I'm wearing my flamingo Airstream trailer pajamas as I write this. They're aqua with puff of snow, red scarves flying from the pink flamingo's while lights outline the Airstream's door and windows.

When I was a girl, our Christmas--like everything else in our family life--was do-it-ourselves from tree to treats to gifts.

We cut our tree up on the pine rows of Evergreen Heights, our family land. Finding the right tree was a highlight of the season. We were good stewards, and cut a scraggly tree to give space so the other trees would grow better. If it'd snowed, we pulled our tree back on one of our sleds. Back home a heavy duty metal stand supported our tree. Daddy drilled holes in the tree trunk and added branches to fill out our skinny tree.

My parents hid presents all over the house in odd places. When we scoured the house in search of them, they just found harder places. My brother Gary and sister Julia huddled in twos and threes conspiring what to give each other and our parents. That remains my favorite Christmas memory.

We opened gifts Christmas Eve. Uncle Ralph (my favorite uncle) and Aunt Dorothy (my least favorite aunt) joined us for the evening. They didn't have kids, so we gave them a whiff of having youngsters around at Christmas time.

We ate a light waffle supper in the dining room, then carefully opened presents in the living room. Mother brought out the Christmas cookies as refreshments halfway through.

Opening presents was ceremonial and thoughtful--often filled with humor. Each of us took turns being Elves. We couldn't pick our own presents. The person receiving the present then became an Elf. This way of presenting the presents and slowly enjoying them and thanking the giver slowed down the process and imbued it with meaning.

One year we gave Daddy seven pairs of cotton work socks--each wrapped separately. He opened the first package and said thank you. Then, when the second parcel came his way he caught on and said, "Oh! These are my Tuesday Socks." And, on it went until he got to his Sunday socks--dress socks for church.

We made a convivial social evening of it. Gary came up with the idea of attaching a string to one of the branches so we could include larger presents that wouldn't fit under the tree. He made box rabbit traps one year. The string led down to the workshop. We all followed and suitably admired them.

We didn't have that many presents, and none of them were expensive. It wasn't about the presents; it was about being together. Most gifts were home made, which I still love. The gift of a poem carefully presented, a coupon to plant hyacinths in the Spring, a booklet made with clippings from a magazine. Well into her adulthood my sister Julia was an ace at giving gifts that cost absolutely nothing. The intimate gift of being known animated our exchanges.

Last year I invented a gift for my friend Grace Madison (in her 80s): The Order of the Golden Rolling Pin. She's an ace baker. I made a certificate inducting her into the order and then painted a toy rolling pin gold to go with it. Her son presented it to her on Christmas. In the photo he sent, everyone looks happy. For an investment of $3.00 it touched a whole family and will give Grace a giggle afterward. She's one of my Women of Inspiration.

For my father's 95th birthday last year I created the Second Mild Award and the companion Women of Inspiration Award. My niece Janean Baird gave a gift of love when she made beautiful certificates for both. Her work multiplied significantly to touch the lives of people we didn't know. The certificates are beautiful, and infused with Janean's care, talent, and skill. Making these certificates cost her little in cash, but represented hundreds of dollars of in-kind contribution.

This year I found out that my brother likes ginger beer. So, I'm giving him a gallon bottle of it tucked inside a "Kudos" bag with a note that says how much I love him and value all that he does.

I discovered that my niece Diane likes Golden Sultana raisins. I stuffed a quart mason jar with them and slid it underneath our African Violet Tree that Daddy made.

For the girls, I've wrapped cloth that holds memories of Grammy Julia. Each is wrapped separately paired with a little story.

Truly, I believe that it's the thought that counts--carried out with a little panache.

My father Erwin Thompson--musician and raconteur-- tells this true story of old-fashioned square-dance music--when it was just music.
Janet
__________

There was this fiddler back some years ago who was learning. He had one piece that he played quite well, but it was a struggle for him to learn. He hadn't gotten around to learning any more.

