While trying to coordinate the feeding of nearly 3,000 people during St. Francis Xavier's annual parish picnic, Ross Reinkemeyer mulled over the question of just how many years the parish has had the picnic.
It's the church's largest fundraiser of the year, and it typically triples the population of its home town in Taos.
Not immediately sure when the picnic started, Reinkemeyer and other organizers stopped one of the senior members of the church, Lawrence Lage, now in his upper 80s.
"They had them when I was a little kid, and I was born and raised here," he said. "During the Depression, people would scrape up enough money to come to the parish picnic."
Lage said it was "one of the big doings" of the church. It still is.
People come from all over Mid-Missouri to squeeze their cars in makeshift parking spaces and pay $10 for all the roast beef, chicken and all the fixings that they can eat. Not to mention the pies. Each family in the parish bakes three pies, and between 200-300 extra were baked the day before just to make sure they didn't run out like last year.
Reinkemeyer said the event takes 3,000 pounds of chicken, 1,400 pounds of beef and 600 pounds of potatoes. It also takes hundreds of volunteers - pretty much every able-bodied person in the parish from seventh-grade up. Preparations start the Wednesday before the Sunday event.
"It's always on Father's Day," Reinkemeyer said.
"It's a great place to bring dads or granddads. We serve a good dinner. People come from far and wide."