Throckmorton
Throckmorton's JournalIn the Soup Kitchen During the Year of the Corona Virus, November 26, 2020
Thanksgiving Day, or Fall Harvest Festival Feast Day, If you Prefer
As most of you are aware, yesterday was the Thanksgiving Day Feast in the United States of America. Not withstanding the perverse mythos that has developed around the early history of this celebration, no guys with buckles on their hats and all that rot, it is still an important day for many. As I am sure my fellow Omàmiwininiwak(1) would agree, we should have kept the knowledge of Corn, Squash, and Beans to ourselves.
I prefer to start my observance of the Fall Harvest Festival with FDR’s signature of the Thanksgiving Holiday in 1942. While it had been around in one form or another since George Washington’s first term as President. So, FDR’s signing appears to me anyway, to be a good place to formulate my idea of what modern “Thanksgiving” is all about.
Why did I say it is and important day for many?
Well, many people have the day off, and who does not like a day off?
For many pre-invasions First Peoples, it’s a stark reminder of just how horribly their respective cultures faired under European domination.
For some it is an excuse to overeat, not that many of the post-invasion Europeans need an excuse to do that.
Family, lots of Family, can you ever really have enough around (don’t go there)?
United States Football, even in the time of the Corona Virus, can you ever really have enough football?
For some others, it is the one day of the year that is to be singled-out to take stock of our blessings or mourn our losses. For still others, it is a chance to, “Stick a turkey leg in their hand and tell them everything is going to be all right”. As is stated in the Simpson’s second season Thanksgiving episode, ‘Bart vs. Thanksgiving’ soup kitchen scene. A scene with its not very subtle poke at the, “Twice a year Charlies”, that blow in right before the Holiday Season, and disappear back to whence they cometh before the Christmas wrapping paper is in the dumpster. However, they are trying to help, even if they don’t understand the true gravity of the problems our visitors face. Hopefully, our seasonal help come’s away with a little better understanding of the stark reality of food insecurity in the United States and that is really all that matters.
This year everything was different, the Corona saw to that. No massive throngs of families waiting to be seated and served. No family style sit down meal, ten to a table, straight out of Lancaster, PA. Tables that were attended to by newly minted volunteer servers for the day, hustling by with bowls and platters of our finest creations. No noise and confusion, no special requests to the kitchen, no unattended children trying to sneak deserts. Nope, none of that this year. Just the 42 of us volunteers, 11 cooks, 16 packagers, 6 runners, and dozens and dozens of volunteer drivers, waiting patiently in their cars for their load of Fall Harvest Feast dinners on a clam shell. Each driver delivering meals to waiting families, shut-in’s, and the dispossessed in our community.
We served 588 individual meals, dished out over a 3-hour period. I would have been proud to put any one of these meals on my Dining Room table for my Fall Harvest Feast family and guests.
The gory details,
From the Hot Zone:
Fresh, Roasted Turkey, Light and Dark Meat: 440 pounds
Smashed potatoes, with Cabot Butter(2) and Half & Half: 300 pounds
Homemade Bread Stuffing, Butter, Sour Cream, Onions: 100 pounds
Green Beans Medley, Dry Roasted Sweet Onions,
Bella Mushrooms, Light Miso Paste, Butter, and Pepper: 180 Pounds
Turkey Giblet Gravy, from scratch. 20 Gallons
From the Cold Zone:
Freshly made Orange/Cranberry Sauce 75 Pounds
Freshly Baked Parker House Rolls(3) 600 Rolls
Butter Pats 1200 Pats
Suitable Beverages(4) (Apple Juice, mostly ) 180, 1/2 Gallon Bottles
Relish Assortment (Pickles, Cheese Slices…) 200 Packages
Assorted Pies (1/4 pie per meal) 400 Pies (5)
I was the designated Green Bean Tsar and worked for several weeks to hone the recipe to a crescendo. My assistant in this task was usually my boss on normal Kitchen days, he is 80, but acts 50. No one though to call me “Beano” the entire morning, I was a little disappointed.
At 3:00, my 11 hour day finally ended, and I drove the 15 minutes to my home, where my beautiful, loving, caring wife, had our dinner on the table at 5:00, This was the smallest Fall Harvest Feast gathering of my entire life (just the 4 of us that live together). Sad that my mother had to stay at her assisted living facility, and didn’t get to join us, but the Corona is now rampant in Eastern Connecticut.
To everyone that helped make this meal possible, THANK YOU!!!!!, it’s 48 hours later and my feet still ache.
(1): If you read my It’s a Brave New World blog post, the same event led to the confirmation that my Paternal Grandmother was 50% Nehantic Indian, (a small sub-group of the Mohegan/Pequot Tribal Family), which here-to-fore had just been a badly recalled family legend (she died in 1960's, so I never got to ask first hand).
