8A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL March 9, 2016
Community Foundation announces grant awards
T
he Cottage Grove Com-
munity
Foundation
(CGCF) announced Monday
that 13 non-profi t organiza-
tions were selected as com-
munity grant recipients for an
awards total of $16,121.
Funding of the grants is
made possible through do-
nations from the Commu-
nity Foundation Permanent
Endowment Fund, the Drs.
Harrison and Fuller Advised
Fund, the Cottage Grove
Green Earth Advised Ex-
pendable Fund, the Carlton
Woodard Advised Fund and
the Cottage Grove Women
and Children Assistance
Fund. The grant recipients
and projects are as follows:
– South Lane Children’s
Clinic Critical Needs, $1,000
Educational
Grants:
Social Service
Grants:
Ophelia’s Place – Cottage
Grove Schools Partnership,
$1,000
South Lane School District
– Family Connections Proj-
ect , $1,000
Lincoln Middle School
– Chromebook Cart, $1,000
First Presbyterian Church
– Grove Music Camp, $800
South Lane Dental Clinic/
South Lane School District
Community Sharing Pro-
gram – Latino Food Box,
$1,000
Bohemia Mining Days, Inc.
– Temporary Crowd Mis-
ters for Coiner Park during
Festival, $200
Humane Society of Cottage
Grove – Canine Spay Neuter
Assistance Program, $1,000
South Lane Family Nursery
– Purchase of Therapeutic
Early Childhood Learning
Materials, $2,500
CASA of Lane County
– A Voice For Every Child,
$2,310.50
Womenspace – Direct Client
Aid Fund, $2,310.50
Safety/Medical
Services Grant:
Warren H Daugherty
Aquatic Center – Life Jack-
ets and Training Equipment,
$1,000
The Cottage Grove Com-
munity Foundation will cel-
ebrate with these outstanding
non-profi t organizations at a
Community Grant Awards
ceremony on Tuesday, March
8 from 12-1 p.m. in the Shep-
herd Room of the Commu-
nity Center. The public is
invited to attend.
The Cottage Grove Com-
munity Foundation is a pub-
lic non-profi t organization to
help improve the quality of
life for residents of the City of
Cottage Grove and surround-
ing communities.
O FFBEAT
Continued from page 4A
In the middle of the night,
though, the four-year-old boy
started having a nightmare,
and with a shriek kicked out,
catching poor Wells in the solar
plexus. This happened two more
times, and the last time, the ex-
asperated and exhausted Wells
secured a length of cord from
his valise and set about tying the
lad’s feet to the bedpost.
Now the boy really did start
to scream, bringing his parents
running. Upon arriving at his
bedside, they found their son
lashed to the bed and Wells
guiltily fumbling at the knots.
We can imagine how the sub-
sequent conversation went. In
fact, we have to, since Wells
doesn’t give the details; nor
does he mention where he spent
the rest of the night. But, “They
never came to church again,” he
writes. “And I never received an-
other invitation to their home.”
The next time Wells came to
Weston, he was on his own for
a place to stay — word having
apparently gotten around. So
he bedded down for the night
in a haystack, piled up against
a fence to which he tied his
horse.
The horse, who knew a good
thing when he saw it, spent the
evening taking bites of the hay
and yanking them over the fence
so that he could enjoy them at
leisure. Sometime in the wee
small hours, having developed a
desire for a midnight snack, the
horse stretched his neck over
and got a big mouthful of hay
— with Wells’ trouser cuff in it.
The horse gave a lusty yank, and
the snoozing Wells came fl ying
over the fence and down into a
heap at his horse’s feet.
Quite possibly Wells’ most
picturesque misadventure —
and, I’d argue, the one that it’s
hardest to believe consists pure-
ly of plain, unadorned Gospel
truth — was one that he had in
a small town in northern Idaho.
In the hotel there, he requested
a bath and was told a tub would
be ready for him in the morning
at the head of the stairs. Upon
coming out the next day, he
found the tub — one of those
old-style giant washbasins that
one sometimes sees miner-’49er
types using in old Western mov-
ies, half full of water. It was the
dead of winter, and the foyer of
the hotel was about 20 degrees;
so, shivering in the chilly air, the
Reverend leaped into the tub to
get his morning ablutions over
with as fast as possible, so that
he might put clothes on and get
warmed back up.
He immediately made two
unpleasant observations.
The fi rst was that the water in
the tub was just above freezing;
he broke through a skim of ice
on his way into it. It seemed the
hotel owner had prepared the
bath the night before, so as not
to have to bother with it in the
morning; so it had had all night
to get very cold in the pre-dawn
winter’s chill of the unheated
hotel lobby.
But the second discovery
made Wells forget all about the
coldness of the water. It seemed
the tub leaked a little. It had
been leaking out onto the fl oor
throughout the night, forming a
small puddle that had then fro-
zen like black ice on a highway.
When Wells had hopped into the
icy water, the momentum of his
leap had set the tub in motion
on that sheet of ice. Majestically
and inexorably it sailed straight
toward the top of the staircase
Community
Conversation March 17
The trials involved
with coming home
from war are the
focus of "Life after
War: Photography
and Oral Histories
of Coming Home,"
a free conversation
with photographer
Jim Lommasson on
Thursday, March 17 at 6 p.m. at Hard
Knocks Brewing. This program is co-
hosted by the Opal Center for Arts and
Education and Hard Knocks and spon-
sored by Oregon Humanities.
Lommasson is a freelance photog-
rapher who received the Dorothea
Lange–Paul Taylor Prize for his fi rst
book, "Shadow Boxers: Sweat, Sacri-
fi ce & the Will to Survive in American
Boxing Gyms."
… and decanted its contents
over its rim.
And so the Reverend Lemuel
H. Wells, shivering cold and
stark naked and helpless in the
hands of a cruel fate, rode a half-
full washtub down the stairs of
the hotel, tumbling with it to the
bottom and ending up with the
tub perched triumphantly atop
his battered and shivering body
in a great puddle of freezing wa-
ter on the landing below.
This was, of course, hardly a
silent procedure. The crashings
and clangings of the tub, and the
terrifi ed shrieks of its helpless
passenger, roused every person
in the building and probably
several neighbors to boot. Luck-
ily, he wasn’t badly hurt. He
was escorted back to his room
as discreetly as was possible un-
der the circumstances, where he
tried to warm himself as best he
could and get ready for a day’s
preaching of sermons to people
who had, a few hours earlier,
seen him naked under the most
undignifi ed of circumstances.
Just another day on the job,
right?
We’ll talk about some other
adventures of early-day circuit
preachers in next week’s col-
umn.
(Sources: Bromberg, Erik.
“Frontier Humor: Plain and Fan-
cy,” Oregon Historical Quarter-
ly, Sept. 1960; Wells, Lemuel H.
A Pioneer Missionary. Seattle:
Progressive Publishing, 1930)
Finn J.D. John teaches at
Oregon State University and
writes about odd tidbits of Or-
egon history. For details, see
http://fi nnjohn.com. To contact
him or suggest a topic: fi nn2@
offbeatoregon.com or 541-357-
2222.
Cottage Grove
Sentinel
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