The neighborhood was well aware of his abilities and limitations. When he went to a dance, he always took his fiddle and some time in the evening he would play his one piece, "The Gray Eagle."

All went well until one fatal evening when he was the ONLY FIDDLER THERE!

So he played "The Gray Eagle."

Everybody knew his situation. When they were getting plans for what to play for the next square dance of the evening, they would discuss all of the various choices without anyone expecting him to play any of them. Then someone would come up with a great idea. "Why don't you play that Gray Eagle!"

The crowd would hail it as a great new idea and the fiddler would play "The Gray Eagle!"

Tact, and fitting courtesy and ingenuity into social situations that could have been embarrassing.

In her series of articles on Riehlife, Khadijah shares how she stays sane by encouraging and nurturing creativity in herself and her children. Read about her life in Yemen at her blog Yemeni Journey.

Khadijah is a transplant from Wisconsin's Kickapoo Valley. She's lived in Yemen for almost nine years with her husband and eight children.

#1 "Creative Parenting: My Head Is Full of Poems."

#2 Creative Parenting: Poverty as Creative Catalyst

Now...here's number 3...

______________

Another Way of Seeing
by Khadijah Lacina

It seems a simple truth that for every lesson I teach my children, they teach me another, unique lesson. This was the case last week, as I sat typing at my computer as my six-year-old daughter. Maryam came into the room and started rummaging around for paper and pencil. I didn't ask her what she was doing, I simply ripped out a piece of notebook paper and gave it to her, along with something to draw with. As I continued typing, she put the paper on a hardcover book lay down on the floor on her stomach, knees bent, her feet waving in the air.

A few minutes later Mu'aadh, my eight-year-old son, knocked and entered my room. He tossed himself down on the couch and started humming to himself. Just as his tuneless humming was about to drive me batty, Maryam invited him to come and draw with her. He didn't commit himself, but sat down next to her and they began a whispered conversation that was much less annoying than his humming had been. I continued working as they talked, and soon I noticed Mu'aadh getting down the box of crayons and colored pencils from Grandma Gretchen.

“You have to draw the tree, it isn't right without the tree,” said Mu'aadh. More whispers, then, “You draw the tree if you want the tree.”

“Where's the red? I need the red.” The sound of fingers dragging through crayons. “Here, this is sort of red, or maybe sort of maroonish-peachish.” I paused, thinking, “Maroonish-peachish??” Not two colors I would have ever thought to associate with each other.

“You color that part, I'm coloring this part.”

“We can both color it, see?”

After a blessed half-an-hour or so, I was proudly presented with a drawing of our house. It was small, in the background, and indeed no tree had been placed where the tree in reality existed. The foreground of the picture was taken up with a riot of colors--reds, greens, blues. I searched for the “maroonish-peachish” but failed to find it. Not wanting to seem dense, I didn't ask what the colors represented.

Instead I looked at the picture from different angles. Then I had it. The beautiful jubilation of color in front of the house was the field of garbage where our neighbors all dumped their trash--brightly colored plastic bags, wrappers of all description, vegetable peelings, whatever they had to get rid of. This same field of trash had upset and annoyed me on and off for months. Yet Mu'aadh and Maryam had made it look pretty, almost like a field of flowers in full bloom.

Later, on the roof, I looked down on the garbage field. It still looked ugly to me. Then I thought of the children, and how they could see beauty in it, enough beauty that they felt they had to put it to paper. Always willing to learn a lesson and nurture my inner child, I scrunched up my eyes a bit, and looked again. Instead of looking at each individual piece of trash, I tried to let my mind see what Maryam and Mu'aadh had seen. In the end, I decided their picture was better than the field of garbage could ever look, but I was thankful for the reminder, gently given by my little ones, of the beauty that can be found in almost anything, if we take the time and make the effort to see it.

