Look at me go! I’m making another post so soon!
The dates for Relief Sale ‘010 (Michiana, of course) are September 24th and 25th.
There are two empty seats in the Honda. Just sayin’.
Also, this year the quilt auction starts at 7 am instead of 6 am, Saturday morning! I think I might care more if I could afford the quilt auction anyways.
Hey, if I keep making new paragraphs when I don’t need to it looks like I’m writing more than I actually am!
Wow.
I believe it to be true, that there are four major things Mennonites love. The beauty of the Relief Sale is that they all come together for two glorious days. They are: great, yet unhealthy, food; cheap sales (the garage and plant sale;) schisms, and auctions. But the greatest of these…is auctions.
There are four auctions to be savored at the Relief Sale. Unfortunately, they all run together during the before-noon hours on Saturday. They are: the Children’s Auction, which sounds more illegal than it actually is; the Antique Auction, which is my personal favorite; the Quilt Auction, which is awesome but too rich for my blood (and you’ll see why in a minute;) and what I like to call the “Random Shit Auction,” which has all the stuff that’s not an antique, but is too nice to sell at the Garage Sale.
The non-food center of the entire Relief Sale is the Quilt Auction, and it really deserves mention. It’s in the big blue block furthest west on Ye Olde Mappe. Different church groups or individuals work on quilts the entire year to donate to be sold. On Friday night the warehouse is open and you can walk through the wooden racks, where the quilts up for bid hang under clear plastic wrap with paper labels denoting the donators. A successful quilt can go for a couple thousand dollars, or even more. Everyone claps when this happens. I wonder how it is I was born to be so poor. I generally stay away once they start auctioning the quilts.
Another awesome thing about the auctions: they’re run by real auctioneers that can make those funny auctioneer noises and talk really fast. If you’ve never been to a Homestyle Mennonite auction, this is generally how it works at the Relief Sale:
Some old progressive Mennonite is up on the podium making noises with numbers mixed in pertaining to an object that is currently up for sale. The prog always has at least one relative in old order or conservative garb, kind of like his “wingmen” for the auction. Their job is to walk around scanning the crowd, sometimes picking up the object and waving it around, flailing their arms and hopping when they get excited or feel moved by the spirit (of the auction,) and generally acting like they have to pee. (This sort of behavior is frowned upon in churches, but totally okay when money’s involved.) If you are caught by one of these guys waving your auction number, raising one finger, or nodding slightly, they will point at you and say “Haahhhhhh!” This means that you just met the asking price, and it gets bumped up for someone else to try and meet. In the end it’s 1part intimidation, 2 parts hilarity, and 5 parts groovy times. Buying stuff! Yes!
The crowds dissipate with the last items auctioned and food supplies at or near empty. Everyone packs up and leaves; every table, chair, and podium is put away until the next time it’s needed. It’s a bittersweet moment; we’re all sad to see it go, but our systems just couldn’t take any more damn food. We are all bloated like dead deer and no more furniture or knick-knacks can fit in the car. And if we played our cards right, we ran out of spending money around that time also.
That’s it for RELIEF SALE WEEK! Honestly, I don’t have anything in particular in mind for next week. And so…
Mix up another drink for…
????Something????
Of course, the awesomeness of the Relief Sale can also be attributed to items other than food!
The other highlights for spending money lie in booths, auctions, and garage sales. The auctions are the highlight of the non-food festivities, so we’ll cover those in my next post. This post is solely devoted to what can be found at the booths and garage sale.
I’m not posting Ye Olde Mappe again, dangit! Look down at the previous posts!
I lied. The big, red building north of the green “X” houses lots of booths with non-food items. They are booths for woodworking, knitting, sewing, and a booth for Ten Thousand Villages (a international fair trade store with instruments for children that can annoy you in ways both foreign and fair.) My favorite booth is the one for Ten Thousand Villages, even though there’s a store in downtown Goshen I could conceivably visit whenever the fancy struck me. There is also a booth where you can buy Relief Sale memorabilia, stuff like coffee mugs, yardsticks, and whirly-toys with the Relief Sale logo and year on them. [True story: one year I got a yardstick for a dollar. It was from the last year, which didn’t matter to me because I go every year. It was really handy for hitting the buttons on my TV while sitting on the chair or at my desk. I got really good at it. But that was in a single room at good ol’ Goshen College. I would’ve broken the window if I stood in the center of my room and tried to twirl the stick around. It is a fact that that particular room had once been a closet. When they “renovated” it, they put all electric outlets, plus the phone jack and ethernet cord, in one little corner on the “far” side of the room, where the bed would naturally have to go. I guess I have Goshen to thank for being prepared with a 20 ft. ethernet cord, 2 extension cords, and two power strips.]
In the strip of white buildings across from the green “X,” there is an outdoor booth with books. Unfortunately, they all look really boring and I think they also have Amish fiction. [ >__< ] Nothing there has ever piqued my interest.
