November 20, 2003

Plains Folk: Canaan

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

Clifford Glasow, the guy in the plaid shirt, has been mashing potatoes for 36 years. No, not every day, just every October, for the fall supper at Canaan Moravian Brethren Church, Cass County, N. D. Darlene Miller, President of the Women’s Fellowship, has done gravy for three years now but was formerly with the potato crew. She says, "Once you know what you’re doing, it’s to your advantage to stay there."

I’d play it safe, too, because this church-basement kitchen is frenzied. It’s not anarchy, because the work is being done and done efficiently, but it’s crowded with people (26 by my count), pots, roasters, percolators, and steaming dishwashers. People are mashing, whisking, clanking, shouting, and grinning. Some of them are making fun of Pastor Chuck Belzer, which is always a good sign. Nine hundred twenty four diners will be served this Saturday, Oct. 25, 2003. Six hundred by sit-down, and 324 by take-out, the orders packed to go by a branch crew under the stairway.

The kitchen is the storm at the eye of the calm. Across the tables crowded with diners, things are relaxed and quiet. There is plenty of conversation, but it is gentle talk. People finish eating and then go around to tables to visit, and only a few of them are politicians. There is something cultural to learn by marking the difference in tone between the work area and the social area.

There are things to learn, too, just hanging around the sanctuary waiting to be escorted to the basement and seated. This is after you’ve bought your ticket at the head of the entryway. The church interior is truly striking with white plastered walls, dark beams and pews. And the stained glass: Christ in Gethsemene at front, Christ the Good Shepherd at back, and smaller windows all around, with an "Andenken" (remembrance) legend at the bottom of each.

My favorite is the "Zum Andenken an die Sonntag-Schule / von den Maedchen und Jungfrauen" legend (meaning, for the Sunday-school, from the girls). While I was looking at it, an old chap sidled up to express his personal affection for the stained-glass artistry and then to tell the story of the brass music for the Easter service.

Earlier this year I wrote about the band that plays over at Goshen on Easter morning, following Moravian tradition. For a while the brass tradition died out at Canaan, a larger parish, until this fellow decided something had to be done. He went to the band teacher in nearby Kindred and drafted two cornet players, without telling anyone but the pastor. The people sure were surprised to hear the brass that Easter morn, and, "Since then, we’ve had a band every year."

When the band plays in the cemetery, my new old friend confides, "It kind of touches a feller. You’ve got your mother, and brothers, and father out there."

Canaan has the democratic style of Moravian cemetery, markers all low slabs, women on one side and men on the other. Entering and leaving the redbrick church, I notice families walking among the rows, locating kin. Cars stream both ways on the gravel road. Older folks have taken advantage of early seating and are getting home before dark. Newcomers’ parked cars spill across the road. 924 turkey dinners.

There are things you do, not because of the amount of money to be made or because of inertia or duty, but because they are things that define who you are. Hard work, quiet talk, rural democracy-these things are the core of matters Moravian.

Not far as the crow flies is Alice, where the annual Halloween party is in progress at the fabulous old community hall. We missed the cakewalk and the duck-bob and the other games, but the haunted house is still going in the basement. Nice and creepy, if you haven’t been spoiled by digital horror. Next year maybe we can get there earlier. And, I think there ought to be a rule that the ghouls ought not to hug the kids going through the haunted house. How can you keep a good scare up with that going on?

Memo to all you fall supper servers, brass players, Halloween ghouls, keepers of all kinds of faiths across the northern plains: Keep on doing what you do. We appreciate it.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2942, isern@plainsfolk.com
Editor: Rich Mattern, (701) 231-6136, richard.mattern@ndsu.nodak.edu 

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