Chapter 11: The Griddle

The Lions Club pancake supper feeds three hundred people, and it takes ninety gallons of batter to do it.

I walked into the Lions Club kitchen at four on Monday afternoon with my sleeves rolled up.

Twelve women in aprons stopped talking at once.

It was getting to be a habit with me.

The room was all steel counters and fluorescent lights, with a griddle the size of a pickup bed.

Forty-pound sacks of pancake mix were stacked against the wall.

Aunt Ginny stood in the middle of it with a clipboard and a Lions vest, as calm as a general.

"Casey, sweetheart," she said. "What a surprise."

"I came to help."

"Oh, we have plenty of help."

"I brought an apron."

"We have plenty of aprons."

I looked around the room until I found the eyes of a woman at the sink.

She looked away, but she moved over a little to make room.

"I'll take sausage," I said.

Ginny smiled.

Sausage was the worst job in the building.

It spat grease the whole time, and you stood over it for six hours.

"Wonderful," she said. "Right by the door."

I stood by the door with a pound of sausage links and a fork, and I watched her work.

She didn't cook.

She had never, in my lifetime, cooked at one of these things.

She directed.

"More butter on the east side. The syrup warmers go on at five. Ladies, we're not wasting a single egg this year, we're running lean."

I flipped sausage.

Around me the room hummed with twelve women who wanted very badly to ask me a question.

They had all been told not to.

At half past five the griddle woman got called away, and the line went silent.