Page 5 - MLD Book

major third!). Ella Bucher, who subsequently hit the confederate monument in a car accident on Third Street after choir rehearsal no less (!) and died, was given $2 for Sunday lunch. A few others were also given the same amount for lunch, I think at the Blue Boar Cafeteria. Still others received $5 a week for singing. With the withdrawal of taxi, singing, and lunch monies, the mood was not great when I arrived!
My first Sunday at Calvary was July 5, 1964, Independence Sunday. (Ironically, I write this on July 5, 2020 at home, where instead of playing my favorite patriotic pieces, I watched live stream from my bedroom with dog Clara while Shawn played some modern postlude that occasionally gave a glimpse of a patriotic tune. Thank Covid19 and no hint of sensitivity on his part). Back to 1964. We had no rehearsal room, but rehearsed in the Parish Hall on folding chairs that periodically collapsed. The parish office complex was first built in 1975 and the Choir Loft and Parker Hall and north end of second floor church school space followed in 1994, so our rehearsal space was nomadic, to say the least. Sunday mornings were especially confusing with all the goings and comings in the Parish Hall. I remember vesting with the women and noting that all of them wore black slips, most were heavy set, and all seemed very old!! Of course I was in my 20s at the time so everyone else in the church seemed old to me. My, how perspectives change! We were required to wear old mortarboard hats, with tassels that flew into our mouths when we turned to the altar. After my first service, our head adornment changed to black beanies! It was a few years, however, before we did away with head covering altogether, and it wasn’t without controversy! Morning Prayer was the normal service at 11:00, except once a month – or maybe once a quarter – there was communion. Padre Elliott-Baker was often called upon as assisting or main priest, in the true sense of what an Emeritus staff member should be. (Take note!!!) Along those lines, Melvin and I were made Musicians Emeritus and Emerita in 2013, titles that today don’t seem to carry the weight they did back then, or elsewhere.
My lasting memory of my very first Sunday at Calvary is etched in my memory of the behavior of two choir members, Iris Gray and Ella Bucher. Turns out, they never did like each other and each wanted to prove to me that she was more important than the other! The seat on the end of the row (we had old, wobbly, long choir pews that seated six to a row) was especially important as a status symbol. Iris and Ella marched in side by side, but when they got to the front, both bolted for the end seat. Astonishingly, they SAT on each other, and during the course of the entire service, whenever it was time to stand, the same battle ensued! There was no actual winner, as they both persisted until the end. Unbelievable. During the course of this epistle, some of the antics of Iris Gray will be told for posterity. I kept thinking WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN INTO? But in spite of all that, the patriotic hymns and the joy of playing in my dream church finally prevailed. My Independence Day anniversary celebrations for 48 years always brought that first Sunday to mind, however.
A note about the rickety choir pews could be injected here. For quite a while, they wiggled and wobbled during every service we had. Iris Gray, with her very sharp tongue, was quick to point out that since three members had had gastric bypasses, a collapse was inevitable. She often asked one or the other of these ladies how much weight they had lost. I remember when Sharon Highley came back after her operation, Iris told her she didn’t look like she had lost very much! Sharon never came back to the choir. Iris’s wish came true one Sunday during service, when one of the pews did collapse and six people went sliding to the marble floor. It actually was perfect timing in front of the whole congregation. I was accused of engineeringthewholething,butforonce,Iwasinnocent. Thatdidit!Wegotpermissionto replace those pews with chairs! Of course the vestry didn’t want to finance the chairs, and