(2): Not really doing product placement here, but when you donate 96 pounds of butter, you at least deserve a little recognition.
(3): Ok, my batch of 100 rolls was 12 hours old, that’s fresh, isn’t it?
(4): All delivery meals were pre-ordered by Wednesday evening, at the time of order, alternate beverage choices for those with special dietary needs were noted on the routing sheet.
(5): Our community partners really delivered here, we asked for 150 pies, and got over 400. Into the freezer the overflow goes for our daily desserts for the next few days.
It is a Brave New World, that Doth Have Such Paradigm Shifts in It, D-Day +2
First off, before I get started, an explanation:
Winneroux; a Portmanteau of Winner and Roux,
Winner(slang) - a sarcastic way of saying "loser",
Roux - a mixture of fat and flour used thicken sauces.
In this context, this story is both a real downer and is a thick sauce to swallow, hence a Winneroux.
Now, on to the rest of the story:
As residents of the United States of America, most of us tend to think that some things are expected to be reasonable constants:
There is always clean water to drink, even if it is over priced.
The toast always lands butter/jelly/jam side down.
Almost all 7th grade boys hate school, except lunch.
You can always save 15% by changing auto insurance to that provided by Gekkonidae.
Your cup is either half full, or it is half empty; unless you are going to knock it over in a restaurant, in which case it is all-up full every time.
Stop Signs do not turn Green.
The stories about family history you learned as a child don’t always pass muster under the light of adulthood.
I thought I knew this as well, so some stuff is embellished or just plain false, but in the end it isn’t really that important, is it?
Well, this week my own paternal history train went straight off the rails, and into the river, sinks to the bottom, and then explodes.
It is a Brave New World, that Doth Have Such Paradigm Shifts in It, D-Day H-Hour.
3:30 pm, my phone rings, it is my sister who never calls me directly, she usually calls my wife. After a brief Hello, and assurances that there are no immediate emergent crises, she asks me a rather strange question, “Why are we 25% Sicilian?”. OK, Ill bite, just where did this data come from, I enquire. “I just got a genetic test performed and it says we are 25% Sicilian”, why is that? Now my father was born in 1937, and is the last of nine children, three of which died before I was born. There is also a 7 Year gap between my father and his next younger brother who was born in 1930 and is the only one of his sibling that I got to know very well.
“Well, have you ever seen the color pictures of Dad, from his teenage years, I always thought he looked Mediterranean in them”, I respond. I always wondered why his ‘Father’ our ‘Grandfather’ always seemed to despise him so”. My sister who is almost 6 years younger than me never really met our paternal “Grandfather” as he died when she was 5. I had always just surmised that it was due to the Great Depression, and an extra mouth to feed that came along years after he thought they were done with more children. Kind of harsh, I know, but that was all it was, so thought I (Silly Boy).
Now as my father, and just about everyone who would know anything about this, is deceased, there are only two people I can think of who might know anything about this. Our mother, and my youngest uncle’s widow, both of whom are in their 80’s.
I also talk with Mrs. Throckmorton about it and she suggested I take a test from a competing provider, just to verify the accuracy of the first test. As most of us have seen the stories of identical twins getting vastly different results. I was going to order one but didn’t really feel it was a priority activity, just another item in the third sub-basement of my to-do list.
It is a Brave New World, that Doth Have Such Paradigm Shifts in It, D-Day+1
My phone rings, it is my mother, who is hopping mad it my sister. Seems my sister called my widowed aunt, and my aunt, she spilled the beans.
Yes, my father was half Italian; my grandmother had an affair while her husband was halfway across the country working as a cook. My father is the result of this affair, and everyone; even my mother knew it. My father had begged her never to tell us, but 21st century technology made that promise mostly moot. She did not tell us, science did.
Until he was around 18, my grandmother would take him to visit his biological father several times a year. His biological father even gave my father his first car, a well-used 1947 Plymouth Coupe as a graduation present from High School, (Dad went on about this car ad-nauseum when I was a child, never mentioned its origin though).
Now the bizarre part, (if is not weird enough for you already), I believe I even met him at several times, the last time being at my grandmother’s burial in 1969. He was at the the back of the cemetery, just standing there. My father took my hand and walked me back to see him. He gave my father a hug, and picked me up, I had just turned 7, and hugged and kissed me.
I never asked who he was, and if it were not for my eidetic memory, I would never have remembered the event. But it was my first burial, and I met so many people for the first, and mostly last time, it was just a bug splat on my window to that distant past event. It would flash into my memory once in a while, but I did not think it was significant. I do remember that my grandmothers’ husband never said a word to me or my father the entire time we were at the cemetery.
