Scenes From A Firehouse Fish Fry That Drew Hundreds Of Amish (14 Photos)
Jim Halverson checks back in with some scenes from an Amish fish fry that took place last weekend in Topeka, Indiana. I’m calling it an “Amish” fish fry here – for reasons that should be apparent – but officially, it was the Topeka Fire Department Fish Fry & Bake Sale.
This is a heavily-Amish area, and so it makes sense that most of those in attendance – as you can see from the photo above – showed up in suspenders and prayer coverings.
Topeka’s Fire Station 30 opened in 2016, won at least one design award, and according to an article at firehouse.com, was designed to be able to accommodate this important local event:
The new fire station replaced an aging, cramped facility that could not adequately house the fire service operations and equipment, nor provide sufficient space for community events, including the locally famous Fish Fry & Bake Sale.
It’s a sharp, modern-looking building, and by the looks of it spacious enough to accommodate hundreds of hungry diners.
We’ve looked often at the “mud sales” held in Lancaster County, meant to raise a large portion of the annual budgets of local volunteer fire departments. Benefit dinners are another common way they do that in these communities.
Jim says that a firefighter/organizer told him that they fried 3,200 pounds of fish, and grossed $50,000. Here’s a poster for the event via the fire department’s Facebook page.
This ran from 3:30 to 7:30 in the evening at the station. Donations were also accepted on behalf of the department. Here’s a simpler ad for the event:
Topeka is a small town of around 1,200 people in LaGrange County, in the northern Indiana Amish community. It was one of my favorite towns in the area when I spent a summer there in the mid 2000s, and again on a later visit. Amish families live both in town and throughout the surrounding countryside. Many came on foot, by buggy, and by bike.
Buggy parking across the street.
This is northern Indiana, so I’d expect a good number of people came by bicycle, which is very common for Amish here.
Folding tables were set up at the bay doors, a spot to place your hat as you came in to eat.
Amish men will generally take their hats off to eat. With a crowd this size, a place to set them down makes sense. You’ll see the same thing at a church meal. Spaces like basements and workshops are typically built with a lot of hooks that men can hang their hats up on. Here they use folding tables.
The trucks were parked outside for the evening, and the bays inside were set with long rows of tables.
A closer look at what’s on those plates we saw in the top photo – fried fish, coleslaw, what appears to be a noodles side, and slices of pie. Sign me up!
Looks like the trucks parked out front were a draw for the children, as you’d expect. These are a draw for a lot of adults as well.
A sign out front, set in front of the department’s red Ford pickup, thanked the community and said it was paid for with donations (meaning the truck, I’d guess).
The department posted a thank-you on its Facebook page after the event, calling the fish fry a successful fundraiser and saying the support let it take “another big step forward.”
Amish support for local fire departments is nothing new, in this community and others. A reader commenting on a 2014 post on Amish firemen noted that Topeka and Shipshewana both have Amish firefighters, and that Amish-run auctions have raised large sums for those departments.
Last September, Amish in Quincy, Michigan served a chicken dinner and held an auction for their volunteer fire department. And we’ve already mentioned the mud sales.
This isn’t the only area fundraiser this summer of course. In nearby Shipshewana, Amish youth held a benefit buggy wash for a different cause, just last month.
Special thanks to Jim for sharing the great photos and sharing the experience. I guess if you can’t actually be there to eat, this is the next best thing. And I won’t hold it against Jim that I’m now craving a heaping plate of fried fish.
Scenes from the firehouse fish fry
The “noodles” are scalloped potatoes. This is an easy dish to make at home and send to the firehouse. Our area Amish churches take turns to supply and serve. Bake Sale is also widely supported. Those potatoes are made at home, taken to a specified person from their church and dumped into a clean cooler, where all these cooks different cooking abilities will be combined. Recipes are often given along with the slip saying what to make. This happened like 2 miles from me.
Thank you Mary Alice. I like scalloped potatoes. Seems like a nice pairing with this meal and a good one to make in big quantities.