Spaghetti Dinner I

by Timothy Vick

I had been working here for a month or so. My memory is vague as to who did what either in preparation for or during the trip, because at that point I didn't know many of the people very well.. That was about to change with a jolt.

We set off on the trip on a Friday afternoon. My recollection is that while both Ed Buchwald and Shelby Boardman were along on the trip, departmental Chairman Eiler Henrickson '43 was in command and had everything under control. We would find a camping place when it started to get dark, have dinner, and be on our way the next morning.

Evening came; no camping places around here! Eiler was far from defeated though. He'd been through this many times before. It wasn't long before he'd found us a nice spot next to a commercial fishing operation on some lake or reservoir somewhere in western Minnesota or eastern South Dakota. I never saw the body of water nor heard the name of the place, but we were there anyway.

As we made camp, things darkened. The sun went down and the camp site went pitch dark. Somehow we managed to erect the tents as freezing rain mixed with increasing amounts of snow fell on us with increasing intensity. Chef Ken Collier '76, a masterful cook as well as an accomplished woodworker and writer, fired up the Coleman stoves and got somebody to put up an awning over the cooking area. It was cold. And windy. COLD! Everyone crowded under the awning trying to get in on the few stray calories of heat that escaped from the fire under the spaghetti pot.

People were famished and clamoring, or at least pressing, for something to eat. It was probably mostly in exasperation that Ken finally decided to dispense some French bread to mollify the throng elbowing their way around the kitchen.

Phwomp. The bread topped with shrapnel of cold butter was consumed with a voracious sucking sound. The crowd of roughly 40 campers remained, unsatiated and cold, huddling under the awning next to the stoves.

Next came the salad. Rustle rustle. We ate it by the fistful with bare hands. There was salad dressing around somewhere but I never made contact with it. Still hungry. Still cold. The snow increased, both in an absolute sense and relative to the rain. So did the rain.

Wait around. Shiver. Huddle. The wind was blowing so hard that the spaghetti water, try as it might, just wouldn't boil. Ken finally gave up and cooked the noodles in semi-hot water.

Yea! Here comes the spaghetti sauce!! Take it - drink it and get warm! Well, what else could we do? The spaghetti wasn't ready yet and we were all hungry and cold, even desperate by this time for something that would fill our complaining stomachs.

Finally... The main dish was ready. Spaghetti. Ken had to kind of estimate on the cooking time because he had a hard time getting close enough to the pot to see anything, what with the steam billowing out and all those people crushed around the stove trying to keep warm, so the spaghetti was compacted into something looking midway between golf balls and Oscar the Grouch's furry fist, but what the hey, we were ready for it.

But wait a minute, we already ate all the sauce, the bread and the salad. Darn. Well, just stuff it down as best you can. And climb into your sleeping bag and try to keep warm. Fat chance.

Bright and early the next morning we enjoyed a nice breakfast of cold, economy grade, food service Danish rolls and cold milk and cold orange juice in the comfort of the cold tin shed that belonged to the commercial fisher people. I got my finger-numbing introduction to rolling up tents encrusted with ice.

And, nineteen years later, I'm still here?