ANAHEIM : Big Heart, Big Plan, Big Headaches
Freshly baked corn tortillas, about 7,000 of them, are soon to arrive at La Casa Garcia restaurant in Anaheim, as are about 300 turkeys, 1,000 pounds each of onions and stuffing and, literally, a ton of potatoes.
But inside the restaurant, filled with the aroma of simmering homemade menudo, there is little evidence that in a few days the place will be cooking a traditional Thanksgiving Day community dinner for 3,000 people.
“I said, ‘You’re nuts, there’s no way you’re going to be able to feed all these people,’ ” Al Martinez told his friend Frank Garcia, owner of La Casa Garcia, about his idea a few months ago to hold a community-wide Thanksgiving Day dinner.
But Martinez knew that Garcia had his mind set on the idea. And, along with hundreds of other business people throughout the county, Martinez decided to help.
So on Thursday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., the parking lot of the La Casa Garcia, at the corner of Harbor Boulevard and Chapman Avenue, will be transformed into a huge dining room. Martinez is donating portable tents, from which dinner will be served buffet style. The Anaheim Marriott hotel is lending tables and chairs. Le Rancherita Tortilleria y Panaderia in Santa Ana is sending the tortillas. About 130 volunteers, plus the restaurant’s 20 employees, will be at work.
In all, thousands of dollars, truckloads of goods and hundreds of work hours have been donated.
“If you want to be with friends, if you want to be happy, if you want to share some gravy with someone else, you come here,” Garcia said between constant telephone calls from people offering help.
Garcia, 45, a father of five, has lived in the county for the last 25 years. Growing up in Texas, he remembered, “My mother would put the turkey in the oven at 1 in the morning. By 11 o’clock we were sitting down, thanking the Lord for all the food we got.
“Nobody does that any more. . . . So I want to get everyone together and bring back the feeling of Thanksgiving.”
The free dinner is open to everyone in the community--especially people who have nowhere else to share a meal. Rides are available for those without transportation; an Orange County Transit District bus line stops at the corner outside the restaurant.
“I don’t want it to be sad,” Garcia said, adding that there will be live festive music performed by local groups. “This town, on Thanksgiving, it’s a ghost town. I’m going to make it come together again.”
Garcia, who often caters for large groups, said the 3,000 figure was just a “natural” estimate. But he admitted that he and his wife, Sylvia, are becoming a little nervous.
Originally, he planned to start cooking the turkeys--14 at a time, four hours each--on Tuesday morning. Now he has decided to start today. After that, he said, he is not leaving the restaurant.
“I can’t sleep,” he said. “I start thinking, ‘One serving makes this much, so 3,000 servings. . . .’ ”
He said he worries most about the gravy. His main organizer, Jeanne Sleeper, who has volunteered her time as public relations consultant, said they are still short of milk, butter and gravy enough to feed the 3,000 guests.
“The gravy, that’s the hardest thing,” said Garcia, a restaurateur for nearly 30 years. “If we don’t get enough I’m going to have to make it myself. But, you know, when it’s fresh, it doesn’t taste as good. It has to sit for two or three days.”
But even with the anxieties, Garcia is sure the plan will work.
“You go ‘round and ‘round, ‘round and ‘round, then I get a call, ‘I hear you need some turkeys, come on down and pick up this check,’ ” said Garcia, referring to an early Friday morning phone call from a developer who donated $1,000 after hearing that Garcia did not have enough turkeys.
Garcia said any leftovers from the Thursday’s dinner will be bagged and sent home with the guests. And after this year, Garcia said, he is certain that he will continue to make the Thanksgiving Day community meal an annual tradition.
“How many kids and families don’t have what we got?” he asked. “There’s a lot of hungry (people) all over the world. People forget that there are people who don’t have enough to eat. I think if everyone did their share, everyone in the world would have food in front of them.
“We have to give thanks for the plate we got.”
