Ide Be a Volunteer

I have no idea how the conversation started, but Sally was asking if I was familiar with Ide Adobe. Heck yes, I am.

(Hang with me here) In high school, I was voted runner-up to “Least likely to be in class.” Hopefully people who know now me think that’s funny. With any luck, I’ve shown myself to be “cured” of such work shirking. But in high school my world revolved around boys and interesting hair choices. School was the last place I wanted to be.

It was in that vein that I signed up for the Ide Adobe program. William B. Ide was a pillar of pioneer Tehama County. He was powerful enough that when efforts were in play to have the north state secede, he was the pick for governor. He had some land on the river in Red Bluff and he build a mud house. This mud house went on to be a historical site where many a 4^th grader would come to learn about California history. Someone had to entertain those 4^th graders so the high school had a program to help. I thought this program would be a chance to ditch class weekly. I was wrong.

The docent program was intended to be historically accurate. We were to be convincing that it was 1850. We had to wear pioneer dresses and bonnets and shit. Musty community pioneer dresses in the nor cal spring. Let that smell conjur up for you. We were not allowed to acknowledge modern technologies and were to redirect kids away from such topics with the catch phrase “That’s a strange use of the language.”

Fun thing about 9 year olds; testing limits such as this is one of their favorite pastimes.

They’d point and call out things such as “It’s not 1850! There’s an airplane!”

Billy didn’t know that every other Billy already tried to wow his friends with the same sort of valiant display. Whichever disengaged teen was the target of the attempted breach of character would flatly tell Billy, “that’s a strange use of the language” and try to move on.

Typically Billy didn’t give up so quickly and sometimes the tone of the catch phrase would end up sounding more like “shut the fuck up, Billy.”

Many a time we wanted to be like “Yah Billy. I know you have a TV in your house and you’re going to get on a bus to leave here, and it’s really NOT 1850, but that dude over there is giving me my grade. I never attend class, and I kinda just need to you stop, before I lose my shit and get failed.” The history teacher was beyond passionate about the seriousness of the roles.

We would work with the kids to make things that probably wouldn’t fly today. Maybe programs still make candles and foods like “peach slump”. They may even still make some rope. But I doubt it was far past 1988 when they stopped letting teens use lye with 4^th graders to make soap or to allow children to make lead rifle balls to take home as souvenirs.

There were some jobs that were more fun than others. Beating the dust out of rugs was obviously lame. We knew it, the kids knew it, but it was a part of the gig. Everybody liked making rifle balls. The docent hierarchy meant it was mostly the popular high schoolers that got that job. I, on the other hand, made a lot of peach slump. Boo.

We had one day when we were short-handed because “Rob” wasn’t at school. This was great for the echelon order. Rob was popular, his absence meant someone else got to be the rifle ball king. We stood there in the sun in bonnets and amish looking hats baking. Someone called out, “It’s Rob!” There on an innertube floating slowly by in the cold water of the Sacramento was Rob. He, his friends, their mullets and mostly likely beer just floated on by.

I feel bad for him. He looked like he was living his best life, but really he was missing an opportunity to thwart Billy’s efforts.

I hadn’t volunteered to be a docent for pure reasons. I was trying to get out of class. But I’m glad I had the experience. I wish I was more like people who would be still volunteering to try to make the world a better place. They honor us with their action and I am grateful.

I hope to spend more time as a volunteer. Keep me in mind if you need someone to pour molten lead into a mold. Just remember that if you tell me that it’s a “safety hazard,” I may press on and dismiss the concern with “that’s a strange use of the language.”

Thanks for reading!