$10 Steak Dinner?

Umm, well, yes - when you live in beef country, you can go to a fundraiser for the American Legion and pay $10 a head for donated, sweetly tender, grassfed Angus beef, over an inch and a half thick, cooked over an open charcoal grill, plus a baked potato and multiple salads and desserts and bread, even a drink.

I admit it, I am in my element here. No high-priced fancy imported beef - these steaks were, just last week, walking the hills around my town. The potato farm started digging last week; hundreds of flaky potatoes in their skins, not hard and tiny culls and nubbins. Real food, grown and raised by real people who take pride in their work, and who happily donate it to raise money for good causes. But dang, BEEF! Real Beef!! I am lovin it! I could cut it with a butter knife!

Yummers.

Sami's boyfriend shot a deer today, the first day of hunting season. He'll be bringing by the meat tomorrow. .. he just wanted the rack, after all. The wild game this year has been so abundant that each deer or turkey license gets two tags apiece. Sami is so proud of her boyfriend - and so proud too of her Honorable Mention in the District Drama competition. She and the Club go on to compete in the State finals - after, of course, they perform their play for the townspeople next week.

It's not just the food, both wild and tame, here that attracts. It is the people; the openness, the willingness to participate and have fun and share. Over 500 people crowded into the Hall tonight to pay $10 a dinner, chat and visit, introduce and re-introduce, and to just have fun. Paul and Enid joined us in the bar a block away afterwards, and we sat and talked family and hunting and politics and Christmas decorations with Pat and Marty and some other neighbors. Nothing rowdy, nothing obnoxious - Paul taught Marty's kids to shoot pool while we chatted and laughed. Janet came out of the kitchen and sat with us too.

The American Legion now has the money to send some more kids from the high school this next spring to a week-long leadership training, that they do every year in Lincoln for over 400 kids. Since we joined the Legion, we can be a part of sending ditty bags to Iraq, and last week I baked 9 dozen cookies for the Veteran's Day program. There were over 200 dozen cookies donated - more than enough to take to Hay Springs for the Christmas Tour of Lights sponsorship, too. Next week the FFA is entering kids in the Parly-Pro competition - what could THAT be? Why, it's where kids learn Paliamentary Procedure and practice it, and are judged on it. Robert's Rules of Order is practically a religion here; everything is pro forma and run by The Book.

And who provides the funding for all of this? Not some vast government bureaucracy, not the parents, not the teachers, not the School District. But the people that belong to the American Legion and Local Farmer's Union, that teach the children not just books but hands-on, practical, life training. They raise the money from donations and membership fees and fun things like steak dinners and pancake breakfasts and picnics. Everyone participates, everyone encourages, everyone works 16 hour days and still takes time to join in the fun and to volunteer to make life better for each other. No running around with their hands constantly out, their mouths constantly open in a whine, begging for this or that while the kids sink ever more increasingly into mindless stupors of drugs, sex, and hapless, helpless, government dependence. There's 'way too much to DO here.

Man that was an AWESOME steak...