In her series of articles, Khadijah shares how she stays sane by encouraging and nurturing creativity in herself and her children. Read about her life in Yemen at her blog Yemeni Journey. In this post she tells about so many things dear to my heart. In my life, it's been the handmade presents made from everyday materials that have meant the most to me. We don't need to commodify crafts or creativity.

Khadijah is a transplant from Wisconsin's Kickapoo Valley. She's lived in Yemen for almost nine years with her husband and eight children.

--Janet

_________

Poverty as Creative Catalyst
by Khadijah Lacina

Every time I go on the internet, I am bombarded with images of things I “need” to have to enhance my creativity, to find the artist within...exotic yarns, expensive fabrics, little doo-dads and widgets and what-not that are necessary in order to make every project perfect. Quilt patterns calling for specific fabric from specific companies. Crochet patterns that rely on $20.00 a skein yarn. Crafts for children that require all sorts of specific paints and materials.

I couldn't afford these things in the States, and I can't afford them here in Yemen- even if they were available.

So what do people who don't have stellar craft budgets do?

Here's an example. A few days ago the children decided to make some paper chains to decorate the house for the upcoming Eid celebration. You know, the ones you made in school out of construction paper and white glue. Thing is, I have yet to even see construction paper in Yemen, and if I did find it, I doubt if such a luxury item would fit into our budget. Sukhailah told me what they wanted to do, and why they couldn't do it.

“Why not make your own colored paper?” I asked. She immediately understood, and the children spent an hour or so on the floor with old waxy crayons, coloring both sides of white printer paper. They even mixed colors and made “variegated” as Mu'aadh said. Then they cut out their strips, and made their beautiful multi-colored paper chains to hang up in every room.

Another example. A friend left us a bunch of quilting magazines when she moved to Egypt. At first, paging through them, the girls became disheartened, as they saw the intricate patterns calling for very specific cloth and colors to make them work. All we have is a motley collection of fabrics given to us over the last few years- certainly nothing that was meant to go together like the patterns in these magazines called for.

I hauled the bag out, though, and told them to pick out a pattern that they liked. I picked one out as well. Then we sorted through the different sizes and colors of cloth, until we came up with our own color schemes. Then we altered the patterns to fit what we had on hand.

The results are very satisfying, thank you. As we did it, I told them that this was the heart of quilting before it became an “art” form- and in a way, it took a lot more work doing it our way than just getting a pattern and heading off to the fabric store.

And so it goes on. We make gifts for each other out of whatever we have on hand--dolls for the girls, a cardboard box dresser for doll clothes, brightly colored rayon fabric for draw string bags, an old drink jar decorated to make a pencil holder, coloring books drawn by hand and photocopied...the list goes on.

And, as with their multi-hued paper chains, the end results are incredibly, undeniably, totally without compromise, ours. And that's what makes it all worth it!

In this series of articles, she will show you how she stays sane by encouraging and nurturing creativity in herself and her children. Read about her life in Yemen at her blog Yemeni Journey.

MY HEAD IS FULL OF POEMS

So stated my six year old daughter the morning after we began spending an hour or more each evening together, writing, drawing, laughing and sharing. The night before I had taken out two old calenders and shown them two pictures- one of moonlight on a river near my old college campus, and another of a mother and colt outside an old red barn. “Write”, I told them. “Write not only what you see, but write what you feel. Write your heart, and that's a poem.”

