We’d been asked to sing for the annual Michigan Academies Reunion of the Collegedale Tennessee Chapter. This is the Annual Tennessee Reunion of the Lake Union Academies for all area graduates, attendees, and former staff living in the Tennessee-Georgia area. Since the quartet had last been on tour, my wife Charity and I had gone to North Carolina to pick up her daughter Lori who had decided to come to Tennessee and live with us. And since this was a local concert, Charity and Lori decided they’d spend the day with us.
The event was being held in the school auditorium of the Standifer Gap church and we got there around 8:00 AM since we were singing for Sabbath School at 9:00. Gary and I always need a good amount of warm-up time when we sing early in the morning, so we spent about half an hour in the parking lot vocalizing and practicing. Charity and I set up the product table so people would have a chance to use the honor system to take home a CD if they liked our music. She stayed at the table throughout the morning, which was very helpful since we had to sing several times.
Ryan had recently found some bowties on sale and had bought four with the same pattern but different colors. We had recently been discussing how bowties are coming back in style so we decided to use this weekend to see how we looked with bowties. Since none of us really knew how to tie one, Tim had to help us. Ryan had been practicing, so he needed less help, but Gary and I didn’t even know where to start. At any rate, we got them tied before we had to sing and throughout the day we got several compliments on them. Being a fan of the British sci-fi show Dr. Who, I recalled how the latest Doctor prefers to wear bowties and, when asked why, he simply states, “Bowties are cool.” I happen to agree!
We performed a half-hour mini-concert for the Sabbath School part of the program and it was less than a stellar performance! It may have been since it was so early, or it might have been that we weren’t using our own sound system, but for whatever reason, we made several mistakes and weren’t quite on pitch for some crucial notes. Nevertheless, everyone seemed to like our songs and they laughed when we mentioned that it was our first time ever wearing bowties and that could’ve been the reason we weren’t performing our best!
Between services, we stood over at the table and talked to several people and helped them with their honor sales. Then, for church service, we sang a couple of songs for special music. We stayed by for a while afterward and then, since the fellowship hall was just too crowded, went to Gary’s house for lunch. Everyone brought a dish or two and Charity brought her awesome enchiladas. We had a good time fellowshipping together and eating all the good food everyone brought and talking about how cool our new bowties are.