2014 Club Activities
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Friendship Force's Garage Sale
October 4, 2014
October 4, 2014
Our day on Saturday actually began back in January when we, as a board, decided to have a garage sales to generate some income for our club. Shortly thereafter, Vera volunteered to chair the garage sale and then we let the idea hibernate or germinate until about a month ago. That was when we learned that the date of Walden's community wide garage sale was set for October 4. Nothing else to do that day since LSU was playing an away game.
Save The Date notices were sent out and then Co-Chair Barbara Wittkopf issued a decree that all "items of interest" were to be dropped off at her house beginning Saturday September 28. A number of club members gathered at her house on Thursday, Oct. 2 at 10 am to begin separating and pricing the valuables. Working through the night (a slight exaggeration) and part of Friday separating and pricing the valuables the big day finally arrived. Barbara kept most members happy by providing food, liquid refreshments, and a place out of the heat Thursday and Friday and out of the cold on Saturday.
Saturday was a cool day and we started the spill out of items from the garage onto our driveway at 6:15 am. We had our first "want to be customers" as 6:30 am. Our first paying customer wandered in about 7:05 am. From then on, it was like a circus, except we weren't quite sure who the entertainers were, us or them.
At different times throughout the three days we had a total of over 20 members who stopped by and helped in one way or another.
Thanks for the many members who provided tables, garage sale items, and helped setup, sort and price items, and package items that did not sell. Many thanks to Barbara for agreeing to hold this celebration at her house. Thanks to Jamie Tindle from Families Helping Families for picking up the items that were "leftover".
Word has it that we had the best Garage Sale in Walden.
Oh, we also made $1,004.25 minus any expenses associated with putting on the garage sale.
Save The Date notices were sent out and then Co-Chair Barbara Wittkopf issued a decree that all "items of interest" were to be dropped off at her house beginning Saturday September 28. A number of club members gathered at her house on Thursday, Oct. 2 at 10 am to begin separating and pricing the valuables. Working through the night (a slight exaggeration) and part of Friday separating and pricing the valuables the big day finally arrived. Barbara kept most members happy by providing food, liquid refreshments, and a place out of the heat Thursday and Friday and out of the cold on Saturday.
Saturday was a cool day and we started the spill out of items from the garage onto our driveway at 6:15 am. We had our first "want to be customers" as 6:30 am. Our first paying customer wandered in about 7:05 am. From then on, it was like a circus, except we weren't quite sure who the entertainers were, us or them.
At different times throughout the three days we had a total of over 20 members who stopped by and helped in one way or another.
Thanks for the many members who provided tables, garage sale items, and helped setup, sort and price items, and package items that did not sell. Many thanks to Barbara for agreeing to hold this celebration at her house. Thanks to Jamie Tindle from Families Helping Families for picking up the items that were "leftover".
Word has it that we had the best Garage Sale in Walden.
Oh, we also made $1,004.25 minus any expenses associated with putting on the garage sale.
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Women's Week
September 19 and 23, 2014
September 19 and 23, 2014
Friendship Force Baton Rouge fully participated in Women's Council of Baton Rouge's Women's Week 2014 by sponsoring a display table at the opening luncheon on September 19 held at the Baton Rouge Marriott. Thornton Cofield and Barbara Wittkopf spoke to numerous luncheon attendees about Friendship Force encouraging them to attend our more informative session on Tuesday night from 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
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A Visit to "Mr. Charlie and the
Wedell-Williams and Cypress Sawmill Museum
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Wedell-Williams and Cypress Sawmill Museum
Saturday, April 12, 2014
A group of Friendship Force members, friends, and two LSU students left early Saturday morning for a trip via Hwy 70 through Bayou Corne and Pierre Part to Morgan City. Our first destination was "Mr. Charlie", the world's first submersible, transportable drilling rig. Built in 1952 she spent the next 32 years discovering petroleum and helping bring the product to market. "Mr. Charlie" could drill in up to 40 feet of water and the platform was 220 feet by 85 feet wide. She could accommodate a crew of 58 men and was totally self-sufficient, being supplied by boat.
