Oysters, 132 years running

Of the oyster-eating events that announce the coming of the "r" months in the rural churches and firehouses beyond the suburbs (and across swatches of Maryland, Delaware and occasionally New Jersey), few unfold as unhurriedly as the one at Old Goshenhoppen Reformed Church, which starts at noon and is advertised to end at 7, though it tends to go on - weather cooperating - a good bit longer.

Praise the Lord, it cooperated last Sunday, the rain date for the event's 132d running, the afternoon in the mid-70s, the sky over Upper Salford Township, Montgomery County, tufted with cotton clouds, the church spire as crisply white as any that graces a green in Vermont.

This is not quite an oyster dinner, dependent on church-basement table space that can require sometimes onerous waits. An oyster dinner - say, the oyster and pork dinner held annually at the Carversville (Pa.) Christian Church since 1871 - can test a body's constitution in that regard, though the reward of stewed tomatoes and congregation-shucked corn, juicy roast pork and fried oysters applies a soothing balm. (Oct. 17 is the next one.)

No, "our event is a picnic," the Rev. Bill Gaydos said by way of contrast in the invitation he sent: "It's served in a pavilion in an old-time picnic grove with bands playing" the whole afternoon long.

And so it is, abetting socializing, giving various chapters to the long day, pacing the eating: If the shucking table is backed up, you can slide over to the blue cooler where the pastor's wife, Jacki, makes sandwiches of the Scottish farmed salmon she smokes for three hours in the Wal-Mart smoker on her porch.

Likewise, if the line stalls for the oyster platters (three deep-fried oysters, potato salad, a roll, and vinegary slaw called pepper hash, or hereabouts "pickled cabbage," $8.50), a baked goods counter is just paces away, or a hamburger stand, or, being hand-pumped under a nearby shed roof, birch beer from a Wert's Beverage barrel, lightly foamy, abidingly sweet, finished with a tart, sassafrass-y tang.

Or you can simply chill for a while, pull up a chair at the bandstand, listen to the bluegrass gospel, the fiddling and picking, the defiant strains of patriotic tunes or of hymns urging Christian soldiers to march onward, as to war.

The poet's wish is granted under the towering oaks; there is world enough and time, given the open hours and the easy sprawl, to assure the chance encounters that make for successful reunions. LeRoy Oelschlager, with his son Richard, was holding court at one table, volunteering that it was his 80th year. Was he 80? No, he corrected, it was his 80th year at the picnic; he was 82.

Photographs of his father, aproned at a picnic 50 years ago, were passed around. Old friends who'd known him - LeRoy, that is - stopped by; he had history here, owned an Atlantic-Richfield station in Red Hill, delivered bakery items, served as a district justice. Oelschlager lore was shared; the panicky juggling once when niece Carol (now Sabatine) scheduled her wedding on oyster picnic day.

Before the automobile was in general use, Rev. Gaydos noted, this patch of country beyond Harleysville was served by a special excursion train out of Philadelphia on picnic day, pulling in at Salford Station. Farmers drove hay wagons to pick barrels of Delaware Bay oysters packed in straw, and to haul up the giddy city folk. "They must have thought," he said, "they were really rusticating."

And so some still clearly do, marveling at shuckers cracking the hinge on mild-flavored oysters from Bivalve, N.J., with a lever-and-arrowhead device called the "Aw, Shucks." (One Japanese American couple ordered 21/2 dozen, then popped up moments later, asking for another 21/2 dozen.) They buy cones of fresh ice cream trucked down from Longacres Modern Dairy in Barto. They sample (this year for the first time) low-key and tasty pork bratwursts that Mike Cressman made and paid for in the Meat Science Lab at Ohio State University where he's a graduate student.

The gate was down about $300 from last year. But Rev. Gaydos said about $10,000 was raised for the church (after expenses), and about 8,000 oysters were served, a disproportionate share bought by one recidivist codger.

"I told him I was going to have him watched by security," the pastor said: "I told him our women aren't safe."