May 15, 2017

Ridge Spring News

Harriet Householder

Magnolia Ridge Antique and Art Gathering

Saturday May 20, 2017

From 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM

The Seventh Annual Magnolia Ridge Antique and Art Gathering will also have The Palmetto Tractor Club featured. The farm is located at 2136 Mt. Calvary Rd .  Do not use the address for GPS.  It does not bring you to the farm but google does.  The Farm is located at Hwy 23 and Hwy 39 and Mt. Calvary Rd in Ridge Spring. (Turn and cross the railroad at the John Deere place).  There will be antique, vintage, and art vendors set up for you to explore.  Come early and enjoy free coffee.  There will be breakfast and lunch foods available for purchase as well as baked goods from the Mennonites.

The Friends of Ridge Spring will meet Thursday evening at the Ridge Spring library. We are working on new rack cards and brochure for our town.  All are welcome.

Joe Cal Watson began the Ridge Spring News column so many, many years ago.  One of the topics he discussed was on the barn swallows that visited his home every year.. The barn swallows built nests under his carport.  He was not sure he liked them that much for they sure messed  up his car.  Over the years they came and he wathc them.  Then he received a cat.  The cat was friendly but stayed outside.  He noticed the birds did not come back.  Well this year the cat disappeared and the barn swallows are back.  The fewer mosquitoes are due to these lovely birds.  His car has been traded in for a golf cart that does not get any droppings on it for where it is parked. 

RIDGE SPRING UNITED METHODIST CHURCH:  

In April Ridge Spring United Methodist Church delivered 100 8 x 12 tarps and 50 hurricane relief bags to a Volunteer in Missions storage unit. These along with other donations from many churches will be shipped to Haiti to help with relief efforts there. As you know the island has been hit hard with natural disasters and the people continue to struggle. We are proud to be a small slice of a larger pie.

In May RSUMC’s Big Red Box will be collecting items for health bags. These bags will be donated to Christian Ministries. This Ministry is located in Batesburg and serves Saluda County as well as parts of Lexington. Items needed are: wash cloths, bath towels, tooth paste and brush, tissues, combs, and bar soap. If you would like to donate leave items on the porch of either the church or Family Life Center and a church member will make sure it will be placed in the BRB. As always thanks for the support of the our outreach efforts.

Kerry Jackson, English Teacher, RS-M High School: Congratulations are in order to the Ridge Spring- Monetta theater students. On Friday, May 5, 2017,  they participated in the annual Garcia Theatre Project at USC-Aiken. Latasia Lockette and Courtney Van-Eck were chosen for the All-Star Cast. The students performed "Baggage" by Christian Kiley and received the award for Best Play Runner - Up.

Josie Rodgers

RSM High: Drama students participated in an improvisation workshop as well as a workshop on voice and movement with other theater students from around Aiken County. RSM had the pleasure of performing first this year. The play was called Baggage Claim by Christian Kelly. After the performance, the judges spoke to the students about their performance.  The judges reiterated some of the things that Ms. Jackson has been telling her students all year as well as offered suggestions on how to improve their performance of this play. Congratulations to seniors Latashia Lockette and Courtney Van-Eck for making the All-Star Cast. RSM students also won Runner-Up to Best Play.

Summer Cherry:  On May 9, RSM Mid/High held a bocce ball tournament for some Aiken County Schools.  Multiple schools from the area participated including RSM Mid/High, RSm Elem, LBC Middle, Paul Knox Middle, Kennedy Middle, & Wagener-Salley High.  Special needs students were provided a “buddy” for the day.  Lizzy Barajas was a buddy to one special student.  She says, “Being a buddy is a great experience, and the bocce ball tournament was so much better with my buddy!” More than 90% of the students participating from RSM High are HOSA (Health Occupation Student Association) members and members of Project Unify.  Everyone had a great time competing, dancing, eating, and hanging out with friends old and new.  Our goal to make sure the athletes had fun was met because we received comments of appreciation from all over.  Next year, we hope to have an even bigger tournament and more new faces!

The National English Honor Society will host a Poetry Café on Thurs., May 18, in the high school cafeteria.  For more information, contact Josie Rodgers, sponsor.

Donna Nelson Minor won first place in 3D at the Aiken Artist Guild members show.  Congratulations!!!!  Her work can also be seen at the Ridge Spring Art Gallery that is open on Fridays and Saturdays.

Wyman and Stanley Fulmer of Ridge Spring were baling hay with a vintage hay-baler and everyone was fascinated.  Fun for all.

Update on the Peach Crop: Titan Farms grows 5800 acres of peaches and also farms broccoli and bell pepper. Starting July 1, the company will have 25-30 percent of a normal peach crop for about six weeks. Some will be sold locally, others will go to retail partners. But nobody’s going to have many South Carolina peaches.

Titan is a true family operation with Carr and wife Lori Anne running the show. That means they had to make some difficult decisions within days of the March freeze.

