‘They're teaching us to cook their way:’ A Utah food truck is serving thousands of flood victims in Texas

Kountze, Texas • Hundreds of people in this small town ate a staple Texas meal Tuesday night: stuffed green peppers, served with some sweet tea.

It didn’t come from a restaurant. Many businesses in this part of the state are still closed or just reopening after record rainfall and widespread flooding. Thousands of people are busy repairing their homes, others still can’t return because the water has yet to recede.

People from the area surrounding Kountze, a town of about 2,000 two hours northeast of Houston, have made their way to the parking lot of a Christian church around breakfast, lunch and dinner this week where they were served by a couple from Moab who drove their mobile kitchen 20 hours to help Texas recover from Hurricane Harvey.

“Over half of this meal was donated by the locals,” said John Clayton, owner of the Sunset Grill in Moab, who poured sweat as he stood in his trailer-turned rolling kitchen Tuesday night. ”They now have a place to come eat.”

John and Laurie Clayton usually use their kitchen-on-wheels to feed firefighters during Utah’s wildfire season, but after seeing the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, they decided to head to Texas. They left Utah last week without a final destination in mind and by word of mouth and social media found their way to the Gateway Church, which has turned into a distribution center. In the ensuing four days, they’ve served thousands of meals to residents and volunteers who are only now starting to rebuild their lives. They plan to stay for at least another six days.

“One lady came in in shock, [she] just got rescued,” John Clayton said. “She walked in, doesn’t even know where she’s at. She got some food.”

In coming to Texas, the Claytons became part of a massive network of average people who either came to volunteer or sent aid to support the hundreds of thousands of lives upended by the storm.

From Utah, the Salt Lake County Republican Party, with the help of ABC4, organized a drive that filled two-semi trucks with supplies. Two Utah animal groups came to help care for the dogs and cats stranded by the storm. Utah firefighters saved people by boat. Utah National Guardsmens saved them by helicopter.

And many people here describe being rescued by their neighbors. Dennis Landry is now using his boat to show people the damage.

He found Bonnie Stephenson, the mayor of tiny Rose City, outside of Beaumont, as she was stopped from going any father by quick-moving water that residents fear will sink the town for good. Landry backed his boat into a flooded ditch to pick up Stephenson and others. 

“Devastation. It‘s just a mess. I went through [Hurricane] Ike, but it wasn’t anything compared to this,” Stephenson said, referring to the hurricane that crushed the area in 2008.

Rebuilding will be a long process, but in these early days residents in counties across southeast Texas are receiving help or offering it in ways big and small.

“It kind of restores your faith in humanity,” said Jody Crump, a commissioner in Orange County, Texas.

Men from the cast of the TV show “Diesel Brothers,” who live in Davis County, visited the area, sent supplies and helped rescue flood victims near Beaumont.

At the Gateway Church in Kountze, rooms are filled with food, water, milk and cleaning supplies and another building is filled with new clothing that volunteers are giving to a near-constant stream of people from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

They received donations from enough people and places that Jennifer Thatcher started coloring a map of the 50 U.S. states marking where the packages came from. Nearly half of America was filled in with purple marker.

It was the Claytons’ mobile kitchen that got Utah filled in on the map. The couple serve food on the east side of the church’s campus, 20 minutes north of Beaumont, where rain  has left lingering and widespread flooding from the nearby rivers.

They’re serving thousands of meals each day as residents come seeking one, two, six meals at a time for neighbors, friends and family who are working to clear out the soggy furniture from their homes and begin making repairs.

“We searched the internet to see how these people eat,” John Clayton said. “Now, they’re teaching us how to cook their way.”

The Claytons received thousands of dollars from Utahns who offered money for their effort and nearly $10,000 more from an online fundraising campaign. An older woman from Monticello, offered yellow squash and zucchinis from her garden. Kountze residents ate them Monday night.

Clayton said he’s looking for more ways to help before the couple return home. High schools in the area that were flooded are trying to host a football game Friday night that John hopes to attend.

It has been hard work, making so many meals each day, but the Claytons consider their service a privilege.

“We are very lucky to be here,” John Clayton said.