Having to shut down only 48 hours after a grand opening that was filled with praise for the food and service would be a nightmare for any restaurant owner.
But not for Emergency Services and Disaster Agency volunteer Betty Essling and her pals who closed their “restaurant” with pride Monday afternoon.
Early Saturday, as she monitored Batavia’s public works radio scanner, Essling heard the hungry discussions of city workers as they plowed by restaurant after restaurant–all closed–and wondered where they were going to get any lunch.
She jokingly offered them coffee.
When they radioed back asking for something with a little more substance, all Essling had to offer was cookies.
But also scanning was resident Norma Beckman, wife of Ald. Chuck Beckman, who called Essling and said if Essling had a place to feed them, she had the food.
“I knew they had nowhere to go to get a hot meal. Those guys need a hot meal when they’re out there working, so I just did what I could to help them out,” Beckman said, downplaying her contribution of chicken soup and the fixings for barbecue. “I always have extra food sitting around.”
Beckman’s donation turned out to be the first of the workers’ weekend dinners at the emergency canteen. Essling cooked up beef stew for lunch on Sunday and her mother, Jean Rundle, called in with an offer of potato soup for Sunday dinner and Monday’s lunch.
Essling said she didn’t keep count on how many workers she fed. “I just kept feeding them, until they stopped eating.”
Among the 30 plowers on the streets from Friday night through Sunday night was Bill Kellum, one of the Street Department’s crew leaders who said workers were moved by the charity.
“It was great down there, very generous of them,” said Kellum. “The guys were really thankful. They said they even thought that it was overly generous letting them come down and eat like that. And it wasn’t canned soup, it was homemade food.”