Chitterling devotees hungry, generous

To visit the Piney River Volunteer Fire Department’s annual chitterling dinner is to breathe in the essence of a distinctive corner of Nelson County, something much broader than food.

It is generations of families and kin, gathered for an expression of caring, curiosity and communication, in a one-day-a-year coda to their lives that is spoken in a collective pride: “We are Piney River people, and we love it.”

The chitterlings, though a curiosity to welcomed visitors, are essentially an after-the-fact local delicacy amid the gathering, which is defined by the sturdy belief in community that brings it about.

This was the 51st year, by local count.

No grand statements, no poetic platitudes and no single pooh-bah or potentate represent the unique institution that unfolds in the cavernous firehouse on Firehouse Road between Virginia 151 (Patrick Henry Highway) and 778 (Lowesville Road).

But a couple of people do a pretty good job of talking about it.

Wilson Kidd, who has helped with it for nearly 20 years, put his home phone number in the calendar announcement for the dinner that was published in the Nelson County Times. His wife, Ardenia, answered the night before the dinner and retrieved him.

“I’ve got 28, 10-pound buckets” of chitterlings, ready to be cooked, he said. “People come from as far away as Pennsylvania, Canada.”

This may have been his last dinner at tournament-level energy, though no one in Piney River ever really completely ignores it or can even escape it. He recently was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but he still escorted a visitor through each of the cooking rooms with a cane. Besides, they have lots of young people, especially those they are particularly proud of who are firemen.

The department has 30-plus men on the rolls.

“We’re very fortunate, because we’re passing it on” said Wayne Ferguson, who joined the department when it formed in 1954. “July the fourth,” he said of the day the department was born, while sitting and holding court at the end of the food line, serving up coffee from a tall metal brewer with foam cups, cream at the ready.

Ferguson, incidentally, belongs to two chitterling clubs in Monroe.

One meets in the fall and the other in the spring, which significantly extends his chitterling eating window.

Those served up last Saturday –– fried in the back kitchen by a platoon of cookers –– were “washed in Piney River water and sweetened in the morning dew,” he said more than once.

The process begins in September or October, said Kidd and his daughter, Patricia Massie, president of the ladies auxiliary. “I’m third generation,” she said. “I was little.”

It takes thousands of pounds of chitterlings, which are winnowed by about a 3 to 1 ratio. The ladies boil and then freeze them after they are exhaustively cleaned.

On Saturday, small pancake-size patties of chitterlings required about 15 minutes each for frying. Piney River neighbors were doing the cooking.

The glue of the cooking department is the ladies auxiliary members, who lovingly orchestrate the finer niceties of the event, which has drawn upward of 1,200 people in years past.

“I think it’s about as busy as we’ve ever been at this time,” said fire Chief Gary Baldwin, sitting in a fire vehicle behind the firehouse, ready for delivery duty.

Besides offering delivery, they have a take-out window that does a brisk business, typically as many as 400 meals.

The eaters lined up steadily all afternoon. The line extended from the food to the door before noon, which was the official starting time.

Typically, after a midafternoon lull, it picks up again as more eaters arrive to wipe out the remaining supply. Most linger to visit among the long tables in their fire house.

Besides chitterlings, the line offered, in this order: fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, roasted beef, ham, English peas, butterbeans, rice casserole, sweet potatoes (candied yams, to the uninitiated), macaroni and cheese, baked beans, squash casserole, corn pudding, potato salad, coleslaw, string bean casserole, fruit cups, cornbread, rolls, coffee, tea and cupcakes, pies and cakes.

At the first stop on the buffet line, doling out the chitterlings with aluminum tongs, was Jimmy Parr, president of the fire department board, whose mother, Christine Parr, created the first such fire department benefit at her house, 51 years ago.

As the dinner has become a Piney River mainstay, so has the fire department, those neighbors who have answered the call to service.

On Saturday, the department’s gleaming new Seagrave fire engine was parked on display, a handwritten note thanking the local people who made its purchase possible.

They had donated $1,900 toward the new engine by midafternoon, besides paying $12 for adults and $5 for children 5 or under to load thick paper plates with the bounty from the serving line, said Freddie Campbell, the fire department’s treasurer.

The new engine arrived Friday night and was parked across Firehouse Road from the fire station, detailed with: “No. 7.” The department still has the first vehicle ever used, dating to 1954.

It’s a four-wheel drive, holds 1,000 gallons of water, has foam (which actually works better than water on some fire scenes) and will enable firefighters to fire away at flames with hoses up to 2-1/2 inches in diameter.

“The donations are extremely important,” Campbell said.

Nelson County gave the fire department a no-interest loan to buy the engine, which cost nearly $300,000, a sum that would have wiped out the department’s finances, Campbell said.

The fire department sent out a letter appealing for donations.

And Piney River people responded.

They sent in $38,000. The donations ranged from $25 to $10,000.

They have made two payments so far.

To donate toward the new fire engine, send checks or money orders to: Piney River Volunteer Fire Department, P.O. Box 33, Piney River, VA 22964.