Illinois
COMMENTRY

The social glue that binds us together

Serious thinking about the recent Toulon Lions Club Pancake Brunch begins at the group's December meeting, with the blunt question from Tail Twister Ted Webster: "Should we do it again, men? It's lots of work and we had trouble covering the floor with help last year." There is audible squirming along the stiff pews of the Methodist Church.

Jim Nowlan

"We have to," responded one squirmer. "It's a tradition and folks look forward to it. They'd be deeply disappointed if we didn't."

And of course we have to go forward, if only because the club in rival Wyoming puts on a heckuva pancake feast just weeks before, and we can't let them top us. "I'd never hear the end of it from that pesky Pete Johnson."

Planning begins at the Jan. 23 meeting of the club executive committee, which they let newcomer me sit in on, as the latest sucker for work. Bob Mueller, the schoolman, presides. As club president, Bob is also head of the breakfast; fortunately, former leader Tom Milburn is there to keep us straight on the details, like how many hogs to buy. "Seven, not eight, darn it; we had too much sausage left over last year."

Saturday afternoon we set up at the Toulon Grade School. "You think you're a writer, Nowlan," Frank Mannix harrumphs, so he appoints me to hand letter the poster board signs that will festoon the walls.

Ted Webster comes by and declares that we'll lose money at the prices they've set, and one wag retorts, "we'll make it up on volume." Duck Musselman and Jim Giesenhagen set up the three stainless steel, gas-fired pancake grills that have been pulled out of club storage. Tables go up. The kitchen is readied.

Sunday is the big day, and Lions begin arriving at 5:30 a.m. (I'm a novice Lion, so I sleep in.) Thirty or so residents from the local nursing home, most in wheel chairs, are the first to be served, another tradition.

I saunter in about 9:30, to join the second shift of pancake flippers. Larry Wang, Roger Shults and Leon Eskildsen all bark instructions at this apparently helpless neophyte on how to flip the cakes. "Wait 'til they bubble up," Roger counsels, as if he thinks this guy, single for 20 years, has never seen a kitchen.

A broken-down politician, I'm delighted to be in the high profile job of flipper, situated between Harold Ely and Gary Montooth, who keep up a steady banter with the line that files by. The ladies eye our skills skeptically. "Make sure they're done," admonishes one matron. "As soon as they're turned, it only takes a moment," instructs a younger lady, also dressed in Sunday go-to-meetin' finery.

I'm delighted to see Hayden Heaton, truly a golden Lion, and we harken to the days when Hayden, Dave Sharkey and my Dad, great friends all, would brag about their youthful exploits, highballs in hand. "A streak of scarlet, and it's another touchdown for H. Heaton."

The church crowd bunches up about 12:15, challenging our culinary efficiency, and our skill at small talk. As folks wait politely, I joke repeatedly that, "A watched pot never boils," as we all try to stare the cakes into faster cooking. The young folks who hear this ancient line are probably thinking I must have come straight from the bar scene in Star Wars. At 1 p.m. we turn the grills off.

I begin to loosen my apron strings when Larry

Jim Nowlan, 54, a former Illinois legislator and state agency director, lives on small acreage south of Toulon in Stark County and pens musings for the Chicago Tribune, Crain's Chicago Business, and the Stark County Prairie Times. He is a senior fellow at the University of Illinois Institute of Governmental Affairs and an adjunct professor of public policy at Knox College, where he also studies Greek and Roman historians and Shakespeare's tragedies. His latest book, co-authored with Samuel K. Gove, is Illinois Politics and Government; The Expanding Metropolitan Frontier. His homepage, with links to other public policy sites, is at Jim.nowlan.nidus.net.

4 ILLINOIS COUNTRY LIVING • JUNE1997

Wang comes back and announces with devilish delight, cocking his eye at this new initiate: "Now, men, we have to clean our grills."

And we don't just clean. I probably developed carpal-tunnel syndrome from one afternoon of back-and-forth drudgery with the carbon abrasion bricks that did, amazingly, bring back the gleam of pure steel. We had to be fastidious, because Larry Maker and the Lafayette Methodist Church men were at hand, waiting to pick up the grills for their pancake supper later in the week. (Doesn't anybody 'round here ever tire of hotcakes?) Can't have those Lafayette folks grousing that we turned over untidy cookware.

By 2:30, Larry West, Roger Shults, Sam Montooth and I take the rest of the equipment back to storage under the Toulon Grain office. I'm pooped.

I counted 42 fellows who took part, with lots of help from their ladies. Frank Mannix will tell us at the next meeting how much we netted, which will go to good local and national causes. If it's in the $1,000 range, that works out to two or three bucks an hour for all the labor that went into the event.

The value that can't be counted comes from the social glue generated by events like this, which keeps a community sticking together. The friendly banter gently nudges us for our foibles and shortcomings, and speaks of appreciation for having one-another around.

JUNE 1997 ILLINOIS COUNTRY LIVING 5