I realize that poetry teachers all over the world would shake their head at this definition, but my children, ages 5, 8, 10, 13, 16, and 17 (little Asmaa, who is one, simply colored her poetry onto paper, and my eldest is out of the house already) understood exactly what I meant. I gave them each a special notebook for their creations, and put crayons, markers, colored pencils and pens all in a big joyous heap on the floor for them. “Color your poems- make your words speak with more than one voice.”

it is spring

a new baby colt

born

a weavy, windy day

early morning

by his mother

big red barn

blue sky above

trees blossom

picture of spring

-Maryam, age 6

The next night I show them a picture of fireworks shouting joyfully into the sky in Colonial Williamsburg. “Don't just be an observer,” I tell them. “Experience it, and make us experience it too.” Sukhailah, my 17 year old, made her poem in the shape of fireworks bursting into the sky, and colored it with bold, bright colors.

colors shoot through midnight sky

red white yellow green

I look out a clear glass window

fireworks in the night

-Mu'aadh, age 8

Here I go, flying high

splashing light into the sky

toss my arms, with a pop and roar

I've never had such fun before

light me, throw me, into the sky

watch me flying! Soaring high!

With an explosion gay and bright

remind you of the long hard fight

between the British and Americans here

in fact, in a spot you'll find quite near

Here I jump to the sky again

me and my friends in groups of ten

-Juwairiyah, age 13

The next night I wanted to try something different. Alongside our poetry pictures, I again put out the fireworks picture and the moon on the water picture, and I told them to color them- not to draw them, but color them- not as they saw them, but as how they felt them. Or, they could write about one of the new pictures I had chosen. I was surprised, as I often am with these children- my eldest daughter colored a beautiful picture, and my six year old went with words again. I had thought it would be the other way around.

Another night I told them to use all their senses to describe something. “Don't rely on the obvious sense,” I told them. “Like taste for an orange, or sight for the moon. We don't experience life with one sense- write life on your paper.”

sunshine taste melts in the air

I gulp it in, laughing, leaping

sunshine fills me

smooth vanilla pudding

forgotten on the counter

happy like a giggle...

-Sukhailah, age 17

And so our nightly ritual continues, as I continue to strive to teach my children to not just live life, but to experience it fully. To help them to see with their hearts as well as their eyes and minds. To know the beauty inherent in every day, as well as in the wild and chaotic universe around them. To respect and honor the world they live in, and to live in it consciously, with all of their senses.

Sound good to you? Come along, and we'll take you for the ride!

Another prime example of generosity paying off is my relationship with the men from the water company. Our work often overlapped. Sometimes when we dug a hole for a gas leak we found a water leak, also. And vice verse. We often traded favors, not even trying to keep track of the things we did or received.

One time they had a really unusual job. They seemed to be perplexed, so I went over to see what their trouble might be. I looked at the victim, and suggested that we try to thread the pipe. It was not a simple case. The thread needed to be cut on the end of the pipe with no room for the conventional die which had a sleeve to ensure that the die would "take" properly. I heard one of the crew say: "That old man is crazy!"

But I wasn't. There is a way of taking the cutting part of the dies out and reversing them so that the thread was cut from the open side of the dies. I showed them, and it worked.

Sometime later we were working high pressure on Broadway. The background for this was that I had tried to get our company to stock clamps for three quarter pipe with no positive results. The answer I got was that if a pipe that size leaked, it needed to be renewed. This was undisputed fact, but sometimes....

So.This was the day.

Chub was digging out the tap hole, and a big chunk of hard dirt came loose along with a big chunk of three-quarter inch pipe.The hard dirt was caused be leaking gas. The obvious thing to do was to tell the customer that we would have to shut off their gas and repair the pipe temporarily until we could renew it.

It turned out that the customer was a potato chip factory. They said if we shut off their gas, it would spoil the whole batch of material they were cooking. They estimated the cost at seven hundred dollars. I was between a rock and a hard place!

As I was trying to figure out an answer to this seemingly impossible problem I caught sight of a water company truck a block down the street. I told the men to just keep everybody away from the hole and I took out on a run for the water company truck, I knew they used three quarter-inch clamps. I just hoped that this truck would have one.

It turned out to be Curt Bridgman, an old timer that I had worked with many times. I used what breath I had to say: "Give me a three quarter inch clamp!"

Curt reached in his bin and came out with a three-quarter inch clamp. I took it back and installed it.

My case was made.The management ordered three-quarter inch clamps, and we used several bushels of them in the following years.

