Last Week at Ellie's

I'm going to try to post daily, when there is anything of interest, but since this is my first day, I'll give you a recap of the week. Last week, Wendy (the owner of Ellie's) decided that she wanted to have a meal for the homeless on Sunday the 22nd. More on this below. Most of the other conversation centered around the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

I'm sure the coffee klatch will roll their collective eyes when they read this, but I'll repeat my complaint about the Thanksgiving meal. This is my wife's favorite holiday. She gets up early and starts to cook. Now, we usually don't have a big crowd at our house. This year it's Kathy, my son Paul, his wife Summer, my mom, and Doug and Dean (close friends whose children are otherwise engaged this year). Did I mention that Paul and Summer are vegetarians? So, My wife is totally involved in preparing a meal of mashed foods which take all day to prepare, but only about five minutes to eat. Think about it, there's mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rootabaga ( who eats that? or can spell it.), slaw, turkey(not mashed but it could be), green bean casarole, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. So she spends all day in the kitchen, cooking, watching the Macy's parade, and the dog show, and annoying me with little requests. "Would you run to the store, Would you take out the trash, would you unstop the garbage disposal." Dinner time finally arrives, and their is a sudden flurry of activity. We rush everything to the table before it can get cold, I carve the turkey and take out the stuffing, and slam bam think you mam, it's over. Except for about forty thousand dishes and five days worth of leftovers.

Now I'll tell you about the meal for the homeless. Wendy gave out 40 tickets to homeless people that hang around uptown Concord. The coffee klatch and our wives donated a little money, made some desserts, and helped serve. Wendy cooked chicken, ham, pork, veggies, rice, saladand provided tea and bread. I hate to talk about what a nice person she is to do this, I'm afraid it will go to her head. We had about 25 homeless show up for the dinner. Not as many as expected, but it was worth while. Here are a few observations about the people that came to the dinner.

The number one thing I noticed, was that they all seemed happy. Not oh boy, a free meal happy, but friendly and engagingly happy. I only hope that if my circumstances left me homeless, that I could be so optimistic. The other thing I noticed, was a sense of community that they displayed. I've noticed that the faces change all the time in the homeless crowd in Concord, and everywhere else I'm sure. There seems to be a lot of interaction between the homeless. I guess they have a lot of time on their hands, and they need all the support from each other they can get.

The one thing I wanted to do, but I didn't because I felt it would be inappropriate, was to ask each of them about their story. I suspect that if all of us understood the circumstances that cause homelessness, we would have a lot more empathy towards them.

That's it for this week, have a happy Thanksgiving.