Thank You Mr Welk

It was a busy day yesterday with getting up very, very early and then later a long, long nap to make up for the very, very short night while Clark and Phil were at Special Olympics bowling. Then it was time for two granddaughters to be picked up so they could spend the night while their parents are away on a trip. For the past couple of weeks we have had an incredible infestation of fruit flies (an overt invitation from the overly ripe tomatoes from our garden and two boxes of apples from our next-door neighbors) so I could no longer procrastinate making applesauce and finishing up the tomatoes. Three of us, no--make that four, worked for over an hour and got nine quarts in the canner. That’s pretty fast work. The fourth was one of the granddaughters who wanted to help from atop a stool. It was her job to turn the apples who were bathing contentedly in the kitchen sink. While we were sweating away in 100% humidity with windows steamed we could hear strains of Tea for Two coming from the TV and laughtercoming from Phil. He was watching, and conducting, and obviously enjoying, The Lawrence Welk Show. According to Wikipedia The Lawrence Welk Show ran from 1955-1982. I remember watching it as a little girl and particularly liking the Lennon Sisters because Janet, the youngest, was my age. I was transported back in time as I listened and remembered a time when I was a young child and my parents were alive. But something else happened—I felt a connection with my Grandmother Fetzer who lived from 1893-1992. In the last years of her life she was blind, very hard of hearing, mentally alert, still lived in her home of 50 years, and watched The Lawrence Welk Show every Saturday night. I felt a rush of gratitude for an upbeat show that brought her happiness and brought us together one Saturday night in 2010 while I stood at the kitchen counter making applesauce.