All invited for Thanksgiving

The OddFellows want everybody to have a happy and filling Thanksgiving, so they have invited the entire Orcas Island community to a Thanksgiving Dinner Thursday. Food will be served beginning at 4 p.m. at their lodge in Eastsound.

“We didn’t want anyone to go without Thanksgiving,” explained OddFellows Secretary Bill Wulff. He came up with the idea of a community Thanksgiving after the Lodge put in a new commercial kitchen earlier this year, making it possible to have such a large undertaking. But the plan took on additional meeting after the Sept. 11 tragedy. “It became really appropriate to promote community,” Wulff said.

It’s been more than a decade since the OddFellows offered the community a Thanksgiving dinner. The last organization to serve such a dinner to the community was the Grange, and that was several years ago.

OddFellows Lodge Noble Grand Master Fred Enge, who organized those earlier dinners, remembers them fondly. “They were a lot of work,” Enge admits, but it all got done because many of the approximately 90 guests who attended “helped out tremendously,” he said.

The OddFellows will supply the turkeys, dressing, punch, coffee and tableware, while John Baker’s new Orcas Island Sourdough Bakery will contribute the rolls. Baker does his baking in the Lodge’s new kitchen. Much of the tableware is being loaned to the OddFellows by other lodges in Washington State.

There is no charge for dinner, although guests are asked to contribute a potluck item for the meal. The OddFellows are suggesting the following: If your last name begins with A-D, bring sweet potato or yam dishes; E-H, salads; I-L, vegetable dishes; M-P, pies or desserts; Q-T, mashed potatoes; U-Z, cranberry sauce, relishes, condiments.

The Lodge kitchen and meeting room can accommodate up to 100 islanders at a given time. Wulff and Enge admit that they don’t know how many people will come for dinner, but they insist that everyone is welcome.

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