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Chicago Homeless Vets Standdown

By Meg Miner

My first trip to the Standdown got off to a less-than-promising start. I walked into the kitchen at O'Darkhundred hours and found Barry and Bill (the first of five or six Bills I met that day) pondering the new convection oven the Armory had finally purchased to make cooks' lives easier. Given the option of helping figure this contraption out or cleaning some trays for the hot dogs, I gladly chose a half hour of having my hands in scalding-hot water.

When the pans were ready I popped my head back into the oven room. Speculation about the amount of time it would take to boil five gallons of water — if only we could start now — was floating through the air as the clock ticked steadily towards 8 o'clock.

I seem to recall Barry having to check on something else around this time. At any rate, he disappeared.

Well, being ex-Air Force and a former jet engine mechanic to boot, I figured I could help the Army and offered to look at the instructions. How tough could it really be compared to a tech order for a multimillion-dollar piece of man's achievements over the elements?

Damn all engineers anyhow!

In true troubleshooting tree fashion, Bill #1 and I started going through the steps:

"Is the thing on?"

"Check."

"Does it have gas flow?"

"At the wall, check."

"What about that downstream valve on the machine?"

"Hmm, I seem to recall hearing something about positioning valve handles in the direction of flow."

Aha! We then had a delicate moment deciding how long the igniter had been on and calculating how long it would take to get the thing warmed up. Our confidence shaken but determined to press on and make this technology ours, we finally placed the first tray of hot dogs in to test the cooking time.

It took a bit longer to get the fan-speed-to-temperature setting ratio tweaked, but once that puppy got going, we had a steady flow of fast-cookin' dogs ready to serve! And they tasted better than the ones that had been boiled to within an inch of their lives, too.

That's how I remember the day. I'd call it a successful joint operation with lessons learned and duly noted for next time — if we can only remember them in six months.