Time Well Spent

Art day in grade school was so much fun. I looked forward to it all week and could barely contain my excitement through morning lessons. Throughout lunch, I’d mull what we’d create when the teacher told us to clear desks for art. My favorite activity was painting, but coloring, gluing, forming clay, whatever hands-on mess making was a hit as far as I was concerned. Art time meant dabbling, creating, and chatting with nearby classmates. What could make it better?

Well, as an adult, I have an answer. Sip or snack and paint class for grownups. The sponsoring artist provides the easel, paint, brushes, and canvas, while students bring beverages and treats.

Several area artists have discovered they live in communities filled with wannabe Picassos. They’ve learned they can offer classes several times a month and teach others to enjoy capturing a scene on canvas. Friends even plan birthday parties and showers involving such activities.

I’ve attended sessions in different area towns and enjoyed every one. In the hours leading up to class, I build the same anticipation that kept me on the edge of my grade school seat. My mind rehearses familiar questions: what are we going to paint, will it be hard, how can I avoid a mess, who’s going to sit nearby, will I like the finished product? Some personality traits never go away, and these have remained mine for decades, even those where I never touched a brush.

No matter whose class you take, teachers understand student limitations and the old adage that nothing succeeds like success. Every course I’ve seen advertised has a great picture for students to paint. Sometimes they focus on scenes involving trees, clouds, sunflowers, water, or farmsteads. Holidays offer options from pumpkins and black cats to big-eyed owls to trees silhouetted against a haunting full moon. Thanksgiving scenes involve everything from autumn leaves to jolly turkeys. My favorite’s Christmas snow men. These whimsical characters might be skating, sledding, trimming trees or even standing on their heads. I enjoy such charming and colorful scenes so much I could paint them year-round.

I credit instructors with setting up the perfect get together. By the time we “artistes” arrive, they’ve arranged plastic protected tables, canvas on easels, paint brushes, Styrofoam plate palettes, and paper towels for messy pupils. They’ve finished at least one if not more demonstration pieces that model what the end result’ll look like if students follow directions. It’s fun to listen to everyone’s remarks as they anticipate the task before them.

It’s interesting how a special energy happens when creative spirits unwind and loaded brushes starting slapping canvas. When colors fill in forms and designs take shape, everyone relaxes. Breathing slows as folks capture key elements of the painting. As participants relax, stories and laughter emerge, adding to a perfect event.

Thank goodness, local artists invite dabblers into their studios and offer opportunities to rediscover joys found in grade school art class. For some, this’ll be their only painting experience, for others this is aspringboard to more advanced skills. Regardless, it’s time well spent.

Out of the Comfort Zone—or Joining the Local Christmas Cantata

I grew up in mostly metropolitan areas. To give you an idea of what that means, my high school graduating class included over 1000 students. In that world, youngsters don’t participate in every program that interests them because competition is stiff and resources are limited. While cities offer exclusive options, small towns require inhabitants to survive outside comfort zones.

During my school years, I played competitive sports, but I never participated in a music program. Yep, I was a BAD singer. This meant I never experienced the effort and cooperation it takes to produce a musical extravaganza. After contributing to my small town’s Christmas cantata as a narrator, I realize performers as well as audiences enjoy unexpected blessings. Individuals experience life more fully because they participate. They discover they’re necessary to the group’s success even though they aren’t as good as they wish they were.

I learned this early in my teaching career. Every student had to play sports and join music so our 1-A school could field teams or have a band. I know there were students who sang every bit as badly as I do, but they got better because they had to. How do I know? Because I coached youngsters who weren’t natural athletes, I learned that by the time they played several games, everyone mastered skills enough to contribute. This also rings true for those joining small town Christmas presentations.

Our director’s a wife, mother, and businessperson who serves along with her mother-in-law every year to extract maximum ability from locals willing to involve themselves in the project. She directs both bell choir and singers who perform beautifully year after year. I still can’t sing, so she and the choir invite me to narrate each holy season.

Since I never enjoyed such experiences growing up, I’ve learned much. Putting on a program requires tremendous effort and commitment. Volunteers leave dishes in the sink to practice for months prior to the final performance. Bell choir members concentrate and replay pieces until they function as a single musical unit. To complicate matters, each plays at least two differently toned bells in every song. It would be difficult to learn one new tune, but this group masters many.

