The spirit of McDonald’s Tea Room, a regular meeting place for elegant Perry ladies in the middle of the last century, was the model for a high tea Wednesday afternoon at the Perry Lutheran Home Spring Valley Campus.
About 20 local women gathered at 5 p.m. at the event, hosted by four of their friends: Katie Schott, Myrna Mino Smith, Mary Lou Stromquist and Linda Ayres, all of Perry.
“We are thankful for our friends and families, without whom we would never make it through the day,” said Smith in prayer before the tea cups were filled and crumpets coated with clotted creamed.
This was the second annual high tea event celebrating Perry’s historic tea rooms hosted by the ladies from St. Patrick’s Church, and Smith hinted it might be the last.
“Next year we’re doing a backyard beer bash,” she said, “where everyone will get a bag of chips.”
Adding to the mood of nostalgia were three of Perry’s blooming beauties, who wore period dresses from the 1940s in order to foster the sense of times past. Andrea Tunink, Cherie Welch and Eileen Splendore entered the well-lit tea room looking not unlike Rita Hayworth, Eva Gardner and Grace Kelly. Their dresses were indescribable.
Was that Tea Room owned by Fred and Grace McDonald above their Drug store?