Sidney and Barbara Stuart sat at a large round table, surrounded by friends Thursday night while eating Thanksgiving dinner.
He stuck his right hand out and held it about 3 feet off the floor.
"I used to work at a store in Holts Summit, down there, close to where they lived," Sidney Stuart said and gestured toward the people that surrounded him. "They were about this high. They'd come in. I'd take care of them."
He said the group that surrounded him at the table always promised to repay his kindnesses.
"When we came up here, they said, 'We're going to take care of you all. You took care of us all the time,'" he said.
Members of the group shared knowing looks and smiles with each other and offered friendly banter.
They also offered respect to 86-year-old Stuart and his bride of 65 years.
Many at the table were kin to Mary Steck, one of the organizers of the Holts Summit Soup Kitchen's annual Thanksgiving dinner.
Steck and another organizer, Darrell Brauner, said they host hot dinners at the kitchen (permanently housed in the Holts Summit Civic Center, 282 S. Greenway Drive) from 4-5:45 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, and get to know each of their regular visitors on a first-name basis.
"We have a lot of regulars, and we get to worrying about them when they don't show up," Steck said. "We kind of have a support system, and we check them off when they arrive."
Brauner said the majority of the regular visitors are elderly.
"They come here just to be able to talk to other people," Steck said.
Alongside large round tables where visitors could eat the hot Thanksgiving meal, staff had arranged a walk-thru pantry, where donated fresh produce and day-old bread was available Thursday night. Staff use what they can for the hot meals the kitchen offers, Steck said.
It's a challenging task, she added. The kitchen (and its volunteers) serve 140-200 meals twice a week. The volume has been closer to 200 of late.
Staff was used to cooking for about 150 people. A new challenge is figuring out how to cook for 200 each day, Brauner said.
Gas prices, food prices, the economy and other hurdles are contributing to hunger, she said.
"It's like buying this meal - the dollar doesn't go as far as it used to," Steck said. "Everything's gone up. I bought some soup containers (from a restaurant supply). From when I bought them six months ago, they've gone up $30 a case."
That's about 12 cents apiece.
They used to cost 7 cents apiece, Steck said.
"Everything's going up," she said.
Brauner said he spoke with folks at the Food Bank for Central Missouri & Northeast Missouri with whom the kitchen works.
They reported to him that kitchens and food pantries across the state are experiencing more demand and higher prices.
Call 573-301-8181 to donate or find volunteer opportunities. The kitchen's email is [email protected].
More information is available on Facebook at www.facebook.com/HoltsSummitSoupKitchen.
Generosity from places like Sam's Club, Walmart and Aldi help offset some of the rising costs, but not entirely, and the kitchen's budget is tighter.
The organizers said more than 20 volunteers showed up to serve Thursday night's dinner. A typical dinner takes fewer than 10. But this was no typical dinner.
Volunteers sent out 267 carry-out-only dinners last year, Brauner said. They expected to serve close to 400 dinners this year, after cooking about 20 turkeys. Many dinners would be carry-out, but scores of people wanted to stay in and interact with others.
Tom Brown and Maurine Hill sat at a table early during the event, enjoying the hot Thanksgiving meal.
"This is only my second time coming here. And, just wow," Hill said. "Everybody is friendly."
Brown said when he heard about it a couple of years ago, he couldn't believe it was free. And each year, he drops a few bucks in the donation can at the door to help out, Brown added.
"It's fantastic. I've been coming ever since," he said. "It's a nice little town."