REEDER - A meeting that begins with women bringing baked goods in Tupperware is a good meeting, no matter what.

At Reeder on Tuesday, eight lifelong friends and neighbors decided to have lunch before taking a vote that would change history in their tiny part of the world, probably forever.

So they had German chocolate cake, date-filled cookies and coffee before voting whether to dissolve the government of Whetstone Township in Adams County.

It seemed a good idea to sweeten the bitter pill that time has forced them to swallow.

There are only 16 people left in the township, which is composed of 36 sections of crop and rangeland north of Reeder.

Three of those are kids and other than their parents, everyone else is getting on in years, too old to want to fool with township business much longer.

Richard Schwartz said he'd been a township official for 40 years.

He declared before the vote, "No matter what, I'm done. I don't want to die on the board."

As friends and family, they've managed the township's business in harmony all these years.

No one recalls a decision about whose stretch got gravel ending in fisticuffs, or even harsh words.

Townships receive a share of the property tax from their sections and use it to take care of roads.

In Whetstone Township, that amounts to about 12 miles and about $4,500 to spend every year.

The township hires the county to do its blading and graveling, anyway.

Everyone in the township goes to the same church and they've married and buried each other's families for generations.

Bruce Hagen, 48, is the township chairman. He might be approaching middle age, but he was by some years the "kid" in the room.

Hagen said the dissolution was inevitable, given the lack of population and the age of most everyone in the township.

Change is all around.

Two weeks ago, Hagen said the Farmers Union Oil Co-op in Reeder also voted to dissolve. Patrons will get their stock repaid and the nearby Scranton co-op will take over fuel deliveries.

The townspeople hope someone will step forward to keep the co-op gas pump open on the end of Reeder's main street.

The Reeder school closed some years ago.

Most years, the township held its annual meetings at Glen and Pauline Doe's place. Everyone lives within about seven miles - close, in their world.

"She makes the best cake," Keith Hagen said. He couldn't vote because he moved to town recently and no longer resides in the township.

They lunched and visited, like innumerable times before, patiently awaiting Zola Hagen, Bruce Hagen's mom, to duck in from her church circle meeting so she could cast her paper ballot.

With Zola Hagen's vote, there were seven.

The tally was six to dissolve, one opposed.

Kathy Donner looked around and confessed that she had cast the lone dissenting vote.

"I just hate to see something stop, the end of something," Donner said.

The end of Whetstone Township isn't the end of the world and the sun would still come up in the east the next morning, just like every day before.

Still, it's the dissolution of something that matters, like the glue that binds the pages of an old familiar book.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)