The annual Spaghetti Supper

The kids and I attended the Spaghetti Supper this evening, which is a school fundraiser that has taken place annually since I was Tim’s age. It’s such a great small-town tradition. So many people go: nearly every family with a child at the school – and since it’s a K-8 school, that’s a significant number of families – but also school faculty and staff, local retirees, families with very young children, even our minister and student minister were there. Much of the charm is that it lacks traditional charm. It doesn’t have the ambiance of, say, a school play or concert, and it’s not holiday-related or sports-related or like any of the other traditional schoolwide or townwide events. It’s just a spaghetti dinner to raise money for the middle school (though it’s put on by the sixth grade, it generates funds that help sustain their activities right through eighth grade graduation).

Since many adults in town know that I grew up here and attended the same school, I’m invariably asked at the Spaghetti Supper whether we did the same event when I was a student, and the answer is that we did, but it looked a lot different. As I remember it, all of the kids took part and were supervised by a small team of parents – maybe a dozen or so at the most. These days, the kids act as servers, but hordes of parents make up the bulk of the event staff. Parents do the cooking, the seating, the raffle tickets, the plating. This change has nothing to do with helicopter parenting or indulging the kids; it’s a generational change in Board of Health standards, safety standards and, as I understand it, labor laws. Sixth graders simply aren’t allowed from a bureaucratic standpoint to do the same tasks we did for the Spaghetti Supper back in the late 1970’s.

This is the sixth or seventh consecutive year we’ve gone since moving back to town. While the event has changed a great deal since I was in sixth grade, it’s also changed throughout just the past few years. Each class approaches it differently. Two years ago, one of the parents in charge was an avid and talented cook, and he toiled over crafting the perfect tomato sauce far more than is typical for this ordinarily rather institutional meal. Another year, there were apparently a lot of high-tech parents on the committee, as the numerous raffle winners were not displayed in the usual way with names written in marker on flip-chart paper but rather with a continuously scrolling computer display. This year, the emphasis seemed to be on the décor, with tablecloths, centerpieces, candles (their flames invisible under the fluorescent cafeteria lighting) and raffia strips encircling the plastic cutlery. There was even a strolling violinist serenading people as they waited to be seated.

The best part of the Spaghetti Supper, which is another thing that makes it better than any concert or Christmas tree lighting event, is that the line to get in is usually about a half-hour long, and the kids, knowing this, come ready to play, with footballs, scooters and layered clothing. Tim immediately found his way into the midst of a fifth-grade football game; Holly and her friends ran around looking for people they recognized in line. It’s a fairly amazing sight to see dozens of school-aged kids all out playing at once like that; it’s like the whole school is at recess at one time, and they all manage to have fun.

Small towns have rich traditions. Though some of ours are more postcard-perfect, like the Old Home Day Parade or Santa’s arrival by fire truck, the Spaghetti Supper is one of our best because of its lack of pretention. Even the food, in this day and age, seems a little outdated. But it’s so much fun to run in to everyone there, to see the kids playing together outside beforehand, and then to sit down at a long cafeteria table with a dozen friends, neighbors and acquaintances for a really messy, really simple, adequately tasty and very filling meal.