Oh man, what a blast.

I'm talking, of course, about Founder's Day, which took place yesterday at Grizzly Pines school.  I can't even tell you how much fun I had ('cause someone would likely come and arrest me) and I was working the damned thing.

Setting aside the two months in advance that we worked on this event, we spent a total of three days just at the school:  Friday to set up (Thank God for those Veterans who were celebrated in our hearts on Friday and the kids who were NOT in school as a result), Saturday for the event and Sunday (today) for clean up and to reassemble the school into something more school-ish again.

The teachers were all such good sports about us coming in and tearing apart their work homes. I mean seriously, they (and our kids) spend more waking hours in there than they do in their own homes, so their graciousness was very appreciated.  Tables had to be raised from little people size to big people size and of course, very special allen wrenches in early Gaelic measurement delineations had to be used.  The tables are heavy as hell with spindly little legs that threaten to snap off like a twig if they have too much weight placed on them, so some care and strength was needed to wrangle them. 

The teeny little munchkin chairs were replaced out with larger, more butt-generous chairs (had most any of us sat on those tiny little chairs - sturdy though they might be - and had the misfortune of discreetly passing gas, I strongly suspect the chair would disappear and some discomfort would ensue in the colon area). 

We had two layouts:  one for rain and one for shine.  We had a good bit of shine on the set up day and we had prayer circles going in literally about 5 different spiritual paths all across the country for good weather.  We watched as the chance of measurable precipitation crept up over the week until we were sitting on top of a big fat 90% by the morning of the event. 

It was only barely misting as we started setting up, but we managed to get the rain contingency plan in place before buckets and buckets of wet stuff began falling out of the sky.  People, O Blessed People, began to show up from out of nowhere with pop-up canopies and soon, everything that needed to be covered was covered.

We had four bands that played through the day and each and every one of them warmed my cold, black little walnut of a heart.  (My large, white, frost-bitten feet were another story altogether)  They were just marvelous and I could have stayed there and listened to them all day long.  Classic country gospel, good ol' classic country and some wonderful bluegrass sounds were filling the mountain top, followed by some really excellent jazz music from 1070.  It was absolutely blissy.

Our main concern had been whether or not we'd have enough warm bodies to man all of the food serving and games and things like that, but God Bless those Red Hat Ladies!!  Just before we were ready to begin, in walked this glorious sea of red and purple and they just got busy.  What a blessing!  Problem solved!

The Tylers were our angels from Heaven with their support of the event.  They made sure we had everything from candy for the kids to hot water containers to tables and chairs, not to mention the work Walt put in helping us set up.  He also provided the PVC structure that had been the Haunted House at Halloween to be used for a game area for the kids.  Again, a real blessing.

Dave and Dennis fired up Dave's custom grill.  This grill is just not to be believed and absolutely every real man who walked up to it was stricken with such a raucous case of grill envy that he no doubt had to excuse himself to rearrange the furniture a bit.  I mean this was the epitome of a man's grill.  Hot dogs and polish sausages rolled off that grill like a scene from Willie Wonka's Hot Dog Factory. 

I have to tell you, there was a point in the morning's set up when the rain looked like it was mocking us and we all wondered if we were going to be sitting on our butts alone at the school, doing our best to work our way through 300 pounds of hot dogs and enough baked goods to put Jenny Craig out of business forever.  We couldn't imagine that anyone would be out in a monsoon like the one that was coming except for five possibly crazy women of varying age groups and their long-suffering husbands.  But they came... and the kept on coming.  Every Who down in Whoville flocked to the school and seeing all of those smiling faces and tapping feet just made all the work of the past two months worth it. 

It all came together like magic; rain or no rain.  As I went to sleep last night, I tried to imagine what we could have done differently to make it better under the circumstances of rain and I just could not think of a single thing.  With the one exception of the weather, the total vision we had for Founder's Day when the thought was first bantered around our "maiden voyage" GFORCE meeting the first week of school was achieved... and then some.  The five GFORCE officers had a mental image of what Founder's Day would be and this experience just came along and blew past that image, leaving it in the dust.  It just could not have been any sweeter.

I had the honor of stealing a few minutes with some really wonderful people over the day, which is always a joy for me.  I got to visit with Lynn Shetley, which never fails to make me smile.  I'd never met Harry Dean before and he and I got to talk for a good long while, which was just a big ol' ton of fun.  He also let me talk him out of his hat, which I retain with an absolutely explosive sense of pride.

In fact, I got to meet a lot of people whose names I'd heard and faces I'd seen, but had never before garnered an intro.  I hate to base the success of a day on my own experience... oh what am I doing? I can't lie to you.  I'm just terrible at the whole coy and demure thing.  It's ALL about my own experience and I had a sinfully excellent time yesterday.  That's what I'll carry with me in my memories.

For next year, however, even though it defies the actual anniversary of the opening of Grizzly Pines school, we will have the event in mid-September for better weather (post-Burger Night, pre-crap weather).  Next time, we WILL have a dance floor.  How am I supposed to bust a move without a dance floor?  I hear that boot-scootin' music and honey, my feet just will not behave (not that the rest of me usually does anyway).

On the day that Grizzly Pines Elementary School opened, I was otherwise occupied.  It was November 13, 1997 and I was marrying my sweetheart in Reno, Nevada.  No, we didn't stop to think, "Hmm.  I'll bet the future school of our unborn children is being christened right now." 

My thought was more of, "Well, I'll be damned.  He actually did go through with it."  Since I could NOT believe my luck on the score I'd just made in the matrimony department (and still can't), I was, well, otherwise engaged (cough).  There were quarters to be dropped into slots and buffets to be grazed and wonderment to behold. 

That's just a damned lucky day.

Best to ya,