Super Saturday

David Baker, (our fearless leader), Alex Baker, Dave's son, Doug Petty, Steve Schroder and I worked from 9:30 this morning until about 3:30 this afternoon at the Temple. David is our High Priest, Illustrious Master and Commander and we had discussed the deplorable (love that word) shape that the York Rite paraphernalia (God I love Spell check - how else could I spell paraphernalia?) was in and how ever since we had consolidated with the Boone York Rite we had some duplicates and things had just been stored in a haphazard manner and if we ever wanted to put on a festival we would spend half our time locating the properties.
This is Dave modeling one of the hats we found. I think it belonged to Fred Schneider and he probably used it when he presided as Master of the Lodge. You can see some of the "stuff" that we dragged out to sort. If you look to Davids left (your right) you will see a white box with a notebook on it. That notebook was one I put together about 20 years ago and in it are all the diagrams and property lists for the various degrees for the York Rite. Doug and I went to Target (pronounced Thar gaa) and purchased some plastic boxes that would fit on our shelves. Using my book as a guide we put the various properties into the boxes and labeled them so that when it comes time to do the degree we can pull out the box and the properties for doing the degree should (I say should because there is some duplication from degree to degree) be in the box or in the preceding degree box.

We all had fun looking at the various properties and taking pictures of each other taking pictures.



We found lots of head gear including the feather headed chapeaux which the Knights wear. Many of them were in such sad shape that it was a kindness to toss them. We were actually able to dispose of a lot of things which will never be used.





We chained Doug up and gave him a snake to play with but it didn't bite him. (unfortunately) (Sorry Doug, just teasing - you know I wouldn't want anything to happen to you.)




The Back room was in very bad shape and so we arranged and sorted all of the material which was stored back there. Golly it takes a lot of things to put on these degrees but at least now you can get around and not trip over things. We put all of the Rainbow things together, The White Shrine and of course, our York Rite material It looks pretty good now.




















You can see the nice way the boxes fit on our shelves. Everything is in the box for the degree and we should be able to bring them out and have everything on hand as needed for a degree.



All in all I am very proud of us. We worked hard and are getting things together for when we are ready to hold a festival or put on our own degrees again. Read David's take on the day here.

We also found some things that had been lost, stolen or strayed into our area. The Eastern Star has been looking for their extension cord that connects their pedestals to each other so they can be lighted. We have been missing it and were even going to have a new one made. Now we won't have to do that.

Finally here is one last picture. I purchased this sword (originally for another group but that did not work out) and presented it to the Lodge. I think it looks cool hanging by the door and should anyone try to spy on us the Tyler knows how to use it to keep off cowans and eavesdroppers.

All things are now ready to start on a New Year!

I hope your day was as good as mine. Hugs, j-bear