Ladies Who Honor Their Mamas and Grandmamas 2
Welcoming us to the 105th Annual Stilesboro Chrysanthemum Show were the members of the Stilesboro Improvement Club. Each year the ladies raise funds by providing lunch in one of the two Stilesboro Academy classrooms, dubbed the Tea Room for the day. We entered the tea room through this giant door. Ray is almost six feet tall!
The Tea Room menu is the same menu these ladies’ mamas and grandmamas served in the 1950s.
I enjoyed my bounteous chicken salad, served just the way their mamas and grandmamas did, I’m sure — on a bed of iceberg lettuce with sides of pickles, potato chips, and saltines.
Ray had the Brunswick stew. From the looks of the roaster, I think it might have belonged to one of those mamas.
The desserts were piled high.
I had to make myself pass up the yellow cake with real caramel frosting like Mama Sue used to make. Instead Ray and I shared yellow cake with real cooked fudge frosting like my mama used to make . . .
. . . and three-layer coconut cake with real cooked frosting and what might have been freshly-grated coconut. It didn’t taste like it came out of a bag, unless it was a freezer bag.
We paid the pittance they charged underneath this sign for the Stilesboro Improvement Club.
We ate our meal on folding chairs around a pretty centerpiece with fresh flowers — just like their mamas used to create decades ago.
Among other things, Jesus told the rich young man:
 Honor your father and mother;
and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew 19:19
The ladies of the Stilesboro Improvement Club did both on the first Saturday of November, just as they have been doing for decades and just as they plan to do next November, if the Lord wills.