A variety of our community members make up the choir. Young and seasoned-- from students to house wives to farmers to professionals, they gather  starting in early autumn to polish infrequently used skills. Seeing these folks uptown, who’d guess they are sopranos, altos, tenors, and baritones gifted enough to solo. From the narrator’s podium, I watch neighbors evolve from tentative, shy performers to confident, bold professionals who lift audience hearts on performance night.

If I didn’t live in the hinterlands of Kansas, I’d never have worked with so many dedicated fellow residents to produce a celebration not only of Christmas, but also of the best small towns offer. Anyone willing to participate belongs.

Summer Fun at Vacation Bible School

 As a kid, I loved going to Vacation Bible School. Even as a four-year-old, I could tell the day’s structure was perfect to educate a youngster. Children, teachers, helpers, and leaders gathered in the sanctuary to begin the session with prayer, music, and a chance to plunk coins noisily into a metal offering plate. At that age, I didn’t appreciate the time grown-up leaders spent organizing classes, activities, and snacks.

Back then, it seemed like everything just happened. It never occurred to me our music teacher not only had to play the piano, he or she had to keep track of what songs students had sung  the past few years of VBS and select new ones.

 As we marched into crafts, I never stopped to think that our teacher had to come up with age appropriate and inexpensive projects for at least four classes. That individual also had to make sure the activities weren’t repeats of past years and that they were difficult enough to challenge older youngsters but easy enough that little ones didn’t end up with glue and cotton balls in their hair and up their noses.

Those who taught Bible stories didn’t have to worry so much about repeating the story as they did about what a three-year-old can do compared to a fifth grader. Ten-year-olds can interact with the actual lesson much better than those little ones! Questions big kids ask usually have something to do with the message. That isn’t necessarily true in the toddler session where stories of cats, dogs, bugs, and other subjects can derail the teacher’s original topic.

Our recreation coaches made similar adjustments. What engages a big kid is usually different from what entertains a tyke. If a little one can’t pull the trigger on the squirt gun, the water games won’t be fun. Twenty minutes take forever if activities don’t match interests and abilities. When they do, times zips by.

With all this play and studying, participants needed an energy boost—just the job for the snack committee. After townspeople donate goodies, the kitchen crew manages those twenty-minute shifts with military precision. They prepare, serve, and clean while navigating around energetic little ones.   

Just as they did when I was a kid, church communities still unite each summer to offer local children a chance to learn about God while having a glorious time. To get momentum going, someone volunteers to organize the whole shebang. This person usually manages a home and day job in addition to picking VBS curriculum, finding helpers, ordering materials, and setting dates. Remember, this event takes place in the summer so that means coordinators work around vacations, fairs, and ball games.

In modern times as well as the past, little ones entertain and inspire grandparents, parents, and neighbors with energetic songs and memorized Bible verses in the final program. That short presentation lasts about as long as it takes to eat Thanksgiving dinner and reminds VBS staff that their jobs are important. Like that famed holiday dinner, VBS requires hours of planning and effort before everyone enjoys the outcome.

Gatherin’ Place

Some people like cities. They like the anonymity of blending into a crowd. They like choosing where to shop, dine, and have fun. Being unknown to a server is a relief rather than a blessing. For these folks, the intimacy of living in a small town where everyone knows your name and your business is too personal. On the other hand, there are people like me who love going into a local eatery where the wait staff knows my name and what I’m going to order. These establishments are the heartbeat of tiny towns.

In the same way that local schools weave together the warp and weft of a community , the local gatherin’ place—coffee shop—hometown restaurant-- links people’s lives like a quilter stitching one block to another or tying the top to the lining. It creates beauty and stability. Comings and goings at the local java stop establish a rhythm that outsiders soon learn so they too can join the club.

Area residents gather before hitting the office, their fields, or pastures. It’s good to down a cup or two of coffee while checking in with neighbors. It’s site for a mid-morning Bible study to gather.  It’s a place the Lions, Rotary, and Kiwanis meet, share a meal, and settle business in the middle of the day. It’s a interlude in a long afternoon.

