Janielle: A Memory

Janielle: A Memory

I recently heard that this bright light of my youth has been transformed by the change called death.

It has been many, many years since I last saw her, but she is preserved in my memory as a small, dynamic girl–always cheerful and always a good influence on a pre-teen and teenage boy like me..

We were in the same confirmation class at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico so we must have been about the same age–about twelve at that time. I remember a photograph of that class– all of we children robed in white with a sprig of fern and a carnation pinned to our chest– Janielle with short blonde hair, snubbed nose and a serious expression which must have been difficult for her since she was usually bubbling with laughter and friendly talk.

(Other faces haunt my memory from that photo: Todd, who went blind and died young, my best friend Eric, who fell in love with the same girl I did and became my bitterest enemy, Elaine, who had a nervous breakdown, Bill, who became a Lutheran Pastor and died about the same time Janielle did, Roland, Neil, the two other Toms and the long, glowing, solemn face of Pastor Soker.–all long gone but not quite forgotten.)

When we were about fifteen, Janielle did something at a summer church camp which I have never forgotten.

The camp was held in the Colorado mountains at a place called “Shadybrook”, and it was a paradise for us.

Young people were there from the entire “Rocky Mountain Synod”– from El Paso, Texas to Cheyenne, Wyoming– never many, of course, since Lutherans were scattered rather thinly across the landscape in those days, but maybe 50 kids.

We played volleyball, went on hikes and had “Bible study” classes; we ate together, slept together (boys and girls in separate cabins, of course) and performed hilarious (to us) songs and skits in the mess hall every evening and we elected officers for the synod Luther League’s coming year in a grand convention.

Also as a camp tradition, several times during the week some of the adult men and leading boys would get together in the kitchen after the evening meal and then march into the dining hall carrying toasting forks or pitch forks or such forkish tools and singing to the tune of “I’m a Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech”:

We are, we are, we are, we are
The Order of the Forks!
We are, we are, we are, we are
The Order of the Forks!
And every single one of us
Is hungrier than the rest of us!
We are, we are, we are, we are
The Order of the Forks!

They would then announce the names of several leading boys or visiting male dignitaries as initiates to the Order. These males would be tapped and led to the front of the room and then they would get to choose their initiation food: “The Fruit of the Vine” (a raw onion), or “The Fruit of the Fowl” (a raw egg). The initiates would swallow their choice morsel while the crowd roared, stomped and clapped. We all thought this was good fun.

But after one meal near the end of camp something different happened. There was a noise from the kitchen and a small group of women and girls, lead by Janielle marched into the room singing to a new tune:

We are, we are
The Order of the Knives, the Knives!
We are, we are
The Order of the Knives!

Janielle and her female cohorts then went about the room selecting the few most popular female leaders who were led to the front and initiated by eating some awful food which I don’t remember. Then they all left, singing together.

I hadn’t realized until this event how chauvinistic The Order of the Forks was. In those long-ago pre-women’s lib days, it seemed quite “normal” to select only males for any honor–even such a mock honor as The Order of the Forks.

Dear Janielle was brave enough and self confident enough to organize her own sex into an “Order”.

I don’t think I ever congratulated her for this wonder, but I have never forgotten it either.

Tomasito, 2008

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