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Breakfast Served Here

Bob was teaching in an Inner City Parochial School in Milwaukee. It was about 1982. The school was almost totally black. In fact, some of the years Scott attended there, he was one of two white children there. At one time he was the only white child.

For some years, Bob was in charge of the youth, as well as being a teaching principal. From time to time he took the upper grades on a trip to give them experiences they would not have the opportunity to encounter as an inner city child.

One such trip was to the Boundary Waters in Canada, where they spent a week canoeing and fishing. On the day they departed, they came through Wausau, and since they were leaving early, Lloyd and I invited them to stop at our house for breakfast. This was fine with them, so we planned our breakfast so we would have enough food for these hungry teen-agers and their leaders.

The day of the breakfast arrived and we were up with the sun. We had our breakfast all planned and set about preparing it. To make the group feel more welcome, and generally add to the festivities, I made a big sign, the dimensions of which were about 4 ft. by 2 ft. I taped it firmly to the wide fireplace chimney right next to the door. On the sign in big bold letters I had printed "BREAKFAST SERVED HERE".

Four cars pulled up right on time, with the children and their leaders, ready to delve into our breakfast, and delve they did. We had a long table with 5 boards, and could seat l4 people. Every place was filled. Such chatter and anticipation for the week ahead was heartwarming.

After the breakfast, after everyone had departed, and we were cleaning up, Lloyd mentioned how disastrous our breakfast could have been if passersby and neighbors had seen our sign, and taken it at face value. We would have had more people for breakfast than we had counted on and our 14 places would not have been enough. I wonder what we would have done then!