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Free food!
Sep. 29th, 2003 12:36 amMy dad, for those who haven't been told yet, is a minister. He'll occasionally check what other pastors are doing in the area, and early last week he contacted a guy who was trying to found a new church in Redwood City. With intent to advertise by giving away free hot dogs in a local park Saturday. Creative idea, certainly. Dad wished him the best.
Friday evening he called just to check up on the guy and maybe offer to help if it was needed. ...it was NEEDED. Four or five helpers who had volunteered bailed on him not three hours before Dad called. So Dad starts calling just about everyone in our church, seeing if anyone is free the next morning. He manages to drum up six volunteers, counting himself and I.
We arrive at the park to find the poor newbie pastor trying to set up a huge booth-tent all by his lonesome. (The few volunteers he had left hadn't arrived yet.) After some manly studying of the parts, we get to work on it. About halfway through this, a private security guy the pastor had hired arrives. Guess he was worried about people pushing in line for the dogs and decided to have an authority figure there to be imposing. The security guy (David) proved to be handy in another way, though: he made himself useful by helping us finish setting up. Real nice guy.
So we get the tent up, and we start cooking dogs. The health inspector comes by about this time... yes, the health inspector. We knew she was coming. This event had been advertised, and the city health department declared that since the event was open to all and on city property, they needed to cover their butts by making sure we didn't have roaches everywhere. Fair enough.
Got out about 200 hot dogs to the public, though some people came back for more. More popular toward the end (as the sun came out) was the bottled water. Which had a creative touch added: the labels all had the church name and URL printed on them. But the pastor (why can't I remember his name?) was a little disappointed in that he only had the chance to talk to about eight families, three of which knew each other. I personally think he did better than he believes we did.
And if you want to know why I took so long to post this... I knew I was forgetting something yesterday. ^^;
Friday evening he called just to check up on the guy and maybe offer to help if it was needed. ...it was NEEDED. Four or five helpers who had volunteered bailed on him not three hours before Dad called. So Dad starts calling just about everyone in our church, seeing if anyone is free the next morning. He manages to drum up six volunteers, counting himself and I.
We arrive at the park to find the poor newbie pastor trying to set up a huge booth-tent all by his lonesome. (The few volunteers he had left hadn't arrived yet.) After some manly studying of the parts, we get to work on it. About halfway through this, a private security guy the pastor had hired arrives. Guess he was worried about people pushing in line for the dogs and decided to have an authority figure there to be imposing. The security guy (David) proved to be handy in another way, though: he made himself useful by helping us finish setting up. Real nice guy.
So we get the tent up, and we start cooking dogs. The health inspector comes by about this time... yes, the health inspector. We knew she was coming. This event had been advertised, and the city health department declared that since the event was open to all and on city property, they needed to cover their butts by making sure we didn't have roaches everywhere. Fair enough.
Got out about 200 hot dogs to the public, though some people came back for more. More popular toward the end (as the sun came out) was the bottled water. Which had a creative touch added: the labels all had the church name and URL printed on them. But the pastor (why can't I remember his name?) was a little disappointed in that he only had the chance to talk to about eight families, three of which knew each other. I personally think he did better than he believes we did.
And if you want to know why I took so long to post this... I knew I was forgetting something yesterday. ^^;