The Plant Sale is awesome. People donate plants and trees and you buy them for pretty decent prices, compared to the rest of the stuff for sale. You have to get there early to get the best ones in the coolest containers, like old coffee mugs or Easter buckets. Some of the stuff has no label and looks like something a senile, yet well-meaning, elderly person found next to their sidewalk and dedicated to the cause. There’s also useful stuff, like aloe plants.
The garage sale is another place with cheap items up for grabs. Unfortunately, the stuff is usually cheap for a reason. A thrifty college student may find some Tupperware piece with warped tops, or an electric wok whose reliability is never specified. There’s always a box of old records, but as a general rule these are never old enough to be really interesting and oftentimes are Bethany Senior Songfests or gospel choirs,all of which are undesirable in my book. The type of records with pictures on the front of uni-brows, creepy smiles, and old beehive hairdos, perhaps a mandolin or organ thrown in for good measure. Or worse: a picture of a mountain and religious text pertaining to eagles.
Last but perhaps awesomest: The Balloon Booth. This is very important. It’s at the bottom right corner of the “Park” area. I marked it with a box with an “X” on it, but it’s so small that it’s hard to see. The Balloon Booth can be a source of endless pleasure during your Relief Sale experience, because at the Balloon Booth you will find surly conservative teens whose job it is to fill and distribute helium balloons, FOR FREE, to whoever wants one. If you give yourself enough time between visits, and claim that you have a couple younger cousins wanting a balloon, you will have access to more helium than is safe for human consumption. Because what’s better than the Relief Sale? The Relief Sale while buzzed and singing like a happy chipmunk.
Don’t miss the gripping conclusion of Relief Sale Week:
RELIEF SALE WEEK Part 5: Oh, the Auctions!
In my previous post, we explored the two main “meals” of the Relief Sale. Now I’m going to give you all a general overview of all the terrible, beautiful things you can eat outside of these meals.
Because I lack creativity, lets pull up Ye Ole Mappe again:
Okay. The green “X,” the two white strips of building across the street from it, and the pale-blue tuber (??) shape beneath the “Park” area are the main places of non-eventical foodular activity.
If I had to label something as the “nucleus” of food for the fest, I would have to go with the pale-blue tuber. In real life, this blob is a large tent that holds many of the event’s culinary highlights. These include: egg rolls, strawberry shortcake, and homemade before-your-eyes applefritters. (The applefritters are a spectacle to behold. They’re made with old fashioned apple-peeler-cranks by sad looking young children that don’t get paid and aren’t allowed to eat them. This makes the fritters taste better somehow.) Other awesome Menno food at the tent:
Welsch Cakes: Haven’t tried ’em, but I hear they’re good.
Egyptian Stuff-In-A-Bowl: Some gutsy Menno, no doubt inspired by my pioneering work in Stuff-In-A-Bowl recipes, tried their own spin on it. Their version has lentils, which I’m not too fond of, but it’s healthy, filling, and worth a try if you’ve never had Egyptian food.Or Stuff-In-A-Bowl.
Indian booth: has mango milkshakes, which is a plus. The food tastes authentic, which means it’s too spicy for me unfortunately. Again, worth a try.
Pulled Pork Sandwiches: Always worth it.
****Sandwich Wraps: DON”T, Don’t, DO NOT get the sandwich wraps. I forget what I was thinking at the time, but once I got one of these. Nasty. Cardboard. Not the kind of stuff you would eat ’til you die. Not Mennofood at all. If my ancestors had been eating these sandwich wraps, they never would have made it to Canada.
Other foods to be had, under the green “X” and white stripes:
Kettlecorn by Old Orders: I hate kettlecorn. That is all.
Cotton Candy: I don’t get it because after two bites I get seriously ill.
Cheese Booths: Run by a bunch of BAMFs. THE BEST CHEESE EVER. Mennonite Cheese. Watch out for the Veggie, but gotta love the Pepper Jack and Lacey Swiss. This stuff is for real.Get there early to insure you’ll get the kind and amount you want. Bring a cooler and ice so you don’t have to carry it around and spoil it.
Apple Cider: Yes, please.
Pizza: No! High price for something commonplace.
Mennonite Sausage: So famous it has it’s own stand in the Goat barn. I shit you not. You can buy Mennonite Sausage in bulk. It’s a good plan. Stop asking questions.
Mennonite Sausage Sandwiches: In recent years, these have become the highlight for me. The bun is lacking (it’s a hotdog bun and therefore flimsy.) You have the choice of with or without onions. Get it with onions! They’re cooked. There are also other condiments to put on the sandwich. DON’T use these. They will just mess up the sandwich. Man that Mennonite Sausage. I told you once and I told you before.
Baked Goods: Why not. I hear the pastries are really good? Get there early because stuff runs out.
Homemade Pie and Homemade Ice Cream: Two things that are very important to Mennocuisine, at one easy spot. The ice cream is stellar, but DO NOT get the pecan pie! This past time around mine tasted funny. I figured out that some saboteur was using light corn syrup in their recipe. Heresy, I say!
Nelson’s Port-A-Pit: For those of you that don’t know, Nelson’s Port-A-Pit is a company with a chicken truck for hire. Sometimes groups will hire a Nelson’s chicken truck and charge people for chicken and keep the profit for the group. The chicken is amazing. I am disgusted with factory chicken, but I love Nelson’s. Though I haven’t gotten any in recent years, I’ll have to rethink this policy for next year.
