Lunch is $3, or $4 if you haven't ripened yet to age 60. Lunchtime conversation is optional. Back scratch is free. After lunch, you're welcome to help with the dishes.
Rose Morrow, 49, the center's nutrition director and manager, started work at the center five and one-half years ago. Since then, she has provided the complimentary back scratch to folks who are sitting at the last table designated to line up for lunch. The lunch meal is served three times a week, and there's usually four or five tables full of people waiting for the cafeteria-style meal. Fifty to 70 folks commonly eat at the center, mostly Senior Center members, plus occasional visitors from the community or out of town.
"It's something Rose started so that last table doesn't feel bad. That way you don't mind being last," said Betty Corum as she scraped plates after lunch last Monday. Corum, 75, was one of about 15 folks at Table 5 whose backs were scratched Monday, including two visitors - this reporter and a woman from Canada visiting relatives in Ronan.
Morrow said the back scratch she provides probably does help folks at the last table feel less impatient. But it serves a more profound purpose.
"It's a way to connect with each senior as an individual. A lot of people don't like to be hugged. But everybody needs some kind of touch," she said.
Sociologists of aging say that such social contact is one of many benefits that patrons at a Senior Center "congregate" meal setting provides, in addition to the obvious benefit of regular, affordable, nutritious hot meals. Other benefits of congregate meals for the elderly include relief of social isolation, recreational opportunities, mental stimulation, and through volunteer work (such as cleaning the tables and washing the dishes after lunch) a sense of participation and continuing productivity within one's community.
All senior lunch programs provide those benefits in different ways and varying degrees.
But neither Morrow nor any of the local Senior Center members know of another Senior Center in the area, or anywhere else that provides a back-scratch service, nor are they aware of any commercial food-service establishment that does so. So, as far as is known here in Ronan, Morrow's before-meal back treatment is a unique contribution to good digestion obtainable only at the Mission Valley Senior Center. Unless, of course, you have a compliant spouse at home.
If the back-scratch technique is unique, so maybe is the sauerkraut salad, which was one of three side dishes accompanying the beef stew with vegetables on the menu Monday.
The recipe's origin, said assistant cook Joan Sampson, is her well-thumbed copy of the 1994 Winnett Home Town Reunion Cookbook, which Sampson, a Winnett native, obtained when she attended the reunion in her home town (Pop. 185) in central Montana years ago.
Sauerkraut salad is an example of the frugal and creative cookery that is a proud tradition at the Mission Senior Center.
Here's how it came to be on Monday's menu.
Last week, Sampson and head cook Linda Schoon served a Senior Center favorite - sauerkraut and hamburger pizza, believe it or not.
"It's amazing how many people love it," Sampson said.
But only about half the industrial-sized can of sauerkraut was needed for pizza topping.
So they reserved the rest for Monday's salad. It is really pretty easy to make. You just add some sauerkraut to some salad greens and maybe a little onion, and there your are - a nutritious, wholesome salad with a pucker to it.
Frugality and creativity with the sauerkraut is one way the Mission Valley Center keeps lunches interesting and nutritious. (Nutrition experts say raw salted and pickled cabbage is very nutritious). It is also a way the cooks help Morrow stretch a dime as far as it can be stretched, to keep the budget in line with increasing costs.
Although the Ronan Center's lunch program, like some 300 others across Montana, is subsidized in part by the Older Americans Act Title III Funded Congregate Meal Site Program, it must rely on volunteer work, in-kind services, fundraising efforts, the occasional bequest, and old-fashioned farm-house frugality to make ends meet and to keep meal prices affordable and nutritious.
For example, the apples at Monday's meal came from Sampson's own apple tree. She has a cold-storage shed at home that kept the fruit fresh all winter, ready to bring to the Senior Center in spring.
And in the freezer, head cook Schoon has packed away a dozen or so neatly packaged gallon containers of frozen rhubarb, home-grown and donated, of course. On top of the rhubarb is a plastic container marked "cookie crumbs," which are leftovers from making cookies. They will find their way into some creative dish, perhaps a gravy.
Like many senior centers across Montana and the nation, the Ronan center has experienced a slow but steady decline in lunch-day attendance during the last decade. Reasons are unique to each center, and are unclear at the Ronan facility. The population of older folks that could be served is growing as a percentage of the entire population, according to Census data nationally and locally.
"Ten years ago, there were 60 to 70 people here for lunch, now there's 50 to 60," said Senior Center president (and center bus driver) Al Sampson, Joan Sampson's spouse. He and Morrow said they could only speculate about the causes. Perhaps a stigma has become attached to "senior" congregate eating (congregate eating is what the federal government calls this cafeteria-style food service for the elderly). Perhaps people are keeping their jobs longer, or have more money saved up for retirement, and are vacationing more, eating out more, or visiting their children elsewhere.
"The older people are here (in Ronan area), but it's tough to recruit the younger ones (of the senior population) to come for lunch," Sampson said. The average age statewide of congregate meal patrons at senior centers is 79, and that is about true for the Ronan center. There are more than 100 members of the Senior Center.
Statewide, the number of people served is down about 3 percent in the last year or so, but meanwhile delivered meals has gone up, said Charlie Rehbein, chief of the Aging Services Bureau, Department of Health and Human Services in Helena.
"Home delivery continues to grow, as people are not able to get out as much," he said. "Congregate meals served are dropping, but home delivery meals are climbing at about the same rate" throughout the state, he said.
Even so, senior centers across the state served more than a million congregate meals last year, he said.
A substantial and steady decline has also occurred nationally in congregate meals programs, according to the National Policy and Resource Center on Nutrition and Aging of Florida International University, Miami. Nationally, the biggest reason for decline is lack of or unreliable transportation, which is not an issue at Ronan. A Senior Center bus is available to take folks back and forth to the noon meal, if they choose.
Ronan's Senior Center also delivers meals to shut-in residents within six miles or so of town. Again, for reasons unknown, participation in that service has declined about one-third over the last decade, according to numbers provided by Morrow. This is contrary to state and national trends, where such meal deliveries to shut-ins are up substantially in recent years.
The Ronan center serves lunch at the center each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Senior Center about six blocks away offers a similar lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So folks can "float" and get a good lunch each week day.
"We encourage it. Seniors in general need to have good nutrition and good conversation," Morrow said.
The Ronan Center also offers a monthly Thursday night special dinner that is popular with all ages in the community, not just with seniors. It occurs on the second Thursday of each month and features old-fashioned ranch cooking.
"'It's roast pork, mashed potatoes and gravy, a vegetable, fruit salad, green salad, punch and coffee. We encourage younger people to come in and we love it when people bring their kids and grand kids. For the little ones, no charge," Morrow said.
On the last Friday of every month, the Center traditionally holds a birthday dinner.
"We celebrate the birthdays of everyone (that occurred) in that month. We have cake and ice cream, roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, and salad, and musicians come in to entertain. It's kind of a senior's jam session," she said.
All this activity, from budgeting to back-scratching, is overseen by Morrow, who has been working with seniors virtually all her adult life, first as a homemaker and now as a "nutrition director."
"The nutrition director is a glorified grocery shopper. I do the shopping, pay the invoices, track payroll, and visit with the seniors - and that is the best part of the job," she said.
Reporter John Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or jstromnes@missoulian.com
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