Being a city boy two memories always stick out in my mind - both from Rome City Campus. One was while on Bless Patrol going over to the Barn and checking out all the pigs sleeping [and making really loud snoring noises] - and then we'd wake them up!...The other was killing chickens - alas - I remember poor Lucky. Jeff was in charge of sticking each chicken head down in a funnel-like thing with their heads poking out [one svelte swoop of the knife]. The first chicken Jeff grabbed he put next to the funnel, stuck a cigarette in it's beak and called it Lucky. Lucky stood there the whole time - watching, emotionless as each chicken was beheaded. He was the last to go - and is now awaiting the Return.
Skyrider: I don't know about teaching to support a main theme or whatever you mean, but yes, the in-rez Corps did teachings and sharings.
Body, Soul & Spirit Week used to be so much fun, with all the different backgrounds people had and the adventures they'd experienced. Our "family" there ranged from newborns to Clarence G.--I'll bet many of you knew him as the oldest WOW--who must have been in his 80s.
T-Bone, I guess Lucky wasn't so lucky after all. What a hoot! Poooor Lucky.
I loved the pigs at Rome City and still love pigs. (Where's Psalmie to back me up on this???)
I'll never forget going out to feed the sheep and goats one day. One big old sheep was lying in front of the gate, which swung into the pen to open. I yelled. I poked. I shoved gate up against the sheep. It wouldn't budge. Finally I went and got Lenny G., the staff guy in charge of the farm, complaining, "This darn sheep is sooooooo stubborn that it will NOT move so that I can get in and feed everyone."
Lenny figured it out right away, and he "wasn't even Corps" (total sarcasm here!!). "Linda, that sheep won't move because it can't. It's dead." Well! So much for MY in-depth spiritual perception and awareness!
Another vivid farm memory: Watching a ewe give birth to two little lambs late one night during bless patrol. I think that was the only time in my life bless patrol was a blessing. :D
Y'all, I KNOW that's the standard on the airlines. I think craiggers USED that as proof for his point that the parents' lives are more important than the children's.
OK, I see your point Belle :) I was just so anxious to show how smart I was about airline procedure :blink: I owe you a tray of crawfish and a beer
My best Corps memory was being sent to Rome City to take Greek and do some repairs on one the buildings.
My hitchhiking partner and I were the last to arrive: we'd gotten stuck on the south side of Kansas City for hours. We finally got a ride with a trucker who took us a hundred miles out of his way and dropped us at the front door of the campus at midnight. Whoever greeted us allowed us to take the trucker to the kitchen and get him fed, and then sent him off with a full thermos of coffee and some sandwiches. We were midly reproved for being late, but that was it-no public flogging.
I loved the Greek class, and I wish I could remember name of the lady who taught it. Greek wasn't easy to learn, but she made it easy. I really remember her though, because of something she did.
Our job was to "tuckpoint" one of the buildings, which happened to be across a courtyard from where the classes were being held. It was freezing cold, and we were bundled up as best we could. We had to climb two stories up on a scaffold, use hammers and chisels to knock out old mortar from the bricks, and "tuck" in new mortar with our little tuckpoint tools. We did this for a couple of weeks: four hours in the morning, and four hours of Greek in the afternoon. (Where else but TWI!)
One day, it was snowing, and it was blowing, and we were just miserable. To keep our spirits up, the folks on my side of the building started to sing. I think we went through the entire songbook, Pressed Down's first album, and most of the Joyful Noise songs. Near the end of our shift, I saw our Greek teacher down below. She was waving at us to get down. I thought, oh, boy, we were going to be yelled at for singing too loud and disrupting her class. But no...she took us into the kitchen, where she had talked the staff into making up pots of hot chocolate (with marshmellows!) and had found us some donuts. She said that she knew how miserable we were out there (and had been), but that our singing had just blessed her so much that she decided to reward our efforts.
Hot chocolate and donuts: a simple thing, but I will never forget that-or her. I never wanted to leave Rome City. Emporia just didn't have the same heart.
Although I was regular corps (10th), I did a stint at Rome city for about 4 months...
...and yes, I also had the priviledge of going into that small basement slaughter house and relieving hundreds of chickens of their breath life...
