Dave Wood

TWELFTH NIGHT—EPIPHANY:  THE LAST DAY OF CHRISTMAS ACTIVITIES, JAN. 6, WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY.

Back in the 1980s when we lived in south Minneapolis, we had the good fortune to fill our gas tanks and have our old heaps fixed at Kirk’s Mobil Station on 46^th Street. Owner Kirkland Anderson, his wife Alice and son Junior were always on hand to help, to laugh and trade chuckles with the neighbors who hung around the station office to also tell stories, short and tall. Inevitably, we became friends. There are lots of Andersons in Minneapolis. I taught for two years under Augsburg College presidents, Oscar and Charles, and estimate over the years 10 percent of the students I taught were Andersons.

But Kirkland ‘s brood was different. They were black, and so were many of his customers. At one point I wrote a Star Tribune story about the assemblage that would gather in the immaculate office to tell long and short ones, at which time Kirk admitted that he felt more comfortable in his home state of Mississippi than he does in Minneapolis where he had spent more than half of his life.  “At least down there I know where I stand,” he chuckled. The Anderson family stood very well with us, in fact, head and shoulder ABOVE.

Alice, a registered nurse, south Minneapolis community activist, and cashier when things got busy at the station, still found time to run for mayor. Sadly, she lost to Sharon Sayles Belton. But that didn’t stop her efforts to pull her neighborhood together with an annual 12^th Night celebration. 

In 1978, Alice cooked up a big batch of gumbo and invited the neighbors in for 12th Night, asking them to bring a portion of seafood to throw into her pot. “We invited about 40 people and they all came,” said Alice. “Soon the party grew to 50, 60. Once in awhile, I’d decide not to do it again. Neighbors would call and say, ‘Alice are you going to do it again next year?’ I say probably, and they’d say we’ll help, sis, so you all’ll do it again.’”

Once Ruth and I got to know the Andersons, Alice invited us to join them. Her guestlist was always colorblind and everyone had a great time. We’d stomp the snow off our boots, while Kirk greeted us and then began the important job of mixing drinks. Alice was always in the kitchen with her daughters cooking up a basic gumbo. Each guest brought some fresh seafood—shrimp, scallop, lobster, crab clams. The bags we duly dumped into Alice’s bubbling caldron. Fragrant aromas filled the house. After the gumbo came dessert, an elaborate Bouche de Noel, shipped in from New Orleans and divided so everyone got a piece. When one lucky guest found a tiny porcelain image of the Baby Jesus, there was a round of applause from everyone except the finder, whose responsibility next year would be to pay for the Bouche! 

A small price to pay for this feast of neighborliness. We dragged the Anderson tree to the backyard and bade farewell to Kirk, Alice and their family.

But not without Alice’s recipe for basic gumbo (serves 10):

Make seafood broth by sautéing frozen seafood shells from last year’s party and simmering shells in three cups of water for two hours. Simmer covered for two hours.

Add 1/4 cup chopped onions, chopped parsley, salt, paprika. Strain.

Sautee in butter 2 ½ cups, ½ cup of chopped onion, ½ cup of sliced frozen okra, ½ cup of chopped celery with leaves, 2 ½ cups chopped tomatoes, 1 TBSP tapioca and all the strained  soup stock.  Add seafood and simmer until tender. Simmer for 1 hour. Enjoy.

But that was 40 years ago. Just last month as I was savoring the recollection of those golden  days, the Star Tribune arrived on our doorstep with a front page story informing me that our U.S. government  had arrived with an ICE brigade on the Augsburg campus and arrested at gunpoint Somali students and hauled them away, unmindful that half a century ago when I arrived on campus and was glad to hear President Oscar Anderson bravely declare “A Day in May” and pledge that all minorities of whatever stripe forever be welcome to study and learn on the little feisty little campus in south Minneapolis. 

When will we ever learn?