And that is all I can think of for foodstuffs. Some words to the wise: yes, the food can be ridiculously overpriced, even for as good as it is. But, as mentioned in the first post, the whole point of the Relief Sale is to raise money to help those in need. And I sure as hell am not making my own apple fritters.
Don’t be shy about:
RELIEF SALE WEEK Part 4: Nonperishable Items!
Ah yes, foodstuffs. The staple of every gathering of importance. Especially the Relief Sale.
Sad is the one that walks with hunger at the Relief Sale, for feed is plenty. There are two main meals that everyone wants a piece of, and in addition to these there are places continually serving up “snacks” to the masses.
The main food “events” are the Haystack Dinner, which takes place on Friday night, and the Pancake Breakfast, which takes place on Saturday morning. Looking at the handy map I found, the Haystack dinner takes place in the little yellow building and the Pancake Breakfast is in one of the long, pale red buildings under the green “X”.
At the Haystack Dinner, you get overcharged by a troupe of old orders for a heaping plate of goodness, known as a Haystack. What is a Haystack? More importantly, what can Haystack do for you?
A haystack begins with rice. From there you add some sort of tomato-based sauce (like spaghetti sauce.) If you’re like me, you don’t like it with meat. But usually the sauce that’s available has meat in it. Then you add toppings to it. In my family, the general spread includes shredded cheddar cheese, chopped onions, salsa, sour cream, fresh spinach (or lettuce,) and black and green olives. At the relief sale, they are also things like beans, green peppers, and nacho cheese. It’s crazy.
From what I can glean, this same troupe served haystacks at some other Menno event I volunteered at. Goldenrod Benefit Auction I believe? They might be a strange new schism. Haystack Mennonites? I’ll have to look into it. Which will be hard since I’m guessing they don’t have a church website. They probably live in a wagon and live by the Book of Nachocheesus, a scripture recovered somewhere near the Dead Sea.
Aaaaand the Pancake breakfast! Look at the map and imagine a line reaching from the Pancake building up to the red block and south beyond where the green “X” ends. Imagine getting to the Pancake Breakfast at 8 in the morning and being caught in such a line. It will happen, if you make the mistake of “sleeping in.”
The Pancake Breakfast isn’t run by a radical traveling Pancake schism. It’s all normal-looking septuagenarians and pre-retirement agers. The meal can be a good deal, depending on how much you can eat. You get your choice of fruit juice box, tomato juice can, or milk box with the meal. This is your first big decision. The next is whether or not you want sausage with your pancakes. The answer to this is always yes. I hate meat, and I am telling you the answer is yes. This is no ordinary sausage, folks. This is Mennonite Sausage. I can hear you laughing. Keep on, by all means. Ain’t no sausage in the world like Mennonite Sausage. And that’s a fact.
You get two sausage links and two pancakes for starters. You sit yourself down in a cafeteria-like seating section, in the open barn building, and eat with your fellows. There are endless abounds of syrup on the tables. There are people wandering around while you eat, offering coffee if you have a cup. There are also people with platters of pancakes. That’s right. All you can eat pancakes. You can eat your money’s worth, if you’re prepared. The Pancake Breakfast.
Keep in mind you only have two sausage links to last you the meal. They don’t go around distributing more of these. They know where the gold is at. It’s the sausage.
Save your ticket for:
RELIEF SALE WEEK Part 3: OTHER FOODSTUFFS OMG!!!!!!!11
Every September for the past two years, I’ve taken out of classes early on one special Friday and made the trek down to a pitstain town known as Goshen, Indiana. The reason? A two-day celebration with Mennonite friends and kin. It’s called a “Relief Sale.” It’s basically a large festival with booths of food both traditional and exotic, artifacts for purchase, and auctions of all sorts. Why is it called a “Relief Sale”? Because we’re relieved that the cheese stand doesn’t realize they excommunicated our grandparents.
LOL, JK of course. Everyone knows that the cheese stand is run by a bunch of Berkey Avenue progressives! They’re chill! In actuality, it’s called a “Relief” sale because all the proceeds go towards helping those in need. RELIEF efforts. There we go.
Allegedly there are other Mennonite relief sales all over different areas, but I’ve never been to any besides the one at Goshen; known officially as the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale. I’m pretty sure going to another one would be like going to a 4H fair other than the Elkhart County one. Smaller and lamer and just plain disappointing in comparison.
Yessiree, Michiana’s Relief Sale is one of the festivities just about as central to this Mennonite’s calendar as Christmas. When I first began writing about the wonder that is the Relief Sale, I realized that there was just too much information to fit in one smoothly transitioning post. Hence, “RELIEF SALE WEEK!” IT’S THE RELIEF SALE ALL WEEK LONG!!! Oh, how I wish it lasted that long in real life.
Save the date for… RELIEF SALE WEEK! Part 2- FOODSTUFFS OMG!!!!!!!11
The Mennonite Table 