And that’s what you do when the unthinkable happens in farming. At the end of the day, anybody who makes a living on what grows from the dirt has to be two things: A gambler and a prayer. “You’re exactly right,” Carr agreed. “And an optimist. Don’t forget the optimist part. We’ll get all those peaches another day.”

Harriet's Garden Tips: April showers bring May flowers.  How true!!!  Daylilies are really hardy.  Have you seen them growing in ditches and along the roadside?  They are called daylilies because that beautiful bloom lasts one day.  There are newer varieties that bloom continuously for longer periods of time.  I love to  mix daylilies in flower beds.  They divide easily and just survive.  We have two wonderful daylily places in town.  The Daylily Depot and Loris and Bobby Yonce have and sell beautiful varieties of them.   In 1944 my mother was visiting may father at Fort Hood, Texas when she walked by a lady selling what turned out to be daylilies out of her trunk.  Mom could not get a plant but the lady promised to send Mom some seeds for $1.00 or it might have been a quarter. That began my family's love of daylilies. 

From David Marshall James:

   The Broadway revival of “Hello, Dolly!” at the Shubert Theater is nominated for 10 Tony awards (to be broadcast June 11^th on CBS), including one for Bette Midler as Best Actress in a Musical.  News of this revival prompted “The History of ‘Hello, Dolly!’ “ as my presentation subject for The Ridge Spring Woman’s Study Club this February, and that presentation will be presented here, in four parts, this being the second:

   So, how did the show come to be?  One turns first to playwright Thornton Wilder, who would come to phenomenal success with the Pulitzer Prize winning plays “Our Town” and “The Skin of Our Teeth.”  Just prior to “Our Town,” he had a flop with “The Merchant of Yonkers” on Broadway in 1938.  He would revisit that play, pulling one of its background characters to the forefront and renaming it “The Matchmaker,” which became a Broadway success for Ruth Gordon in 1955 and a movie starring Shirley Booth, Anthony Perkins, Shirley MacLaine, and Robert Morse, 50 years before he would star on the TV show “Mad Men.”

   Producer David Merrick, who would have another big hit during the 1964 Broadway season—“Funny Girl”—brought “The Matchmaker” to Broadway, so he dug it up and pitched it to director Gower Champion as the basis for a musical.  Merrick and Champion had had a hit together with the show “Carnival,” and Champion had taken Broadway by storm by putting “Bye, Bye Birdie” together in 1960, the show that made Dick Van Dyke a star, and that would make Ann-Margret a star when she was introduced in the 1964 film.

   Gower, unofficially assisted by wife and dance partner Marge, grew even more enthusiastic about the show when composer/lyricist Jerry Herman brought them four songs, including “Hello, Dolly.”  As he was playing this in the Champions’ apartment, one of their young sons wandered in and began singing along.  Everyone knew it was a hit in the making.

   This was only Herman’s second Broadway show, following “Milk and Honey” (1961), although he had written several successful Off-Broadway revues during the 1950s, both of them featuring his good friend Charles Nelson Reilly, who would portray Cornelius Hackl, the second male lead in “Dolly.”  Eileen Brennan, fresh from her success as “Little Mary Sunshine” on Broadway, would portray second female lead Irene Molloy. 

    There are as many David Merrick stories as there are people who worked for him.  Carol Channing relates several in her memoir, “Just Lucky I Guess,” including this one from March 1964.  The show had been playing for two months, and was up for a Life magazine cover story—the kind of publicity that you couldn’t put a dollar value on, to be seen by untold millions.  Merrick was hot to have that cover, but the editors informed him that Gen. Douglas MacArthur was gravely ill.  Should he die, MacArthur would not fade away, but rather grab the cover out of Merrick’s itchy palms.

    “Pray!” he ordered everyone within earshot.  “Pray for the General!”  And off Channing and the lot of them went, and lo, she found herself on the April 3, 1964, cover of Life magazine.  Upon its release, some souls questioned their producer’s exhortation to prayer, to which he responded, “Let the s.o.b. die now.”  And he did, his death grabbing the cover of Life on April 17, 1964.

REMINDERS

May 20: Magnolia Ridge Antique and Art Gathering

June 2& 3: Peach Tree 23 Yard Sale

June 6: Vouchers given out at Town Hall

June 10: RS Farmers' Market Opens

Ridge Spring Library hours: Mon/Tues 8:30 am - 12 pm; Wed., 8:30 – 4:30; Thurs 8:30 am - 12:30 pm; Fri 8:30 pm -4:30 pm

Ridge Spring Post Office hours:  Mon-Fri. 7:30 am – 11:30 am; Sat 9 – 10 am

Saluda County Library Hours:  Mon/Wed 8:30 am-5 pm; Tues/Thurs 8:30 am – 6 pm; Fri 8:30 am – 5 pm; Sat closed

Recycling Center Hours: Mon/Wed/Fri 1-7; Sat 7-7; Sun 3-7; Tues/Thurs closed

First Thursday of the Month:  AARS meets at 6:30, 685-5783

Third Thursday of the Month: FORS at Library at 5:00