It was the last Burger Night of the season. The monthly "Family Night" that the fraternal organization that sponsors our youth group puts on for its members, guests and anyone else who wants to come by. Burgers and cheeseburgers for a dollar. Fifty cents for fries, or a hot dog.

And that's the entire menu.

And since the wife seems quite set on wrapping up our volunteerism with this organization next August, this was also our last Burger Night.

Folks come through the glass doors on the east side of the building. The inner door is usually propped open with a brick or stone, since it has an automatic lock which requires a membership card to open. Then a half flight up the wide, carpeted staircase and a right turn into the bar. For that is what this is. A bar. The other thirty-some evenings a month this is an adult place, a place to gather, socialize, smoke and drink.

The left side is the bar itself, covering most of the length of the room, with a peninsula projecting almost to the middle of the room on the end where you enter. The other half, the half with windows, is an ordinary dining room. Nothing fancy, plastic-topped tables and booths, with 1950s-style wood and vinyl chairs. There is carpet around the tables, and open wood floor by the bar. This carpet is the dividing line, that segregation of the facility into the family area, and the area where no minors are allowed.

As soon as you come in and pass the cigarette machine, which is loaded but I have never seen anyone put money into, you hit the line at Table Zero. Here the wife sits, in the same golden yellow t-shirt we all are wearing, and takes your money. Just like at the fast food lines, folks stand there and figure out what everyone wants to eat. And the wife returns a ticket for every 50 cents you pay.

These tickets are then redeemed when the food is delivered. I suspect someone came up with this ticket idea to keep the servers from having to deal with money, and carrying change. And it works, although I have no idea if anyone actually counts the tickets at the end of the night. Watch the wife and you will see her hands move down the coiled ribbon of paper tickets, counting two tickets for every burger, one for every fry or hot dog. Backing up one if a child changes their mind and wants a hot dog instead of the cheeseburger Dad had ordered.

Then it is off to grab a table. And wait for the young man in the yellow shirt to come by with his ticket book. Probably half the time someone at the table knows him by name, a co-worker of a parent, a neighbor, a relative or a teacher. And he writes your order down, one line of data for each plate. On the back of his ticket book you might notice his cheat sheet. HB for hamburger, CB for cheeseburger, HD for hotdog, and FF for the fries.

If he's new, at least once he will probably forget to list each plate on a separate line, and just list the food ordered for the entire table, yielding either a single plate stacked high with grub or, more likely, calls from the volunteer cooks in the kitchen immediately below you for a clarification.

That's part of my job. Run up and down the stairs, and find the boy whose initials are on the ticket (or, if they forget that detail, as one did tonight, doing a quick handwriting comparison that the FBI would be proud of with all the other tickets to identify the culprit). Usually he can remember who ordered what, provided you get him up in the room to look at the people at the table.

Drinks you order on your own, from the barmaids. Any tips left on the tables are presumed to be for these ladies, a large coffee can on Table Zero serving to collect tips for the servers.

Bill and his wife came in again, as they almost always do. And he again paid with a twenty dollar bill. And ten dollars of his change went into the boys' tip can. Something he has always done. With the night's tips being around $34 (Heh. This reminds me... I still need to buy the Sacagawea dollar out that can.), Bill has been by far our biggest supporter all these years.

It only took one night of hayhem, lost orders, folks whose table was forgotten, or whose food went somewhere else, for the wife and I to institute a standard restaurant procedure for this operation. The dining area was divided into stations, with pairs of boys assigned to each group of tables.

Yeah, there is still some chaos, especially when someone wants to take the order from their family or teacher. But generally, everyone gets waited on quickly, and we know who to talk to when food is late.

Apparently, when we missed last month's Burger Night, my replacement went back to the chaos theory of serving. Just having yellow shirts wandering repeated through the room looking for someone who hadn't ordered yet. Grabbing tables as they could.

Teaches boys nothing about true food service in real restaurants. Teaches them nothing about being responsible. Nothing about organization, distribution of labor, or teamwork.

We fixed that tonight. But it may be the last time.

Through the course of the two hours, the servers each get a break with a free meal. The high point, and incentive, for their work. This they take at the real, empty bar downstairs in the banquet room by the kitchen. And they get to trespass across that carpet barrier upstairs to order their free soda drink from the barmaids. The order of who gets to break first is almost always based on who arrived first. Although there are times, like tonight, where that order is rearranged simply to prevent two particular boys from being on break at the same time.

If we hadn't, they would have been goofing off the whole night together, never eating, never getting back to work.

The wife takes her meal at Table Zero, while I gobble down mine with the boys, occasionally refereeing the ketchup and french fry wars.

We had seven servers tonight, which worked perfectly. Three pairs in the dining area, and one, the eldest, to work the bar itself. But we lost three of them, and us, a half-hour early for the combined choir and band concert. Arranging the breaks was a little difficult, 'specially since the last kid to arrive is always the one who whines the most about being hungry.

Two of the boys had to change into their band tuxes, with red bow ties, before heading to the concert.

Have a wonderful photo of one, in full tux, heading up the stairs to deliver his last tray of food.

To the attention and applause of almost all in the dining room.