Egg-stremely Social

I find it so interesting to learn about customs from other places, don’t you? I’m sure you will enjoy this one. I’m fairly certain that it is unique to my home province of Manitoba. If I am mistaken in this assumption I hope my Canadian readers will correct me.

I am speaking of course about “The Social.” Sometimes referred to as “The Winnipeg Social.”

Winnipeg Socials came to mind last week when I was writing my blog about cooking way too much food for pot lucks. That gave me an unhappy flashback to my early-20s, my pre-married, Winnipeg-girl days, when someone asked me to make deviled eggs for a Social. The organizer of this event delivered 12 dozen farm-fresh eggs to my parents’ house, where I still lived at the time. Being a novice cook, I boiled them, but made whatever error it is that causes the shells to stick to the whites and prevents them from peeling away cleanly. I stood at the kitchen sink for hours, peeling 144 eggs, one after another looking more wretched than the last with gouges the size of Volkswagens torn out of them. I was in tears over this culinary debacle. No eggs worthy of redemption. Should I surrender and start over? Should I admit defeat and let the organizer know I had failed to bedevil even one egg? I hadn’t the confidence in those days to let anyone know how badly I had bungled this seemingly simple gastronomic task, nor the budget to buy another 144, so I persevered. I smashed up yolks as though smashing Beelzebub himself, whisked them violently with mayonnaise and loaded up the hollowed-out, shredded eggs. They made a kind of lacey, scalloped effect on the plate. When I got to the Social, I saw what remains in my mind’s eye to this very day, long tables in that rented hall that stretched from here to Saskatchewan, platter after platter laid with hundreds of beautifully assembled, perfectly smooth devilled eggs. I stood gazing at them in quiet disbelief and mounting anger. The Social organizer came up behind me. I turned and asked, “What’s with all the freakin’ eggs?” He had invited no less than 4 other people to prepare 12 dozen deviled eggs each. That’s quite a number.  I calmly walked into the kitchen and dumped all of my raggedy eggs in one basket – the waste basket.

So now I that I have gotten that story off my chest, I can tell you about Winnipeg Socials.

In my youth,  Socials were held to celebrate couples about to get married. Girls had bridal showers. Guys had stags. But Socials were parties for the couple – and ostensibly to raise money for them, because, in fact, tickets were sold. Friends of the bride and groom would hire a hall in a community center or church, and then got the word out. Today’s social media-fueled raves have nothing on these events. Word spread like wildfire. Close friends and family could be counted on to attend, but so could most of your high school and half the population of Winnipeg, Transcona, St. James, St. Boniface, Fort Garry, River East, Teulon, Birds Hill and Selkirk. Beer and mixed drinks were served: rye and Seven, rum and Coke, vodka and orange juice.  A DJ was hired to play a mix of standard party tunes: pop, soft-rock, slow dances, polkas, the hokey-pokey, the bunny-hop and the chicken dance. If you were lucky, somebody’s uncle would get up to lurch around doing a passable impression of Herman Munster frugging to Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising.” And just as everyone was on the verge of getting way too drunk, one of two things would happen: food would come out, or a fight would break out in the parking lot between the groomsmen and  kids from a rival neighborhood who were taunting the groom with phrases such as, “Ah, she’s got ya whipped now, man!” A fight was not a guarantee at every Social but no one was surprised if one happened.  As for food, folding tables were brought out of storage mid-way through the evening. These were covered with white paper rolled off giant reels. Then, paper plates emerged from the kitchen. These were loaded with potato chips, dill pickles, cubes of cheddar and marble-cheese and kielbasa (in Manitoba we said, "Koo-Ba-SAW," not "Keel-BASS-a," as I hear in these parts of the US.) Everyone dived at the food, because if you didn’t act fast, you’d miss out on everything but the dills, which were not that tasty with your vodka and orange. The evening usually ended with a slow dance, maybe Tom Jones singing, “I’ll have the last waltz with you, two lonely people, to-ge-ether; I fell in love with you, the last waltz should last for-ev-ever!”

And that’s it, a Winnipeg Social. Although I never went to another one where they served 576 deviled eggs – minus 144, that is. Can anyone in Manitoba tell me if Socials still egg-sist?