Mill Hall Firemen Ready for Fishing’s First Day
MILL HALL—The routine this weekend will be the same as it has been for better than half a century: Friday night a veteran group of Mill Hall Fire Company volunteers will spend its time conducting the company’s weekly bingo event, the proceeds put towards maintaining fire protection services in the Mill Hall area.
And, as every year since 1965, the firemen will run the Friday night bingo, clean things up for Saturday morning, go home and get an hour or so sleep and come right back before sunup and, augmented by additional volunteers, stage the annual Mill Hall Fire Company first day of trout season breakfast.
Pennsylvania’s trout season opens Saturday and for the 53rd year in a row the Mill Hall firemen will stage their breakfast.Present fire chief Bill Strunk, who has been a part of most of these breakfasts, said the breakfast makes for a great community event, an opportunity for Mill Hall area residents to put a face on the volunteers who belong to the Mill Hall Fire Company. The event, he noted, is one of the company’s bigger fundraisers each year, serving great pancakes and sausages to thousands and thousands of community members for better than five decades.
Strunk (as told to The Record back on the 50th anniversary) said the idea came about from a pancake event staged at the Lock Haven Elks in the early 1960s. Aunt Jemima was the pancake brand used (and the company provided an “Aunt Jemima” as part of the Lock Haven event staged by the Lock Haven Kiwanis Club).
Strunk said that breakfast led Mill Hall firemen Ted Reeder and Harold Rogers to incorporate a fire company breakfast into the start of the local trout season. They even tried to get Aunt Jemima to come to Mill Hall; that didn’t work, but the Aunt Jemima company provided the necessary pancake batter.
Strunk said the late Louden Kyle furnished the milk, eggs and butter and the first ever Mill Hall Firemen First Day of Trout Season Breakfast was born in 1965.Strunk said the firemen depend on the breakfast, along with their Friday night bingo and an annual mail solicitation, to help fund their volunteer services.
The preparation concept has changed a bit over the years, firemen speeding the process by first baking the sausage then reheating it at the breakfast. On average, Strunk said, 250 to 300 orders are served during the 5 to 10 a.m. hours of operation.
The cost of breakfast has remained little changed over half a century, an adult breakfast this Saturday costing $6; for children 12 and under it is $4. It’s a no-frills but delicious breakfast, pancakes and sausage, one that attracts fishermen, fisherwomen and plenty of community members who just want to help the fire company.
