Roy Logan has been frying fish at St. Elizabeth Catholic Church in Granite City for 30 years.

Now the chairman of the fish fry committee for the church's Men's Club, he oversees all of it. On Ash Wednesday, he took a break from preparations to talk about it.

Question: How did you get started?

Answer: About 30 years ago, an older fellow in the parish said we should restart the fish fry. I said I'd help him. We hit October, November, December and January. February got sleeted out. And then we have Ash Wednesday and every Friday during Lent.

Q: How many jobs have you had?

A: I know them all, but I don't do them all. I haven't sold tickets and I haven't marked tickets. You have to be 80 years old to do that.

Q: How much work is involved?

A: On Friday, we start at 1 p.m. At 4 p.m., we start serving. At 7 p.m., we're done and hopefully we have guys to help clean up. If you don't have enough guys to clean up it's a real mess.

Q: What's the hardest part?

A: The cleanup. You're messing with hot oil. It's just difficult to deal with. And you want to make sure you get your stuff clean and it takes time.

Q: Is there a lot of camaraderie?

A: It's a great bunch of guys, they work their butt off. We did 700 people in three hours one time. It's an art form when those guys get going. When we have a good night, it's fun to watch them work.

Q: What is the secret to good fried fish?

A: It's done and it's hot, it looks good and it tastes good. We keep the temperature at a constant temperature. We do the walleye at 2-and-a-half minutes, we do the catfish for 10 minutes. With the pressure cooker, we do the cod 4 minutes 15 seconds. When it says they're done, they're done. We don't guess. The people who do cod in an open fryer, it's an art and everybody's not good at it. With our machines it is always the same product. I can tell you what's going to come out of the machine. It's going to taste good and it's going to be moist.

Q: What is the best part of doing this?

A: We make money. It's for the school. The Men's Club takes care of many things at the school. We used to do raffles, and that's a pain in the patoot.

Q: Do you ever get tired of fish?

A: No. The fish always taste good to me. Whenever it's around, I eat it.

Contact reporter Scott Cousins at 618-344-0264, ext. 113