Terry Flanagan: Boothy Call

Booth duty for me used to mean manning the company exhibit at trade shows. We gave up on trade shows a while back. They are expensive, and we never seemed to generate any new business. It might have had something to do with my partner’s uncanny ability to attract the oddest people to our booth, or “stall,” as one foreigner visitor called it. And in retrospect, stall may have been the more accurate term for our sad little exhibit.

My partner’s strange entourage would gather at our booth in the morning and pretty much spend the whole day there, frightening away any potential real customers, and forcing the rest of us to excuse ourselves from the booth as often as possible. I thought of hiring a bouncer for the booth, but the trade show sponsors frown on this sort of heavy-handed technique. So we nodded and smiled as the normal show attendees hurried past our display. Meanwhile, we marked off the days like guys doing hard time in San Quentin.

Nowadays, booth duty means volunteering at the food booth during , or Midsommar Festival if you prefer, a far-less-scary situation than the trade show. Here we get to deal with normal people—except, of course, for the Knights themselves. These guys take their fun seriously and are as well known for some of their stunts as they are for their charitable activities. That’s part of what makes working in the KC booth so great.

The KC booth has been in its present location at the corner of James and Third for a number of years. But we didn’t always have this prime location. We started out near the old Grateful Heart Café at Second and State—the nether region of Swedish Days. We were so far removed from the main activities that we might as well have been in West Chicago. Generally, the only traffic we got was people who were lost and looking for the main stage and the real Swedish Day booths.

Our menu was still in the formative stages then. We served an eclectic combination of cream puffs and Sno-Cones out of a cart to the occasional passer-by and dreamed of making it to the “show” one day, although with this menu our chances were probably pretty slim. Not a big demand for cream puffs. And Sno-Cones had pretty limited appeal, too. Not to mention the mess. Everything was covered with sticky Sno-Cone syrup drippings. Many a volunteer went home at night wearing multi-colored sneakers and with their hands stained a lovely shade of Smurf blue.

We bided our time, gave up on the Sno-Cones and cream puffs, and eventually got the opportunity to move to our present-day location. The move meant designing a new and larger booth and a new menu to go with it.

We went with more conventional menu choices—Italian beef, roasted corn, hot dogs, brats, and soda. Later we would add Italian sausage, turkey legs, pork chop sandwiches, cheese curds, pickles, chicken wings, potato chips, and bottled water.

The booth went from a ramshackle stand with a Plexiglas roof that magnified the sun’s rays to an impressive monolith with canvas top and sides, lights, and a huge sign above the roof. The “kitchen” is an enclosed area with a huge grill, a sink, a corn roaster, a turkey leg roaster, an ice machine and a fryer. We rent a 14-foot supply truck that we keep opposite the booth next to the cooking area. It now requires 20-25 people to man the booth during the peak lunch and dinner periods. We’ve come a long way from the little cart we started with on State Street, and the proceeds from the booth have gone to help out many worthwhile charitable causes that the Knights support.

Over the years the people working the booth have honed their food-preparation and serving skills. They pride themselves on not only serving good food, but getting it out quickly to the people waiting in line. The lines can be long and constant during the lunch and dinner hours, but the crew manages to remain cheerful and keeps the lines moving quickly. The work can be hard and sometimes the pace can be frenetic, but the people working there are always joking and kidding around. They enjoy the work and each other’s company. And they know that all of their efforts are going to a worthy cause.

So stop by, say hello, and be sure to try the awesome turkey legs that are big enough to feed a family of four, or any of the other great entrees.