ST. JAMES’ HOLY SMOKERS: SMOKIN’ HOT FOR CHARITY

Fans of C.S. Lewis’s “The Chronicles of Narnia” would have called him Fayette County’s Puddleglum, by both appearance and temperament. An aging, crotchety old hermit holed up in a broken-down single-wide plopped down in a cluttered lot on the outskirts of Carmine. Buford––not his real name––was a victim of life, scarred to the core, who seldom encountered either friend or foe or acquaintance … or family.

And he was deeply angry about it. “It” being life.

You might have met him: He was the embittered geezer in the H-E-B queue who, when asked by the clerk for his zip code––“for a marketing survey, sir”––responded “That’s personal; I ain’t givin’ you my personal information.”

Kelly Franke noticed the decrepit mobile home while making a delivery in the rural area around Carmine. She made her way past the jungle of weeds and detritus of discarded hot water heaters and husks of desolate, decades-old rust bucket cars.

Buford snarled as he answered her knocking on the flimsy door. No, he didn’t need on help from no Meals on Wheels (MOW).

But he did, and Kelly knew it.

But Kelly who has been the Executive Director of Meals on Wheels since 1984––she loves her job––couldn’t ask her MOW volunteers to deliver to Buford without first cleaning up the rat’s nest of a lot.

So, she asked her volunteer group from church to do it. They said yes. (It’s hard to say no to Kelly Franke.) That has been 15 years ago now.

Buford, cantankerous as ever, offered neither thanks nor praise when Kelly delivered the first meal. It was then she picked up on the disheveled innards of the trailer.

So, she asked him if he had any other option for shelter, something other than the mobile home.

Though he was about as loquacious as Harpo Marx, he did manage to point out the unfinished bungalow on the adjacent lot. It was the home he had been building with his own hands … that is, until his health failed, and he became too frail to continue.

What did Kelly do? You might’ve guessed. She went back to her church volunteers and let them know they were now in the house construction profession. One day during the building process an irritable Buford said something particularly caustic to her, and Kelly replied, “Listen here, Buddy, you don’t get to talk that way to me.” That’s when, according to Kelly, their friendship started.

On moving day, Buford smiled for the first time in years. Kelly thinks she detected a tear as well.

Buford died a few years later. But he died having a friend. And a modicum of happiness I might add. I doubt he would have had that were it not for Kelly Franke and her organization.

We, the Holy Smokers of the St. James’ Episcopal Church, smoke thousands of pounds of chicken and sausage each year so we can give yearround and special Christmas donations to our local charities such as Combined Community Action (the umbrella of WOW). CCA via MOW serves six counties with 188 clients––83 of whom are in La Grange and who receive more than 1,600 meals per month. Their volunteers are often the only human contacts a client has.

Those volunteers look out for their clients. And they’ve been doing it since 1978.

These statistics and the beneficence they spawn are the reason Holy Smokers like Chuck Gibson and Larry Kahanek get up at 3:30 am on cook days to get it all going.

Well … these stats certainly do figure in the calculation over choosing beneficiaries for our donations. That’s so. But so do the people running those charities and their recipients–– folks like Kelly Franke and Buford.

We Holy Smokers are happy we can contribute in a small way to the charity angels of Central Texas.

You can support these charitable efforts by driving through the St. James’ parking lot on the second Saturday of the month and buying a smoked chicken or sausage or both. Look for information in “For the Record” in this publication and our sign placed in the parking lot visible from Travis across from H-E-B. Call (979) 968-3910 for more information. The next one is Saturday, January 13.