jaternice dinner brings community together malin 030112

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Serious tradition

Jaternice Dinner brings community together

Herald and News 2/21/12 by JOEL ASCHBRENNER

H&N photos by Joel Aschbrenner

ABOVE: Mary Victorine serves food at the Jaternice Dinner Sunday. She’s helped organize the annual Czech celebration for decades and taught traditional Czech dancing to school children for 30 years.

They take tradition pretty seriously around Malin.

Whether it’s the sausage recipe, the traditional Czech dress or the woman serving strudel, not much changes at the Jaternice Dinner, hosted by ZCBJ Lodge 222, a Malin based Czech organization.

LEFT: Kailleyanja Wilcox and Andrew Miller, both 2, dance in hand-medown Czech outfits at the 52nd annual Jaternice Dinner.

Nearly 300 people attended the 52nd annual Jaternice Dinner Sunday at the Tulelake fairgrounds.

Outside, a group of volunteers drank beer and manned the grill. They’d been cooking homemade jaternice, a Czech pork sausage, since 10 a.m. It’s a traditional Jaternice recipe, calling for 360 pounds of pork shoulder, 20 loaves of bread, spices and 60 pounds each of pork heart, liver, tongue and rind.

Inside, a line wrapped around the dining hall as people waited for Jaternice, baked potatoes and a sinus-clearing horseradish sauce.

A few toddlers stole the show for a minute as they danced in traditional Czech outfits. Elizabeth Wilcox’s 2-year-old daughter Kailleyanja wore a homemade red and white Bohemian-style dress that had been passed down through generations.

Wilcox is part of the Victorine clan, a Czech family well known in Malin and well-represented at the Jaternice Dinner. A group of Czech immigrants settled Malin in 1909 and many of the names and families remain in the community today. (Years ago the Jaternice Dinner was moved from Malin to a bigger dining hall at the fairgrounds in Tulelake.)

Mary Victorine, of Malin, wore an embroidered Czech dress as she helped pass out food at the dinner. She’s been to every Jaternice and helped organize most of them.

Victorine watched as Polka music played and a group began a traditional Czech dance. For 30 years, she taught Czech dancing, giving lessons to the gym classes at Malin Elementary.

“We teach them to dance as soon as they can walk,” she said.

jaschbrenner@heraldandnews.com

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