Dinner talk: Swapping stories about the origins community’s chicken dinner

By Mary Owen

Tony Beitel loves to chat about the first St. Boniface Chicken Dinner.

“My wife, Mildred, filled this old aluminum kettle to the brim with mashed potatoes,” said Beitel, 103, to his longtime friend, Joe Spenner, a mere 90, the 4-gallon metal pot between them on Beitel’s couch.

“And a bucket of gravy to go with it,” Spenner chimed in.

“It was just a get-together back then,” Beitel continued, smiling at those gathered to hear about the festivities of old. “They didn’t even charge for it!”

As far as Beitel can recollect, the first dinner was held in 1921 in the old school house when longtime pastor Anthony Lainck was at St. Boniface.

If Beitel is right about the date, the Sublimity Catholic Church will host its 91st annual chicken dinner, now with barbecued chicken, chicken and noodles, baked potato, green beans, coleslaw, roll, dessert, ice cream, juice and coffee from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 14 at the Sublimity School cafeteria. Price is: adults, $10, children 12-6, $5, children under 5, free. Take out is from noon to 3 p.m. for $11. Parking is free.

Partakers can also enjoy the Country Store, featuring fresh local produce, homemade and handcrafted items, as well as offerings by more than 30 vendors. Hand-quilted quilts made by the Sublimity Quilters will be prizes along with various “made in Sublimity” items. Children will have fun with games, and those interested in learning a bit more history than parlayed over the dinner table are welcome to browse through the St. Boniface Archives and Museum.

“I was promised a chicken dinner,” Beitel told those gathered in the living room of his country home.

“It’ll come on the day we hold it,” Spenner told him, returning Beitel’s grin with a friendly pat on the back.

“We had a good time then, with lots of food and a bazaar,” Beitel shared with Spenner, as old friends do. “People liked to talk a lot, share a bit about their lives.”

Beitel’s table talk provided his listeners with a bit of the past mingled with the present, and still entertains, his visitors agreed.

“Father Lainck went from Sublimity to Stayton by buggy,” he related. “He gave a Mass in German, and the next week, in English.”

When the popular priest got his first automobile, Beitel said Lainck pulled back on the throttle, almost hit the back wall of the church, grabbed the steering wheel, and yelled, “Whoa, whoa.”

“Gas was poured from a glass bottle dipped in a 50-gallon barrel of gasoline,” he went on. “It went for seven and a half cents per gallon.”

Just like the price of gas, as the dinners progressed from year-to-year, changes came. Chicken, usually fried, turned to sausage one year, Francis Hendricks said. Darlene Hendricks recalled having turkey, and that the potluck dinners evolved into paid dinners put on by parishioners.

Henry Strobel, who started and maintains a website about parish history, provided clippings with plenty of past mentions of barbecued beef, steak and other attempts to jazz up the dinners.

“They had a turkey roll one year that was quite popular,” Darlene Hendricks remembered.

Today’s fare headlines Tim Bielenburg’s special recipe barbecue chicken, and the tried-and-true chicken and noodles remain a favorite, she said.

“I love the old stories,” Carol Rambousek said of the get-togethers. “It’s like a walk back in time for me.”

More than 1,100 partakers are expected at this year’s event, she said, and all will have their reasons for coming.

“We were poor,” shared Frances Hendricks, wife of Francis, who grew up in Lyons. “The one thing we did every year was to go to the parish dinner. We always got ice cream!”

Carol Zolkoske’s husband Gary’s family always came from Coon Hollow by wagon.

“Some of the older kids walked,” she said. “It was an all-day affair. Very family oriented.”

People still come from all over, including as far away as Bend, for the now-famous chicken and noodles, a recipe passed down from parishioner to parishioner throughout the dinner years, Rambousek added.

“The world changes, but the chicken dinner stays the same,” she quipped.

Beitel chimed in with a conversation-stopper about confiscating photos from an album in Adolf Hitler’s home after his unit swept the premises in World War II.

“I talked to Eva Braun, too,” he said of Hilter’s longtime companion and wife of 40 hours before the two perished. “If she committed suicide, how could I have had a 15-minute conversation with her? She told me she was going home to live out all her days.”

He paused, handed round a few of the photos, and then added, “Hitler went nuts with syphilis. When the German soldiers heard that, they surrendered.”

That’s a story for another dinner, but the telling is pure practice for Beitel, who remains grateful for the opportunities to share his experiences over the years.

“I remember loading the old wood stove with wood when I was about 7,” said Spenner, on track with his own thoughts, a smile crinkling his cheeks. “They’d dip the chickens in big boiler pans of hot water, scalding them to get the feathers to come off. You might say they started from scratch!”

As for Beitel’s old aluminum pot, asked if he might share it at last year’s dinner, he replied reluctantly that he still used it.

Even a promise to return it after its grand appearance met with his resistance.

“But I use it to wash my feet!” he finally admitted.

Everyone chuckled at the memory, a forerunner to what promises to be just one of many tales, tall or true, told around the St. Boniface dinner table in a few weeks.

“The dinners started as a gathering to celebrate the harvest season,” Spenner said.

And just as it was back then, he added, today’s dinner remains “a gift of gratitude to the Lord.”