*** *** ***

Another interesting experience was my negotiating for the purchase of a hay wagon from Harold Schulte. He had been putting up the hay from our field for several years. So he decided to retire from that chore. Since he no longer needed the wagon and I did, I undertook to buy it from him.

I offered him fifty dollars for it. He said he had planned to ask me twenty-five. So we settled for thirty seven fifty. [Janet: An example of "reverse bargaining!]

I still have the vehicle. We have re-enforced it several places, but it has stood the test of time and use. Solid as the man I bought it from.

*** *** ***

I had a good relationship with my foreman at the gas company. Dewey Payne trusted me to do what needed doing. Sometimes it did not fall completely within the scope of our specifications, but getting the customer back working was really the basic aim. Sometimes there was a conflict with strict regulations.

One day Dewey said to me: "Erwin, there is a big mess with the pipes, down at Mama Mia's Pizza Place. Go down there and fix it!"

So I did. It was not in accordance with a new rule that had just come out, but it followed the practice that we had been following for the last thirty years. When we got done the proprietress made us the best pizza that I have ever had--on the house!

One day my helper, Cal Lebegue, needed to go downtown during business hours and sign some papers. I happened to be in the foreman's office when he asked Dewey for the time off.

If I hadn't known the man, I would have thought that he was mad, but he wasn't. He looked at Cal.

"You're on a truck, aren't you?" Cal, thoroughly confused, agreed that he was. "I don't even want to know about it!" Dewey told him.

*** *** ***

I never heard Dewey laugh in the years that I knew him, but I clearly remember seeing him smile, twice.

He was the foreman, "the boss." I was the union steward. Traditionally, this was a contentious relationship. Or, the other way it worked sometimes, the steward was wanting to be agreeable so that he might get some personal advantage. But if he had a problem with a man he would talk to me about it, and we would find a workable solution.

One evening, he said he had a problem, so I waited until the other fitters had their business of the day completed and prepared to listen. He said he had this man that none of the features wanted to have on their crew. I'd had the man on my crew before, and never had any trouble. The solution seemed simple to me. So I said: "Give him to me. I never had any trouble with him."

I thought for a moment that Dewey might laugh, but he smiled--one of the two smiles that I remember.

"What do you think you've got now, but two men that nobody else wants to work?"

Well, it had been awhile since either of my two men had worked for another fitter. We picked the one that we thought would be the most likely to succeed and made the trade. It worked.

The other time I saw Dewey smile was the case of a service man who did not want to work the after hour call-outs. Usually this was work that the men fought over, because it paid good money. But for some reason Clarence did not want to work them. This was his right, but the contract stated that he had to be asked, and turn the assignment down before the foreman could go on and ask the next man in line. Well, getting called up at midnight simply to fulfill the contract requirements was almost as bad as working the call-out. But Dewey was caught with the requirements of the contract, which he faithfully tried to follow. What to do? Clarence was quite outspoken about not wanting to be disturbed.

I told Dewey the story of the Christmas Eve Mouse. The household consisted of three people: the father, mother, and grown daughter. Following the custom of many people, they celebrated Christmas Eve with a bit of alcoholic cheer. The three glasses were left on the table.

Enter the Christmas Eve Mouse.

He sampled the leavings on the first glass. He smiled, smacked his lips and tried the second one. He frowned, looked around, and then tried the third one.From this one he straightened up, looked around angrily, and demanded: "Where is that cat!"

Dewey got the point. This was the one place where Clarence could make himself heard, and he was doing it.

The solution that we arrived at was that he signed a letter stating his position of not wanting to work overtime and relieved the management of the obligation of notifying him when the opportunity presented itself. This worked to the satisfaction of all concerned.

*** *** ***

I'm ninety-five years old. I've had a lot of fun, met some really great people, done some good turns, and have been the receiver of many helpful hands. Of course there are those who simply take. But really, they are in the minority. Not just for the practical results, but for the satisfaction I get out of it personally, I have found that "It pays to be generous."

