The Rainbow Girls is one of the girls' auxiliaries of the Masons. Connie's father was a Mason, and got her in. She asked if I wanted to join. I didn't really know what it was, but I was new to the rural scene, and figured I needed something to belong to, mostly in order to meet people and get involved. So I responded in the affirmative. I floated the idea with my parents, and since my father was a Mason, the answer was in the affirmative. He took me down to the Masonic lodge for an initial interview with the old Cajun, Jacques, who was the head of the group, despite not being a girl.
Jacques was square. About seventy and very tall, he had an imposing presence. Being a Cajun and a Southerner, he was genteel, polite, and gallant. He offered to sponsor me, since my father's bona fides could not be ascertained by that immediate group, a fact that neither surprised nor offended any of us. My father was a member of the Spanish-speaking group out of Mexico, probably Derecho Humano, which was technically a Co-Masonic group and therefore at sixes and sevens with the Free and Accepted Masons. The truth is, they didn't initiate Mexicans into the Masons in the 1970s; there was a separate branch of the organization for African-Americans, to which Mexicans weren't any more welcome than they were to the Anglo set. Today, of course, that is all different, and many Hispanics are becoming Masons, but back then, racism was a lot more defined and virulent than it is today.
Jacques always smiled at me and took particular care, I think, because I seemed to be something of an "orphan," as the child of a Mexican. It wasn't that he looked down on us, but that he felt we somehow didn't have the advantages that the rest of the girls had. I was invited to start moving up the chairs, and to everyone's surprised, memorized the pretty little speeches quickly and well. I went to the summer conference in Dallas with the group. I remember because we took the train up there. In the snack car, I was offered a dish called "yogurt," which I accepted as a new experience. I heard it was something they had in Europe, and being interested in learning about this thing, this authoritative thing called Europe, I tried it, the blueberry variety. I first scooped into this incredibly sour stuff, and was told to spoon up the blueberries from the bottom of the cup. I was hooked. Dannon blueberry yogurt. Back in the 1970s, yogurt in the United States was mostly sour and mostly made of whole milk. It wasn't until the mid-1980s that the Dannon yogurt company decided to make it unbearably sweet. The first time I tried the new super-sweet "New Coke" variety, I had the shock of my life and wrote to the Dannon company to complain. They wrote back and said that most people in their focus groups liked it sweeter than I did, and recommended that I mix one regular with one sweet. I abandoned prepackaged yogurt altogether.
The conference was held in a lovely downtown hotel, and we attended classes on general moral education and service to freemasonry and the community. It really is a feeder organization to the Order of the Eastern Star, the wifely auxiliary to freemasonry, and a secret backbone to middle-class Southern culture and community.
Now that was an education.
I spent about a year and a half with the organization, and only quit because the Mormons considered the Masons a cult.
I still remember the initiation, with its hoodwinks and knocks, its ritualized little playlet about faith, hope, and charity, and the various trials the girls had to go through to get to the East. It was gorgeous, and it was only in my late thirties that I finally let go of the small booklet that contained the ritual, not by giving it to the unwashed, but by decently disposing of it where no human eye could peep. There are times I wish I could go back "home," but that home doesn't fit me any more. I could not be a second class member as women are required to be, and don't currently have time for Co-Masonry. But it was a glowing interval between the wilds of paganism and the even wilder currents of Mormonism.
