Paddlers load up at Grange Hall breakfast

KENDUSKEAG – Like the paddlers of the Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race, members of the Mystic Tie Grange Hall came well prepared Sunday morning for the travails that lay ahead.

But instead of paddles and life preservers, the grange members were equipped with spatulas and oven mitts as they dished out the prerace breakfast, intended to nourish paddlers and onlookers alike.

More than 300 people passed through the Grange hall, sitting long enough to eat a meal loaded with carbohydrates and proteins before heading to the nearby start of the race.

Organizer and Grange member Ruth Kennedy reported only a few people had trickled in by 6 a.m. But as expected, the rush began at 7 a.m., keeping Grange members flipping a steady stream of pancakes, browning mountains of white potatoes and scrambling to scramble eggs.

“When they start coming, they don’t slow down,” was the early prediction by Stephen Weymouth, a retired groundskeeper at the University of Maine who Saturday morning was the meat and potato man, frying rashes of ham and piles of cut potatoes.

At times, a long line of people stretched out to the door and that sometimes required brief runs on food in the buffet-style breakfast. With 50 pounds of ham, 40 pounds of sausage, 30 dozen donuts, 60 pounds of potatoes and 60 dozen eggs among their supplies, there wasn’t a concern about running out of food, just keeping pace with the influx of hungry people.

From the front lines of the buffet would come Grange members’ requests for more food, something like “We need more sausage,” although most times it was shortened to “sausage.”

Invariably from the small kitchen, where a light cloud of smoke clung to the ceiling, would come the response: “It’s coming, it’s coming.”

For the last 10 years of her working career, Prudence Barry’s job at the Bear’s Den at the University of Maine included boiling and peeling 320 eggs daily, to be served in egg salad or on the salad bar. Saturday she was back working with eggs, this time on a stainless steel grill, alternating between scrambling them and cooking them over easy.

“It’s fun, but I couldn’t take a steady diet of it,” Barry admitted.

Despite the pressure to get the eggs out quickly, Barry kept her cool.

“It’s a lot more laid back right now,” she remarked, recallng past years and a time in the early 1980s when they had 600 people pass through the hall and kitchen workers were bumping into each other trying to keep up. That the money they raise will help others – the Mystic Grange previously donated $1,200 enabling the town’s Fire Department to purchase a thermal imaging camera – also eases the sense of pressure.

The Grange has hosted and staged the breakfast for 35 years – enough time to refine and smooth the process. Members say part of their success is the fact that everyone involved is quick to lend a hand when and where they are needed and everyone has a job to do. For instance, as Grange master, Thomas Kennedy is charged with cooking pancakes and toasting the English muffins that were buttered the day before to save time.

The morning began much earlier for some. Ruth Kennedy was on hand at 3:30 a.m. to start the coffee, which had to percolate for an hour and a half in order to be ready when the doors opened at 5 a.m.

For Kennedy and others, both days this weekend began early and finished late. Once the breakfast was over and cleaned up Saturday, Kennedy returned home to resume making the last seven of 17 pies and cakes for Sunday when she and other Grange members would return to the hall and its kitchen to serve an annual Eastern dinner.

On Sunday night they could rest.