My job on the assembly line of death, was to take the featherless (or nearly featherless) carcass, split open it's abdominal cavity and remove any eggs that were either partially formed or fully formed. :blink: .
The fully formed eggs were set aside for later consumption by the glassy eyed minions...
The stench of this underground pit of death was beyond description as the smell of blood, guts and entrails permeated the very pours of your skin. The poor individual whose job was to sever their heads in the funnel started out squeemishly but by the end of the day was sadistically laughing as he would decapitate them with such remarks as "sure love ya bro" and then slash their poor heads off with a swing of the blade that would make Zorro proud...
and upon completion of our death task...we entered into the dining room for a scrumptious meal of fried chicken...almost lost my cookies.
Oh Psaaaaaaalmie. This is for you. We had a little pig just like this at Rome City. I tried to make him our mascot. He wasn't crazy about the idea. He was sooooooooooooooo cute.
Add to that a couple of couples having (clandestine) meetings in the sauna downstairs and Selina and I began to realize that something was not quite right in the Rome City campus plantation !
The other was killing chickens - alas - I remember poor Lucky. Jeff was in charge of sticking each chicken head down in a funnel-like thing with their heads poking out [one svelte swoop of the knife]. The first chicken Jeff grabbed he put next to the funnel, stuck a cigarette in it's beak and called it Lucky. Lucky stood there the whole time - watching, emotionless as each chicken was beheaded. He was the last to go - and is now awaiting the Return.
OMG, T-Bone - - I remember poor Lucky! And Jeff! Oh man, what a funny guy (and could he do a mean Texas two step!).
Groucho, I had the distinct privilege of doing "chicken duty" three times and hog slaughter twice. By the time I left RC, I could barely look at meat for a while. The stench of hog blood in warm weather kinda stays with you for a spell
And yes, dear Cool, they WOULD serve chicken the same day we slaughtered chickens.
The funniest "meat" duty though was making sausage with Tony Kl*eiwer's crew - - which at the time was a few of us (very bad) married women and about 5 single moms - - OMG - - DO NOT ever make sausage with a group of women who have been locked away too long in a cult campus in the middle of no where. T-Bone and Tonto will appreciate that J*nny Sn*w was the main ringleader. We laughed so hard, we nearly "blew up" some of her 10 lb. "manly" sausages. Even clean cut Tony could not refrain from joining in on all of our good-natured fun!
I actually did lose my cookies pretty shortly after we started killing the chickens. And got put on dining room setup after that, as did the other token female who was on the crew that day.
I don't know if you remember that. But it was the SMELL, that got to me, more than anything.
Jardi, with the ringleader you named, no wonder you guys nearly bust a gut laughing!
I agree that the smell was horrendous, but I found that standing in a hot shower and jamming a washcloth-wrapped finger up my nose helped get some of the chicken-death-particles off my nose hairs. How's that for a lovely mind picture?
Speaking of Jeff...do you remember that near the end of our second year, someone was sneaking into our corps coordinator's unlocked house and taking big dumps on the floor? It happened at least two or three times. For some reason, I think it was Jeff. (Way to go, Jeff!)
On most occasions, I really like bless patrol. Not because I thought we were walking the grounds, keeping the devil spirits out and townies from vandalizing emporia campus......but because of the one-on-one time with other corps.
Heck, it was a four-hour shift.....of peace and quiet. Besides, I could always "believe" to be assigned the shift with a good-looking girl. :)
Another.....Bad
Those late night fire drills......and red alerts.......and "emergency meetings."
Another.....Ugly
Seeing the corps coordinators and their hypocrisy. They'd dip in and out of meetings and expected us corps to sit 14 hours a day........teaching after teaching after teaching.
One of the good things in the corps, for me, was having a whole closet of clothes, a fabulous wardrobe, at my disposal. ;)
All us girls, in the dorms, liked to share clothes, makeup, nail polish, etc.
Seriously, I grew up with many brothers, in a large family, and had to share with stinky males all the time.
I loved living in the dorm and having other girls around to share stuff with. I had that in college too, but somehow, we were closer in the dorms in the corps. We used to wear each other's stuff all the time, but usually got it back, cleaned, washed, pressed.
