Selle goldmine

I brought home a sack of gold yesterday. It weighs about 15 pounds, so you can imagine its value in today's precious metals market. It's not exactly metal, but be assured I'm planning to guard it with my life. If I don't, there's a chance that 70 years worth of women's precious investments could go down the tubes, and I wouldn't want to be responsible.

The Coldwater Creek shopping bag has three scrapbooks and a collection of autobiographies written by the "ladies of the Selle Club." I'm not sure who brought them, but when I saw the pile of scrapbooks, it was all I could do to concentrate on the monthly meeting of the Selle Extension Club, but my ears did perk up every time Wilma Erickson said something.

Wilma, who, I believe, is 95, joined the club back in 1946. Occasionally, she would think of items of importance from back in those days, like Rural Electrification Act (REA) of 1936, which brought electricity to rural America. She knew there was a connection with REA and a connection with the county home extension entity. Someone pipe up yesterday that there is no home extension agent in Bonner County anymore, but they weren't sure.

I suggested we have someone from the University of Idaho extension office come to one of our meetings and explain to us what the present set-up involves, since most of us are used to the era of the agricultural and home extension agents providing guidance to farmers and homemakers.

During the meeting Carol Burroughs read the by-laws, adopted back in April, 1938, when the club reorganized (the scrapbook hints of members back in the 1920s), calling itself Selle Extension Workers. A few items among those by-laws are still followed faithfully: the vice president serving as the "sunshine chairman," meetings held the third Tuesday of each month, five members constituting a forum, meetings in June, July and August shall be held at 1 p.m.

The 70-year-old bylaws don't mandate it, but summer meetings involve only a dessert rather than the covered-dish potluck lunch with meeting beginning at 11 a.m. most other months. Since it's April, yesterday's array of goodies was impressive as usual---casseroles, homemade bread with Carol Burrough's chive butter, fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies from Susan Beebe, pickled beets, Carol's prizewinning huckleberry-apple pie, to name a few.

The standard policy for the group is to assign hostesses for each month except Christmas and Mother's Day (when restaurant meetings are scheduled), and each hostess has an assistant to help. The doxology before sitting down to lunch involves a variety of voices doing their best at "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Come." Some of the voices, like yours truly, keep the singing to a mere whisper.

I asked Wilma if she could ever remember any conflict within the organization. She said no. Nothing in the bylaws says anything about handling strife, so it's obvious these ladies have maintained a sense of civility for decades.

A few things have changed over the years. No all-day meetings, no major connection to extension work, and dues have inflated from $3 a year to $5. I also noticed that they let me into the organization, waiving the two-meeting waiting period, where I should first come as a guest. And, I gathered that they've forgotten to read the bylaws a time or two as deemed essential each November.

I think several members of the group were surprised to learn that the colors for Selle Club are rose and bronze. I also heard a few chuckles when Carol read the rule about members 80 years of age or above being no longer required to bring a covered dish to meetings. Isabella Hohlreigal and I agreed that we all have something to look forward to if we just stick with it.

I have just begun to peruse the scrapbooks and have learned that the group was limited to 15 members back in 1938. Only 11 attended that first meeting at Ida Surby's home, where Miss Curtis conducted the first lesson: Lesson 1, Series 1, No. 7: pinking scissors. I'm assuming Miss Curtis must have been the extension agent.

Officers included president Lucinda Hart and secretary Anna Cox. I guess the sunshine chairman came later in December when Lucinda Hart stepped down as president and took over secretarial duties while Charlotte Perry was elected president and Georgia Cox, vice president.

Yesterday Nita Schoonover presided over the meeting. I noticed in the first scrapbook, which covers 1938-1999 that her mom, Ruth Beauchamp, was a member also.

I'm anxious to sit down and look through the rest of the scrapbooks detailing the history of the phenomenal women in this community where I feel so fortunate to live.

There's a wealth here in humanity that supersedes any price traders could ever put on precious metals like gold. I feel honored to be a newbie among this club that has impressively withstood the test of time and clung to simple goals of friendship, good works----and, of course, good cooking.

And, to know that when I turn 80, I'll no longer have to bring a covered dish---now that's a goal worth pursuing.