It snowed a bit in the morning - our first real accumulation this year! (I found out later that Mollie apparently missed most of it because she slept late...) I'd planned to volunteer at Sacred Heart Church, helping with food prep for Thanksgiving meals. I departed my condo by about 0645 and carefully made my way to Lebanon (the plows didn't seem to be ready to go, unfortunately, so I had a tough time going). I arrived to find several other people already getting ready to start the massive food drive. Our Knights of Columbus Council advertised that 2,000 meals would be made available to families in the Upper Valley for Thanksgiving (drive through or delivery). By this morning, all of the meals were claimed! In a community that probably only has 20,000 residents, that is pretty amazing. Our fearless leader (Lenny) has coordinated several of these dinner operations but this year he definitely went above and beyond the normal routine of getting food and cash donations from businesses across the area, hiring cooks from the Cardigan School and soliciting assistance from members of the parish. Clearly, the COVID-19 impact on normal family gatherings made this event much more popular. The results of many weeks of planning were distilled into a concerted effort of meal package assembly this morning as the Knights and other volunteers gathered to help get everything ready. Parishioners who had cooked a turkey (200!) at their home on Tuesday night brought the well-seasoned and savory birds (and baked goods) to the church parking lot - several of us then carried these items down to the Parish Hall. There, many more volunteers began the difficult work of processing meat into trays for delivery. The whole place smelled like Thanksgiving! Other volunteers cut up hams, packaged rolls, diced veggies and organized the hundreds of pies and cakes. I’ve never seen so much food in one room! At one point, Lenny sent me on a last-minute mission to pick up some more hams in at Dan and Whit's (in Norwich, across the Connecticut River). The experience of visiting that business opened my eyes even further to the huge support network that helped make such a dinner possible. Back at the church, I worked at several stations within the meal prep chain, walked up and down many flights of stairs and met a lot of smiling people - everyone was so happy to be involved. At one point, I had to do a survey of the food in the freezer truck and counted many dozens of trays with every “fixin’” you can possibly imagine for Turkey Day. I had to leave after five hours (1200) to go back to work but was very glad to have been a small part of the huge effort that our church made to brighten the homes of people who live in our community. I’m looking forward to hearing from the guys making all the deliveries tomorrow!
