Head, Heart, Health Hands - 4-H
I pledge:
My head to clearer thinking,
My heart to greater loyalty,
My hands to larger service,
My health to better living
For my club, my community, and my country.
Learn to do by doing!
There I’d be, every Saturday morning, gathered around a leader's kitchen table, chanting this, and whipping out my notebook with 8 or 10 other teen girls, ready to learn something about bread-making, or sewing, or some other domestic art. And laugh. Oh yes, we laughed a lot! This was community-building at its best. This was 4-H, circa 1982, East Wawanosh township.
Seems 4-H is a North American invention, beginning in 1901 in the US and spreading to Canada a dozen years later. It was all about agriculture then but in the 1930s, they introduced ‘homemaking’ courses, the stream I pursued 50 years later. We met weekly for 2 or 3 months, learned about the topic with the help of two adult leaders who were mothers of friends, and then participated in an “achievement night” where each club in the county had to either present a skit or a poster that somehow captured the content of the course. For completing the course, we each received a silver spoon engraved with the 4-H crest.
My favourite course was the bread making one, a skill I have used throughout my life. For Huron County, the course included tutelage in next-level bread, and so while I don’t recall ever having eaten a croissant before, I do recall the pride of rolling out sheets of butter between sheets of wax paper, letting them chill on top of leftovers in our fridge, and then folding them into the dough. It was a painstaking process that still makes me the bakery-bought kind and give a disdainful sniff to the sort that comes in bulk from Costco.
Not every course left me with life-long skills or recipes. One, probably about party foods, left some bad taste in my mouth, including the questionable combination of heating up cut-up weiners in a sauce of French’s mustard and grape jelly. If I ever serve you this, you will know you have overstayed your welcome!
Other courses left me sweating, swearing, and sometimes bleeding onto the fabric as it sped too quickly under the foot of the sewing machine. Or babying the blisters that formed from the macrame jute. While the learning happened at the Saturday morning sessions, the projects developed at home, so it was my mother, not my friends’ mothers, who suffered through the teenage bitchiness for which I was so known in my own house. Despite the gnashing of teeth it inspired when I was 16, macrame re-emerged during the pandemic after having faded into a deep part of my brain for 40 years. I have several projects to show for it.
Beyond remembering the substance of each course, though, I remember working with the other club members to make stuff happen at the meetings. Academically, I wasn’t much for groups - it always seemed much easier just to do it myself - but in this environment, I experimented alongside my friends trying to master skills that were part aesthetic, part science, and all technique.
Then there were the stories and gossip that we shared sotto voce while our leaders had their backs turned or using teen code words that, like every cohort, we assumed were impenetrable to other generations. Because 4-H time was Saturday morning, Friday night provided ample fodder for sharing, especially by the older girls. More than once I arrived directly from a party at a friend’s house where I stayed over. It is likely my breath bore the distinct whiff of alcohol although I was too naive to consider this possibility. I do recall occasionally feeling too “unwell” to sample the results of the cooking classes - clearly even then I knew that grape jelly/mustard/weiner combo would not be a positive addition to a hangover.
As with much of my rural beginnings, I kept my 4-H life under wraps over the last decades. In recent years, however, I am more inclined to trot these tales out at parties, as a bit of a novelty. It’s remarkable how frequently I meet other women my age who enjoyed and endured similar experiences. I hope this nudges a few memories out for you!
Now, join me in a rousing recitation of the 4-H Creed, best said in an accelerating speed and a rising pitch just as we concluded our meetings all those years ago!
I believe in boys and girls working for the opportunity it gives me to become a useful citizen.
I believe in the training of my HEAD for the power it will give me to think, plan, and reason.
I believe in the training of my HEART for the nobleness it will give me to be kind, sympathetic, and true.
I believe in the training of my HANDS for the ability it will give me to be helpful, skillful, and useful.
I believe in the training of my HEALTH for the strength it will give me to enjoy life, resist disease, and work for efficiency.
I am therefore willing to devote my efforts for the fulfilment of these things which I believe!
I dedicate this blog to the memory of my 4-H leader, Mildred Purdon, who died in early May; to her daughters, all friends and blog readers; and to all the other girls who grew up to be women with a bunch of tarnished silver spoons and the ability to chant the Creed.
(above and below right - me in the summer of 2020 re-acquainting myself with the wonders of jute and beads; below left my six trophies from my 4-H clubs, never polished but occasionally used nonetheless; below middle, an example of my bread making skills for which I have Mildred Pardon and my mother to thank)
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