TAILGATE PARTIES

          Boyd and I traveled to Boise to watch the Boise State/BYU football game this past week. I told Jon we were going early so we could go to Agri Beef’s tailgate party. Our daughter Chris works for Agri Beef and they always have really good food at their tailgate party, probably because they have their own brand of hamburger and hot dogs that they serve at their party. They also furnish bottled water to go with their meal. And it is all free.

            Our son Jon said we should stay away from the BYU tailgate parties because they would be having green Jell-O with grated carrots in it, five different recipes of funeral potatoes, rolls, and water to drink. Many different kinds of cake would be for dessert. I got thinking about that and thought I would enlarge my idea of what a BYU tailgate party might be like. Now I can do this as I am a Mormon and know all about the idiosyncrasies of the Mormon culture.

            The Elder’s Quorum would have been assigned to get the chairs and tables to the party, and then the Young Men’s organization (boys from age 12-18) would be in charge of setting those up. The Young Women’s organization (girls from 12-18) would be in charge of getting the tables clothes on the tables. The Relief Society (women from 18 on up) would have made the assignments for the food, and they would also make sure there were table decorations on each table. The Young Women would be called upon to take care of the children running around. They would gather them together and play games, read stories, and sing songs. The High Priests would be in charge of the opening and closing prayers. I’m not sure many of them would go to the football game, but they would enjoy the company of everyone and probably talk about anyone who wasn’t there, therefore they would have a big turnout. The women would also be there with their aprons on to serve the meal and to clean up the dishes afterwards.

It would be interesting to see how many different kinds of green Jell-O and grated carrots could be found at one of these parties. Each bowl fullwould look completely different from the others. And all of the women could be given the same recipe to follow for the funeral potatoes, but again every pan would look like a completely different recipe. It used to be that when there were rolls at these parties, they were always homemade. Not anymore, but they would still be good. And the cakes would be homemade, though from a cake mix.

The cleanup wouldn’t be too hard as they would use paper plates and cups, and plastic forks, knives, and spoons, and it wouldn’t take long as the Young Men and Elders would make quick work of folding up the tables and chairs and getting them in the pickups to take back to the church. Someone would have brought brooms, dustpans, mops, and buckets. When it was time to leave, things would look neat and clean as if nothing had taken place in their spot.

Well, we did go to Agri Beef’s tailgate party. They even had a TV on for those volunteers to watch the game while they worked. We didn’t even see a BYU tailgate party, so didn’t get to check it out to see if what I thought might be, actually was.