November 15, 2009
Rifle season begins
Community breakfasts feed hunters on opening day
By Joel Banner Baird, Free Press Staff Writer
FAIRFAX — Napoleon famously championed the virtues of a well-stocked chuck wagon, declaring “An army marches on its stomach.”
Hunters and nonhunters in Fairfax tested the theory Saturday morning, well before dawn’s early light on the first day of rifle season for deer.
At 3 a.m., the grills in the Baptist Building basement roared to life.
An hour later, as a steady stream of Beatles tunes drifted through the room, volunteers served up mounds of scrambled eggs, home-fries, sausage and bacon, buttered toast, coffee, and juice.
Jeff Phelps of Fairfax and his dad, Jim Phelps of Derby, appeared content after breakfast.
Both men had stayed up until 1:30 that morning, talking around an open fire.
“We got some venison from last year out of the freezer; cooked it up outside with onions, green peppers and garlic,” Jeff said. “Old-school.”
Jim nodded approvingly: “We lost track of time.”
Sharon O’Neill cleared their plates; father and son ambled into the dark parking lot, bound for Waterbury Reservoir and — maybe — fresh venison for the freezer.
O’Neill, who described herself as “a newbie” to the hunters breakfast, said she’d been alerted to the need for volunteers by a series of e-mails.
Proceeds from the event, she said, go toward maintaining the old building, which is owned by the United Church of Fairfax, but is increasingly popular with a wide range of community and civic groups.
Laura Woodward, who sold numbered tickets at the door, is not a newbie.
She said the Lamoille Masonic Lodge No. 6 had begun sponsoring the breakfast “at least” 20 years ago with simple but no less warming fare: homemade doughnuts and thermos jugs of coffee.
Woodward said patronage ebbed and flowed with new and old faces. She’d kept track; she hadn’t missed a single deer season.
A table crowded with young men drowned out the final, grand chords to “A Day in the Life.”
Woodward said she remembered when they were boys.
Jordan Hayes was one of four or five young bucks who said they’d rolled out of bed for the breakfast and the company of friends — but not for the hunt.
“Some of us have to go to work,” he said. “I’m going to walk home and go back to bed.”
At the busy toaster station, another non-hunter (and newbie) Margo Rome paused to explain her choice of music for the occasion.
“I finally settled on the Beatles because I was worried about getting too wild,” she said. “I didn’t think people would want to listen to Pink Floyd this early in the morning. Or Van Halen.”
Working next to Rome, washing dishes, was Wayne Sweet, a Mason, who said the pleasures of community involvement bring him to the breakfast every year.
He’d lost any urge to hunt when he was 8 or 9 — after watching his uncle (a game warden) dispatch a wounded deer with a pistol shot to the head.
Michael Cain, born and raised in Fairfax, said he was predisposed to hunt (and enjoy a ritual pre-hunt meal) like his deceased father, Frank Cain.
“Dad was always enjoyed socializing with everyone who came in here,” he said. “So, I’m here in memory of Dad. And to have a good breakfast.”
Contact Joel Banner Baird at 660-1843 or
joelbaird@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com. Read his blog at
www.burlingtonfreepress.com/bairdseyeview and follow him on Twitter at @vtgoingup .
