Seeing a picture on FB of a turkey carved out of SPAM reminded me of Mildred and Gertrude's SPAM turkey recipe. We thought of it during the Enron turmoil and fall, when a significant amount of people lost a lot of money because the stock price fell and since M&G are all about doing budgetary things for church and home, coming up with a new budget item seemed like a good idea. We were in Ft Worth, our first time out with the new material and who would have guessed, managing SPAM right out of the can was not easy or pliable to mold into the shape of a turkey. We also didn't think about the lovely aroma of SPAM and didn't wear latex gloves. In spite of these things including buying two chicken legs to smash into the concoction, it went over well. So we fine tuned, added tomato sauce like making a meatloaf, always had latex gloves, raw chicken legs and those little white chicken hats or flourishes to put on top of the chicken legs. We never looked back. We added the new resource for those who were tired of hosting holiday dinners or tired of bringing the hard and time intensive dishes for family get togethers or pot lucks at church. Fix this one time and you will never have to host or bring anything but bread or paper goods for the rest of your life. We never received one complaint about wasting food. A few people gagged but nothing went beyond that stage. The last few years that we performed, we would act like this was a door prize but the only hitch was, we kept the platter. We had been asked to do M&G in Baytown, hosted by a women's ministry from one of the churches there, at the country club. As was our practice, we arrived early to get the lay of the land to see if we'd have to tweak anything we did. Then it was out to the parking lot that day to work on lines and timing of them. We weren't dressed up for a country club event but we didn't look shabby out there in the parking lot wearing Ralph Lauren. Someone came up to us and told us to stop goofing off and direct people in the parking lot. Sounded like fun, so that's what we did. Got people parked in an organized way. We went back into the country club. The lady in charge of the event handed us our microphones when we came in the building and we went to the locker room where we could change our clothes. This event also held a fashion show and those who were modeling the clothes were in there as well. We started to go into the ladies locker room when a woman stopped us in our steps. This room was for the talent and no one else. We said we are a part of the program, you know after directing traffic in the parking lot we weren't fresh as daisies, and showed her our lapel microphones. She stopped at accusing us of stealing them but she reluctantly let us in but kept a sharp eye on us. They did their getting ready to model stuff, we changed into our costumes. We were sitting there minding our business by reciting lines, all the models had left for the runway or hallway or cleared out aisle space. The lady who accused us of being thieves and lazy workers came back into the locker room. She told us to get off our butts and do our job because there was a toilet overflowing while we sat there and visited. Before we went on stage, we found out the name of the lady who been after us since we arrived in the parking lot. Imagine the shock on her face when we hit the stage and began the program. When we got to the turkey part, we announced she had won the door prize. I began walking toward her with the platter of SPAM turkey, stuffed with an apple and celery, raw chicken legs with the little hats, sitting on a lovely Thanksgiving platter. I feigned a tripping motion and she thought that SPAM would land right in her lap. If we were mean, I think I just might have let that happen but I didn't. Take the high road, it's less crowded up there. Afterwards, as we cleaned up our mess, she came up to us and told us how funny we were and how much she enjoyed the performance. She never apologized. I don't remember if we told on her during that part of the show or not, but there was some satisfaction in letting her know we had been telling the truth all the time.
