Another Day in the Country
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
The month of May is always full of wonderful events — we call them wonderful before they happen and wonderful afterward in retrospect. While the actual work of the event is looming over our heads, we sometimes wonder at our sanity.
May starts out with the Ramona Tea which finds us cooking for 80 lovely ladies. The other day I was listening to Martha Stewart — whom we evidently attempt to emulate — while she described a dinner party she'd had the night before for 35 people. She showed the tables and the menu and then said, "I had a staff of 20, plus a chef." My sister and I rolled our eyes.
"A staff?" said my sister. "A chef? We do our Tea with Tooltime Tim and our cousin Ed." That's probably why events loom — it's two (not the 20) and our taste for the unusual, the exciting, and wonderful!
On the heels of the Tea comes the Artful Eye — it's our art show for third and fourth graders at Centre Elementary where we transform the gym into an art gallery. It's delightful to behold and about 40 children are eager to show off several pieces of framed artwork as they walk through the audience — we call them walking easels. Did I say "Those kids are wonderful?"
This also was the year for the old Ramona High School gang to have their RRHS reunion. It was quite the party, with a '50s theme. We revived the Arthur Godfrey Talent Show and featured guests like Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, and the Everly Brothers. It was fun and after the clean-up, we looked at each other and said, "Whew! This was wonderful! I think we're gonna make it! May is almost over."
Our next event in Ramona is Memorial Day weekend with lots of guests showing up in town for the ceremony at Lewis Cemetery and the big picnic in the park. There was quite a team for this event! It seemed half the town had something to do — mowing, fixing, painting, hanging flags!
First, on our agenda, were 30 wonderful bouquets of peonies from Margaret's garden to deliver to grave sites. (We were doing a fund-raiser for "improving Ramona" and folks had contributed by ordering flowers for loved ones who were gone.) We were the foot-soldiers making delivery.
Saturday morning found us wandering in the cemetery, hunting for headstones of people unfamiliar to us. Luckily we had cousins, Keith and Gary, visiting from Colorado and the four of us searched for names. "Anyone know where Conrad Schnell is?" someone called. "I can't find him." "Here's the Sondergards," someone else called, "weren't you looking for a Sondergard?" "How could you lose someone in a cemetery this small?" we wondered. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if folks with the same last name always huddled together?"
"You've got to see this," called my sister, and I made my way over toward a grave with the Sader name on it. I remember years and years ago my Aunt Naomi saying to me, "You've got to come see this display that Anna Mae has made for her parents." We actually made a special trip to the cemetery just to see it. "Isn't this something?" Aunt Naomi said, "Just look at all these flowers. It's showy." I chuckled as other people stopped by on that Memorial Day long ago to see this spectacular array of flowers and wreaths. Aunt Naomi, who was never prone to excess, looked from Anna Mae's abundance over to the arrangement of flowers adorning Uncle Kenneth's grave with second thoughts, "Maybe mine isn't showy enough?" she said. I smiled as I remembered this encounter walking across the freshly clipped cemetery lawn, away from Aunt Naomi's grave where I'd just deposited peonies.
"Anna Mae has something even more grand this year," my sister called. I couldn't imagine what that could be until I got within sight of it and saw that this year's display featured a live bird — a killdeer had made her nest amongst the flowers and she was bound and determined to stay! Neither lawnmowers, grave-decorators, or spectators would cause her to fly away. It was a wonder-filled sight on that clear Kansas morning in May.
It's another day in the country — a day in June. I had to wait until May was over to tell you about it.
