Thursday Nights

 Thursday nights usually means a potluck and program at church.  The program can be on anything from birds to flowers to travel adventures.  Last week, we played the "Wagon Wheel" game.  The purpose is to learn something new about the people around you.

Two rows of chairs were set up facing one another.
The outside row was the one to move clockwise when
the time was called.  We were given a question and one minute each, and the two people facing one another took turns answering that particular question. Then we rotated.  I thought the questions were quite interesting.

In what ways do you most hope you are like your mother?  (surprisingly, this was hard for many people)
What do you remember about last Sunday's sermon?  (I did especially well on this one.)
What was your first job, or some interesting job you did when you were young?
What is your favorite city? (the one I currently live in)
What do you think heaven will be like? (I have a lifetime worth of questions ).
If you were a television host, who would you most want to interview? (living person)
If you knew you absolutely could not fail, what is something you would do?

On the 'job' question,  I remembered an interesting experience with a job I had the summer I graduated from college. It was Mississippi in 1967.  Two of us were employed by the Organization of Economic Opportunity to recruit families to enroll their children in a new government program, Headstart.  Most poor families (for whom this program was targeted) were deeply suspicious of any federal government idea or representatives. We knocked on doors, walking in neighborhoods.  For some black families, it was probably the first time that 'white girls' had knocked on their doors, or been in their homes.

What I experienced was contrary to what I might have expected, based on the racism at the time.  It was the poorest white folks who had the most filthy homes.  The poor black homes were neat, orderly.  For some reason, I can still picture a simple table with a white lace doillie and a framed photograph of a loved one.

After that summer, I left that city, and the state, and have no idea about the outcome of the Headstart program in that particular location.  I hope that some we recruited did enroll and benefit from it.   I know that thousands have, in the years since.

It was certainly a unique experience in my life, opening door into homes I could otherwise never have entered at that time in history.