Optimists Report Surge in Membership

(Norwood) The Disappointment Valley Optimist Club had whittled itself down to two dues paying affiliates during the winter. Then one of them was deported to Grand Junction. The situation looked bleak or is that bleek?

One member was not enough to maintain the charter or pay expenses. It wasn’t even enough to reach a quorum or host the Bedrock Earth Ring Symposium. Something had to be done. People risked losing a vital civic contribution from a solid organization that has been around since 1901 or so.

As one later president remembers it: “Then the toilet got stopped up and the pipes froze, the fox got into the hen house, the tires on the snowplow truck went flat, the wood is too green to burn and mighty wet. It was like putting lipstick on figs.”

That’s when the last member standing, Olde “Man” Pritchard, started serving free drinks at the meetings.

“I could still hear the ice tinkling in the glasses,” said new Optimist, Rufus Maxwell. “Then I watched as new members lined up, signed up and paid their annual dues in cash. I couldn’t believe it.”

Tonight, with a confirmed brotherhood of 26, the Disappointment Optimist Club is thriving. The fraternal organization even hopes to rescue its insignia happy face round table and regimental colors from the Naturita Poke ’N Pawn before the end of the month.

The Optimists still need a place to meet, a gavel, some folding chairs and buckets of ice.

“We will always need more ice,” said one new member. “It is our cross to bear.”

“The hospitality shown by brother Pritchard was above and below the call of duty,” said a specially prepared release. “Tomorrow night we plan to offer free gasoline, a tea dance and tax counseling,” said the statement. “That should bump us up to 100 members, a milestone that will qualify us for matching funds from the exiled government in Cahone and a discount at the Yellow Rock.”

Meanwhile old men with caps and canes in villages all over the world stare at arriving buses as if they had never seen such a brazen display of cutting edge technology.

– Susie Compost

“Stand up (to his wavering troops). They couldn’t shoot an elephant from this distance!” – General John Sedgewick, moments before being shot in the face in Spotsylvania County, Virginia May 9, 1864. He had the dubious distinction of being the highest-ranking Union soldier to be killed in the American Civil War.