This summer I had the opportunity to do something I hadn't done in many years -- work as a front-line interpreter. It had been more than a dozen years since I had been a seasonal; plus, having been in management for several years, I hadn't had the luxury of doing intrpretive programs and demonstrations for the public on a daily basis in quite a while. It was during the course of a demonstration of candle making at our outdoor demonstration area this summer that what my wife calls The "Duh!" Factor kicked in.

Some folks would say that this past summer in Montana was downright unbearably hot. It ohly figures that the day we first tried the candle making was very hot. the "Duh!" Factor kicked in as two volunteers and I tried to render some tallow. Because of burning restrictions, we were using a one-burner Coleman stove. We had rigged a tripod of andirons to support a copper kettle over another with water in it (which rested in the stove) to create a double boiler. It looked pretty authentic as long as you ignored the stove inside the fire ring. At the end of three hours (when our stove's gas ran out), we had probably 4 ounce of melted tallow in the bottom of the kettle. Well, the "Duh!" Factor told us that (a) we'd tried to melt too much tallow at once, (b) we shouldn't have used nice, cold, Missouri River water and expected it to boil in a short amount of time, and (c) the double boiler was unnecessary. These revelations led to some interesting interpretation, because we really didn't have much top show our visitors.

The next time we tried this demonstration, it was a slightly cooler day. We'd pre-rendered the tallow and now only had to melt it to liquid form. We used a better stove that put out a great deal more heat, and soon had liquid tallow. We melted beeswax and mixed the two according to a recipe we'd found for candles.

Unfortunately, we were less prepared when it came to our candle molds. we couldn't get our wick material to thread through the tiny holes in the bottom of each candle mold. The "Duh!" Factor eventually pointed out to me that because the molds were soft metal we could widen the holes and then close them again. By that time, we had to re-melt the mix. By this time, the "Duh!" Factor gods were chuckling.

When we poured the mix into the molds, we had a small audience who watched as we discovered that we hadn't closed the holes on two of the molds. The level of mix in these two was falling rapidly and collecting in the bottom of our kettle. We got that problem fixed, and then couldn't figure out why the mix wasn't hardening, even though we'd doused the molds in a kettle of that same cold river water. The "Duh!" Factor gods guffawed and pointed out that this kettle was sitting out in the sun.

By the time we'd passed the afternoon in this demonstration, we were quite a bit wiser about recreating this particular culturally significant activity. I'd guess that the first individuals who tried this activity, untold years ago, might have had the same setbacks. However, we may have had the last laugh on the "Duh!" Factor gods because we used our heads and let the candles set up overnight ... inside the center ... in the office with the coldest air conditioning. All things considered, they came out rather well.

I'm sure that many of our modern attempts to recreate traditional activities encounter the "Duh!" Factor. The key is learning from what went wrong and remembering what went right, and passing on the discoveries to whomever comes along to try it next. In the meantime, we have a nice set of candles to show off and a bunch of stories to share about how they were made.