For two Saturdays in a row, I've gone with my father-in-law to an Oyster Dinner. Frank is in his eighties, loud and feisty -- and for years he's gone to every oyster dinner he can get to. Here in the Mid-Atlantic, the Oyster Dinner is a common fundraiser for fire departments and churches.
Last week, it was the Urbana Volunteer Fire Department. This week, the Jefferson Ruritan Club. Several hundred of us sat down at table together and were served "family-style" -- pass the plate, please -- country ham, turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, cranberry sauce, pickles and applesauce.
We sat down with people we didn't know -- a man with a flattened nose, a married couple in their sixties, another couple in their thirties.
And you make conversation (this is a great exercise for the timid and introverted among us). Frank eats virtually nothing but oysters, and quips loudly with those across the table.
This is Americana -- baseball caps and muscle shirts, mullets and tattoos, white hair, grey hair, no hair -- you can taste the flavor, quite apart from those watery shellfish.
The Church is kind of like this -- the body of Christ, all shapes and sizes, all ages and races, sitting down together at the Lord's table. Often you don't get to choose who you sit beside -- or who sits beside you. You eat together what has been graciously provided for you, and you begin to speak to one another, awkwardly at first. You find out that your table mate is a Catholic while you're a Methodist. They're a Democrat and you're a Republican.
But if you visit long enough, you find you have much in common...
What do you think? What slices of Americana have you experienced?
That's a nice picture of Americana...church dinners. I remember going to a pig pickin' once.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Gary, we are all about turkey and oyster dinners. Been going to them for years and years. We do have our favorites--read: we have become oyster dinner snobs--and put the dates in Sharpie marker on our calendar. Natalie was eating oysters almost before she was eating anything else! We had never heard of such a fundraiser before moving to Maryland. As an aside,I had never heard of slippery pot pie before coming to Maryland, either...still not sure about that one!! Where we come from, BBQ is something people are passionate about, but that is a whole other blog :-)
ReplyDeleteYes Mary, I went to that Pig Pickin' every fall for a number of years. It's such a southern concept! Up in eastern Canada it used to be [baked] Bean Suppers, and now it might be Hog Roasts or Fish Fries. Did they have something like this in Russia?
ReplyDeleteNo Bonnie, slippery pot pie must be a Maryland thing, along with scrapple, I guess.
ReplyDeleteEastern Canada has fiddleheads and poutine (look it up!) and rappie pie.
In upstate New York there are Pancake Dinners with freshly-made maple syrup.
This yearning of some people to get together with their neighbors dovetails nicely with the perceive need of churches or fire departments to raise money.
What else?