During all those years we had people wanting to escort us to their Crisis Closet, I'm looking at you Kingsland Baptist. Haha! We did M&G for a church in Magnolia, before it grew as a suburb and when some ladies saw Peggy in the bathroom with twigs, branches and dried out grass in her wig, it didn't seem to surprise them. I began noticing our characters looked just like the women there. I wasn't too sure how this was going to go... The lady in charge of the event told us young mothers would be there, so we worked up a script to include their interests, only there weren't really any young mothers there. We did a thing at a dinner, never work while people are eating is what we learned, for the small Methodist congregations of east TX at the big Texas Methodist Conference. The look on the lady's face that had hired us showed pure horror of what in the world had she done? I felt sorry for her because I tried to explain to her when she contacted me, we were not a singing group and when we sang, it was passable at best, the changed words to a familiar tune is what was funny. We were almost charged by some well meaning men at Champion Forest Baptist when we got up on the stage. They thought some homeless women had gotten in. I would have thought that whole thing, which was horrible, was our fault, except I worked at a church and the mistake was, the children's minister wanted us to be a surprise at an event where she was thanking everyone who worked in children's ministry with a catered lunch. She had never done a program in previous thank you dinners and people didn't want to have program, they wanted to eat and get on with their Sunday afternoon. At LPM, the new assistant, who didn't have a clue to who or why we were there for a volunteer Christmas breakfast, was giving signals to another staff member, should she call the sheriff? We've had soundmen turn off our microphones when we did out true love waits, for married people bit. We laughed with them when they thought they were saving mankind from this unholy kind of talk. We were asked by an older singles Sunday School class to do something for their Christmas party. Steve Selig advised us that this class was a problem class so maybe not do any new material. We took that to heart and so that we didn't have much dialogue we choregraphed a Christmas Dance, we had learned with the 4-5 year old ballet class, at the local dance studio. You sell the concept by believing the story, that we were excellent and the best dancers in the class. We did that dance for a lot of programs, even used it when we did a bit called, Dancing with the Scars...cause Peggy and I both had scars from bad knees, ankles... Over the years, doing M&G at our home church, well those those are treasured times. Well mostly. Once we were asked to do a program honoring a couple of staff members, who had to be the most boring people. We tried and tried to use material given to us about them, but finally just made up stuff and it went well. When we were part of a program with Marge Caldwell and Jeanette Clift George on friendship, that was fun. The going away dinner sponsored by the senior adults for Gerald and Trev was a ton of fun too. It is memorable for me because I got food poisoning at the Cheesecake Factory and was so sick the days before the program. I sweated bullets up there but God gave me strength. Mildred and Gertrude got to sing with some of the best voices over the years. Funny how talented voices made our voices sound so much better. Another favorite was the Deacon Christmas Party during the time of the Pastor Search Comm. There are two songs out of the many we sang over the years that I still want to sing our words rather than the correct words. In the Bleak Mid-Winter and What Child is This, more like Whose Child is This.
We had some really good experiences as well, including a few groups that wanted us to come, couldn't afford our cheap price and we went anyway because everyone needs to have fun in church from time to time. We all think some of the same things when some lame-o church programs would be introduced or something so spiritually insensitive spoken or just something dumb M&G gave voice to that "here we go again" cause for the most part, all of still volunteer and support the church. We just voiced what everyone was thinking. A pastor came up to me and said thank you for undermining all the new efforts at change. I assured him all those volunteers would still volunteer and everyone out there in the audience did not take us seriously. Wow, to think what if we did have that kind of power...but we didn't.
Yesterday, I saw where Green Giant is promoting healthy gingerbread houses. Peggy and I were so ahead of our times. Several have said they would like to see M&G again, but truthfully, since holiday gingerbread houses and now veggie ones are popular, it's not funny. At the time we thought it was so far fetched. When we started out as M&G we were young, now we wouldn't need wigs or fake glasses. All those years hold such wonderful memories and a whole lot of fun but now, that's just what it all is, memories of fun times. Roy knew the script so well after practicing lines with me over the years, that if for some reason if Peggy could not go on, Roy could. Of course it wouldn't be the same but still. Even now, if we hear someone say or we happen to say, Do you know....we finish out their sentence with, the ink wasn't even dry on my membership card, when I was asked to be on the Lord's Supper Comm, baptism comm... I learned a lot over the years from Peggy about timing, presence and the like. Sometimes our styles of humor offered discussion but we came to a resolution each time. Once, when I accidently shot her wig off with a balloon launcher, we hadn't practiced it or even knew if it would work, we had to leave the stage cause we were going to wet our pants. We were laughing so hard. We knew the other one would come fully prepared and we could trust the process even when a few times we lost our way in the script. One of the greatest compliments we heard, y'all use a script? We thought that was just a natural conversation between you two. Sometimes in choir we would be talking to one another and look around us, everyone was looking at us, wondering what we were going to do next. We'd say, no, no, this is friend time. We are just talking while y'all rehearse some boring song.
My stage days are behind me but I am left with such great memories. I believe at some point, as you age, you should gracefully relinquish to the younger generation. I remember seeing old comedians coming on SNL in the early years. It did not go well and now some of those cast members, who are now old, are repeating history and it doesn't go well. The exception is Steve Martin but he reinvents himself.
While kind of being brain foggy over the past several months, I thought writing a few of these times down and that is good for the memory and the heart.
The above wasn't M&G, but Burnt Offerings. A 'how to' event for the Women's Ministry. We made food from the generations of pot lucks in a Baptist Church. This was a ton of fun. I believe this is a pear half, on a lettuce leaf, sprinkled with grated cheese, adding a dollop of mayo and then putting a cherry on top.
Working hard on our nativity cookies that can be used for other Bible stories after the holidays.
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