The end of an era: As membership dwindles, Tuesday Morning Coffee Club calls it quits

We called ourselves the Tuesday Morning Coffee Ladies, because well, that’s when we met. Not very original, but it worked for us.

Somewhere between 35 and 40 years ago after Brandon Valley hired female bus drivers, the ladies decided to stop for coffee after work on Tuesday mornings. In the early years, club members met at the Brand’n Iron, the grocery store coffee shop or in the basement of what is now Taco John’s and later Tailgator’s, etc.

Then Lu invited Doris (Doris’ husband, Harly, stopped Lu one day to say that Doris was so thrilled that she had), Myrtle invited me (of course, I was thrilled), Helen invited Mona, Doris invited Elsie, I invited Lorrayne, and so on until we were over 25 ladies strong.

For Valentine’s Day, we celebrated by bringing a red gift to pass. Someone brought a pair of red, lacy bloomers. Jo put them on over her jeans and we had a good laugh.

For St. Patrick’s Day, we brought a green gift – the more disgusting, the better. Not sure who the joke was on more, Alice who grew a thistle in her kitchen all winter or Helen, who drew the unlucky number for the thistle. Of course, Helen “accidentally’ forgot it at my house, but guess what? Jo drove right by her house on her way home, so was glad to deposit it on her porch steps.

For Easter, I made cute little hat cut-outs all decorated with flowers and bows for the invites. We were all to wear a pretty bonnet all decked out. I walked up to Verla and almost lost my cookies. She had attached that invite to her head. Guess she thought the invite was pretty enough to wear!

One year, we had our Halloween party at the Sioux Valley Energy Community Room, with all of us coming in Halloween costumes. For some reason, the employees kept peeking around the corner and laughing at us!

Of course, there have been many 9irthday parties. Like the year they had one for me. I hate raisins, so I was gifted a raisin necklace, a little raisin figure, packages of raisins and so on. If I remember correctly, the cupcakes even had raisins in them. Yuck.

We took many trips to Sioux Falls, to Falls Park to eat at the restaurant and to ride the trolley. We also took trips to other restaurants and also to the Casino for breakfast. We have driven to Brookings to a play at the Swiftel Center there and lunched at the Secret Garden. It was awesome, then ended the day with a trip to the SDSU Dairy Barn. Duh!

In later years, we went to Bethany Meadows for coffee because a few of our ladies were residents there. We were treated like queens by the staff.

As the years passed, we mourned the loss of a few, some moved to Sioux Falls, some to nursing homes, but one morning we woke up to discover that there are only five of us left. Like I said, the end of an era.