Randy, our tour guide, did a fantastic job keeping our attention, pointing out tools and equipment that were commonly used on this rig 35 years ago. At that time most of the work associated with drilling offshore was manual. The roustabouts did the hard manual work such as loading and unloading mud and cement sacks as well as drilling pipe. While there were no photos of the roughnecks and drillers on display, Randy showed us the tools that were used in a typical 24/7 work week to penetrate the Earth's crust to retrieve the locked petroleum and bring it to surface. The work on the rig went on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Having worked offshore while in college, Randy informed us that the work I used to do is now done by machines or is automated. "Mr. Charlie" last saw duty in 1986 in the shallow bay waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
After the rig tour we stopped for a few minutes by the 21 foot sea wall protecting Morgan City from the potentially high waters of the Atchafalaya River and walked over to look at the docked shrimp boats.
By 12:15 pm we were at a local establishment named the Boiling Madd Café for the special of the day, shrimp or crawfish stew. The food and service were excellent.
After eating we all made our way to the Cypress Sawmill and Wedell-Williams Museum in Patterson, LA. This museum is part of the Louisiana State Museum System and the two distinct displays are equal in quality to the Capitol Park Museum in Baton Rouge. Patterson, Louisiana was home to the largest cypress sawmill in the world during the early 1900s. Numerous lumber tools and artifacts of sawmill operations were displayed as well as an informative video showing how early cypress trees were cut and transported to market was shown.
The second component of the museum, titled the Wedell-Williams Museum, featured two of Louisiana's leading aviators and their airplanes from the Golden Age of Aviation during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Jimmy Wedell and Harry Williams were early aviation pioneers who with their planes set several speed records during the early formative years of aviation.
Please click on any one of the following images to begin a manual slide show and to enlarge the image!
Randy, our tour guide, did a fantastic job keeping our attention, pointing out tools and equipment that were commonly used on this rig 35 years ago. At that time most of the work associated with drilling offshore was manual. The roustabouts did the hard manual work such as loading and unloading mud and cement sacks as well as drilling pipe. While there were no photos of the roughnecks and drillers on display, Randy showed us the tools that were used in a typical 24/7 work week to penetrate the Earth's crust to retrieve the locked petroleum and bring it to surface. The work on the rig went on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Having worked offshore while in college, Randy informed us that the work I used to do is now done by machines or is automated. "Mr. Charlie" last saw duty in 1986 in the shallow bay waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
After the rig tour we stopped for a few minutes by the 21 foot sea wall protecting Morgan City from the potentially high waters of the Atchafalaya River and walked over to look at the docked shrimp boats.
By 12:15 pm we were at a local establishment named the Boiling Madd Café for the special of the day, shrimp or crawfish stew. The food and service were excellent.
After eating we all made our way to the Cypress Sawmill and Wedell-Williams Museum in Patterson, LA. This museum is part of the Louisiana State Museum System and the two distinct displays are equal in quality to the Capitol Park Museum in Baton Rouge. Patterson, Louisiana was home to the largest cypress sawmill in the world during the early 1900s. Numerous lumber tools and artifacts of sawmill operations were displayed as well as an informative video showing how early cypress trees were cut and transported to market was shown.
The second component of the museum, titled the Wedell-Williams Museum, featured two of Louisiana's leading aviators and their airplanes from the Golden Age of Aviation during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Jimmy Wedell and Harry Williams were early aviation pioneers who with their planes set several speed records during the early formative years of aviation.
Please click on any one of the following images to begin a manual slide show and to enlarge the image!
Game Night
Thursday, January 30, 2014
On Thursday, January 30, we had our first social, "Game Night", at St. Paul Lutheran Church. Twenty-three members showed up for a light dinner of Cane's fried chicken fingers, cole slaw, mustard potato salad, and cake. Of course, before that, we wet our appetites with chips and dip to create the mood and listened to short presentations by Karen Vingeillo on the incoming Ottawa Exchange in April and Sheila Melancon's outgoing exchange to Mid-Willamette Valley in July. We then ate and settled down to the serious business of playing Farkle, Pokeno, poker, and the new game: Wits and Wagers. We ended the night about 8pm.
