Oh, what a blast from the past! When I pulled the 2009 – 2010 Aleppo Grange Subordinate Lecture’s Scrapbook off the shelf I was looking for an old photo to write about – one that would bring back memories and maybe some smiles from those of you reading here. What I found was a personal time capsule so potent it took my breath away. Page after page of photo collages with bright bold text, perfectly preserved in plastic sleeves, dialed the past back up to yesterday. Dutifully recorded and submitted to State Grange, this scrapbook tells the story of the pivotal grange year when Aleppo Grange 2054 joined forces with Harveys Grange and became Harveys Aleppo Grange 1444. This is also the year Chaplain Mae Richardson “was taken from us August 30, 2010 after a brief struggle with leukemia. She is sorely missed.” Her smiling face lights up her dedication page. Husband Lester is beside her; Margaret Moninger is too. I read the words that I wrote more than a dozen years ago and remember….
“Mae was an active and valued Granger friend and neighbor, always there to help, always willing to pitch in. A Marine, a mother of nine and a loyal member of her church, Mae gave life her all. This scrapbook was one of Mae’s favorite projects.”
Mine too. Lecturer Kay Harris was so busy helping out with her new grandbaby that year, she asked Mae and me to help her and we were happy to oblige.
I chose this photo collage to share because it captures us in action throughout that last perfect season of being Aleppo Grangers.
There’s Tom Ellsworth in the kitchen, pushing cooked apples through the grinder and Walter McDowell is scooping the apples out of their broth for Tom to grind. Gallon ice cream buckets of sauce will be needed to make apple butter in a copper kettle over the fire for Arts in the Park 2009 at Ryerson Station State Park. New manager Alan Johnson was sure glad to find us keeping history alive at when he arrived! The grange had been volunteering for ten years with last manager Jeff Anna to make this a fall destination weekend. When Duke Lake was lost on July 28, 2005 after its dam fractured during nearby long wall mining operations, the grange and the festival carried on, making apple butter and selling cabbage and noodles to pay our bills. (What made our cabbage and noodles a sellout item? I asked Lorraine Keenan one day in the kitchen as we chopped cabbage then chopped some more. “Butter!”)
When undermining in 2009 cracked the walls of the old general store that was our grange hall at the crossroads of Aleppo Road and State Route 21, we considered our options, accepted the settlement offered and prepared to join with Harveys Grange in Graysville. With the new contract for continuing the festival tradition assured, Aleppo Grange members joined the new Friends of Ryerson group and our Treasurer Carol Stein became chairman of the new board. The Friends tried out some new events—a Halloween costume parade, some more good eating at the January 2010 Winterfest Chili Cook Off, an afternoon of fly tying with Ken Dufalla in July as the public came to remember having a lake and learn more about the park’s plans going forward. Public turnout told us we were on the right path.
There were loose ends to be tied up as Aleppo Grange prepared its exit. There’s Mae Richardson, beaming as she holds up a donated pair of rocking blue velour pants at the Dollar a Bag – All you can stuff in! – Store she set up every Pantry Day. This is the day we all turned out to help. Hershel Moore and Lea Gray were two of our most reliable volunteers; Hershel wasn’t one to let his oxygen bottle slow him down. Our ten years of being a Corner Cupboard food pantry site serving at least 80 local families was passed on to the still viable church building next door. Some members stayed on as volunteers; as RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteer Program) coordinator, I would continue counting the hours that volunteers 55 and older contributed to this Federal program. Nellie Tustin’s daughter Candace Webster would grow up to be director of today’s Corner Cupboard Food Bank on Rolling Meadows Road, Waynesburg, overseeing pantries throughout the county that serve so many families.
In October 2009 we supported the Womens Center for a tenth year during Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Our public meeting lecturer program discussed what was being reported locally and what could be done about it through education and the law. Since we had no shelter of our own, our gift basket of toiletries, diapers, clothing, toys and cash would go to Greene County families displaced and living in the Womens Center shelter in Washington County.
The official Grange year ends with the September harvest and all good deeds and resolutions are reported and acted on at every State Session in October. Our scrapbook wrapped things up with the happy news that Harveys Aleppo Grange #1444 was now official and I got busy painting the backdrop that would tie our grange exhibits together at the Jacktown and Greene County fairs.
That backdrop behind me as I write up yet another grange activity on my laptop is now stashed in my barn, a visual history of my years as a granger with talent to share.
When I became a VISTA worker in the 1980s going door to door asking neighbors what they needed, I was encouraged to join a local organization with deep cultural roots to network with.
Mrs. Helen Dinsmore, one of the perennial volunteers who took what was submitted for judging in the exhibit hall of the Greene County Fair, gave me my best lead.
“You should join the Grange,” she told me looking at the big acrylic painting of the Greene County hills I’d done that year.
So I did.
When I brought in my art to be judged the next year, I thanked Mrs. Dinsmore for encouraging me to join the Grange. My first grange exhibit backdrop on a four by eight foot sheet of plywood was hung and all the attributes of country living were arranged on the steps below. We grangers worked for hours to get it right. There were other grange exhibits stretching along the wall as well, all competing for the blue ribbon – Carmichaels, East Franklin, Harveys, Aleppo, Dunkard.
She looked up with that expression fifth grade teachers reserve for late papers. “You joined the wrong one!”
All’s well that ends well, Helen Dinsmore! We’re all together now and your kids Mary Jane, Marty and Jamie are doing a bang up job keeping the grange tradition alive in Greene County!