ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - It was 1897, and a group of women from the Hamline Methodist Episcopal Church Ladies Aid Society were on a mission from God. To support their church, they sold sandwiches and cold drinks from an indoor food stand at the Minnesota State Fair.
In the decades to come, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and fundamental changes in church attendance and public dining would alter so many things around them - even their church name, which is now Hamline Church United Methodist, the Pioneer Press reported .
At least one thing has stayed constant. As long as the State Fair has opened its gates to customers, Hamline Church has offered them its signature Hamline Ham Loaf with mustard-vinegar-brown sugar sauce.
Penny Sandahl has been mixing coleslaw and serving cups of lingonberry sauce at the Hamline Church Dining Hall since she was 8 years old. After 57 years as a volunteer, she’s still not ready to say goodbye to the checkered tablecloths, indoor banquet tables, and 6- to 10-hour work days.
With five years of service under her belt, her 11-year-old granddaughter Julianne Stewart is barely getting started.
“If I made a dollar in tips in a day I’d though I’d died and gone to heaven,” recalled Sandahl, of Blaine, one of some 250 church volunteers who have kept the dining hall alive.
With church attendance on the decline nationally, it’s gotten harder to find warm bodies to dish out the grilled chicken and mashed potatoes, said Mark Krueger, who has co-chaired Hamline Methodist’s Dining Hall Committee for 22 years. But every year, with the help of friends and family, he finds upwards of 60 servers and food prep workers a day to fill some 700 shifts.
“It’s a fellowship opportunity for people in the church,” said Krueger, who says the dining hall covers about 10 percent of the annual church budget. “It’s an important fundraising opportunity for us, but it’s as important, the fellowship piece.”
By the 1920s, Hamline Methodist operated multiple food stands throughout the Fair, with volunteers sometimes arriving by horse-drawn-wagon or supplementing the kitchen by growing their own ingredients in lean times.
Dining proceeds helped rebuild their Gothic Cathedral-style St. Paul sanctuary on Englewood Avenue, which was destroyed by a Christmastime fire in 1925.
The church cemented its presence at the Fair at the end of World War II. Hamline Methodist bought a dining hall in 1944 from the East Immanuel Norwegian Evangelical Church of St. Paul. That building was replaced by the current building in 1968 after a difficult vote of 75 church families. A rear addition was built in 1983.
On Friday, as the Great Minnesota Get-Together opened for the second day of its 12-day season, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman helped Hamline Methodist celebrate its 120th year at the Fair with a proclamation naming that day in its honor.
The dining operation - still run in part by the church’s women’s group - is the oldest continuously operating food vendor at the Fair. It’s also one of two remaining church dining halls, which once numbered close to 100. Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church of Minneapolis has been serving Swedish meatballs and Swedish coffee for almost 70 years.
To the delight of executive chef Erik Hendrickson, Hamline Methodist’s signature Hamline Ham Loaf found its way a few years ago into the pages of Saveur Magazine, a magazine aimed at discriminating epicureans. Hendrickson and the high school students who start at minimum wage are the dining hall’s only paid workers.
“If you ever want a taste of home, have that,” said Ray Faust, chair of the Hamline church council. “It’s better than Lutefisk by a mile. It’s a quintessential Minnesota ’church lady’ dining room-type church hall meal.”
To keep current, the dining hall began partnering a few years ago with St. Paul-based Izzy’s Ice Cream, which runs a storefront counter that allows patrons to beat the regular lunch line. New this year are the wild rice cranberry meatballs in Swedish cream sauce, which have already gotten rave reviews from food critics.
Jane McClure, a Twin Cities journalist and co-president of the church’s Hamline Women’s group, assembled a four-page history and timeline of the fair’s church-run dining halls, and not all of it is pretty.
More than a dozen denominations once competed for space nearest popular livestock attractions and farthest from fortune tellers and other seemingly inappropriate neighbors.
“Most Fair food in the early days was widely criticized as being horrible,” said McClure, noting food poisoning wasn’t uncommon. “In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Twin Cities newspapers sometimes vigorously attacked the church dining halls for serving poorly prepared foods and for using the Fair to espouse a particular faith.
“Some writers heaped abuse upon the Ladies Aid Society members who often cooked the food. Silverware wasn’t clean, cloth napkins were torn. . the criticisms were piled on.”
On Friday, Otti Armant, a Texan who grew up in St. Paul, and longtime friend Sam Mack of Minneapolis had just the opposite experience.
The friends wanted to enjoy their own reunion at the same time as the dining hall’s 120th anniversary.
“That’s why we’re here - and because of the reports of those meatballs!” Armant said, taking her seat at a banquet table.
Minutes later, the two ladies were all smiles.
“The meatballs were delicious,” Armant said. “We came for the food, but what we like best is the family atmosphere . It’s family-style. And endless cups of coffee!”
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Information from: St. Paul Pioneer Press, https://www.twincities.com
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