12 oktober 2023 New Years Eve 1995

 

(Illustration by Chairman Joe McDonnell)

 

Dear Bill,
   Thanks for the nice review of THE RAVEN.

    In answer to your question “How big is Wannaska?” Lessee, If you include Elmer Benson’s trailer house on the east side of Highway 89 (that’s the Golden Valley Township part of Wannaska), then  and Kenny Tangen’s trailer house over there in Grimstad Township, the town may well be 300 yards long east and west; and about the same north and south including the Roseau River bridge and the Riverside Lutheran church. Wannaska’s population must be nigh around forty people, more in the Mickinock Cemetery northeast of town. 

    The wife and I were going to her mother’s house for a bit of New Year’s Eve food and a chance to exchange witticisms with the father-n-law on the subjects of manhood -- and lutefisk.
Well, you see the two go hand in hand up here: You ain’t a real man--if you don’t eat lutefisk, at least once a year. You’ve got to prove yourself, but if you over-do it, people’ll start thinkin’ you’re a Norwegian, so you can see you could over do it. I can see it now, one of those info-mercials:

“This is your brain as a Norwegian.”

“This is your brain as a Norwegian on lutefisk ...”

   Yah, that’d be a little too graphic even for television these days, so we have to draw the line somewhere. I’m cutting it back to basics for some of your friends back in Texas who may not know what lutefisk is. Lutefisk, (pronounced ‘loot-ah-fisk’) is akin to sucking raw egg yolk between the spaces in your teeth, or I would go as far to say, (I can only imagine now) swallowing the dregs on the bottom of a large spittoon.

    Now this is for real Bill. Lutefisk is cod fish that is dried and stacked like cordwood. It’ll keep for months on end that way. Then, when the second and third generation American-Norwegians that practice this dead tradition sense the approach of fall, they drag out the old lye barrels and reconstitute this stuff.

    Lutheran churches all across northwestern Minnesota put on these grand lutefisk suppers beginning around the first week of November. There is no coincidence that moose and whitetail deer are coming into rut at this time; so are the real Norwegians, normally sane individuals with just a tad of Norwegian blood suddenly turn manic and begin talking with an odd lilt to their voice and accenting their words differently. The men grow beards and the women fine-haired mustaches that they sport with a certain ethnic pride. Norsk is spoken in strange dialects and much backslapping is commonly observed. Like I say, lutefisk is strange food.

   So it is that I’ve eaten lutefisk me self all my lfe, I don’t know why. I’m supposed to be Swedish/Norwegian on my mother’s side and Scot-Irish on my father’s side of things. I would’ve thought the other three quarters would have diluted the Norwegian part to an appreciable degree and I wouldn’t be so inclined to slog a plate of steamed lutefisk with everyone else as I usually don’t act so irrational. I’m a kind of guy who can’t even eat pudding without getting nauseous because of its consistency; yet, once a year, I can sit down to a plate of bovine nose slime smothered in melted butter and eat it all gone, mopping up the very last dollop of the stuff with a piece of hardtack. Yum!

   Oh yes, its aroma is really something too. Face shields and safety glasses are recommended as you don't want to get any on you. The rendering plant has nothing on this stuff when its being cooked either. We walked in the door of the in-law's place and my eight year-old daughter refused to enter because she thought one of her grandparents had gotten sick just as we arrived. She preferred to remain in the parking lot, than enter and cause them further embarrassment so it was some time before I could convince her otherwise; much less, that we were there to eat it.

   But the kid is cursed anyway. She has Nordic blood coursin’ through her veins like her Viking foremothers. Although Nordic women are quick on their hooves, some still fall prey to lutefisk lovers and I fear she may be one of them too if she ain’t careful of them Swedish Sons-of-Erick, especially.

And she did, anyway.