I agree with you Ex10. We used to share clothes too in our dorm. We had so much fun getting ready for a dance,especially after 2-4 months of grewling training at Gunnison. By the time you thought you couldn't even read another verse, they would announce that we were going to have some fun Then back to the dorms, clothes being tossed from one to another, helping each other with our hair and makeup, then dance , dance, dance.... We had a great time that year!
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.............of corps food.
The sunday "sack suppers" were good. Plenty of stuff to eat, to swap, and to save for another time. Plus, some of the girls would give us hungry guys their food. Thank you corps girls. :)
The scrambled eggs were bad. Not because of the eggs themselves, but the shells added a crunch that I really detested. Who was throwing those shells into the mix anyway??
But, in great contrast, was the uuuugly..........the wheat berries, fig pep breakfast. Just not the way to start one's day.
Ohh the food. Emporia was an aquired taste for me. I hated comming off of bless patrol in January and getting that fruit that was still frozen. :unsure:
I will say Emporia's food was healthy, you just had to get used to it and some I never did. Benny's whole wheat bread. mmmmmmmmmm good stuff.
I went to hq for my last block and the food was totally different. It was real food.
One time after a long meeting we were late getting to the kitchen [or was it Adam's Alley? or whatever they called it] - and Darth VaderlinDylan in charge of the kitchen would NOT give us our sack suppers...Another time: I was working in the kitchen by myself one morning having to dish out peanut butter. This 5 gallon bucket of peanut butter was soooooooo thick - I think it was Deaf Smith brand - or one of those natural, very very very exceeding abundantly thick kind. I was hungry - usually was [refer back to previous incident]. I put a spoonful of it in my mouth - - - and choked - couldn't breathe. Thoughts are scrambling through my head: a memory of gagging on a peppermint when I was 6 years old, my obituary in Rome City Paper, my wife and kid leaving the campus in shame. I finally heaved it out - but to this day I still love peanut butter - as long as I don't have to be sneaky about eating it.
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T-Bone
Being a city boy two memories always stick out in my mind - both from Rome City Campus. One was while on Bless Patrol going over to the Barn and checking out all the pigs sleeping [and making really loud snoring noises] - and then we'd wake them up!...The other was killing chickens - alas - I remember poor Lucky. Jeff was in charge of sticking each chicken head down in a funnel-like thing with their heads poking out [one svelte swoop of the knife]. The first chicken Jeff grabbed he put next to the funnel, stuck a cigarette in it's beak and called it Lucky. Lucky stood there the whole time - watching, emotionless as each chicken was beheaded. He was the last to go - and is now awaiting the Return.
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Nottawayfer
RIP Little Lucky!
ROFLMAO! T-Bone. That was darn funny!
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Linda Z
Skyrider: I don't know about teaching to support a main theme or whatever you mean, but yes, the in-rez Corps did teachings and sharings.
Body, Soul & Spirit Week used to be so much fun, with all the different backgrounds people had and the adventures they'd experienced. Our "family" there ranged from newborns to Clarence G.--I'll bet many of you knew him as the oldest WOW--who must have been in his 80s.
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Linda Z
T-Bone, I guess Lucky wasn't so lucky after all. What a hoot! Poooor Lucky.
I loved the pigs at Rome City and still love pigs. (Where's Psalmie to back me up on this???)
I'll never forget going out to feed the sheep and goats one day. One big old sheep was lying in front of the gate, which swung into the pen to open. I yelled. I poked. I shoved gate up against the sheep. It wouldn't budge. Finally I went and got Lenny G., the staff guy in charge of the farm, complaining, "This darn sheep is sooooooo stubborn that it will NOT move so that I can get in and feed everyone."
Lenny figured it out right away, and he "wasn't even Corps" (total sarcasm here!!). "Linda, that sheep won't move because it can't. It's dead." Well! So much for MY in-depth spiritual perception and awareness!
Another vivid farm memory: Watching a ewe give birth to two little lambs late one night during bless patrol. I think that was the only time in my life bless patrol was a blessing. :D
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rhino
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topoftheworld
My best Corps memory was being sent to Rome City to take Greek and do some repairs on one the buildings.
