Contents of a Jitney Supper

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Keith from Pendleton, Indiana.

Hi, Keith. Welcome to the program.

Hello.

I’m excited to be on.

Well, we’re excited to talk to you. What’s on your mind?

Well, I live in an area that’s kind of at the edge of the city, so it bumps up against a rural area.

And I came across a term recently that I had never heard, and the first people I thought to ask about it was you.

Oh, yes, please, right away.

Okay. The term is Jitney dinner or Jitney supper, and it’s spelled J-I-T-N-E-Y.

And I can’t find anything that connects it to, this is a rural area, and there’s a lot of people who have verb nouns and things like that here, but I couldn’t find any history on this word.

Where did you find it? Where did you run across it?

My wife used it in a conversation.

And she just said something, well, that sounds like a Jitney supper.

And I asked her what that is, and she said, well, I don’t know, it just sounds like it is.

Yeah, sometimes you just know what a word means, right?

And she did relate it back a little bit.

She said that her family had used it pretty consistently.

And it regularly had to do with suppers at the church or dinners at the church.

So I don’t know whether Jitney has to do with an ecumenical or church thing or what.

And have you ever been to a church supper or a Jitney supper or something like that?

No, I’ve never been to one.

I don’t know that the term floats around much today.

It seems like it was more used in the last generation.

And when I say that, I’m about 50.

So those people who are 60, 70, and 80, they use it more than my generation would.

Okay.

Oh, well, you’re really missing out if you’ve never been to a church supper.

I mean…

Well, I’ve been to church suppers, not jitney ones.

Where they serve jitney, right?

Or whatever this is.

I would like some chutney on my jitney, please.

A little chutney on the jitney, yes.

Okay.

Well, I’m just saying that because you’re evoking for me these fabulous memories of dinners on the ground.

Because all the church ladies, they want to do their best to show off for everybody else.

So they bring potato salad to die for.

I will say that there’s nothing like church pies.

So I’m with you on that part.

Church pies.

You mean that’s a pie that you bring to a church supper?

Yes, all of those pies that the ladies bake.

I mean, they’re unreal.

Right, right.

And they’re just laid out there.

It’s the bounty as well.

Just the bounty, like a couple dozen pies sitting there.

Cornucopia.

Right.

Everybody’s trying to outdo each other, and salads, and potatoes of gratin, and where I’m from, garlic grits.

Garlic grits.

Garlic cheese grits.

Do y’all have that?

No way.

Yes, way.

Chicken and noodles here.

Lots of chicken and noodles.

Chicken and noodles.

Oh, right.

Beef and noodles.

Yeah, too.

But a church supper isn’t automatically a jitney supper, right?

No, not automatically, although there’s some overlap, right?

If we draw the Venn diagram, there’s going to be some.

So break this down for me.

Okay.

Jitney is?

Well, Jitney originally was a five-cent piece, a nickel.

Aha.

Right?

Right.

And we don’t know where that word comes from, Jitney.

But it got applied to a lot of different things.

People referred to buses that took a five-cent piece for sure.

Well, they still have Jitney buses in New York.

You take the Jitney from Manhattan to the Hamptons if you’re going to spend the weekend out there.

Oh, is that right?

They still call it that.

Yeah.

And some of the company name is the Jitney bus line or whatever, the Jitney, you know, Jitney coach.

Right.

But it costs more than a nickel, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the name has been transferred, so now it means the bus rather than the fair.

Right.

And so a Jitney supper is a kind of fundraising dinner where you pay a Jitney or a nickel for every scoop of whatever those great things are that you get or every slice of pie.

Only it’s probably more than a nickel these days.

But it’s a way to raise money.

So a nickel at a time for every scoop that you get.

And then the church makes their money or whatever the organization is.

And in that way, if you’re a glutton, you pay more.

All those pies we’re talking about, right?

So a whole pie would cost you a couple bucks at least.

That’s right.

That’s right.

It’s like a diamond-dipped dinner.

That’s another version of it.

Diamond-dipped.

Yeah.

I love that.

That makes so much sense.

It really does because I knew it had to do with a monetary term, but to apply it to a fundraiser at a church because churches are always needing to raise funds.

Oh, sure.

Oh, yeah.

So that makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s a good idea, isn’t it?

Well, we may go back to it.

Yeah, these days your jitney might need to be defined as five bucks, though, instead of five cents.

And I’m a pastor, so I’m thinking now that I know what it is, I’m going back to this term.

Oh, well, very good, Keith.

That’s just the trick.

There you go.

You’re going to have that new education building built in no time.

No time at all with these jitney suppers.

Well, save a pew for us, will you?

We sure will.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for calling.

Okay.

All right.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

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