Ice Cream Socials and GM

Okay…so my 23 year old son comes home from Columbus last weekend and sees two pink tickets sitting on the counter for the Seraphim Spring Concert…an ice cream social entitled in The Good Old Summertime. He queried: “What in God’s name are these…and what is an ice cream social?” I explained to my progeny of the computer age that an ice cream social is just that. The Methodists among us know that in the summer, occasionally one goes to church on Sunday evening for some entertainment and ice cream…kind of like a Strawberry Social or a Cake Walk. A what???? I told him it was like The Music Man sociable at the end of the movie. My comments were met with a blank stare as he text messaged his friend on his cell phone.

When this program was first proposed, I had some issues with it. It was too old. It was too dated. It didn’t attract young people. Even more frightening, it contained a whole lot of barbershop music, a new genre for our chorus, and difficult to sing if you want to do it right.

Early ticket sales seemed to confirm my always insightful point of view. But then sales started to pick up. Soon, we were scrambling for extra seating, more cookies, more ice cream…it was an unabashed success, both musically and monetarily. No one was more surprised than me. You know what else surprised me? I think it was the best concert we have ever done in my multi year association with the chorus. It was baseball. It was hot dogs. It was apple pie….and Chevrolet. Ouch!!!

At the New Castle performance on Friday night, while others were nonplussed, I got teary eyed during the patriotic medley that ended the show, semi-hokey arrangements of Yankee Doodle Dandy; You’re a Grand Old Flag; American the Beautiful; and the National Anthem. It was the National Anthem that did me in when the audience, as if on cue, stood up as we began to sing “Oh, say, can you see…”

Now I knew what they came for: baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. In times of trouble, people look for what they know. Unfortunately, what they wanted isn’t there anymore. The irony of doing this type of concert on what would be the traditional Memorial Day, before long weekends became more important than what the day represented, on the eve of the General Motors bankruptcy, hit me like a ton of bricks. The America that I grew up in is buried in an age of electronics, computers, cell phones, government takeovers and bailouts, international markets, excessive greed, political correctness, a total lack of any moral fiber and self responsibility, matriarchal families, and a complete collapse of the understanding of American principles and values midst our touchy/feely/empathetic government.

Am I too pessimistic? Probably! The stock market doesn’t jump 250 points the day GM goes belly up unless someone out there has some optimism. On the other hand, Cisco replacing GM in the Dow Jones Industrial Average just isn’t the same. I truly fear that our American way of life is in trouble…being chipped away a piece at a time while we aren’t paying attention. Maybe I will be proven right. I hope that I am wrong.

Hey...wait a minute. You...scooping up all the salted pecans in the sundae line...save some of those things for me. Can I have some extra hot fudge? Where's the whipped cream? And can those four guys with those funny hats please stop singing songs about dismembering their spouse? Oy.