My hitchhiking partner and I were the last to arrive: we'd gotten stuck on the south side of Kansas City for hours. We finally got a ride with a trucker who took us a hundred miles out of his way and dropped us at the front door of the campus at midnight. Whoever greeted us allowed us to take the trucker to the kitchen and get him fed, and then sent him off with a full thermos of coffee and some sandwiches. We were midly reproved for being late, but that was it-no public flogging.
I loved the Greek class, and I wish I could remember name of the lady who taught it. Greek wasn't easy to learn, but she made it easy. I really remember her though, because of something she did.
Our job was to "tuckpoint" one of the buildings, which happened to be across a courtyard from where the classes were being held. It was freezing cold, and we were bundled up as best we could. We had to climb two stories up on a scaffold, use hammers and chisels to knock out old mortar from the bricks, and "tuck" in new mortar with our little tuckpoint tools. We did this for a couple of weeks: four hours in the morning, and four hours of Greek in the afternoon. (Where else but TWI!)
One day, it was snowing, and it was blowing, and we were just miserable. To keep our spirits up, the folks on my side of the building started to sing. I think we went through the entire songbook, Pressed Down's first album, and most of the Joyful Noise songs. Near the end of our shift, I saw our Greek teacher down below. She was waving at us to get down. I thought, oh, boy, we were going to be yelled at for singing too loud and disrupting her class. But no...she took us into the kitchen, where she had talked the staff into making up pots of hot chocolate (with marshmellows!) and had found us some donuts. She said that she knew how miserable we were out there (and had been), but that our singing had just blessed her so much that she decided to reward our efforts.
Hot chocolate and donuts: a simple thing, but I will never forget that-or her. I never wanted to leave Rome City. Emporia just didn't have the same heart.
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Tom Strange
good? hmmm... did anyone mention "top of Anderson Library late at night"?
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GrouchoMarxJr
Although I was regular corps (10th), I did a stint at Rome city for about 4 months...
...and yes, I also had the priviledge of going into that small basement slaughter house and relieving hundreds of chickens of their breath life...
My job on the assembly line of death, was to take the featherless (or nearly featherless) carcass, split open it's abdominal cavity and remove any eggs that were either partially formed or fully formed. :blink: .
The fully formed eggs were set aside for later consumption by the glassy eyed minions...
The stench of this underground pit of death was beyond description as the smell of blood, guts and entrails permeated the very pours of your skin. The poor individual whose job was to sever their heads in the funnel started out squeemishly but by the end of the day was sadistically laughing as he would decapitate them with such remarks as "sure love ya bro" and then slash their poor heads off with a swing of the blade that would make Zorro proud...
and upon completion of our death task...we entered into the dining room for a scrumptious meal of fried chicken...almost lost my cookies.
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WhiteDove
I sent her to time out for making a mess. Don't encourage her Linda.
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coolchef1248 @adelphia.net
wow groucho you grossed me out! did this reaally happen?
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Linda Z
Oh Psaaaaaaalmie. This is for you. We had a little pig just like this at Rome City. I tried to make him our mascot. He wasn't crazy about the idea. He was sooooooooooooooo cute.
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allan w.
Add to that a couple of couples having (clandestine) meetings in the sauna downstairs and Selina and I began to realize that something was not quite right in the Rome City campus plantation !
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jardinero
OMG, T-Bone - - I remember poor Lucky! And Jeff! Oh man, what a funny guy (and could he do a mean Texas two step!).
Groucho, I had the distinct privilege of doing "chicken duty" three times and hog slaughter twice. By the time I left RC, I could barely look at meat for a while. The stench of hog blood in warm weather kinda stays with you for a spell
And yes, dear Cool, they WOULD serve chicken the same day we slaughtered chickens.
The funniest "meat" duty though was making sausage with Tony Kl*eiwer's crew - - which at the time was a few of us (very bad) married women and about 5 single moms - - OMG - - DO NOT ever make sausage with a group of women who have been locked away too long in a cult campus in the middle of no where. T-Bone and Tonto will appreciate that J*nny Sn*w was the main ringleader. We laughed so hard, we nearly "blew up" some of her 10 lb. "manly" sausages. Even clean cut Tony could not refrain from joining in on all of our good-natured fun!
