Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

When we moved to Glenwood in 1973, it wasn’t long before we learned about the Jaycees.

Back then the Jaycees were a very active organization in the community. But they were not only a group that benefitted the community, they offered a social connection to other people of the same age.

As we worked together we got to know each other. Some of the friendships that we made back in the 1970s are still active today, 50 years later.

Back then the Jaycees ran a bingo hall. It was in the one-story building attached to the north side of the Village Inn. The Jaycees owned the hall and had bingo every Saturday night.

Lots of people would come to bingo depending upon the weather. And the Jaycees had a schedule of workers for the bingo hall so people didn’t have to work it every Saturday night. Usually it took 8-10 people.

The bingo hall generated roughly $20,000 a year that the Jaycees invested back in the community. That was a lot of money back then. I think at the peak in the 1970s there were close to 50 members.

In addition to the bingo hall, at Waterama the Jaycees cooked and sold barbecued chicken from the shed the Rotary Club now uses for pancakes. Actually for a while both the Jaycees and Rotary used the shed, the Jaycees would clean up early Sunday morning just before the Rotarians showed up to cook pancakes.

Those were long days and nights over the hot coals! In fact one of the best times to sell chicken was to people who left the dance at the ballroom late Saturday night.

Of course we helped each other, too. One day Jaycee Roger Salonen needed help to move a piano into his house. We were to pick it up in Alexandria.

On Saturday morning a half dozen of us headed to Alex and learned that the upright piano was in the basement of the house. That was a project. The stairs were narrow so we couldn’t get on each side and lift, people had to lift from the ends and push it up the stairs. It took us well over an hour to get it up the stairs and into the back of a pickup truck.

We got it down to Glenwood and into Roger’s house and that was easy compared to getting it out of its previous location. And then we ran into a problem.

To get it into the room where Roger wanted it placed, we had to go around a corner in a hallway. We tried it frontwards and backwards. We took panels off the piano and it still wouldn’t fit.

While someone had said we shouldn’t do it, desperation took hold. We tipped the piano on its end and it easily slipped around the corner on the carpet and into the room. We put the piano back on its wheels, reinstalled the panels we had removed and there we were, done!

A few years later the Salonens got a newer piano delivered to their house. We didn’t have one at that time so Bev Salonen told the delivery guys they were supposed to take the old piano to our house.

Two very unhappy delivery guys showed up with the old piano and got it into our house. Apparently that was part of the deal but the delivery guys had not been told!

(By the way, we have a different piano at the Stone house now that we don’t currently need, an Everett spinet. You haul it away, it’s yours.)

Over the years as society changed so did the Jaycees. As membership fell, the age to leave was increased, it merged with the Mrs. Jaycees so it was younger men and women.

But as time crept along people got busy and didn’t have time for Jaycees. The Glenwood chapter merged with the Starbuck chapter and I’m not sure there is anything left. That is too bad. I have to get rid of a piano!