Dinner At The Wells Street Cafe

Location: Breaking Bread Ministries/LaSalle Street Church

Date: Wednesday, June 5, 2013; 5:45-9:00 pm

I arrived to find the usual pre-dinner activities in full flow and spotted Miranda and Keith, but no Marianne, which I found strange since she is a pillar at this event.  Miranda welcomed me and said that they had not started with the desserts yet and were waiting for me to arrive.  This worked for me and after suiting up – aprons, hairnet and gloves – I went over to my usual dessert station to check out our options for the day.  Besides sticky brownies, we had some white chocolate cookies, mini cakes and Mexican wedding cookies, which I had not heard of, but hey if they are wedding cookies they can’t be bad!

Desserts again

 I was joined by a new volunteer Neomi along with Tash, who is a regular.  I quickly told Neomi the drill, which was equal distribution amongst the 21 plates.  As is usually the case, we filled the plates and then evened them out by either taking some things off or putting more or just redistributing.  We put them on the racks and our dessert duties were over.  We chatted about various volunteering opportunities and projects for a bit and then I went over to the fruit salad section where the salad had been distributed amongst the 21 bowls and all that was needed was moving it to the refrigerator to cool.  I saw that Lisa, who is another regular at this program, was also there and we caught on things since our last project together.  Other than that, other menu items were well under control and all we had to do was wait till service.

Keith called everyone to attention and started by announcing that Marianne’s mother was not doing too well and that was the reason why she was not in attendance.  This also meant that he would have to do most of the talking today since Marianne always led this part of the evening where all the volunteers huddled together before heading out for the service.  Keith started by thanking us for coming and told us a little bit about the place and the program, which was now 10 years old.  Besides providing a meal, a nurse service was also available for the guests and Keith mentioned about how they had raised $10K to create a separate, more private room for this service, but when they got the actual quotes for tearing down a wall, it was more like $50K.  So they abandoned that idea and instead bought some privacy barriers to do the same function.  I saw his main point of the story, which was adaptability in situations and ensuring that minor setbacks do not deter anyone from the main mission, which is to provide services to those who need them the most.  He told us that one of the most important things for him was the safety of the volunteers and he said that were any of the guests to misbehave, he would throw them out.  Miranda then filled in for Marianne by reiterating that we were to not give any guests money, no matter how much the pleaded or what story they told us.  Finally, Keith led us in prayer and we were ready to begin.

Dinner plates

When the various tasks were announced, I volunteered for juice services, along with Lisa and Neomi.  It was an interesting looking juice and Lisa said that we should call it a ‘fruit cocktail’, were anyone to ask us.  We started serving the juice and whatever it was called, the guests seemed to like it since many were finishing it fast and asking for refills.  I had to keep telling them that I would get to them once all the guests had been served.  Once the juice had been distributed, I started helping with the dinner plates.  The menu was lima beans, with some meat and corn bread.  There wasn’t any live music today, which was a shame since it definitely adds charm and more warmth to the evening. 

Once all the plates had been served, it was almost time to start clearing up.  I started by collecting the salad bowls and once again I saw a lot of bowls which had lots of salad still left.  I have said before that this 21 equal portions model does not work unless you have the same number of people on each table.  But this is how things have been done and I am sure Keith and Marianne have their reasons.  Then Lisa and I went around collecting the salt and pepper shakers along with the flowers on each table.  Well, these were artificial flowers mounted on Styrofoam blocks but did add some color to the table.  Some of the guests came over to thank us, while some complained that there was no other choice besides Lima beans.  You can’t win them all! 

We cleared up the chairs and tables and then it was time to go.  I told Keith that I would be joining the ‘Breaking Bread’ team at the 'Hunger Walk' and in fact had already registered.  He said that he was still figuring out how we would meet on the day of the event, but it was still a few weeks away.  Miranda volunteers here every Wednesday, independent of Chicago Cares and I told her that if she required a desserts guy, she should send me a note.  Tonight we had been our usual efficient selves and though we had missed Marianne in spirit, the rest of us had made sure that her absence had not affected us in performing our duties as they should be done – with empathy and respect.