Playing the Past

by Kim Van Sickler

Juniors at a Playing the Past badge event.

My daughter, Claire, is about an eyelash short of snagging her Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can earn. It's roughly equivalent to the Eagle Award in Boy Scouts, but having assisted my son in earning his Eagle and my daughter in earning her Gold, I will say it is harder to earn the Gold. However, most people have never heard of the Gold Award.

We could get into a discussion about why that is, but that's for another post.

Claire just turned in her final paperwork for her project, which was restoring a community building, built in 1896, that was originally used by a local Grange organization, otherwise known as the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. As part of her project, she compiled a brief, reader-friendly fact sheet about the Maplegrove Grange and the building that used to be its meeting house. She also threw two community events: one was a Girl Scout badge-earning activity, the other an open house.

Her favorite part of the project was the badge workshop we held for Junior girls to earn the Playing the Past badge.

Girls had to attend, dressed as they might have looked in 1896. Some of us even came up with alter egos.

Girl Scouts dressed as our alter egos.

(From right to left) Claire was Samantha Johnson, a seamstress with a husband  in the Army. She helped sew Army uniforms as well as anything the town's residents needed mended.

Megan was Meg Winston, a single farm owner, ever since her dad passed away.

Carli was Cecil. Her parents were Italian immigrants. She helped her mother run the house, but dreamed of more for herself. She courted a man named Tim and was adamantly opposed to arranged marriages.

Nicole was Sarah Lee. Her father came from a long line of tailors. She grew up in Maine and lived in her beautiful family home until a year ago. It was then that she moved to Ohio with her soon-to-be husband, William James Tabin, a traveling salesman she met in Maine. For the last six months she has been working as a governess.

Nancy was Nora Nash, the local schoolteacher. Her parents were fruit farmers.

Tina (arrived after the picture was taken) helped Nora at the schoolhouse.

And the girls decided that I would be the local newspaper reporter.

It was an afternoon with a decidedly different feel to it. The girls baked Apple Brown Betty.

Preparing Apple Brown Betty.

They braided handkerchiefs out of strips of old fabric and made dolls out of yarn.

Making braided handkerchiefs and yarn dolls.

They played parlour games like "Button, Button" (The It person tries to figure out who is holding onto the button as the players continue to pass it around the circle behind their backs.)

Playing "Button, Button".

And all the while, songs like "Stars and Stripes Forever", "Yankee Doodle Dandy", and "Zacatecas March" played in the background.

This is the badge the Juniors earned.

It's fun to read about times gone by. We discovered it's also fun to try and re-enact them.