Tea & tradition
Tea party introduces generations
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POLSON — The new friends sipping tea around the table may have had a significant age gap, but as they shared stories, the fabric of their lives seemed interwoven.
“Hi, my name is Imogene. My friends call me Jean, and I will be 85 years old this month,” Imogene Repke said, introducing herself. “I do like to paint … I’ve made a study of it. It’s my main interest, that and gardening.”
Valerie Glantz and Taylor and Marshelle Walhood, all 13 or 14 years old, joined Repke at table 2 in the St. Joseph Retirement Community dining room. Wearing burgundy, aqua and royal blue hats, the foursome sipped tea, sampled cookies and sandwiches and talked at a tea party held after school on March 8.
Repke said she grew up on a farm in Michigan, where “the earth was very fertile.”
“We raised everything we ate,” Repke noted. “The only things we bought at the grocery store were coffee and sugar.”
Describing her home, Taylor told her tablemates they live in the country. Her family has 20 horses, and they used to raise pigs. Marshelle and her family own 10 horses and 20 pigs. Glantz also lives in the country. The Walhood grandparents are from North Dakota so the girls had heard stories of less luxurious times.
The community’s dining room was filled with women — those who lived at the home and young women from the Polson Junior High School — all, drinking tea and eating treats. The tables each had at least one, sometimes two or three, retirement community residents and three or four 8th graders.
Above the hum of voices, laughter and the clink of china, Repke continued the conversation.
“We (my family) felt we were blessed because we had enough to eat.”
She spoke of her mother feeding people who were walking through the countryside looking for work.
“Did you have a big family?” Glantz asked.
“Just my brother and me,” Repke replied. “During the depression people didn’t have lots of children if they could help it … it was more mouths to feed.”
She recalled being in charge of the strawberry bed one summer, picking berries every day, making jam and jelly and every evening preparing a strawberry shortcake for the hired man’s dinner.
“When we pick raspberries,” Glantz said, with a giggle, “half don’t even come home.”
Marshelle added that her grandparents do a lot of canning and freezing to preserve fresh produce and fruit.
“Tastes pretty good in the winter time, doesn’t it,” Repke said.
She noted that her mother raised chickens and sold eggs, cream and butter.
“We had a bill at the doctor’s my mother paid off with chickens, egg, butter and cream,” Repke said. “It was the depression; no one had any money.”
Glantz asked Repke if she had ever gone hunting.
Repke said, “We had pheasants on our farm. … I didn’t really enjoy killing them. I did it because everybody did it … kind of the macho thing to do.”
“My grandparents raise peacocks,” Taylor said.
“Oh, they’re noisy,” Repke said.
Marshelle said they also have turkeys, ducks, geese, guineas, “plus llamas …”
After animals, the conversation turned to birthdays. Repke’s is in March. Glantz mentioned that her birthday and her brother’s birthday are July 21 and July 19.
Marshelle and Taylor, cousins, are four months and 10 days apart. Repke asked them who were the siblings, their mothers or their fathers.
“Our fathers are brothers,” they answered in unison.
There were eight children in their dad's family and only one girl.
After a few minutes discussing zodiac signs, Repke determined that Marshelle is an Aries and should be artistic.
Marshelle admitted she likes to draw, and the conversation continued on to Repke’s happiest moment.
She said, “Moving to Montana … I never regretted it, not one moment.”
The tea party was the brainchild of Polson Middle School Physical Education teacher Cindy Templer. Templer visits the community every Saturday morning, bringing communion to the residents and doing a church service so she’s gotten to know many of the residents. One day when Templer and some of her 8th grade students were talking about interesting women at the retirement community, the girls expressed an interest in visiting.
So Templer brainstormed a tea party.
“I come up with these crazy ideas,” Templer explained, “… then I say, okay, I need help.”
“My thinking was that the women could share their lifetime experiences,” she said,” (of) the depression, World War II, women’s lib — and the girls could share their energy.”
Templer’s friends from the middle school — counselors Rhonda Hinman and Kathy Fewlass and teachers Terry Calahan and LouAnne Krantz — and PEO members all jumped in to help her.
To really make the tea party special, Lucy McCrumb and other PEO ladies brought hats for everyone to wear –straw hats, felt hats, vintage hats, garden hats, wide-brimmed hats, hats with veils.
PEO President Toni Young and her group baked cookies, brought teapots to serve the tea and served the treats. Young even made egg salad sandwiches cut out with cookie cutters cause she knew the girls would be hungry after school. The retirement center provided the tea and the dining area.
For entertainment, resident Fritz Dehne did her Woody Woodpecker laugh and mimicked a cuckoo clock. Eighth grade pianist Sarah Rausch played “Jessica’s Theme.”
All too soon, the hour-long party was over. Many girls and residents became friends, and Templer had girls volunteering to come down on Saturdays with her.
“I’m so excited at how it (the tea party) turned out,” Templer said. “I just want people to know how wonderful these girls are.”
She added, “I’ve just been empowered by these women (residents).”
