There is a rounded knoll across the gravel road southeast of Waldheim Lutheran Church. The road is a designated Scenic Backway, as if that weren't obvious. On this morning the sumac is scarlet, and the Sheyenne River valley is gorgeous as usual, but today even the bottomland beanfields glow with transitional green-gold. Upriver the pale elevators of Kathryn invite the reflective eye, but closer, in the churchyard below, there is a buzz of activity.

This is the day for the annual Turkey & Lefse Dinner. It's not supposed to begin for an hour, but scores of ordinarily orderly Lutherans are crowding in to get tickets for early seating. Ken Clausen, veteran ticketmaster in the foyer, says it gets worse every year.

Or better, depending on your point of view. Some of the best parts are free. The colors of autumn, for instance, and the contrasting colors of Waldheim's exceedingly Norwegian cemetery, spiked with spruce and birch planted by Martin Prestrud in 1945.

And, if you read up in advance, the richly ambivalent sense of history that pervades the place. I appreciate local histories that have voice, and the voice of Waldheim's published parish history is deliciously droll. It lets us wonder just why, since parishioners poured a foundation in 1886, they didn't complete the church until 1900 (I have my own theories). Then in 1909 they built an addition "for more horse room." What does that mean?

It notes the advent of the first English-language service in 1917, the cessation of Norwegian-language services in 1946, and the dual-language transition in-between. It alludes also to what must have been a particularly sensitive changing of the guard some years later. "In 1969," we are informed, "Pastor Ron Johnson was called to serve. We received the red hymnals as a memorial gift, and Pastor Ron suggested we start using them."

"Through all these years," we are reassured, "the Waldheim Ladies Aid did commendable work." Darn right, I'm thinking in the church basement, having gotten into the third seating as holder of ticket #76. These days the turkeys are brought in by that ubiquitous country caterer, Norm Erber, but there still are the potatoes, dressing (sometimes a controversial item), cranberries, pickled beets, coleslaw, and pumpkin pie to get ready.

Lefse-rolling has occupied Myrtis Clausen, Audrey Smith, Becky Sorby, Shirley Anderson, Lorraine Fornes, Dorinda Zacharias, Edith Zacharias, and probably others for several days. Lefse for 600 or more — that's a daunting mission. Last night someone stayed up to bake chocolate-zucchini muffins, and this morning someone pulled a trailer-load of sweet corn now available for a free-will contribution. Other preparations backed up through the year: quilting for the bazaar, boiling of chokecherry syrup and rhubarb-apricot jam.

The men do the dishes.

Sharon and Ken Clausen remember moving back to the locality on Christmas Eve 1981 and going to church on Christmas Day. They had been living in Fargo following Ken's military service. Theirs was a permanent homecoming. Today is temporary homecoming for hundreds.

Nobody seems to know how far back this turkey and lefse tradition goes. I ask people milling around the bazaar or seated in pews waiting to eat. Here are Shirley Anderson, who plays the old pump organ every Sunday, and husband Lee, who pumps it for her. When they moved here in 1947 the event already was annual, although in those days it was an evening supper rather than a noon dinner.

Pastor portraits line one basement wall. These guys with the ruffled collars, I'd hate to have done catechism with them.

I'd rather do it with Pastor Brad Edin. He lives on the family farm north of Kathryn and has preached at three churches this morning, including the early service for food preparers here at Waldheim. He preached from that text where Jesus lectured Peter on forgiveness. He encouraged everyone to think of their service today--sharing a generous meal in a beautiful place--as a metaphor for daily life.