Let me Count the Ways I Miss You, Potluck.

As I prepared a meal today for a friend of mine who had surgery, I thought of potluck dinners and how awesome they were. Does anyone still do those?

I attended Mary Branan United Methodist Church for my formative years; there was nothing I liked better than potluck dinners.

Mmm. Mmm. So good.

What was it about all those congealed salads loaded with cream cheese and whipped toppings?

Or the real macaroni and cheese resplendent in cheese with the extra crispy brown crust?

Or heaping bowls of potato salad, my Daddy’s favorite, layered with egg, onion, and potatoes and then mixed with mustard and mayonnaise and topped off with sweet pickle?

But the best part of the potluck dinners was the endless dessert table: apple pies, frosted chocolate cakes, pound cakes flavored with vanilla and almond, fruit cobbler, or banana puddings baked to perfection with the brown heads of vanilla wafers peeking out the top.

*mouth waters*

The church used the Fellowship Hall at Mary Branan for multiple events.

In between Sunday school and church for about 30 minutes {this was the olden days, my blog readers; we had one church service -- Sunday school at 9:30 and church at 11:00}, women set up huge aluminum urns full of hot coffee which adults sipped laden with sugar and cream. The sugar spilled from the bowls on to the white tablecloth and the multiple cream pitchers brimmed with white foam. Teaspoons lay scattered hither and yon as the adults absent-mindly picked them up and stirred their coffee all the time never missing a beat in a conversation with a fellow worshiper.

In my day, no teenager hung around the Fellowship Hall for coffee; they were busy securing seats in the balcony or hitting up their parents for a dime or using their own hard earned money for the Coke machine that graced the hallway in front of the Hall. Sometimes, they shared a sip of that Coke with their siblings or best buddies.

Ugh. I can’t believe I ever drank after anyone.

Cookies were usually the snack fare to accompany the coffee, but on some Sundays, the doughy, yeasty, sugary smell of doughnuts filled the air. We children would sneakily take more than one if our parents weren’t looking.

What were we thinking? We were about to head upstairs for a full hour of announcements, hymns, responsive reading, and preaching. We were about to sit still!!!! Not that sugar intake mattered then -- there was no such thing as processed food with that added sugar that we have today. Sugar was sugar -- and it wasn’t in everything.

My parents instructed us four children to meet them in the Fellowship Hall in between Sunday school and church -- for one reason and one reason only.


If we were not sitting with them, where were we sitting and with whom? Daddy took inventory each Sunday by craning his neck as he searched around the sanctuary to make sure that we were where we said we'd be and with whom we said we would be with. Lord knows, no pun intended, that we were not about to do what we rather do and what some of our friends did -- skip church.

Never gonna happen. We didn’t dare cross Daddy. Nope. Nada. Not smart. Not worth it.

I was not allowed to sit with my friends until I was in high school. Before that I sat with my parents and drew furiously all over the bulletin and the offering envelopes with those little bitty, unsharpened pencils placed carefully in those pencil slots next to the envelopes on the back of the pew in front of me. I always thought the women in the altar guild were mean spirited in never sharpening those pencils.

My mother sometimes handed me a fountain pen from her purse, if she was in a good mood and if I pleaded well, with a stern look to be careful that I only wrote on paper and not accidentally on my clothes. My mother could do some communicating without ever opening her mouth but simply by making certain facial expressions. She could also do wonders with a pinch to the thigh if she found me slouching, leaning my head back on the pew too far, or kicking my legs back and forth madly like I was on a swing. I stood for hymns and sang, closed my eyes for prayer, and read along with responsive readings. Occasionally, or once I grew bored with my doodling on every available white space, I could lean my head against mother or daddy’s arm, but it was on rare occasion that I was allowed to put my head in their laps. I have no idea what would allow that action, as most of the time, they wished me to sit up.

We sat still in church.

BTW: My Aunt Ava told me a hilarious story about how she survived the boredom of church as a child. She and my Aunt Harriett, who were closest in age, would have fits and snorts together by flipping through the hymnal and reading the title of the hymn and then adding “between the sheets.” She said some days she thought she would die holding in the laughter under the watchful eye of my grandmother, a no nonsense, strict disciplinarian. She said that somehow Grandma’s rigidness made their getting away with it more fun.

[Take any hymn right now, blog reader, and add "between the sheets.”]

*snorts*

The church also used the Fellowship Hall for other events. Located directly under the sanctuary, the room had a small stage at one end, a green linoleum floor, and four or five huge windows on either side complete with Venetian blinds.

Folding chairs set up in rows facing the stage allowed parents to watch their children in various accomplishments: receiving ribbons for memorizing verses or the order of the books of the Bible, performing in small plays, sing alongs, or skits, or for the end of Vacation Bible School closing ceremonies where we came together and sang the songs we had learned that week.

Also used for gathering together for Wednesday Night Suppers, prior to Wednesday night prayer meeting or for those special Sundays when the day was called Pot-Luck, the Fellowship Hall was aptly named for its building of fellowship and relationships, the casual camaraderie of coming together.

I wonder if potluck was a quarterly event. I really can’t remember.

Pot-Luck! What a great name -- if I was lucky, I could fill my plate over and over with the goodies brought to that hall -- and I grew up in the age of the casserole. If a mother added cream of mushroom soup and sour cream to anything, it became twice as yummy! Who couldn’t eat broccoli if it was covered in cheese?

That was rhetorical, but my oldest brother wouldn't. He's still weird, btw.

My own mother, a nutritionist, never served casseroles. They were of the Devil.

*snicker*

As I think back to that hall with the long table set up on either side, covered in long white tablecloths and covered from end to end with food, it brings back nothing but good memories of
watching the mothers and other ladies of the church bring bowls of salads and vegetables, plates of biscuits and corn bread, and oblong platters of fried chicken or ham covered with aluminum foil. Adhesive tape adhered to the bottom of the dishes with family last names kept from their being any mixed up as to what plate belongs to whom when so many were similar and empty of food at the end of the dinner. I waited patiently while the minister or a deacon drew our attention to him to bless the food.

I was always proud when my Daddy was asked to say this prayer as he had a beautiful voice, a varied vocabulary, and a way of phrasing that was a gift. I also prayed that it would be short.

:)

I stood in line with my plate, mouth watering, the aromas of good things to come wafting in the air, and then I took my heaping plate of food to the table. If I were sitting with my friends, we saved places by placing purses or coats in chairs or turning it up to lean against the table and mark this spot as "saved."

Heh. Saved. Church.

Never mind.

At that table, we broke bread with our neighbors, our school friends, and our church body. We laughed, we caught up on each other’s lives, and we ate large.

'em, my friends, are some good memories.

*sigh*

You got any? Meanwhile, Brother Blog Reader, pass the fried chicken.