Dyngus Day 2009

WNDU

At South Bend’s West Side Democratic Club they’re celebrating Dyngus Day for the 80th year. What in the Old World began as a celebration of the end of lent lives on in places like South Bend, IN and Rochester, NY as an excuse to get drunk on Monday. This WNDU report from today gives a sense of the flavor. The central European culture persists in the sausage & cabbage and in  last names with awkward k’s and z’s. (Names like Weinzapfel and Walorski.)  The beer and speeches go on all afternoon. Some groups rent big multi-passenger entertainment vehicles to travel around the circuit of old social clubs. Candidates distribute hundreds of stickers,  slapping them on attendees at the door.

Dyngus Day is on a Monday – the week after Easter, near the end of the semester – so I’m disappointed to say that I only attended once when I was at Notre Dame. I remember feeling I should be at home doing class work. Maybe someday I’ll  go back under the guise of a research project. Hmm.