Rake

I'm not sure that my hometown of Rake, Iowa, has ever been considered a city.  Even though the city boasts an 'International Airport,' there is little to differentiate Rake from small hamlets in a variety of countries all over the world.  The size of the town city limits is not directly proportional to the size of its spirit, the collective soul of its citizens which strive for excellence and notoriety in the area in which it is situated.


Rake isn't known for much, I guess, other than two yearly events that draw people from far and wide - most of them of Scandinavian descent.  The first happens right around our birthday every year.  At the end of February, the lutefisk dinner occurs.  For a while, this always used to happen in the church basement which was a double-whammy for me as a kid.  Firstly, going to church twice a week was not exactly something a young boy wants to do. (But in February, in Iowa, what else is there to do but go to church?)  Secondly, the odor that emanates from a freshly opened box of frozen cod soaked in lye, is eye watering.  You see, lutefisk, as tradition goes, was meant to be like a Scandinavian Trojan Horse.  The Swedes sent it across the channel in an unmanned boat to poison Norwegians hoping that the Norskes would see fish, eat fish and die.  Lutefisk is soaked in the same chemical that they put in dishwashing detergent.  You've got to hand it to the Norwegians, though, they are a tough lot.  Not only did they overcome the lye soaked cod, but they miraculously still are able to engage their olfactory systems.


Lutefisk stinks.  Reeks.  It smells as if everyone in a tri-state area took out the padded instep of their basketball shoes after a nine hour game and strapped them around their necks.  Imagine, as church is about to occur four weeks after the 'lutefisk festival' (yes, it's a festival!  They should have made t-shirts that said, I survived the smell) and you're sitting through the first bars of the worship service, the odor rises from the basement, and so does your gorge.  The words "Lord, have mercy," ring out from the pastor and take new meaning.  You are sitting in the ninth row from the front (because your family was late getting to church) pinching your nose and saying, "Yes, indeed most gracious God, have mercy on us."


These same Norwegians who enjoy ingesting poison soaked fish are the same ones that created the Mange Tak Days which are Rake's holy days during the summer.  'Mange Tak' in Norwegian, means, 'Many thanks."  We used to say that it meant 'Mangy Dog.'  Either way, the highlight for me was always cowchip bingo.  Across the Rake park, a grid had been set up where people would 'purchase' a square and then let loose a Holstein onto the grid where, after days, minutes or hours, the cow would feel the urge to drop one and where ever the cowchip ended up, the owner of that square received a pot of money.  The last Bingo game I saw, the cow took almost three hours to effectively move her cud out the backdoor.  But in those three hours, while Rakivites lined the roped off Bingo court, dozens of people milled around sharing life, talking about the weather or about family relationships. 


Under the guise of watching a cow defecate, community life blossomed.


This is by no means an attempt to say that the residents of Rake and surrounding areas are simple.  Some of the most intelligent people I know graduated from the Rake community school district.  Like any other town, or city for that fact, they just have certain traditions that, from an outside perspective, seem strange or ridiculous: what could be more strange than eating fish soaked in poison and then rubbing your belly while exclaiming, "Mmm, mmm, mmm that was soooooo good," when in fact the actual swallowing of the gelatinous mass probably caused the gag reflex in most of them?  What could be odder that standing around for much of an afternoon waiting for a cow to poop so that you have the chance to win seven dollars and thirty-six cents?


Traditions often lose meaning by the repetition.  What I mean by that is, after a while, we sometimes forget why we do something, only remembering that we are supposed to do it.  Every family has these traditions, every church, every community and every country repeats an action that made sense when it was first done.  Some of them are good, some of them are, well, better.


With my family, I attended Christmas Eve services this year in Rake, Iowa at Zion Lutheran Church.  It is the only church in town now, a cathedral like erection on the south side of town.  Over the years the outside has changed drastically, but the inside, apart from putting in an elevator, has been relatively stable.  Christmas Eve was/is my favorite service of the year.  When we were growing up, we sang in the choir in our little red robes looking like Christmas candy canes singing about the little baby Jesus.  As we grew older, we progressed through junior choir to the varsity choir getting blue robes with a  gold collar which hung over the neck and down the back.  If you looked from the back as the choir was walking in, the choir looked like a pack of ambulatory candles.


I got to sing with the choir again this Christmas.  They don't wear robes anymore; in fact, they don't even sing from the choir loft.  When it comes time to sing, they move out from their families, trek to the front and stand on the steps leading up to the chancel (front of the church).  But they still sing with passion.  As we sang, I continued to notice that these were the same people we sang with when we were growing up albeit that many of them had either less hair, or slightly less colorful hair.  Fortunately, most of the ladies don't have a blue or purple tinge anymore.  Natural gray is wonderful (not fifty shades of it, though.)


We sang two songs that night; I don't even remember the first, but I stood next to my brother who was extricated from his seat to reluctantly sing the bass part.  It was fun, looking out over the crowd of people who had come home for Christmas, some of whom I hadn't seen for a decade. 


But then, the tradition that always made my night.  When we were little, the combined choirs of the church, cherub, junior and senior, would circle the entire sanctuary holding hands and sing the song, "Let There Be Peace on Earth."  This is the part about tradition that makes me smile.  The song in itself is not really a Christmas song - it's more like a 1960's equal rights hymn dedicated to 'walking with my brother in perfect harmony.'  But the spirit of the song is that we stand together and embrace the gathered church on Christmas Eve and sing as loud as we can hoping that peace can come to earth this Christmas.


There aren't enough people in the choir to circle the church anymore, so everyone in the congregation got out of their seats to sing at each other this year.  It was a powerful experience to see this amazing congregation at Zion, which in two months would be trying to poison each other with fish, stand and sing to each other.


There aren't enough Zion Lutheran Churches in the world. 


The service was the best Christmas present I had.