When Chef Scritchfield first mentioned this event I was completely on board! Any opportunity I get to go back home is one that I will definitely take. An extra perk was getting school points for doing it as well. Monday in class we worked out the final details, we were to be at Landreth Park in Joplin by 8 am, we would start serving food at 11 am, and should be done and back on the road by 2 pm. I knew that it was going to be a long day, but I didn't expect it to be as long as it turned out to be! I worked until 12:30 Sunday morning then when I got home I was still awake, as I usually am after closing; I didn't end up getting to sleep until around 2:30. My alarm went off much to early at 5:30 blaring upbeat Justin Bieber music hoping to wake me on a cheery, joyful note. I looked outside at the black sky trying to remember the last time I had been up before the sun - to my recollection it had been 5 years! I had not been up that early since the trip I took to New York for modeling, but that's a different story. I peeled myself off my bed, got dressed and headed to McDonald's to get food and Starbucks for a hot chocolate.
By 6:30 I was on the road headed to Joplin running right on schedule. By this time, I've made enough trips back and forth to Joplin to know that at the speed I normally go it takes me exactly an hour to drive there. I headed west, watching the slowly rising sun in my rear view mirror, trying my hardest not to fall asleep at the wheel. I made it to Joplin, stopping before I got to the park to change at a nearby gas station. This event had to have been one of the funniest in my day! To preface this I must say that this particular gas station is one that I have been in probably 200 times in the past year, so I know it well. However, I normally go in at night so I haven't gotten to know the daytime employees well. I walked in, carrying my bag containing my classic, but not fashionable uniform. Headed to the bathroom, out of the corner of my eye, I watched the clerk catch a glimpse at me. It took me less that two minutes to change out of the jeans and fleece jacket that I had on into my checked pants, and chef jacket. I walked out of the bathroom with my apron and hat in hand and caught the clerk look at me, then look again. I chuckled and told her, "Yes, it's the same person, I just changed my clothes!" She laughed, and said back, "Okay! I was just making sure, you looked so different!"
I made it to the park around 7:40, and waited for the others to arrive. Chef Scritchfield had said that he would be there early because he was hauling a hot box on a trailer to the park. I got out of my car, and despite the chill of the fall morning walked around the park to try and find him. He was either invisible or not there, to my surprise. I thought, "Well, maybe he's late." and sat down to wait. Eight o'clock rolled around and Jennifer, another culinary student had showed up, but still no chef. An hour later and Scritchfield had still not appeared, however, a couple more students had. We stood around the park, drinking Starbucks to take the chill out of our bodies for another hour. When 10 am came and Chef was still no where to be found, I was starting to get worried that something was wrong. I knew where they were supposed to be preparing the food so Jenn and I decided that we would drive across town to see what the problem was.
We arrived at the John Q Hammons building to see all the chef's standing around chatting. The ovens weren't on, and there was no food being heated though we were schedule to start serving people in an hour! We went up to talk to Chef Scritchfield and he told us that the service time had been pushed back to noon, and that they were waiting on hot boxes to arrive to transport the food to the park. Around 10:30 the chef's decided to fire up the ovens and begin heating the burritos they had made and wrapped in foil the day before. We were definitely rushing to have everything ready and at the park for service. It was taking 20 to 30 minutes to heat a batch of burritos at a time and we had 2 batches to do. Once they got the burritos heating Jenn and I decided we would head back to the park and let everyone else know what was going on, but not before we made a second stop of the day at Starbucks.
When we returned to the park it was yet a waiting game of standing around, until the burritos arrived. As people started to arrive Jenn and I noticed that the few volunteers they had were having a heck of a time trying to direct traffic. We were searching for something to do, so we walked down to see if they needed any help! Thankfully, the guy was more than happy to sit down and allow us to direct traffic for him. With a sign and two whistles in hand, we cheered up an elderly man by giving him a break, and made the monotonous task of directing traffic the most interesting thing we had done all day. I saw Chef Scritchfield pull in around 11:30 and decided I would walk down to see if he would mind if we continued directing traffic. Luckily he didn't, so back I treked across the park to continue directing traffic.
All in all, I believed we received 6 middle fingers - from some unwilling people. I had one woman personally drive up and roll her window down to complain to me because she followed the crowd to the park and had 'got stuck up there for 20 minutes', when she was simply trying to get home with pizza for her family. I apologized but she wasn't accepting of it. The day got off to a slow start, but ended on some fun times. I was happy to be back home and help serve some of the volunteers that helped with clean up, search and rescue, and rebuilding parts of my hometown.
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