My sister Doris was born in 1944. She graduated from Flambeau High School in 1962, and started working at the school as a secretary. She lived at home, bought a car to drive to work each day and had money to contribute to the household. She would buy different food items from the grocery store that Ma and Pa were unable to afford.

Campbells cream soups were a favorite to have in the cupboard as we could make those fancy casserole recipes. Ground beef with noodles and cream of something or other soup. She would sometimes buy Jello or Kool-Aid.

She also purchased a Wollensak 3M branded reel to reel magnetic tape recorder that came with a small microphone.

When Ma and Pa married in 1942, Pa was playing fiddle in a small jazz band. Pa grew up in the Greenwood Wisconsin area and was the second born son of Frank and Flora Manning. Pa loved music and his parents provided him fiddle lessons when he was a teenager in high school. Pa could sing and read music. After Pa was saved through the missionary efforts of the Mennonite neighbors, Pa came to believe that music was to be sung acapella in worship to the Lord. He never played his fiddle again.

The Mennonite tradition was to sing hymns in church without any musical accompaniment. Playing a musical instrument was believed to be unchristian. Instruments created a rhythmic beat, which lead to dancing, which lead to women and men holding each other close, which lead to lasciviousness. I was never sure what that word meant, but heard it frequently and just knew it was something sinful. Okay, even today I had to look up the definition, and it means “expressing a strong sexual desire or lustfulness”

Mennonite traditions have changed over the years, but the beautiful four-part harmony in that little country church always brought a beautiful swell of emotion. Women sang soprano and alto while men sang low baritone and bass. The voice was instrument enough to praise and worship the Lord.

In our family, Pa taught us how to sing harmony parts from a church hymnal. Jane had a beautiful high soprano voice, Doris had a lower tenor/baritone voice, Wayne had a booming bass and I sang the alto part. John didn’t want to participate and claimed he couldn’t sing on pitch. Carl was too little. I was probably about five years old when this quartet was formed. Doris was the leader and the one who would choose the songs and gather us around to practice. She would record our songs on the Wollensak 3m reel-to-reel recorder. We would listen to them and then Doris would make suggestions as how to improve our diction, breathing, pitch, etc. We never worried about rhythm. We used the time signature of the tune merely as a guideline.

Pa never found a church he could agree with enough to join as a member. He did feel a responsibility to go out into the highways and byways (Matthew 22:9-11) and preach the gospel. He decided that sharing our family quartet music and his sermon would be fulfilling that command from the gospel. Every Sabbath we would go to the long-term care home in Ladysmith. Pa would give a bible message, and the Manning Quartet would sing acapella hymns. The residents loved the music. Ma would sit and visit with the ladies, hold their hands and give them a gentle hug. Some of the residents would ask us to sing at their funeral when the time came. Many of the songs we sang were befitting a funeral service, so we never had to learn any new tunes to perform at a funeral. We just chose a couple hymns that we already knew.

Decades later, we were able to transfer many of the Manning Quartet audio files from those reel-to-reel tapes to digital, and that close family harmony is still able to be enjoyed today.