By Leigh Ann Rutledge
Accent Editor
July 8, 2008

Norma Clark has been a staple at the Mechanicstown homecoming for around 35 years.

She is unsure of the exact year she started but remembers receiving a call from Irene Donaldson asking if she would help with hamburgers.  She started out working the grill with Carl George and her duties just evolved. That was the beginning of what her friend’s kids call “Norma-burgers”, hamburgers with fried onions. 

“I would work and stay to help clean up.  I am not sure how many years it has been but it seems like everyone I started with is gone,” stated Clark.

She never really questioned the number of years until she fell in April.  “My kids wanted me to hang it up.  I told everyone I would do the ordering and make the calls to get help but couldn’t promise how long I could work,” Clark said.  How many hours did she put in?  “I was there everyday but I did sit a lot,” she answered.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing in the kitchen area.  She remembered one night one of the girls went to pour from the five-gallon glass jug of ice tea and she spilled it everywhere.  One of those memories that stick with you, she explained, was when she was first working the grill and Max Cotton came up to her and told her to flip that burger he wanted it.  “I told him he couldn’t eat that one.  I had just put it on the grill and it was barely warm,” she laughed. “That has stuck with me all these years.”

Over the years she has worked every area of the kitchen except for cooking sausages. She laughed, “I haven’t cooked G’s (Chief Glenn George) sausages.  No one does but him.”  Clark has her home for sale and plans to move to Carrollton.  Jokingly, she asked Chief G if that meant she couldn’t come back.  “He told me I was welcome anytime,” she said.

“When the firemen expressed their appreciation for helping, I would tell them ‘When I smell smoke I know who to call and without a guilty conscious,” she laughed.

Clark said they haven’t found a volunteer to take her place but are hoping someone steps up to the plate.  “I will probably go back just not in the capacity of before,” she stated.  Whoever steps up to the plate will need a big bat to take her place.