Saturday's Old Photo

 
The other blonde girl in this photo is my friend Suzanne. When we were in high school we sang duets occasionally in our little country church. Back in those days, I sang alto to Suzanne’s soprano. Our specialty was an obscure song called Dear Jesus, which, like all obscure songs, has lyrics posted on the web.

We weren’t all that good, but we were told we sounded like sisters, which must mean our voices blended well.

This photo was taken after a wedding in the big Lutheran church in town in 1973. Yes, someone was crazy enough to ask us to sing at their wedding. We were used to singing in front of a small congregation of people we knew, so this gig was a little frightening. We had to sing a couple of song from Fiddler on the Roof that neither of us liked with the guitar guy in the photo. He was the bride’s friend from university and we didn’t meet him until the rehearsal, so I don’t remember much about him, but the back of the photo says his name is Fred. The pianist’s name, it says, is Vicki.

We made our matching dresses for the occasion; or at least, I made mine. Suzanne’s mother was a wonderful seamstress so she never had to learn to sew. 

I always wanted Suzanne’s hair. Hers was nice and straight and silky, and those were the days when very long and very flat was the only acceptable way to wear hair. I had to brush my hair dry—there were no blow dryers or straighteners in the olden days!—to get it as straight as it is in this photo and it still took only a little bit of humidity to make it go—poof!—into something more like my photo in the sidebar, or worse. Some people without naturally straight hair ironed theirs with a clothes iron, but I was too afraid of split ends to go that route.

I still remember the cup of coffee I had at the reception in the church basement after the wedding. It might have been the best cup of my whole life. It was—wouldn’t you know it!—Swedish egg coffee, also known (appropriately, in this case) as Lutheran church basement egg coffee. 

To this day, I love a good cup of black coffee and hate the song Sunrise, Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof. And I’ve made peace with my hair.

I've Changed

my side bar photo once again, but this one I promise to keep for a while. In this one you can really see the t-shirt from Reflections Apparel and Gifts, where Carla says she has “the LARGEST selection of reformed/ Calvinistic/ sovereign grace themed t-shirts and gifts of any online (or offline) retailer (that we know of, anyway).”

So if you are looking for a t-shirt, a mug, a tote bag, a poster, a Bible verse calendar, some greeting/note cards, a framed print, a button or something for baby, check Carla’s store first, where you’ll find all that and much more.

Carla, by the way, blogs here. 

Dog Days of February

Joey 

Photo by Andrew Stark

 

 Three to make you chuckle:

• A  dog story in photos from Kim (and Sam).  
  
• Scott posts what he describes as another dog picture of questionable taste.
• I’ve reposted A Dog Story with a Happy Ending.
• Update: Rosemary takes us down memory lane in Dogs I have loved; some not so much.
  

There’ve been a few more additions to our list of dog books, too.

 

I’m inviting you to participate in the Dog Days of February, too. If you post anything dog related during this month, send me the link by clicking on the Contact button in the sidebar and I’ll link back to your post in the next February dog days post. Short on ideas? Here are a few suggestions.