Eating Together: Food, Friendship and Inequality

5. Potlucks

5. Potlucks Also: Does Tina Turner cook? I’ll bet that she doesn’t cook a lot but that she has mastered one fancy party dish—something that’s not actually hard to make but looks complicated, like Smoked Bluefish Pate or Nachos. It’s become her signature dish: whenever she goes to potlucks, people see her coming up the driveway and instead of saying “Hey, here comes Tina” they say “Hey here comes that Smoked Bluefish Pate” or “Here come the Nachos.” —Susan Orlean It takes a lot of experience to trust in the very idea of potluck. —A. Chesman Observing the Mill River “Old versus Young” potluck barbecue was one of the experiences that prompted me to write this book. For five or six years my spouse played pickup basketball at a local park every Sunday morning. Like most regular pickup games, there were informal but enforced rules about when the games occurred, who got to play, and what protocol for type of play. Although it was like any other pickup game I’d ever watched, it was clear that every court has its own tacit protocols. I began observing because of an interest in the ways in which people negotiate informal behavior. The activities at Mill River had a routinized informality: people knew when to play; what time of year there would be someone there; when someone hadn’t played in a while; which girlfriends, wives, partners, or children would be hanging around the outside of the court; when people outside the usual circle could or could not participate. I never saw anyone explicitly asked to leave; through mechanisms of playing time and allowing someone to “play” or vocally ignoring or hassling someone, it would become clear whether someone was welcome or not. In this setting, ignoring someone was more the norm, and in fact verbal hassling often signaled insider status. Compared to other pickup game sites, this one was described to me as “more genteel” in determining acceptance or rejection. Regular participation was also important for being given playing time: a player who hadn’t shown up in a few weeks could expect to wait a while to get on the court. Potlucks 147 The negotiation of informal and formal rules that structures pickup basketball parallels the same kinds of negotiations that structure potlucks. At Mill River, these occasions come together. One formal mechanism of acceptance for regular pickup play was an invitation to the end of the summer “Old versus Young” Basketball Game and Potluck Barbecue. Sometimes the invitations were photocopies handed out to the regulars, but more often people would extend the invitation verbally, “you’ll be there of course.” Although this potluck did not take place at someone’s house, it illustrates the way informal events both cross and create social boundaries. The event was informal but routine and organized: participants contributed five dollars per person for chicken and also brought a side dish, drinks, or snacks. Some years there were “commemorative” T-shirts printed for players. A few times the game was filmed for viewing on local cable access television. This potluck/ barbecue was coordinated around an activity and therefore the food might appear secondary to the game—and in some ways, it was. The timing of eating was entirely determined by the game, such that kids, partners, and observers had to wait to eat (especially when, on two occasions, the person cooking the chicken was also a player). Food work was gendered: men handled the barbecue while wives and partners brought side dishes, arranged the beverages and plates, and watched children. As a participant observer, I was drawn to the event because general ideas and standards of food, both in terms of quality and quantity, were a significant topic of discussion. The first year I attended, a number of people commented on the dish I brought. Talking about the food became a way of meeting people and bridging differences. The majority of participants were African Americans living in a mostly white community who knew each other from various places outside the pickup games. As an unknown white woman, connected to the games only through my partner, I had to extend myself to start conversations, although at the potluck, food became the topic around which social relationships developed. There was a lot of commentary about people’s food, what’s good and what’s acceptable, both at the meal and in general. Many of the men talked to me about where to...