“Everybody seems to have such a good time,” said retired plumber Frank Snow, of the weekly luncheons put on by Brooksville’s Meals For Me. Each Thursday, Snow brings his sister, Nettie Leach, of Penobscot to Brooksville’s Town House. They’ve been attending the lunches ever since the program began four years ago. People come from Brooklin, Blue Hill, Penobscot, and sometimes one person comes all the way from Steuben and is said to claim, “It’s well worth the day.”
Audrey Peasley, a powerful bundle of energy who delivered Blue Hill’s mail for 35 years, started the lunches. “When I retired,” she said, “it was in the back of my mind that’s what I was going to do.” She said she planned to call ten “girls” and try the idea out on them, hoping to get one or two who’d be interested. All ten thought it was a great idea and agreed to help as well as two “boys,” Dale True and George Bell, who pick up the food and take out the garbage.
Deer Run, a low-income housing facility on Deer Isle, provides the strictly regulated food. As Peasley explained, the food’s temperature is recorded when it leaves Deer Run’s state controlled kitchen and when it arrives at Brooksville’s Town House kitchen. The Brooksville volunteers heating the food have instructions as to the temperature the food must reach before it is served. On Thursday, March 6, the hamburger-green bean casserole topped with mashed potatoes was 180 degrees F. when it left Deer Run, 150 degrees F. when it arrived in Brooksville, and 190 degrees F. when Peasley and her helpers filled the plates.
Several volunteers decorate the room each week with a different theme. March 6 took a jump on St. Patrick’s Day, offering overhead decorations, green placemats, shamrocks, jigger-sized handled cups filled with a lime-colored drink. “We always have a treat to eat and a favor to take home,” Peasley said. Each week Leach gathers favors not taken by others and brings them to friends at the Penobscot Nursing Home. March 6’s treat to eat was a paper cup filled with pretzels, a Hershey’s kiss and jellybeans. The take home favor was the tiny handled cup.
Peasley advised those present that since the next week’s theme would be Easter, the best homemade Easter bonnet would win a prize.
Prizes are a big part of each Thursday’s luncheon and are chosen by drawing numbers. Winners on March 6 won a loaf of Irish soda bread and a pan of nut-filled fudge. Each week’s winners have to provide the prizes for the following week. One of Peasley’s “girls” sees that pictures taken each week of the decorations and people attending make it into a scrapbook that provides a record of each meal served since November 2004.
A spirit of fun seems to be what makes these Meals For Me such a success. The food is good, the suggested donation only $3, but it takes more than a three-dollar meal to make an average of 50 older people each week get dressed and out of their houses. Barbara Martin said, “Meals For Me brings the community together, and people get to meet people they hadn’t previously known.”
“We’re very proud,” Peasley said of the plaque awarded Brooksville’s Meals For Me as the best in the state. It reads, “Certificate of Recognition in appreciation of your outstanding community service.” In addition, the Eastern Agency on Aging is having a video made about Brooksville’s Meals For Me, to be used as a training tool.
Peasley summed up the attitude of everyone involved, saying, “We look at ourselves as a family and we feel like a family.”