My friends - This is a rare Friday posting I am making, replacing the postponed message of yesterday. Below is another selection in the review of essays authored by Dr. Gordon Wilson. This one comes from his little book, "Fidelity Folks", and is titled 'Picnic Time'. Dr. Wilson was born and raised at "Fidelity", which is better known to us today as New Concord in Calloway County. He was the son of Dr. Maquis Pillow Wilson. M.P.Wilson was a physician. His son Gordon held a doctorate in English and taught for many years at Western Kentucky University. If time permits over the next couple of days, I will return with another offering from the "miscellaneous files". -B =================================================================== PICNIC TIME -Fidelity Folks Dr. Gordon Wilson Almost any occasion was an excuse for an all-day picnic. Sulphur Springs, besides being the location of a Methodist church, was equally famous as a picnicking and camping area. The annual Quarterly Meeting at the church was a sort of picnic; we got to see funny people from up the creek and out in the Flatwoods, that is, funny as compared with us. However, there was a decorum that had to be observed at Quarterly Meeting that was hard on us children. We sometimes got so noisy out by the spring that some of our parents, fearful that we might spend our later career in a burning lake because of violating the Sabbath, would come out from church and remind us of the nature of the day. But the dinner on the ground made up for all restraints and made us glad that we lived in such a religious community. Genuine picnics, though, were quite free from restraint. We could let out as many yells as we liked, we could wade in the creek, we could even go in a-washing. Our clothes were not so fragile as the ones we wore to church and could be risked in climbing trees or in walking on drifts in the creek. It was unlikely that we would be far away when the dinner on the ground was ready. We ranged up and down the table, eating here and there, for barbecued lamb, fresh beef or pork, and the usual fried chicken and cakes and pies were always on hand. Our real fun of playing in the woods came after dinner, or as soon as we got over a little of that over-full feeling. The older men took this occasion to discuss politics and religion or to swap yarns. Sometimes a grown girl, probably the local teacher, would get a group of us children together and direct an exciting game of Drop the Handkerchief or Puss Wants a Corner. Our mothers had to interfere sometimes to keep us from being too rough with the girls, who, unlike us rough necks, had on their fluffiest dresses and shoes, if shoes can be included in that description. It seemed pretty sissy to be playing girl games when the creek was so close at hand and when my dog could do some fancy swimming after the sticks we would throw into the pools. As soon as we could do so, we escaped from the games and became wild creatures for the rest of the day. If we had enough money, we went by the stand and bought some soda pop or some candy or some ice cream. But it was not necessary to our happiness to have some additional dainties; being out of doors, where we lived all the time, anyway, was good enough. From the time I attended my first picnic I wanted to grow up and be the man who ran one of the stands. And, sure enough, I did grow up and did work in a stand, feeling as big as the man who cut bundles at the wheat-threshing or the man who carried a corner in barn-raisings. I would have worked for nothing, just to be a big boy for a day; but the money I earned made me feel superior, and I got a freedom of eating candy and ice cream that I used to the utmost, so that I was likely to be sick for several days thereafter. Ice-cream suppers were long used as a means to raise money for churches and schools, but in our section they were often used for themselves alone. We usually served ice cream in a summer cottage near the spring and ran the stands immediately outside. When the stand was being run for a public benefit, the women of the neighborhood would furnish everything possible. Some boys or men would go to the county seat for ice, soda pop, cigars, candy, and noisemakers of all sorts. The custards for the ice cream would be made the day before and kept fresh in coolers let down in the wells and cisterns. We made the ice cream right on the ground, turning the old-fashioned freezers millions of miles, it seemed to me. Nothing but being a big boy in the eyes of the fellows who did not get a job of working in the stand could have kept me from growing very weary while turning the freezers. So far as I know, no one has ever published a list of what people actually ate at a picnic. Thanks to my old diary, faithfully written at the end of the day, July 4, 1905, I find that there were some five hundred people at Sulphur Springs at a combination picnic-political speaking. There was a big dinner on the ground, rather private, however, as the tablecloths were laid for small groups rather than for the whole crowd, as at Quarterly Meetings. There was a "refreshment stand and also an ice cream parlor," which "did a very good business." The sales were "240 bottles of soda pop, about two tubs of lemonade, a great lot of candy, wax (chewing gum), cigars, etc. The ice cream trade was rather slim, but they sold four or five gallons." For Fidelity on a spree that was something. When I had recorded the figures, I added, very naively, "After the speaking the crowd wandered first this way and that, staying until rather late in the afternoon. Everyone seemed to have a delightful time. Courting couples were plentiful." (Of course, or what would have been the use of having a holiday or ice cream or soda pop?) "We had only one little difficulty, and that was settled in a short while," (Even the Eden of a Fourth of July near Fidelity had its serpent, a drunken row between two boys from an outlying neighborhood; otherwise life would have been too good for this world). With the coming of cars picnics lost some of their appeal. And people now drink soda pop at any season of the year and are not likely to get the bubbly stuff all over their shirt bosoms when they open it, and they can buy ice cream any day in the year at even country stores. The only thing that remains unchanged is the political speaking, which even George Washington would recognize instantly if he wandered back to Fidelity or elsewhere. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++