans. We ate cold fried chicken, hot tuna noodle casserole, and molded marshmallow jello in church basements. I was introduced to hot roast beef sandwiches with Wonder Bread, mashed potatoes, and gravy somewhere in the Halsey National Forest. We sang songs from "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" and "Jesus Christ Superstar", an anthem from a Walt Whitman poem, "A Jubilant Song", another called "Our God is a Rock", that Palm Sunday "Ride On in Majesty" hymn , and a song for children about a hat with three corners. Back on the bus, being teenagers, we told jokes, exclaimed about the plentiful cows, played cards, had imaginary races between sports cars and the bus, ate Salted Nut Rolls, and snuck out the cherry cigars. It was a primitive time without cd players or Gameboys, you understand. I celebrated my sixteenth birthday on one of these wonderful road trips.

The choir earned money for the trips with the usual assortment of high school fundraisers. We also got together many Saturdays to make sugar Easter eggs. One mom taught us this tricky process. We struggled with the timing to bake the sugar mix in the molds. We commiserated with each other when our hollowed egg shells collapsed. We brainstormed goofy scenes to put inside the sugar eggs, and tried to perfect our skill with fancy icing. I'll never forget watching seventeen-year old guys in motorcycle jackets, reeking of Irish Spring soap, and totally focused on creating frosting roses, accompanied by the songs of Cat Stevens!

Here is a webpage with instructions for making sugar eggs:

http://www.post-gazette.com/food/20010405eggs3.asp