The Right Idea

Sometimes I really think my ancestors had the right idea with that whole communal living thing. Prior to 1932, Amana was a communal society. Nobody owned anything. Nobody received wages. Everything was provided for everyone in need. Okay, that stuff seems a little bit weird nowadays. I can understand why that didn't last. But the thing I really like about the early Amana days- the thing that I wish, somehow, we could've held onto- is the idea of the Kitchen Houses. When girls were done with school at 13 or 14, they had two choices: work in the kitchen or work in the garden. Sometimes I think that my indecisive self would've fit in very well back then. Only having two career choices would certainly have narrowed things down. Yeah, I'm not too adept in either the kitchen or the yard, but I'm sure I would've learned.

But that's not the point. Every day, for lunch and dinner, the townspeople would all go to their respective kitchen house- there was at least one in each of the seven villages- and share meals together. It was usually 40 some people per house, all fed by the Kitchen Boss and her workers. Individual houses didn't even have much in the way of kitchens. The Kitchen Houses were where it all happened. I think it's a very charming set-up.

I think the hardest thing about graduating from college was having to eat by myself. I had been used to eating dinner with a big, fun group of people for years. Many of my fondest Mount Mercy memories happened at "our table" in the cafeteria. It was my group of friends' spot for, I think, three out of the four years, along the wall by the McAuley dorm. Everyone knew where to find us. We had good times at that table. I remember laughing so hard at Eric Chrisman that it took me forever to finish my meal. I remember Debbie Fontenoy and Bill Huff getting into silly arguments and dumping their beverages on each other's plates. Kathi Pudzuvelis even knew where to find Bill and I during that year that she essentially owned us. She would walk in from McAuley, point at us, come on in, and eat our food as she told us what we needed to do in the theater.

That table is where a lot of our lives happened. Often we would stay for much longer than we needed to, sharing stories from our day, planning events for the evening, helping Emily and Tauna smuggle out as many ice cream treats as they could, watching Capecchi eat bowl after bowl of frozen yogurt. It was good times. Once, we even decided to have a family-style meal. They were serving spaghetti, and instead of each of us getting our own trays, we instead set the table first, and then all had assignments. One person got all of the spaghetti; another got a tray full of breadsticks. Someone else filled cereal bowls with spaghetti sauce, and another got big bowls of salad and cottage cheese. Everyone else in the cafeteria just stared. We all brought our items to the center of our table, said grace, and passed it all around, eating together as a family.

When I moved into my first apartment in Omaha, and knew no one, I had some lonely, mediocre meals in my little kitchen. And it's just not good to eat alone all the time.

This summer, our group is getting together every Monday night for a meal. It's been really fun starting the week off in community. June started with Luke and Adam making us breakfast food. Two weeks ago, Charlotte, Beth, Tabitha and I made a lot of manicotti. Last week we had tacos at the V Street house. And tonight we gathered down in Bellevue for a meal out on Matt and Justin's deck. And as David and Naldo passed me up on the interstate driving home, I just felt so happy to be a part of this fellowship, to have this group of people as friends. I've come a long way from that first apartment.

Community is a beautiful thing. The Amana people had the right idea.