Meat Raffle Revisited Part 2

This is the 2nd and final posting from a 2006 piece

- worth your time if you are curious about Minnesota bar culture.

I ask why they play the meat raffles, and am met with laughter. A friendly guy wearing a cap looks at me as if I might be the most foolish person he’s ever met. They play for the meat, he tells me. Duh. One woman estimates she spends about thirty dollars a week on the meat raffles, and says it is worth it when she wins, and fun even if she doesn’t.

Around us the walls are covered in American and military flags, eagles, portraits of past VFW officers, and patriotic slogans. Many of the male patrons are wearing caps with naval ship and Army squadron insignias. Everyone is smoking. Without these symbols I might forget that I am in a military club: the VFW is the more intimate and friendly cousin to the neighborhood dive and it is also one of the rare Ramsey County establishments where smoking indoors is still legal.

My new friends at the bar want to buy me a beer, a shot of Jägermeister, a raffle ticket. I oblige finally, on the later, and step into the meat raffle ticket line.

The first few rounds are orderly, organized, and subdued. But before long a chorus of good-natured “Boos!” erupts as a petite blonde comes running from a back room (ala a contestant from The Price is Right) to claim her meat.

“She wins every week!” Matriarch tells me. The blonde selects a package of beef and pork roasts, winking at the hecklers and holding the meat over head like an Olympic medal winner.

Two guys near the paddlewheel grudgingly allow me to snap a few shots of them and the meat they’ve already won. They pool their money and their winnings. Like the other football fans in the bar they’ll cook it all up to enjoy while watching the Vikings play the Bears the next day.

It is a few weeks past the mid-term elections, yet one political comment remains; on the white board in back of the bar someone has scrawled “It’s E85, stupid,” referring to the Democrat’s Lieutenant Governor Candidate’s blundered political moment. Beneath the watchful glare of a flag enshrined eagle I’m glad I had the foresight to park my car, laden with liberal bumper stickers and a Green Bay Packer window peel, far from the bar’s entrance. These veterans and their friends have been kind to me, and I don’t want to be disrespectful toward them on their turf (although it is probably my football alliance that would gall them more than my political leanings).

The gang at the bar is pooling their dollars, each and takes a turn buying tickets in bulk. They are a well-rehearsed ballet. “It goes faster this way, and we don’t clog up the line,” Matriarch tells me.

The raffle hearts up, and so too does the jeering. The two guys from the back table win another round and receive genial hisses. At five wins they have not beat their old record of seven wins in a day, but it is still an impressive showing. The chairs around their table are stacked high with white plastic bags that Barb gives the winners for their meat. They’ll have plenty of bacon, steak, and chicken for game day. Halos of cigarette smoke encircle their table.

Contrary to my food safety fears the meat looks pretty good. I discuss the quality of the pork cutlets with a tiny smiling woman. “You should go to the County C Legion tomorrow. They have a raffle at 3 on Sundays. They have a good raffle,” she tells me as she rips open pulltabs and wins a couple of bucks.

“Yeah, they do have a good meat raffle,” agrees Friendly Guy in Cap, wistful reverence in his voice.

From behind me Matriarch approaches. “Pick one,” she orders, holding her fisted hands toward me then opening them to expose one crumple ticket on each palm. Upon my arrival at the bar she was the most suspicious of me, and I want her approval. I think she is warming to me now that I have been unofficially welcomed into their raffle pool.

The number I didn’t choose wins the final round: a package of old-fashion skin-on wieners and some hamburger. Matriarch is pleased and teases me for making the wrong choice.

Useless spoils of war cover the bar and tables: towers of losing raffle tickets and pull-tabs, butts spilling from ashtrays, baskets of popcorn hulls, and empty beer glasses. The raffle is over and the regulars shuffle back to real life.

The VFW is where regulars tear open pull-tabs to fill the gaps between raffle spins, where it is still legal to smoke in public, and where no one bats an eye if you order your third beer before 1 PM. To look beyond the chatter and din of hardworking folks gathered to commune and relax is an opportunity to find something surprising and delightful. My first meat raffle was an experience akin to church fellowship or celebrating a National Holiday: I felt like I was part of a community.

It wasn’t the meat that was really important, no matter what the participants might want me to believe: it was the shared event, the collective participation that evoked within me a sublime feeling of civic pride.

In Minnesota, meat raffles are so woven into the blue-collar landscape that many of us never see them. They are common in inner city neighborhoods, in the eastern suburbs, in farm communities, and across the Iron Range. Because of this, I believed that they belonged to some quaint subculture. Yet meat raffles help form the icon of mid-western life.