In a world overtaken by impersonal connections these informal assemblies warm the belly and the heart as individuals look one another in the eye and ask, “What’s going on?” Then they listen. It’s sometimes the first place a person hears that someone needs help and arranges to offer aid. Somehow, it’s more powerful than reading a post on a phone or computer screen.

It’s a good place to hear who’s getting married or who had a baby, even before the preacher announces it from the pulpit or the local paper runs the article. You might find out whose heart is breaking so you can offer a meal or a kind word. People long out of the classroom and off the sporting field keep up with area youngsters’ successes. Some might say it’s gossip. I like to think it's connectedness.

Since I work, I forget how pleasant it is to join a kaffee klatch. This weekend I got  reminded how this daily ritual makes a person feel like he or she belongs. I returned to Ellis to meet a couple of friends for breakfast and a quick catch up. In Hays, we would have been anonymous. In that little town where I lived for thirty-six years, I knew everyone in the café.

A former student came to our table to introduce his little brother and girlfriend, telling them we were his former teachers. A past school board member dropped by to say hey, a neighbor from our newly wed year updated me on her life. It had been decades since we shared the same block, but we cared about what was going on in one another’s lives. It was wonderful to connect with folks who enrich my life.

It was a blessing the way that little visit reminded me that I still belonged even though I have a new address and new place to lift a cup. These little establishments are a hidden pleasure of small town living. Put this stop on your bucket list.

An Unlikely House Call

City dwellers take for granted easy access to all sorts of services.  With strip malls in urban areas sprouting like weeds in a wet summer, finding a groomer and pet care is as easy as taking a drive around a section is for me. During that four mile drive in a city, people have to choose which business to patronize.  In small prairie towns on two-lane highways where customers are in short supply, it requires ingenuity to meet people’s needs and make a living at the same time—that’s how a groomer who makes house calls came to be.

When we first moved to a small town bordering Highway 9, I figured I’d continue to drive our shih tzu- mix beast to his regular hair care professional. That wasn’t a serious problem because this kind woman understood Dudley’s issues about having his hobbit-like feet touched, his mouth shaved, and his ears cleaned, but it was long drive in bad weather.

 If you miss your appointment at  a good groomer, you wait until your next one for relief.  As winter-weather advisories began appearing on the radar, concern prompted me to see what was available in my new home town before I had to deal with a dog with dreadlock fuzz.

My investigation revealed an inventive neighbor in a nearby community .  This pet loving woman devised a mobile grooming palace using an old delivery vehicle—the kind with a passenger door like a school bus for easy entry with a pet in arms.  Inside, she has lighting, a water supply and large tub for bathing dogs, a grooming table, generator-driven blow dryers, shears and clippers, as well as a high tech nail file. 

You make your appointment, she shows up in your drive, picks up your furry critter, and returns him in less than two hours, clean and sleekly groomed—in Dudley’s case, feeling soft as an old-fashioned chenille bedspread.  I expected to continue to drive an hour to my previous groomer in rain, snow, and ice rather than suffer through his knots and tangles.  Then a little word of mouth advertising clued me into this gypsy-wagon inspired business.  

This canine stylist travels to each small town in our region at least once a month, making sure rural pets look as spiffy as any big city dog.  She goes several times a month to larger towns like Norton and less often to smaller communities.  She also grooms out of her home and provides boarding services for folks who don’t want to travel with their pets

Obviously, when someone parks a big vehicle bearing a Groomingdale’s sign in your small town driveway, there’s no secrecy about your pet’s appearance.  “Saw the dog lady at your house today,” comments everyone you see.  It’s embarrassing to admit you can’t shear your own pet, but it’s true.  I’m afraid I’ll hurt Dudley while trimming around his mouth, eyes, ears, and . . . the other end. 

 Another reason the groomer’s name is on speed dial is because friends  and family accused me of using a blender to cut our golden retriever’s hair every summer when he was still alive.  Even Tucker was ashamed to reveal himself in public until his hair grew out enough to hide the bald and uneven spots.

As long as this clever businesswoman is willing to make house calls to bathe and trim our fur ball at a reasonable price, she’ll have our business.   Dudley’s grateful too.