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On the road again:
Greetings from Wanchese, North Carolina, a village on Roanoke Island, part of the Outer Banks
The time is 6:00 am. A cool northerly breeze is wafting the aroma of salt water from Atlantic Ocean backwaters through the open windows on our trailer.
Yes, Cyndy's and my travel trailer (our home on the road) is repaired; the damaged electrical components, as described in
my previous blog, are working fine.
We picked up the trailer in Plainwell, Michigan, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and headed south on Sunday morning. Destination: Louisville, Kentucky. Distance: 400 miles.
Last Monday night, we attended a local contra dance. And on Tuesday, we helped a friend who uses a form of contra dancing to create a sense of safe community for soldiers and veterans and their families who are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Click here to see some of the photos that Cyndy has taken on our journey.
Today's Story
Today, I want to tell you about volunteering in a commercial kitchen on Thanksgiving Day and doing our small part to help serve over 3,000 meals to people who, for whatever reason, are less fortunate.
Cyndy and I arose at 3:30 am, dressed, and drove 30 minutes to the Louisville Hotel in downtown Louisville. We reported to the kitchen at 4:30.
There, we met Barry, the master chef, who assigned us to “tray up” bacon and sausage.
Over the next half hour, I and another volunteer named James trayed up about 20 dozen frozen sausage patties.
Cyndy, over the course of the morning, was the Bacon Lady. With the aid of a few other volunteers who came and went, she handled thousands of bacon strips, carefully putting them cold and uncooked on trays, sliding the trays into ovens, and then placing the cooked bacon in serving dishes. I also cooked bacon but in different ovens nearby.
We were among hundreds of volunteers who, that day, would help in some way ... in the kitchen or in the dining hall or driving meals to other locations.
At one point, I counted about 30 volunteers in the kitchen, all taking directions from Barry, who demonstrated a remarkable skill of answering a barrage of questions and always finding something for an idle person to do.
Many of the volunteers were teenage girls who peeled pounds and pounds of potatoes and removed meat from turkey carcasses.
Some adult volunteers cooked pancakes and eggs on large commercial griddles. Over and over, they mixed and poured batter or whisted and scrambled eggs.
I shared my oven space with volunteers who mixed up large bowls of stuffing and gravy or cooked vats of potatoes or green beans atop an eight-burner gas stove.
At any one time, four to eight volunteers, working at two different sets of sinks, hand-washed a steady stream of food preparation pans, bowls, and trays or serving platters, plates, drinking glasses, and metal tableware. No throw-away plastic or Styrofoam here.
One couple told me they have been volunteering here on Thanksgiving Day for eight years. Their teenage children were serving food upstairs in the dining hall “because we want to show them how important it is to help others.”
Another volunteer, a professional chef who had the day off from his regular job at a senior residence, said he was here “because God, through a passage in the Bible, told me to be here.”
This endeavor is the work of
Wayside Christian Mission, a social service organization in Louisville that is dedicated to giving women, men, and families in need “a hand up.”
The 3,000 meals—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—served on Thanksgiving are comparable to those served on Christmas Day. Yet, every day, Wayside provides over 1,000 meals.
Matthew, a member of the mission staff who wore a shirt with the image of Jesus, said that there are 1,300 on-the-street homeless persons in Louisville. In addition, there are many more who live in some kind of shelter that is not a personal residence.
Some of these people have rooms at the Louisville Hotel, a multi-story facility that houses locals more than travelers.
The mission’s shelter, a few blocks away, sleeps 450 persons regularly but can handle up to 650, especially when temperatures dip into the freezing range or rise to the level of heat advisories.
All those who are not in an end-of-life condition perform some sort of chore or are learning skills while living there. “Our purpose is to help them move out and up,” said Matthew.
But, as was evident by the conversations and smiles of the volunteers in the kitchen, those of us who helped serve also received “a hand up” by knowing that we had given a bit of time and reaped the reward of simply feeling a bit better about ourselves.
By the way, tomorrow is Giving Tuesday, a day to give to your favorite charity as we approach the holiday season.
To make a donation to Wayside Christian Mission,
click here. If you are moved to make a donation to Dancing Well: The Soldier Project,
click here.
Thank you.
Next blog: Whatever the muse inspires me to write about
Thanks for reading my stories.
God blesses everyone ... no exceptions.
Robert (Bob) Weir
