Now a quick story about yesterday’s experience in Waukesha that was a bit maddening and could have been catastrophic. Our concert last night was at 7:00. The choir arrived at the church by about 4:00 in order to have a good 90-minute rehearsal . . . with dinner scheduled at the church for 5:30, which would give ample if not an enormous amount of time for the students to change into concert garb.
The students were milling around at 5:40 with still no sign of a meal or any direction on where to go- so Kathy and I went downstairs and found a promising-looking room with some long tables set with paper plates and cups- but not a morsel of food in sight. So I went back into the kitchen and found two guys back there cooking – one of them spinning lettuce in one of those fancy salad spinner contraptions – the other pulling a baking sheet out of the oven with large delicious- looking meatballs on it. placing the meatballs in some sort of strainer to remove the excess grease, sprinkling fresh garlic on top, and then bringing it over to the Nesco and carefully dumping them into the cooking sauce. .. and then returning to the oven to put another baking sheet of meatballs into the oven. It is now 5:45 – our concert is at 7- and these two nice gentlemen are cooking a meal fit for Martha Stewart, but at the rate they were going it wasn’t going to be ready until midnight. Trying to hide my mounting panic, I asked them when I should have the choir come down. “In about ten minutes we should almost be ready to serve the salad.” (They still had cucumbers to slice and so on.) A choir guy ambled through the vicinity about that time, so I sent word with Matt that the choir should come down in ten minutes. I’m also wondering to myself if the guys should change into concert garb – white shirts and pasta sauce are a dangerous combination, at least for yours truly . . . but somebody apparently made that decision and by the time the choir appeared, they were dressed for the concert. (With not a napkin in sight, by the way.)
It turns out to have been a good idea that they were dressed for the concert because it was after 6 before the salad came out to be served – and it was 6:20 before we saw our first hot food. . . (by this point I’m practically jumping out of my skin with worry, so I’m helping the kitchen guys any way I can.) It was spaghetti and wonderful sauce with huge meatballs- and I’m not talking Ragu either – but the spaghetti was wiped out after about a third of the choir had gone through the line. (And they weren’t pigging out either- I was standing there and monitoring that, which is always a good idea when you’re dealing with college students.) So there were a bunch of students standing and waiting for about ten minutes before a second batch of spaghetti was finished – which managed to serve another third other choir – and another delay for more spaghetti . . . and by the time the last choir members were serving themselves spaghetti, it was 6:50. Literally.
One comic moment- as I was popping back into the kitchen at 6:47, knowing that a couple of guys still hadn’t gotten any spaghetti yet, I saw the pasta guy stirring some pasta that seemed close to being done. “Is that the last of the pasta?” I asked. “O no, I have two more pots of pasta cooking. They’ll be ready soon.” “Thanks, but we won’t be needing those because the concert is at 7.” “O that’s okay, I can stay down here and serve it.” This would be a classic case of People Unclear On The Concept. The people to whom he is supposed to be serving dinner would be upstairs singing their concert.
Fortunately, all of the choir got some food in their stomachs- and it was delicious food (I’m told) – and there weren’t any horrible accidents, although there were a couple of minor infractions. (Before napkins were found, one of my students engineered a fantastic bib to protect his tux shirt by attaching his paper placemat to the stud of his shirt. He may have something there!)
After the concert, as Kathy and I were piling into our car for the trip home, I bumped into one of the two cooks, who apologized up and down for how terribly behind schedule they had been. It was a combination of being a little too fancy with a very labor intensive meal – and way too little kitchen help to make it happen – and a couple of snafus which made a bad scenario even worse.
But ultimately what felt to me like absolutely catastrophe was far from a catastrophe. The kids got fed- loved it- and were relatively cheerful through the whole thing . . . . and went on to sing a gangbuster concert. So the moral of the story is – What feels like a Disaster isn’t always a Disaster after all. Stay Calm and Stay Cheerful.
Actually, there is a second moral as well – Don’t serve a Martha Stewart meal to a group of 50 college students – not unless you have a small army in the kitchen and plenty of time.
And there’s a third moral as well – perhaps the most important of all. Miracles do occur.