But more important, Snyder said, is that church dinners are a good part of the glue that holds a community together. It's not like all that other stuff in the papers. But these things are just amazing. You'd think there's not a thing there. Then they have their dinner and you literally can't find a place to park.
People come from everywhere.
Snyder said the archives got calls constantly from people seeking to pinpoint the date when their church dinner began. That tells her, she said, there is a deeper interest in the events than just this year's pan-fried chicken or rhubarb pie. Alas, she said, church records deal mostly with births, christenings, marriages, deaths and who was pastor when, not chicken dinners and hog roasts. I can still remember that pork, especially in late summer when the lard would start to get rancid. So chicken was special.