J.
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ex10
Groucho,
I actually did lose my cookies pretty shortly after we started killing the chickens. And got put on dining room setup after that, as did the other token female who was on the crew that day.
I don't know if you remember that. But it was the SMELL, that got to me, more than anything.
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tonto
Jardi, with the ringleader you named, no wonder you guys nearly bust a gut laughing!
I agree that the smell was horrendous, but I found that standing in a hot shower and jamming a washcloth-wrapped finger up my nose helped get some of the chicken-death-particles off my nose hairs. How's that for a lovely mind picture?
Speaking of Jeff...do you remember that near the end of our second year, someone was sneaking into our corps coordinator's unlocked house and taking big dumps on the floor? It happened at least two or three times. For some reason, I think it was Jeff. (Way to go, Jeff!)
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skyrider
Another.....Good
On most occasions, I really like bless patrol. Not because I thought we were walking the grounds, keeping the devil spirits out and townies from vandalizing emporia campus......but because of the one-on-one time with other corps.
Heck, it was a four-hour shift.....of peace and quiet. Besides, I could always "believe" to be assigned the shift with a good-looking girl. :)
Another.....Bad
Those late night fire drills......and red alerts.......and "emergency meetings."
Another.....Ugly
Seeing the corps coordinators and their hypocrisy. They'd dip in and out of meetings and expected us corps to sit 14 hours a day........teaching after teaching after teaching.
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ex10
One of the good things in the corps, for me, was having a whole closet of clothes, a fabulous wardrobe, at my disposal. ;)
All us girls, in the dorms, liked to share clothes, makeup, nail polish, etc.
Seriously, I grew up with many brothers, in a large family, and had to share with stinky males all the time.
I loved living in the dorm and having other girls around to share stuff with. I had that in college too, but somehow, we were closer in the dorms in the corps. We used to wear each other's stuff all the time, but usually got it back, cleaned, washed, pressed.
The sisterhood was good. For me, anyway.
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Sunnyfla
I agree with you Ex10. We used to share clothes too in our dorm. We had so much fun getting ready for a dance,especially after 2-4 months of grewling training at Gunnison. By the time you thought you couldn't even read another verse, they would announce that we were going to have some fun
Then back to the dorms, clothes being tossed from one to another, helping each other with our hair and makeup, then dance , dance, dance.... We had a great time that year!
The good times were good.
The bad times were really bad
Oh well, glad to be here with you all
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skyrider
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.............of corps food.
The sunday "sack suppers" were good. Plenty of stuff to eat, to swap, and to save for another time. Plus, some of the girls would give us hungry guys their food. Thank you corps girls. :)
The scrambled eggs were bad. Not because of the eggs themselves, but the shells added a crunch that I really detested. Who was throwing those shells into the mix anyway??
But, in great contrast, was the uuuugly..........the wheat berries, fig pep breakfast. Just not the way to start one's day.
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justloafing
Ohh the food. Emporia was an aquired taste for me. I hated comming off of bless patrol in January and getting that fruit that was still frozen. :unsure:
I will say Emporia's food was healthy, you just had to get used to it and some I never did. Benny's whole wheat bread. mmmmmmmmmm good stuff.
I went to hq for my last block and the food was totally different. It was real food.
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T-Bone
One time after a long meeting we were late getting to the kitchen [or was it Adam's Alley? or whatever they called it] - and Darth VaderlinDylan in charge of the kitchen would NOT give us our sack suppers...Another time: I was working in the kitchen by myself one morning having to dish out peanut butter. This 5 gallon bucket of peanut butter was soooooooo thick - I think it was Deaf Smith brand - or one of those natural, very very very exceeding abundantly thick kind. I was hungry - usually was [refer back to previous incident]. I put a spoonful of it in my mouth - - - and choked - couldn't breathe. Thoughts are scrambling through my head: a memory of gagging on a peppermint when I was 6 years old, my obituary in Rome City Paper, my wife and kid leaving the campus in shame. I finally heaved it out - but to this day I still love peanut butter - as long as I don't have to be sneaky about eating it.
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