LOCALadk Magazine

On the menu this Wednesday: baked ham, baked beans and coleslaw. Long tables with white table clothes are set up in the dining room and decorated with baskets of orange flowers and scarecrows. On every table is a basket of bread and butter. There is a station for coffee and tea near the kitchen. Two tables flank the sides of the room, one with breads donated by Hannaford and the other with pastries from Starbucks. The delicate sugary cakes and danishes with buttery icing are hard to resist as one passes by. The idea of the Community Lunch Program is a simple one: Come in, sit down, enjoy the food and company. Eat as much as you like. Take a loaf of bread and handful of pastries for the road. The teams are well organized and responsible for everything from buying the groceries to cleaning up after the meal. The cooks put the food on the plates, pass them to the servers, and the servers deliver the plates to the guests. Empty plates are returned to the kitchen and then the dishwashers take over. It's a nice sit- down dining atmosphere with an exceptional view of Mirror Lake and Cobble Hill. The room is full of conversation as people come in and take their coats off. Hugs and smiles are exchanged. One of the guests comments, "From the first time you come, they make you feel welcome." Most of the people who come to the free lunch are from the Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, and Wilmington areas. On average, 70 meals are distributed either to people who walk in and sit down or call for take out deliveries. Some of the guest's favorite meals are baked ziti, Jim Hadjis's Greek chicken, spinach meatloaf, and lasagna - just to name a few. The guests who come to the Community Lunch Program are as diverse as the food served. Some have lived in the area their whole lives, others transplanted from elsewhere, some are working, some are out of work, some wear jeans and flannel, while others wear pressed khakis. The majority of the guests are over the age of fifty and attend for a couple of reasons. One, for the free meal because money is tight or two, for the social aspect of dining with others. Many come for both. The Adirondacks are made up of six million acres of public and privately owned land - an area in which you could fit Yellowstone, Glacier, and Yosemite National Parks. The park is home to 150,000 year-round residents and, compared to many places in the world, the history of the people living within the Blue Line is a new one. After the Civil War, when the country was in the midst of reconstruction, logging practices expanded in the Adirondacks and directly impacted the watershed of the Hudson and Erie Canal. In 1892, the park was created, not by the voice of the people living there at the time, but state legislatures, artists, writers, priests and professors. In many ways, the creation of the park restricted development and limited the livelihoods of the people living there. Though today, one hundred and twenty two years later, the Adirondack Park is a global model of people living in a protected place, November is a good time to assess this sparse population, during the lull in between the fall foliage seekers and ski season. Sociologists associate the region as a northern extension of Appalachia because the Adirondacks has some of the poorest counties in New York State. For example, Essex County has one of the highest rates of unemployment and lowest incomes per capital. Due to the boom in the summer economy, in LOCALadk Winter 2014 47

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