SUMMARY:  It’s time to raise money for the church, and the ladies have an idea about how Ben and Adam can help with that.  However, as you would expect, things don’t work out as planned.

Rating:  PG  Word Count:  1194

Fretting About Fundraising

In Virginia City, Nevada, it was time for the annual church fundraising social. The ladies of the congregation too charge every year, and this year had decided that singing was going to be the entertainment and they would charge admission. The committee had quite a discussion about that saying they couldn’t get anyone to pay any money to hear singing, but then Abigail Meyer suggested they would pay the price of admission if they could get Adam Cartwright to do the singing especially if he would play his guitar too. Clementine Hawkins said that was good for the younger women, but she thought they might get more money if Ben might be persuaded to sing too.

Now that did complicate things a bit. Adam had a broad repertoire of songs he could sing, but Ben mostly could sing songs in church. By discussion among them, they discovered he knew some songs from his days as a sailor and folk songs from his days on the trail both with the wagon train coming west and from numerous cattle drives. Abigail, Clementine, and the minister’s wife were appointed to enlist the two singers in their endeavor. After some verbal arm-twisting by the ladies, they got the two men to agree and at the next meeting they were there to discuss songs they might sing. As part of the discussion, they planned to perform the songs to see if they were what the ladies wanted for their program.

“All right, Pa, we’re going to sing Git Along Little Dogies and sing the melody first. It starts on the fifth fret.”

As the two men began singing, the ladies were enchanted until the two men sang a couple of lines the ladies found blasphemous for a church fund raiser. They had no idea that a folk song could contain such lyrics.

“Stop, stop, you can’t sing that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s blasphemous!”

“What?”

“Going up the trail for pleasure!” The ladies looked aghast at the two men.

Ben looked at Adam and shrugged. “Let’s try The Range of the Buffalo.” They sang some until challenged once more.

“Stop, stop, you absolutely cannot do that song in front of the congregation!”

Adam rolled his eyes.

Ben looked at the ladies. “That’s blasphemous too?”

“Oh, my, one cannot use words such as damned and hell-fired in church!”

“But the minister uses words like that in his sermons.”

“What Reverend Wilson says in a most serious manner in his profound sermons to guide our lives is much different than saying something like that in an irreverent way.” The ladies all had that look that reminded one of being chastised by the teacher for an infraction of the rules. Ben meekly gave up arguing.

“Pa, let’s try The Cowboy’s Lament.”

When Adam and Ben finished singing that one, the ladies talked and then shook their heads. The song talked of gambling, drinking, and gun fighting. Father and son tried I Ride an Old Paint but were abruptly stopped at the poolroom reference. As sensitized as the ladies had become to folk songs of the west, Adam suggested that perhaps they should let the ladies decide on the songs for the two of them to sing. He did so because it was unlikely that the songs that men would choose were going to satisfy them.

Although frustrated, Ben agreed that the folk songs weren’t going to work, but he asked the ladies what other ideas they had because their original plan wasn’t panning out. Unfortunately, he missed all the warning signs Adam was desperately trying to give him. Adam couldn’t be too obvious with all the women watching but couldn’t get his father’s attention long enough to get him to realize the danger in the direction he was going. It didn’t take long though for that to become painfully clear.

Several women immediately volunteered to sing with the two men and hurried to the front of the room to stand with them. Several quickly said that perhaps they could sing more traditional songs such as Amazing Grace. Another suggested several traditional folk songs.  Greensleeves was mentioned by several to enthusiastic responses from the other ladies in the room but none so great as those who would be next to the two men as it was being sung. Ever willing to help or in this case to prove a point, Adam began to play the instrumental part and the ladies began to sing. Two of the volunteers apparently had been born with no concept of pitch and with no ability to appreciate that their voices were best heard only in low volume or perhaps when they were alone. Everyone in the room cringed. The others would have done all right singing in a large choir but not in a small ensemble.  When they finished, there was silence even as the ladies waited for applause or at the very least some praise. There was none. Those who had witnessed the appalling event followed that adage that if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all.

Following the best dictates of diplomacy, the chairwoman of the committee suggested they go back to the previous year’s fundraisers until more research could be done on the singing. It passed by a wide margin. Adam and Ben were asked if they could spend some time perhaps in the next year working on songs that would be suitable for a program. They said they would try but made no greater commitment than that. As soon as they could leave the building, they did, and the ladies were sure they heard loud laughter as the men rode away.

A bit peevish at that point, Abigail expressed her displeasure. “Now, I wonder what they found so amusing. I wish they had shared that with us. After all our hard work, we could have used a moment of levity as well.”

However after being subjected to a session of her singing and watching how the two men had reacted especially watching Adam’s eyes roll and Ben’s eyebrows go up and down in consternation, the ladies could only hold back so long. Laughter erupted throughout the hall and even Clementine understood why it had occurred. She knew she was a terrible singer, but the opportunity to stand next to Ben with her arm through his and sing Greensleeves, perhaps her favorite love song, had been too great a temptation. She got a great cleansing laugh, but she would have a wonderful memory to help soothe her way into sleep each night.

Only poor Abigail had to go home completely flummoxed by all of the events. She told her husband, Hank Myers, all about the meeting and what had happened and then about the mass hysteria at the end. He soothed her and said words meant to comfort her, but she couldn’t understand the hint of a smile he seemed to have either.

Tags: Adam Cartwright, Ben Cartwright