Polson dinner a giant exercise in generosity

Last Thursday morning in Polson, a line of cars with community members coming to pick up their Thanksgiving feast reached from the Mission Valley Elks down the right side of Main Street to Hwy. 93.

The Polson Community Thanksgiving Dinner works like this: folks call the dinner number several days before Thanksgiving to make a reservation, giving their last name and how many dinners they would like to pick up or have delivered if they are ill, homebound or have no transportation.

Tracy Plaiss, now in her 21st year of coordinating the event, and her crew of volunteers count the reservations, make a master list for those volunteers whose job it is to hand out meals to diners and delivery drivers, and start preparing a massive amount of food.

This year, the volunteer cooks prepped for 2,000 meals, which translates into 100 turkeys. One day last week Plaiss said, they roasted 60 turkeys and baked 250 pies and 2,000 dinner rolls and made a vat each of cranberries and pasta salad.

The turkeys are sliced and put into baking pans to be heated up on Thanksgiving morning. The rolls need to rise before they are baked, and then they’re cooled, packaged, and stored in the cooler with the other Thanksgiving chow.

The remaining 40 turkey and salads were prepared the next day, while potatoes were peeled, boiled, and mashed on Thanksgiving morning as other volunteers made gallons of gravy.

As the diners lined up on Main Street (some come an hour or so early to get a good place in line), volunteers outside the building met the vehicles, wished them a Happy Thanksgiving, and asked for their reservation name. The reservation name was checked off the master list, and volunteers headed into the staging area inside the Elks Club where more volunteers were busily assembling Thanksgiving dinners and placing them into plastic bags to deliver to the vehicles or hand off to the delivery squad. The same process repeats nonstop from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“We always have the core people we’ve had here year after year, and then we get new help each year,” said Plaiss of the monumental effort.

Alida from Bigfork has always wanted to help on Thanksgiving, so this year she joined her friend Jamie and said she enjoyed the experience.

Todd Bailey, who has been part of Plaiss’s crew for several years, was stacking dinner containers in plastic bags. His son, Josh, was home “with a ham in the oven and maybe a turkey in the smoker,” so they could enjoy their own Thanksgiving when Bailey finished.

Katie, Plaiss’s youngest daughter, will turn 21 next week and has been a volunteer for 20 years. “She’d ride with her dad delivering meals,” Plaiss said. “Her job was to wear a pretty dress and say ‘Happy Thanksgiving.’”

One couple who have been staunch volunteers had serious health issues this year, and “we got to deliver meals to them,” Plaiss said. “That’s the way it should work.”