Published on November 14, 2007

Evelyn Rich presides over the home fries at the annual hunters’ breakfast at St. Michael’s Church in Greensboro Bend. Photos by Joseph Gresser

GREENSBORO BEND — At 4 a.m. on almost every day of the year the St. Michael’s Catholic Church hall is dark and quiet.  But on the first day of hunting season it is lit up.

A few men in fluorescent orange caps are sprinkled in pairs and quartets at the tables that fill the hall.  Evelyn Rich hustles around the kitchen tending to pans full of home-fried potatoes that are verging on golden perfection.

It is the calm before the storm.  By the end of the day customers at the hunters’ breakfast will have eaten 540 eggs, along with a hundred or so pounds of potatoes, several hogs worth of ham and sausage, a grove full of orange juice, and seemingly, all the coffee in Columbia.

For 27 years Ms. Rich and her crew have been sending well-fed hunters out into the woods and fields.  The annual event started in Stannard, as a benefit for the town’s Civil Defense Committee.

Ms. Rich pauses for a moment to recall the early days of the breakfast.  In 1980 the Stannard Town Hall lacked everything one might expect for a food service operation, reliable power, reliable running water, and heat.  The cooks worked downstairs, the diners ate upstairs, and the servers were constantly on the run carrying metal trays from kitchen to table and back again.

Nan Perron had the job of selling tickets, a job she’s kept.  Back in the early days, she recalls that her post was in the town hall’s anteroom, a space

Even at the crack of dawn Nan Perron can be counted on to keep careful count of the money. That’s why she’s been selling tickets at the hunters’ breakfast for almost 30 years.

that lacked even the cooking heat that warmed the chefs.  Since the breakfast moved to St. Michael’s in 1989, she can do her job without a coat, hat, and gloves.

Ms. Rich, too, is pleased with the move.  “The state inspected us,” she boasts.  “We passed everything, 100 percent.”  Even the water has weathered state scrutiny, she says.

Her crew has also been tested over the years; most of them have been working at the hunters’ breakfast for years.  Most of the early shift is family; two daughters-in-law and a grandson are cooking or waiting tables.

The other waiter, Renee Kelly, grew up in Stannard, and is, at the very least, an honorary Rich.

Business is steady, but not overwhelming in the early morning hours.  Connie Withers, the egg chef, keeps the hen fruit coming.

Fifteen-year-old Justin Rich keeps track of the ham and sausage, and the assembled plates are shuttled to tables by Ms. Kelly and Michelle Rich.

Early Saturday morning the patrons were mostly hunters who prefer going into the woods after daybreak.  Those who post themselves before dawn wander in later.  By midmorning the place is jammed, with hunters possessed of appetites honed in the woods and fields.

Everyone is offered a mountainous breakfast of eggs, sausage, ham, home fries, toast, and juice with coffee or hot chocolate.  It isn’t an eat-and-run type meal, and everyone lingers, conversing quietly before going out into the still-dark morning.

Ms. Rich admires Ken Hal’s fluorescent orange hunting cap as she takes a rare break from her kitchen duties.

At one table Ken Hall, a regular since the beginning of the tradition, sits with his son Ken Jr.  He lived in Stannard until very recently.

Health concerns, he said, caused him to move to East Hardwick where he can stay “closer to the blacktop.”

The same problems now keep him from trekking through the woods after deer.  This day he and his son were planning to head out together to do a less strenuous bit of hunting.

Evelyn Rich spotted the Halls as they finished their breakfasts and came out to visit for a bit.  But business was beginning to pick up, and she quickly headed back to the kitchen.

At another table Gerard Fontaine waited for his brother Fern, who was heading down from Newport.  As he worked on his eggs he spoke of how hunting has changed in recent years.  Sitting in the woods and waiting for your buck is not as good a strategy when there are fewer people out pushing the deer.

Mr. Fontaine said he thinks the deer herd in Greensboro is coming back after years of decline.  He also talked about the benefits to young people of the 4-H Club and recalled his years of membership in a group led by Lewis Hill.  “It was the best 4-H Club in the state,” Mr. Fontaine said.

Lewis Hill walked into the room dressed in classic hunter’s style with a distinctly nonflourescent red hat and a red and black checked woolen jacket.  He spotted Mr. Fontaine and sat down at his table.

“I don’t hunt much anymore,” Mr. Hill admitted, “except in self-defense.”  The deer, he explained, will sometimes gang up on his fruit trees.  The

Justin Rich loads a diner’s plate with its full complement of breakfast meats. If anyone left the table hungry it wasn’t his fault.

men chatted until Mr. Fontaine’s brother showed up.  Fern Fontaine hadn’t come to eat; he wanted to hunt.  So the two brothers left together.

Watching Gerard Fontaine walk out the door, Mr. Hill said Mr. Fontaine used to be in his 4-H group.  Told that Mr. Fontaine claimed it was the best in the state, Mr. Hill allowed himself the flicker of a smile.  “We liked to think so,” he conceded.

At the corner table nearest the door sat Roger Colbeth and his seven-year-old grandson Blade.  Mr. Colbeth said he has been bringing his grandson out hunting with him for the past three years, although Blade isn’t old enough for a license yet.

Mr. Colbeth had just about cleaned his plate and asked Blade if he was ready to go.  Blade still had a sizeable quantity of food left, but obviously was more eager to hunt than to eat.

“I don’t like my eggs,” he said, adding in a hopeful tone of voice, “I tasted them though.”

Mr. Colbeth is a grandfather, not a parent, and the first day of hunting season is not an ordinary occasion.

At four in the morning the refrigerator at St. Michael’s Church Hall was filled with flats of eggs. By midday only six were left. The breakfast crew served 540 eggs. The hunters were served three to an order of scrambled eggs, two for fried eggs.

“That’s okay,” he said.  And the two Colbeths headed out to the woods.

To see portraits of some of the people mentioned in this article click here.

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