September 1, 2002           St. John the Evangelist Church            Enochsburg Indiana

I met a friend at a chicken dinner last year at the Labor Day chicken dinner at St. Anthony of Padua. It was Jim Kemper. I shared a barracks room with Jim and a dozen others when we were sent to active duty during the Berlin Crisis in 1961. We were members of the Air Force reserve unit located at Blue Ash Ohio. Jim, Larry Westrich and I were best friends, and we took many trips in my VW (Holland, Vienna, Paris, and more.) I was standing in a long line waiting to have dinner when I heard someone call out “Hey chicken man.”

Jim is very out-going and loves to laugh. It was great to see him after all these years. It turns out that Jim goes to many of the chicken dinners (either his or his wife’s sister is a “sister” who also likes to go to the church dinners.) Jim mentioned that he was at a church dinner the day before. I recalled that I had a church dinner on my Web page that took place the day before Labor Day, but somehow it got dropped from my list. I had never gone, but remember that I talked to the man who ran the Fireside Inn restaurant/bar up the street from the church (they cook the chicken the day of the festival.) Today was a better day for us than Labor Day, and we headed out at about 11:45 Cincinnati time.

This is about the furthest church dinner that I keep track of on the Web site. It’s the next exit past Batesville, about five miles more. The exit is marked New Point -- St. Maurice. Take a right and then another right at Base Road and in about five minutes you will see the church among the hills and trees. The steeple is enclosed in scaffolding. We later read at the church that the renovation is a $75,000 project, and the amount was to be forthcoming from pledges.

We parked in a grassy field and walked to the festival area. There are two fairly new buildings across the street from the church and a large open-sided building where games and sales were taking place. I paid $14 for the two of us and we passed through the line and into the hall in less than 15 minutes. It was warm but not unbearable, and it was nice to not have a long wait (I’m not as willing to endure the long lines as I get older.)

The hall was not air-conditioned but fans kept things comfortable. We passed through a cafeteria line and asked for dark meat (two legs and a thigh) and were given corn, beans, mashed potatoes, dressing and gravy. I picked up a slice of homemade berry pie and a drink, and we found two seats at a table occupied by four others. There were bowls of sliced tomatoes and cole slaw on the table. We enjoyed the chicken -- it was very hot, crisp and juicy, but didn’t have much “heat” from spices. Maybe the chicken is not always this good but we really enjoyed it (at most dinners, the chicken is held for a while and looses some of the crispiness.)

The tomatoes were especially good, well ripened and juicy, but the slaw could have been a little tangier for my taste. I couldn’t have eaten any more and ate very little the rest of the day. My raspberry pie was a good choice and I didn’t mind finding a seed now and then on the drive home. I noticed that my serving of dressing was larger than Edith’s (it’s probably one of those old-fashioned values where the man is favored – way to go!)

After finishing our meal we stayed at the table a little while longer to continue our conversation with a very nice couple that sat next to us from Connorsville. Richard Pflum farmed a thousand acres with one of their two sons. At one time, they farmed two thousand acres and raised 2,500 hogs when both sons were with them, but one of them had a serious back injury and could no longer do the hard farm work (he’s in his mid-30’s and has almost finished his course work for earning an engineering degree at Purdue.)

Richard said that corn crop suffered this year because of the drought. He usually gets 190 bushels of corn to the acre in a good year but expects to harvest only 90 bushels per acre this year. He said that not everyone in the area has such poor results as some farms got more moisture than others. He has the big tractors with air conditioning and radios (if he were my brother, I'd ask him if I could drive one sometime.) He had eleven brothers and sisters and most are still in Indiana (one of them is running for judge this year.)

We stopped at the church after dinner. Edith commented that the altar looked exactly like the one at St. Martin. I forgot my camera so I don’t have a picture for comparison. I looked at the pictures on my Web site when I got home and St. Martin wasn’t the look-alike church (I’ll solve the puzzle some day.)

As I was writing these notes on my laptop, I turned on channel 12 at around 9:30 to see the end of the WEBN fireworks on the riverfront. Our son John met up with Bill Caruso in Covington where his parents have their boat docked. It’s a good seat for the display and provides a little separation from the half-million spectators. He has his first class at 8:30 Tuesday morning at the University of Wisconsin and has an 8-9 hour drive tomorrow to return to Madison. He drove down to Columbus on Wednesday to see The Who in concert and then came home for a short visit. It was good to see him, and we probably will not see him again until Thanksgiving.