Pot Luck and Professors
We have several get-togethers each year now that we have a fellowship hall. It used to be our old sanctuary, which we have outgrown. Our beautiful new building will seat a thousand people and is built adjacent to the old one. It still seems weird to eat food in it, but let me tell you, we eat food in it! Sometimes the ladies will have a fund-raiser and sell hot dogs or sloppy joes, but my all-time favorite is the good old American Potluck dinner.
What happens is each family brings a main dish and a side or salad and a dessert, making at least as much as would normally feed your own family. Then it is all put out on a long table full of food and with 500+ people there you can always find a great variety. Especially our church because we have people from all backgrounds and walks of life and from all different regions of the country and from some other countries as well. With a church as big as ours, you cannot always do the polite thing and try some of everyone’s, but I sure do try! I take 2 big plates with me, a little plate, a bowl and get started.
To answer what my favorite is is kind of impossible. I like the fried chicken, the casseroles are good, the beans, the enchiladas, the unidentifiable somethings or others (one time there were pierogies!), the salads, hmmm…okay, my favorite part is the desserts. One of the big plates is just for desserts. Homemade layer cakes, pies, cobblers, unidentifiable somethings or others… There used to be a show called Hee-Haw where they did a skit that had Grampa Jones come out and all the people in the audience would say, “Hey Grampaw! What’s for supper?” He would break into a poem listing off all of these different southern dishes and at the end, everyone would say real loud, “YUMM-YUMMM!” That’s how you feel. I wanted to write one of those poems, but was afraid that i wouldn’t get this entry even started, so maybe you will hear it a different time.
After that we have some skits. One of them was where a trio of men are trying to learn to sing amazing grace and one of the guys messes it up real bad and the other two take him around “backstage” and bang on some pots and pans as though they were beating him up. It happens a second time with a different guy. Finally they decide it is the music director who is the problem. Our music director is a small-framed young lady that is in charge of the music for our whole church and just loves to have a good time. Her husband is good, solid Wisconsin stock who looks like a Sackett when he walks into a room. Anyway, they all three take her back there, and there is a wild ruckus and when it is all done, this petite girl comes skipping out with her hands clasped in victory.
Then there was the incredible amazing enlarging machine. I played my character, Professor Fritz Von Googleheimer. He has a white lab coat, a goofy tie that has its own story, a Pendleton wool Tam O’Shanter, a cane and glasses. He has this thick, obviously fake German accent and glasses. The glasses are the important part of the costume because they are those reading glasses you buy at the grocery store and are a 3.50 magnification. I can’t see anything through them unless I squint and get right up next to something, so it makes me have to walk funny and look at people all strange.
Since I am going to try to use the photo gallery for the first time, i don’t know how this will all turn out.
In the first picture, you see my colleague, played by Sis. Pittenger, whose character’s name I don’t have. Professor Von Googleheimer is a character I use in Sunday School, so I know him. He “uses ze zientifical messod of zienterrifical observationizating” in a variety of ways.
Next we have the introduction of the Enlarging Machine. The pictures were taken by Abigail, who usually does a good job, but she couldn’t get through the crowd too easily. But we don’t have pictures of every scene.
All the little kids were seated up front. The first time we tried the machine, I put in a giant Hershey’s kiss and (Brother Andrew was behind the machine, throwing things out) it spewed out a bunch of little kisses into the crowd.
In the next picture, we see a little bouncy ball go in and in the next, the ball that came out.
Then we put in a mustard seed and out came a bottle of French’s. Sister pittenger wanted spicy, so I threw back the mustard and out came the spicy.
Not shown in the pictures, the other professor pretends to spit into the machine and I am doused with water thrown out of the machine with relish! Then we put in a baby doll and a little girl pops out.
Then we put in a stuffed monkey. I pretended to hesitate to push the button but (the whole skit was hammed up all the way along of course “Mit der prrrofeshor dishcushing und ekshplaining sings”) was persuaded to finally do it by the screaming kids, who are in a frenzy by now.
I push the button! It makes its noise and suddenly out jumps Andrew in a gorilla costume with a half-eaten banana in his hand. The crowd goes wild, and he runs over to his wife and pretends to try to kiss her. This is the end and he takes off his head because he is burning up inside there and everyone applauds.
The last picture is a close-up of the professor. He has to squint because of the strength of the glasses.
After the eating and entertaining, Brother Johnny Burgess spoke for a short while about the scriptural idea of common feasts and told several humorous anecdotes and we were done. One of the stories he told is on the humor blog ( http://herbshumor.blogdrive.com/ ) as the entry for 11/24/2004. If you weren’t able to be there, you missed a great time!
Remember, The Good Book says, “Enjoy life while you’re alive because when you’re dead, you won’t be able to.”
