Now that we've all recently eaten at the Elks Crab Feed, think back on different feeds held in Kellogg when we were youngsters. Write what you remember about any feeds or a particular fed that occured in Kellogg.You can read about Carol's memories of the United Church's oyster stew feed here and Christy remembers the chili feed at Sunnyside Elementary, here.
The first time it happened recently was back in November of 2016. I wasn't a feed, per se, but local people packed the Elks dining area upstairs. It was a benefit spaghetti dinner and auction to help a longtime Kellogg resident, Wendi Lewis, defray the costs of cancer treatment.
It happened again this past December. Christy, Carol, Paul, and I attended a memorial service at the Elks for Peny Benson and once the service was over, people lined up and were served hamburgers. It wasn't a feed, per se, but like the benefit for Wendi, it transported me back to feeds in the Kellogg area, whether it was the fish feed at the Sunshine Inn, the annual PTA Chili Feed at Sunnyside School, the PTA Oyster Stew feed at Silver King School, or another Oyster Stew Feed, this one at the United Church across the street.
When I walked into the Elks Crab Feed a couple of weeks ago, my mind immediately flashed on Dad.
Dad hated these feeds -- especially the ones at the Elks, the schools, and the church.
Dad hated the long lines of tables. He hated how confined he felt being packed in his seat with so many others around him. He really hated the school feeds where adults had to sit at tables with benches constructed for elementary school children to eat hot lunch. He also hated having to get up from his seat and stand in line to be served and, when he did go to these feeds, beads of perspiration formed on his forehead and face because he was uncomfortably hot.
I don't remember the last time Dad went to a school or church feed. I do, however, remember that eventually he drew a hard line when it came to the church's Oyster Stew Feed: he wasn't going, but, he liked the food, and so he asked Mom to bring a container of oyster stew and oyster crackers and, most likely, a dessert home when the rest of us were done so he could enjoy the oyster stew feed in what he called his castle, our little house. Mom complied. (By the way, Carol writes that she brought him home chicken noodle soup -- it was also an offering at these feeds. She is most likely correct!)
For me, the experience was different.
For starters, I love the food at these feeds whether it's burgers, spaghetti, chili, crab, or oyster stew. I suppose the lining up to be served food reminds me doing the same for hot lunch and I always enjoyed the hot lunch line -- and the line at the dining hall at Whitworth -- because I got to shoot the breeze with people and got to spot people, wave to them, find out stuff that was going on, and enjoy seeing them.
When I wrote earlier that "it happened" when I went to these recent events at the Elks, I was referring to the sensation that these feeds somehow deeply engraved in my Kellogg experience, the same way going to high school basketball games or drinking in Kellogg bars did.
It's a happy sensation. I break out into smiles and laughter. I feel at home. The sensation is, I think, born of the boisterousness and vitality that fills these rooms, that filled the rooms where the feeds were held when I was a youth.
Encoded deep in the Kellogg experience is a boisterousness that is often loud, sometimes coarse, reliably friendly -- even affectionate -- and full of life. That din that fills the room at one of these events is the loud sound of stories being told, people eager to make one another laugh and just as eager to laugh at what others say; stories fly all over the place, most of them have been repeated a thousand times and get told for the sake of getting a good laugh. It's remarkable how often this works.
People who know each other boisterously, and, sometimes mercilessly, give each a bad time, pick on each other, and laugh. I often get it because of my hair -- you ought to have heard all the grief I took in Kellogg when I wore a beard -- or because I lived back east (I was a traitor) or because of my occupation (people I know love to razz me for having been a college English instructor, or, as I'm often referred to, a professor).
People hug, blow kisses, wander around and visit with people in other parts of the room, buy each other drinks, bump into one another, make wise cracks, laugh, laugh again, and laugh some more.
Now, keep in mind, this boisterousness marked Dad's public personality. He loved walking into a bar or the golf course clubhouse or his workplace at the Zinc Plant and immediately start giving people a bad time and he not only loved going for the big laugh, he loved being made to laugh.
That he didn't enjoy all this boisterousness at PTA or church feeds and that he rarely went to big dinner events at the Elks is evidence that these feeds really made him basically unhappy and uncomfortable. His physical discomfort defined how he felt about these feeds. Not even knowing that he'd have plenty of people to be boisterous with could overcome how much he hated the different feeds in Kellogg.
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