“Good morning everyone,” the mayor said into the microphone. “We’re about ready to get started. As usual, there’s a bit of housekeeping before we can dig into all this food that’s smelling far too tasty for its own good.”
Steele had heard the same spiel, even if in different words, by different people, and even in different towns before, so he didn’t bother listening. As a competitor, he’d paid for his meal in his entry fee, so he had a meal ticket instead of having to pay cash for the meal like the non-competitors had to, so once he was allowed to, he could go forward, turn in his ticket, grab a plate, and get it loaded up by the people waiting behind the stainless steel chafing dishes on the tables lined up along the front edge of the tent.
Once the preamble was over, Steele stepped forward, accepting a paper plate from a volunteer was taking the job of separating the plates from the stack one at a time — which was something that could be easier said than done at times — then came a sealed packet of plastic cutlery that had a small-looking napkin and little packets of salt and pepper included in it, which Steele shoved into his back pocket beside his wallet.
He then proceeded down the line, taking two golden pancakes onto which he set two little packets of what he was pleased to see was genuine butter, versus margarine, as even if margarine was quicker and easier to thaw and spread, butter tasted better by a vast distance.
After about a minute, during which he watched the guy in line behind mutter profanities as he both fought to get the dollop of butter out of the packet, and then to spread it over his pancake, Steele opened his butter packets and poured the butter out. It wasn’t fully melted, but it was at least softened, allowing him a much easier time of spreading the butter around his pancakes before adorning them with syrup and carrying on, to the appreciation of two guys who’d skipped the butter and taken only syrup, who’d actually been prohibited from carrying on until he did so.
Next was sausages, bacon, and finally eggs that Steele could tell weren’t just eggs, they had milk or something in them, as they looked wet still, as opposed to dry-but-moist, as he liked his eggs.
Then came the drink options. Steele chose orange juice before walking off to the picnic tables laid out in about half the parking lot for people to dine at. A woman he knew was a member of the group that organised Hanna’s rodeo waved in an attention getting way.
“We have a table for you,” she said.
Steele barely suppressed the loud groan he wanted to utter, and was only able to keep from rolling his eyes until he’d fallen into step behind her, when he rolled them hard. He didn’t feel like the pomp and circumstance was justified until he was coming back to Hanna as the reigning champion or maybe the season leader.
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