*** *** ***

Sometimes it pays to be generous. (And as a personal reward, it is a pleasant way to live)

I have often seemed to be in a position of being where something that I could do would help some of my fellow humans.

The Good Book advises us to cast our bread upon the waters and it shall be returned to us. Not exactly a practical suggestion, but applying it to the opportunities that we are offered in our lives it is a very comfortable philosophy. And in many cases, it has actually been a practical one for me.

As we worked, doing our job for the gas company, we were often confronted with situations which could either be funny or aggravating, whichever way a person might choose to view them.

One shining example of this circumstance was the Bland Brothers. Sewer contractors were a fact of life to us at the gas company. They came and went. Some were careful and courteous, finding out where our lines and the water lines were located before they started. Others were very self centered, digging where they needed to dig to install their sewer and pretending that there was nothing in that particular area of earth to interfere. Our gas lines suffered.

Enter the Bland Brothers, fresh from Calhoun County. They were pleasant people, with their minds strictly on their job at hand. They tore up three gas service lines, the first day. Just the way that our work unraveled, I inherited the job of repairing all three of them.

Which I did. I tried to educate them about the hazards of city excavations. As it was, the damage simply amounted to repairing or replacing the damaged lines. The possibilities existed, however, of serious injury, massive property damage, or even death with some bad luck and/or bad handling.

I tried to really educate them to the different conditions from the ones that they were used to. It could have been a contentious situation, depending on the personalities of the people involved.

Fortunately we were able to communicate in a civilized manner, and it worked. I guess I was a good teacher, and certainly they were good students. They got the "feel" of putting their installations in between the existing lines without damaging those already in use.

This would have been good results and pay for the time, energy and patience I had given them, but the real pay off of their feelings came to light one totally miserable, rainy, cold day.

The background: Earlier that year, the sewer contractor had installed a sewer in a very wet area. To ensure the safety of the tile crew they had dug the ditch about three times as wide at the top. This was good for them, but surely bad for the gas lines.

The obvious, predictable result was that when the dirt settled, it took the gas lines along with it. Logically, this had to happen when it rained or snowed.

On a cold, miserable winter day, with rain falling enough to make things thoroughly miserable, we got a leak call for that area. Knowing the area, we almost knew what was the trouble. But not a simple case, necessarily. Could be the service line pulled out of the compression coupling at the tap, or broken at a coupling out under the street .

My foreman asked if I wanted a backhoe. I declined, as at that time our backhoes did not have a closed cab. The operator would have been thoroughly miserable by the time they got to the job, let alone whatever it took to actually find the leak and do the digging work. So. Just as we pulled up at where we figured the trouble was, here comes one of the Bland Boys with his backhoe. He was laughing.

"Where do you want the hole dug?" he asked me. Pay day.

See Part 2: "Sometimes it pays to be generous," tomorrow on Riehlife under our "Family Matters" category.

"Why Jelly Donuts Make Me Smile"
by Janean Baird

As Aunt Julia began doing more collaborative work throughout Illinois, her travels often brought her to my neck of the woods near the center of the state. As she passed through the corridor where I lived, she sometimes stayed for a night or stopped for a brief visit before getting back on the highway.

On one of these layover visits she was telling me about the seminar she had just attended at a nearby university. In passing she mentioned, "Oh, and there were these jelly donuts".

Her expression as she uttered the words, "jelly donuts" was one of pure appreciation and pleasure. As a woman with a weakness for chocolate myself, and knowing how healthy, healthy, healthy everything she ate, often choosing food in it's purest form straight from the earth, I was rather incredulous and amazed to find out she had a secret sugar obsession in the form of jelly donuts.

I never knew. In all my 30-some years. What a marvelous piece of information to discover about a woman that seemed so different from me, but was the same in ways were just beginning to discover before her untimely death.