Ok so, throw what I thought for 58 years about my paternal lineage is out the window. Because of whom my ‘Grandfathers’ family was/is, our paternal linage is documented from my ‘grandfather’s’ generation back to 1066. All this being duly recorded in book form in the Harvard Library. Turns out, in the immortal words of Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace: “No, no. I'm not a Brewster. I'm the son of a sea-cook! Ha! Ha! Chaaaaarrrge!”.
It is a Brave New World, that Doth Have Such Paradigm Shifts in It, D-Day+2
I will have to digest this concept for a while. One thing is for certain, except for the big secret he took to his grave, I do not think any less of my father because of this. But it does help explain some of his internalized struggles he fought his entire life. Dad, when I was old enough to understand, I wish you had told me, because as it says in a horribly miss applied John 8:36 “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
So, now off I go into the future, unchanged, except for maybe having a little, (who am I kidding, truckloads), more understanding of my father’s family dynamic. Ha! Ha! Chaaaaarrrge! "
In the Soup Kitchen During the Year of the Corona Virus, September 9, 2020
10 Months ago, I began as a volunteer cook in the local soup kitchen. The temperatures were mild, with a hint of the winter to come. After nearly 4 year post-nuclear, I had reached the point where I could offer myself to this effort for at least one day per week. I had some experience in commercial baking in my late teen’s, a job on weekends and summers during college. With that ancient experience in hand I joined in and soon found myself feeling genuinely useful.
I discovered that we had around 80 visitors for Breakfast, and about 120 for lunch each day. We do not serve Dinner but would hand out to-go sandwiches to anyone asking. On a routine day we gave around 50 sandwiches out. The number meals and sandwiches we serve out visitors will rise around 20% in the final days of the month, as that month’s benefit payments ran low for many of our Visitors.
After the Corona, these daily meal numbers tripled for many weeks, and we had to switch to take-out only format. With the exception for a few well isolated and socially distanced table that are available for the Documented Homeless,(Yes, there is such a status in Connecticut anyway). Here they can sit, eat, and take care of daily hygiene needs, while recharging their mobile devices and doing their laundry (two loads, once per week).
After the summer descended upon us, our daily volume fell to about double pre-pandemic levels, we never expect them to return to these original levels again. Those pleasant temperature from last fall were long gone, our facility has no air conditioning, during one of the hottest days in August, my meat thermometer read 108 degrees F on the shelf.
In the past 10 months, amongst other things, I have learned the following:
1. Food insecurity is much worse than I imagined, with the areas two largest employers paying at or close to minimum wage for almost all jobs. Many of the workers work multiple part time jobs, but still find themselves unable to eat a few days a month.
2. Our volunteer base of kitchen and support staff is mostly over 65, and a few are in their early 80’s. I am 58 and am the kid most days. The Covid-19 pandemic has made about 75% of these people unavailable to work, so I increased my work schedule to three days per week, and now arrive at 5:30 AM instead of 6:30, and leave around 2:30 PM, instead of 1:30.
3. Only about 10% of our visitors are homeless, and live in one of several tent villages in the area. These people suffer the worst indignities and are mostly seen on the streets of our small city during daylight hours.
4. I can cook a mean side dish, and I can turn box potatoes into some genuinely tasty. This effort does come with a personal price tag; each workday I bring in around $20.00 worth of supplements to make this improvement a reality.
5. Not everyone is cut out to do this work. We get a small number of people who are working their community service hours. Many of them last only one shift, and never return, or they are asked to not return. Many of our visitors have various forms of psychological impairments, and taunting, belittling, or ignoring them is not the way to help them.
6. The waste of usable food is very real in my area. Each day we get many pounds of perishable foods donated by several large supermarkets and chain restaurants. About one third of this food is not usable when we get it, one day sooner and it would have been fine. Sometimes the donations are truly amazing, a bakery chain's local store sends great stuff at lease twice a week, and I personally thank them everytime I visit there location.
I am not a religious man, and find little to offer in organized religion, but when I feed our visitors, to paraphrase Eric Liddell, I feel that “god gave me this hidden talent, and when I feed others, I feel his pleasure”.
I also feel I am paying back for the extreme kindness shown me and my children many years ago. Those who have been here since the beginning, may remember the loss of my first wife, April, to cancer. Random people both here, and in my community, showed me that not everyone expects reward for doing kind things.
Thanks for reading, my next Journal post is a Winneroux,
Throckmorton
Profile Information
Name: DanGender: Male
Hometown: Northfield, CT
Home country: USA
Current location: Jewett City CT
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 3,579
