A recipe for commUNITY
BONNERS FERRY is a true throwback to the 1950s, at least one day a year. Forget the pickup trucks with running boards and the little boys in ballcaps. They’re still around in most North Idaho towns.
But in Bonners Ferry, townspeople head to the local high school to eat breakfast together, shoot the breeze, drink gallons of coffee and analyze the world’s problems. And it doesn’t cost them a cent.
“Bonners Ferry is delightfully low-tech. The fact that all these people come together in a social event, celebrate our differences and enjoy each other – that’s significant,” says Marty Becker, a proud Bonners Ferry resident.
Marty is one of the founders of the Better Boundary County Coalition. The group formed to support school causes but quickly expanded its focus to the entire town.
Last year, the neighbors in the coalition started talking about the hunters’ breakfast the American Legion used to offer as a benefit every year at the start of hunting season. It was a big deal, a social event that attracted hundreds of townspeople. The free Thanksgiving dinner every year at Chuck Quillin’s Three-Mile Café is the same draw. Hundreds of people show and Chuck doesn’t charge anyone a cent.
Those good memories steeped in the group’s minds like a teabag in boiling water. Marty and his friends wanted to promote community togetherness and understood food was the answer. They decided to start a free breakfast for the community at the start of the school year and see if people still liked to gather with their neighbors as they had in less complicated days.
“We didn’t know what to expect. I remember when I was a kid and churches held ice cream socials and they were packed,” says Marty, who’s 49. “Have those things stood the test of time?”
The coalition hired the high school booster club to cook and serve pancakes, biscuits and gravy, ham and eggs, juices, coffee and milk. The local market, Boundary Trading Company, donated half the food. The coalition bought a banner advertising the free breakfast. Then everyone in the group crossed his or her fingers and waited.
They weren’t disappointed. So many people showed up for breakfast that organizers had to run to the market several times for more food. Plenty of people arrived prepared to listen to speeches or some sort of sales pitch because no one offers free food without a catch. If they chewed loud enough, maybe the noise would drown out the speakers.
But there were no speakers. No one pushed a cause or product. Disbelief gradually faded and conversation took over.
People sat over coffee and gabbed about their children, the war in Iraq, weather, health care worries and more. They talked about football at Bonners Ferry High, a planned expansion of the Kootenai River Inn and the darned Canada-bound tourists who speed through town.
“We had to keep rustling up more seating. This was no grit and sit. They ate and lingered,” Marty says. “We hit a home run.”
The turnout impressed Bonners Ferry Mayor Darrell Kerby.
“Everything and nothing surprises me in this community,” he says. “People just want to have relief and come together as a community over something positive and warm. It’s a very prideful thing to have a community that comes together like this.”
Darrell was out of town for the first community breakfast last year. He won’t miss this year’s. The free breakfast is scheduled for Sept. 11, a good day for a town to appreciate its unity. Coalition signs announcing the event enlarge the unity part of community breakfast in case diners fail to recognize the togetherness that graces too few cities.
No speakers will ruin breakfast this year either. Organizers added a silent auction to raise money for future coalition events, but it won’t pull attention away from breakfast and socializing. Diners will have an opportunity to write bids for a half ton of hay, horse feed, truck chains, scissors sharpening, health club membership and more.
The coalition may need the money for next year’s breakfast. After last year’s turnout, it’s preparing for 500 diners this weekend.
“The thing I like about Bonners Ferry is that it’s more Mayberry than Manhattan,” Marty says. He travels regularly to New York to appear on “Good Morning America” as a guest veterinarian. “People rush there, size each other up. Bonners Ferry is a wonderful throwback.”