Ironically, I've never been a jelly donut person. Glazed. Powdered. Apple fritter. Long john. Chocolate covered Bavarian Creme Filled. I haven't met too many donuts I didn't like. However, jelly has never held any appeal for me. I can resist them just fine. Even now that I know they were my Aunt Julia's Achilles Heel. She couldn't pass 'em up.

Ever since that shared moment with her, as we chatted about our days, jelly donuts make me think of her with a grin. So, the next time you pass a bakery case filled with delectable delightful donuts and you spy the ones with purple jelly ooze, I hope you'll think of her and grin.

If only I liked jelly donuts, I buy one and say aloud, as if in a toast to her, "This one's for you, Julia," before taking that first sugary sweet purple filled bite. Mmmmmmm, donuts.

So, doing the math, this August 16th is the 7th anniversary of her death. People around the world take time to honor the anniversaries of the death of people they love. As I do today.

Her grave is within a stone's throw of the Big Brown House--where my father grew up, where we grew up, where my father nursed his wife Ruth Thompson before her death, where he continues his days before his own passing.

I'm sitting upstairs in the room that was my sister's bedroom before she went off to college. I'm sitting here writing on a bed we sisters slept in and talked until we fell asleep. This is the bed where I wrote "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary" which traces the year following my sister's death--ending with the poem "Anniversary."

Her grave lies at the border of my mother's flower garden and our old horse pasture. Mother's garden is now mostly mowed back into lawn because we just can't keep up with the estate-size garden she kept up all those years. Where the horses once roamed there is now an overgrown hill. No fences anymore.

And, so, there Julia's grave sits; her stone inscribed simply "Beloved." And she was. Extremely beloved. Today I'll stroll down to her grave and have a chat with my sister who will never die in our hears.

To read more about my sister Julia Ann Thompson, here is the archive link on Riehlife.And, of course, you can use your search engine to find out more about her activities around the world in experimental physics and for social justice.

"On time, by God! Nine O'clock Sunday School"
by Erwin A. Thompson

I was born in 1915. When I was seven years old, we started going to the Melville Congregational Church. The "we" being my Uncle George Gibbens, his wife, Emma Riehl Gibbens, and myself.

Uncle George had gone to college to prepare to be a minister. But in his studies he had found warnings of potential divisions in the church. Shurtleff College, where he had attended, had insisted on ordaining him as a Baptist minister. Uncle George wanted to minister to anyone who wanted to be ministered unto. He refused the ordination.

But he devoted his life (in my opinion) to being a true Christian. Uncle Georg soon became the Sunday School Superintendent, and did a great job. As he got older he "slacked off" a bit, and helped younger people assume that responsibility. Eugene Huckstuhl became the Sunday School Superintendent.

The problem that I found was that instead of starting Sunday School at nine, the starting time seemed to get later each week.

This starting time was governed arbitrarily by the arrival of the piano player, who lived across the road. She was good. It seemed that everyone simply accepted her tardiness and adjusted their schedule to it.

I believe I was nineteen. Eugene liked to go to Florida in the winters. So. They had recently elected me to the doubtful honor of being Assistant Sunday School Superintendent. I determined that if Sunday School was supposed to start at nine o'clock, that is when it should start.

I had gone to grade school with Curt Sherman. He took the responsibility of building the fires.

Louis Veltjes played the piano. Not to the standards of Lydia Collins, but the old familiar hymns could easily be recognized.

The three of us got together and decided that Sunday School should start at nine. Curt built the fire, Louis at the piano, while I stood in the appropriate place to begin.

Reactions varied, depending on the people. Some told me (very nicely as a friend) that I was offending important people.

To give Lydia full credit, she came in late and sat out in the audience. I talked to her later and we came to a friendly agreement that we would start on time. Whenever she arrived, the pianists smoothly changed. It worked!

The rest of that winter, Sunday School started at nine.