Click here for the original "Lutefisk Dinner" post
One year ago on Round and Square (27 October 2012)—Rural Religion in China (27)
Two years ago on Round and Square (27 October 2011)—Dropkick Me, Jesus (Through the Goalposts of Life)
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| [a] Codfish Dreaming RF |
I spent part of my afternoon yesterday—a cool, but sunny, Saturday in southern Wisconsin—eating gelatinous codfish with a small group of aging Norwegians. I would characterize myself the same way (only my name is French; I am ninety-percent Norwegian, and I am aging). The only difference is that I was the gray-haired, "kid" in this group. Most of my fellow diners had entered their seventh, eighth, or ninth decades. One or two were nearing their tenth. It was a formidable generational presence. I have heard of high school football teams with offensive lines characterized as "weighing half a ton." This was back in the 1970s, when gridiron girth and heft were less pointed than today. I would describe our table another way. If you added up our ages and subtracted from today's date, you would not be all that far from the Magna Carta. We'd easily make it to the War of the Roses, and we could have reached the Reformation and the Council of Trent with two geriatrics to spare.
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| [b] The Way of All (Lute-) Flesh |
And that leads me to Lutherans...and Norwegians...and lutefisk. I have attended the Orfordville Lutheran Church Lutefisk Dinner every latest-October Saturday for some time now. It brings heavy doses of codfish soaked in lye, drawn butter—some would call it "heated butter"—and lefse. It also brings layer upon layer of memory. Lutefisk was a part of my childhood, when I could depend on having the squishy, white, piscinity at least half a dozen times a year. As I have written on "these pages" before, though, those moments of gustatory delight have been winnowed down to just a few a year—and for most of us in this area, just one. First great-grandma died, back in 1983, after a long life of soaking, rinsing, and preparing lutefisk. In time, the grandparents passed on, as well. And their friends...and (with a few hardy exceptions) the entire Norwegian-Lutheran demographic born between 1880 and 1920). The 1920-1945 cohort (I speak of the generation—sometimes referred to as the "greatest"—before the Baby Boom) is fading. Lutefisk consumption depends on them, but time keeps on churning, and they keep on winnowing.
Such is life; such is lutefisk.
Lutefisk dinners—those big, belt-loosening social events dotting the Midwestern landscape—are on their long, slow, path to extinction. Thirty years (or so) from now, they'll be gone. When the only hope for the future is the Baby Boom generation, we know we're in trouble. We're holding the line, but the line cannot hold for long.
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| [c] Sardine-y Future RF |
If you remember, I was the youngest person at my table. I have attended enough of these affairs to know that our demographic is repeated at the vast majority of tables in the church, hour after hour, and (now) year-after-year. When a graying Norwegian professor with a French name is the hope for your culinary future, you'd better look to Plan B. I couldn't prepare a lutefisk dinner if my life depended on it, although sometimes it seems that it does.
Nope, I need help. I need the Orfordville Lutheran Church and their mass of volunteers. They are a wonderful bunch, and they do a nice job of providing codfish to aging Scandinavians year after year. And that leads me to the ethnographic specifics of today's post. You see, I was very late getting to Orfordville this year, and cut it way too close (as we say back home...over big jello-chunks of lutefisk). The big sign outside the church "said" Lutefisk Dinner 11-3. I arrived at the church at 2:55 and bought the last ticket. My wife—the only person I have ever met who was not "born into lutefisk"...who actually likes it—is traveling, so I was on my own.
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| [d] "Lutefisk Rock (Mars) RF |
Most years, when I arrive at a reasonable hour, I face a long wait. Sitting in a church pew with other hungry diners and hankering to descend to the promised land in the basement, we watch slide shows of the year(s) in the life of the Orfordville Lutheran Church. We wait as ticket numbers are called, and lucky piscivores head to tables stocked with pale-colored food.
Today was different.
I was so late that I was told to go straight to the basement. I felt like a Monopoly player with a "Get Out of the Pew" card, rushing headlong to the Lutefisk Valhalla. Down the stairs I skipped (sort of)....and found that all the tables were more-or-less finishing up. I can't imagine eating lutefisk alone, but that seemed to be my lot this year—my punishment for the sin of slothful delay.
And then I realized what a stroke of methodological brilliance my late arrival really was. This was not "research design," alas, but rather (and merely) a kind of dumb-luck. As I started to prepare my plate, large groups flowed out of the kitchen. It was time for the volunteers to eat, and they would be my companions. This is the rough equivalent of a lonely anthropologist, sitting by himself outside a temple and wondering about even the most basic matters of temple life. Suddenly confronted by a gaggle of priests and monks who, done with the day's hard work, are happy to talk about what they do, his notes "thicken" markedly. What seemed like a prairie ethnography disaster turned into Codfish Gardens and Their Magic.
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| [e] Codfish (not lutefisk) RF |
It went something like this. "We're down forty-four from last year, and last year we were down about forty from the year before. We're under five-hundred." I asked how long the downward trend had been going, and was told that the high point was well over a thousand..."some time ago." I am convinced that everyone was thinking what no one had the ill-manners to say—several dozen lutefisk eaters had passed on to that big codfish bowl in the sky. Ashes to ashes, fishbone to fishbone.
We quickly turned the conversation in a seemingly more positive direction. "Look at all of those energetic young people," one of my tablemates observed. It was true. Children and teenagers were everywhere. They waited tables, bussed dishes, and brought new platters of cod, lefse, butter, coleslaw, and cranberries. They poured good, strong, Norwegian coffee...into styrofoam cups. They did everything but what us old folks need from them—eat lutefisk.
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| [f] Now...soak in lye RF |
"Do you like it?" I asked one twelve year-old. "Nope; I tried it once and had to spit it out." This was not the first such "thousand-ask" question of this nature for me. In fact, I have met only a very small handful of bright, rosy, young Norwegian-Lutherans who have any intention of going to lutefisk dinners when they are my age. Their own children will be raised in a world without the jiggling lumps of cod. In time, the Greatest Generation and all of the Baby Boomers will be gone. I plan to eat the stuff right up to the end, and would request it if I were to be given one last meal. By the nation's tricentennial (and probably a good deal before), it will be gone.
There is no Lutefisk app, and those big church dinners will go the way of the Chautauqua, the dropkick, and the major political party conventions.
Gone, poof, nada. 沒有了.
Like the eight-track player and the Chevy El Camino.
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| [g] Norwegian Dream RF |
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