WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT, ALFIE?
Copyrighted 2010 by Bill & Jean Venrick, Lancaster, Ohio

What young man or woman hasn't had this thought pass through their minds? What are the real purposes and goals in life? What is right or true? Those familiar with the Scriptures find similar questions in the Book of Ecclesiastes. It was refreshing to me to read such questions (with commentary) in the lyrics of a hit song of almost fifty years ago, "What's It All About, Alfie?" Honest questions are not always answered honestly with proper perspective and life experiences in the BIS (or FSB) are no different. Consider the questions asked Alfie:

The photos accompanying this essay show "boys on the hill" seventeen years before "What's It All About, Alfie" was to fill a giant screen and supply some philosophical meaning to life, and perhaps more simply remember the first line instead of the lessons taught in the movie. Who remembers more anyway? Hopefully lessons are learned--even in the movies.

What mother wouldn't be glad to know her son could take a pair of scissors, follow a pattern and cut up the material, choose the various kinds of cloth necessary to make a jacket or a pair of trousers? Only the mother whose son carelessly wore his best clothes to play in or take a hike through the woods. Boys at the BIS learned first hand what it took to make clothes - and not just make them, but how to keep them clean and look nice!

Making garments, sewing articles or items together to make pillow cases, hand towels or utilitarian clothes was just one part of the training boys on the hill were given. Another photo shows a room full of boys being taught how to iron clothing (they also worked in a laundry where they used large commercial machines to iron sheets). When you have had to iron the clothes you wore, it just might be you also learned to respect the work involved to iron and mend the clothes you wear.

From head to toe the boys were taught about the clothes they wore. Years before these pictures were taken (these photographs are of classroom work in 1949) boys on the hills also made their own shoes! In the years the trade of shoe making and repair was taught at the BIS the boys worked with professional, commercial "state of the art" equipment (see photo below) comparable to the kind of equipment found in the shoe factories in downtown Lancaster, Ohio. Perhaps some of those boys who learned how to make shoes left the hill and got a job at Irving Drew Shoe or Godman Shoe in town, or at shoe factories in nearby Columbus, or other larger Ohio cities. Shoe repair shops were quite abundant in the days of the BIS existence. Manufacturing philosophies today are much different in our casual "throw-away society" and shoe manufacturing is just one more industry that has gone "offshore"..

In the sheet metal shop (above) boys were taught to make items that would be used in the farm work: scoops to measure out grain or buckets to use for water or milk, or kitchen pans; etc., this was again, what a boy who became a man could use as a skill or trade. Weaving was also one of many vocational curricula. The photo below shows boys working at various stages of making small throw rugs.

"WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT, ALFIE?" Purpose in life. Meaningful existence. Giving more than we take. Learning threads and yarn "hold things together". "Learning there's something more to believe in--something much more, something even non-believers can believe in."

#####