The Report from Riceville-November 7, 2004-Maple Leaf Chili Cook-off edition

I’m spending a short week in Riceville with my brother and his family and in blogging hope to treat it as a bit of vacation from political topics. We’ll see how it goes. Watch out for sentimental and nostalgic writing that tends to the superficial. I may not be able to control myself outside the cynical world of politics.

Tonight my brother David and his family and I went to the Chili Cook-off at Maple Leaf Lutheran Church. My uncle, Dan, is the pastor there, having moved back to the area to be close to the rest of the family after his four kids graduated from high-school. Maple Leaf has been attracting some new and former attendees since his return and a bit more life in the church and a few more cars in the parking lot are helping the old country church continue to outlive half-century old pronouncements of its inevitable demise.

Recently there was discussion of building a new Maple Leaf Church. The proposal was to build a handicap accessible, one level church on the other side of the parsonage, currently part of a cornfield (The church truly is a country church, the parsonage being its only companion in the sea of soybeans, corn and grain.). This plan to build anew was taken up because the costs of installing an elevator in the current church were prohibitive, but was rejected after one of the members found a chair lift on auction for two-hundred dollars. Those against building a new church also argued that the church wouldn’t be around in twenty years anyway so it wasn’t any use building a new one. My brother said that the same argument was raised fifty years ago when the current building was remodeled. He seemed annoyed at the defeatism, saying that he would not be surprised at the church’s decline if the building was allowed to deteriorate without a replacement being built. There are similar attitudes regarding the eventual closing of the school and the death of the town. Beside those mourning the foregone conclusion of these eventualities are also those who are working toward avoiding them.

The Chili Cook-off was held in the basement of Maple Leaf. There are kitchen facilities on one end of the single room basement and young people from the youth group, the beneficiaries of the ten-dollar fee for entry of a dish in the competition and five-dollar fee for entry of a person through the door, served up a few spoonfuls of each of ten different varieties of chili via a tray full of miniature plastic cups. Also to be picked up for judging were a plate full of bite-size portions of twelve different desserts and another with four types of salad and yet another with five different breads because in truth this was not a one-front battle for the best chili, oh no, but rather a two-front war for tops in chili and dessert with additional minor skirmishes in the third world of breads and salads.

The chili itself was less diverse than I might have hoped with three of the ten barely differentiable from each other. My uncle Dan made his with lamb, which turned out to just not be quite the right meat for chili. Another’s makeup was literally ninety-five percent beef, but despite that promising constitution lacked flavor. Without knowing it was hers one of my nephews picked his mom's chili which made her pretty happy. In the end I cast my ballot for number ten, a spicy number with just the right consistency and tasty tomatoes, but not before I considered writing-in Ralph Nader.