Chapter 14
I Would Rather be Pregnant than President
After several phone calls from church members welcoming me home, I was anxious to see all my friends. As I put the phone down, my thoughts went back to the day we first joined the church.
Edna Garrels, a member of the local church, was relentless in her quest to have me working alongside her from the moment we arrived in Manson. Before my marriage I was the only one in my extended family who attended the Catholic Church regularly - every Sunday, for the 7.00am service. Although I was never christened a Roman Catholic, my stepmother insisted I attend her church.
Looking back, I think my participation in the church gave me a feeling of belonging in the community. Long after my joining the Congregational Church, the vice-president of the Women’s Fellowship moved to another State, and I was nominated for that chair. I suspected Edna’s influence inspired other members to make sure I would remain steadfast in my commitment. I was elected, but when it came time for me to move up into the president’s chair, I was pregnant. Our unborn child was sitting on a nerve on my right hip, preventing mobility and causing me considerable discomfort. I declined the nomination.
The next time the president’s chair became vacant I was nominated again - I was also pregnant again! ‘I would rather be pregnant than president’ became a popular expression, and when I was nominated for any other office, they would check first to see if I was pregnant. I refused to give them any guarantees!
Instead, I became chairperson of the funeral committee, a job I could handle from a sitting position by the telephone at home. It was a very important function of any community. We served those grieving for their loved ones, and helped take the burden off the family by feeding many from out of town and interstate attending the funeral. Any food remaining after the mourners had left was delivered to the bereaved family.
Incredibly, we witnessed thirteen funerals in the first seven months that I held office for that committee. Never before had so many members died in such a short time. “It is really weird that we have had that many funerals in seven months, and it happened after I took over the committee!” I was looking to Bill for consolation.
Bill thought I was over-dramatizing my powers, and laughed at the thought that I was eliminating the membership of the church. I was being a little paranoid, he said, when I contemplated quitting my position as chairperson.
In most small country towns, membership in any of the local churches offered not only spiritual guidance, but also a close kinship with townspeople and the surrounding farming community. Outside the home, the church also offered most of the family entertainment. I understood then, what it meant to be living in the Bible Belt of the
The annual Smorgasbord became so popular that the church basement could no longer hold the crowds, and we had to transfer the venue to the high school auditorium. People came from miles around, through snow and sleet, to attend this gourmets’ delight. Many of the church members were descendants of European stock, and offered their most treasured and unusual recipes. I could have offered a dish from Australia, but where would I find a lamb to slaughter in Iowa? Lamb was an acquired taste for beef lovers, and with my cooking expertise it was better that I didn’t offer a new dish to an otherwise proven menu. Besides, I may have been put in charge of the lamb dish, and then where would I have been? Up the creek without a paddle! I had enough on my plate.
Reverend Bond, our dedicated and energetic minister at that time, was not in favour of such an enterprise for raising money for the church. He was very outspoken about church commitment and believed that all church members should tithe. Robert Bond made known his thoughts at the annual meeting: “The Congregational Church will be known far and wide as The First Smorgasbord Church of Manson!”
It was the one big function of the year where the entire church membership worked together for weeks on their committees, in preparation for this lavish affair. Any church member owning an electric roaster was assigned the cooking of one twenty-five-pound (or larger) turkey. One year, a church member who had to go interstate because of a death in the family, arrived on my doorstep with her roaster and a turkey. “But I am already cooking a twenty-pound ham, and pies!” I frantically exclaimed. I was left standing at the door with a roaster at my feet and a cold turkey in my arms. My friend had no time to argue, as she had a plane to catch.
I had never cooked a turkey before, and made a frantic call to Edna. Laughing at my predicament, she offered directions on cooking said turkey and the recipe for the stuffing. “Whadya mean! I have to stuff it too?” She assured me that it wasn’t such a chore - I could do it!
The following day, after a restless night dreaming of having my head, shoulders and hands stuck inside a monster 300-pound turkey, and wallowing in a truckload of stuffing which was stopping me from breathing (not a pleasant sight!), I got out of bed at 3.30am. The thirty-pound turkey didn’t look quite the challenge after my dream. The turkey was in the roaster in the basement at 5.00am, while the ham was cooking in the kitchen oven. Luckily, I had baked the pecan pies the day before.
That was a frantic day! We didn’t own a car, and having to have turkey, ham and pies delivered to the high school on time required a phone call to another friend. Edna Reynolds was the generous person who collected Bill at the office first, then helped us deliver our food to the high school. I worked in the kitchen as waitress and dishwasher, while Bill helped keep the coffee urns going. We all finished cleaning up and went home very late, exhausted. It was estimated we served about 1,200 people.
I vowed that I would never invest in a portable electric roaster oven. As proud as I was of my roast turkey, I never wanted to ever cook a turkey again!
Bill and I took our turn at chairing the Sunday Supper Club, where we had to take only one casserole dish. That, I must admit, sounded like a paltry contribution after the Smorgasbord! It was a popular Sunday evening get-together-potluck-dinner for couples, and we had some fabulous meals. One of these gatherings that Bill and I often talk about in our many ‘remember when’ moments was the night we did everything in reverse. Our greeting was ‘goodnight’, and then we ate dessert, followed by the main course, followed by the appetizers. We also switched games around where the losers won.
On alternate Sundays, Bill and I always looked forward to being sponsors of the Pilgrim Fellowship group - a memorable group of teenagers. Bill also taught the senior young people’s class in Sunday school, while I joined the adult class during my pregnancies.
In 1958, Bill took on the task of producing the Christmas story on 8-millimeter film. He made one stipulation: all the children would be dressed in authentic costumes and not in bathrobes, with tea towels for their headgear. The women members took care of that problem with their sewing machines and a few bolts of inexpensive fabric. That film went into the archives for posterity.
During the summer, the school vacation was three months long. Most of the churches had bible school, for which the mothers were eternally grateful, as summer was an extremely busy time with vegetable gardens, bottling and canning. All this involved not only their homegrown produce, but also buying commercial cases of produce, as well as bushel baskets of peaches, apricots, pears and apples to process and store for the winter.
I felt like the squirrels in North America, collecting the nuts to store for winter. I had joined the frugal housewives and the squirrels of the community. The only bottled or canned product I ever bought off the grocery shelf was a large tin of pumpkin, when I was out of pumpkin in the freezer. I can remember paying nineteen cents for that can of pumpkin back in the ’50’s.
In Australia we ate pumpkin as a vegetable, just like squash. Although I learned to make sweet pumpkin pies, I could not quite relish the idea of eating pumpkin as a sweet. (Here was I, always bragging that I could eat anything, with or without a skin!) I did learn to eat pumpkin pie just to save face, and found I really loved it!
The churches rotated their programs so the children could go to other bible schools at other churches in town. When I started to teach bible school, I had two of our children in class. As the years progressed, I eventually had four of them attending. Ada Harman, a member of our congregation, was most generous with her time as our baby-sitter. My neighbour, Marion, filled the gaps when Ada wished to attend some of the church functions. We all worked so well together!
The phone rang again and brought me back home to my family once more.
No comments:
Post a Comment