Linda DeGarmo knows there is more to food than what meets the mouth. Word was out last week that the Tippy Toe Inn in Chaseburg, population 300 and shrinking, would no longer serve subsidized meals to the elderly.

The budget for the Unit on Aging was pinched, and the six to 25 or so people in Chaseburg who regularly received meals at the Tippy Toe would have to find a ride to nearby Stoddard or Coon Valley.

DeGarmo — who with her husband, Marvin, runs the Tippy Toe and is village clerk of Chaseburg — pretty much told the county, "OK, fine, I'll do it myself then."

So today is the final day of the Tippy Toe Inn as the official meal site. A favorite, the Wednesday special is chicken, baked potato and coleslaw.

Friday will be the first day of the Tippy Toe as the unofficial place for old people to eat low-cost, nutritious meals. DeGarmo will charge $3.50 for a solid hot meal.

"If I don't make money on it, I am taking the loss myself," said DeGarmo. The Tippy Toe is "a little place, we do a homemade meal every day, so it will change from mashed potatoes and meatballs and a veggie, to roast beef, or pulled pork, or chicken hot dish, or a bowl of soup and a burger," she said.

Most of the customers, however, are from Chaseburg, a village on the Coon Creek, which has flooded to disastrous effect for the past two summers.

The DeGarmos have owned the Tippy Toe Inn — a bar and restaurant, actually — for about eight years, inheriting a regular clientele and a name devised by previous owners based on the slogan: "Tippy toe in and stagger out."

While county officials have said the Unit on Aging meal program changes were impossible to avoid, and that no "homebound" elderly would lose meal delivery, DeGarmo said the loss is not one the village can accept.

"I think it stinks that the county is doing this," she said. "What are our people supposed to do? They can't drive all the way to Coon Valley and Stoddard. It was just one more thing being taken away from our older folks here," she said.

With that sort of choice, she said, some of the elderly would just as soon "go without."

So the meal stays, and DeGarmo and restaurant staff Bernadette "Bunny" Johnson and Karli Zimmerman will cook and serve as usual, though DeGarmo says creamed spinach — "nobody eats it" — will no longer be served. "The meals I serve will be ones I know they will eat."

Myrna Ostrem, a retired widow who lives two blocks from the Tippy Toe, said if the meal service moved out of Chaseburg, she would probably not be a regular.

"Rather than cook for just one, it is an easy way to pick up a nutritious meal," said Ostrem.

And, noted Ostrem and DeGarmo and others, a meal with others provides the nutrition of human contact that feeds the mind and soul, too.

"It's a social gathering, it is important because we know that if someone doesn't show up, someone might need to go check," DeGarmo said. "It's a way to keep an eye on our folks," she said, and that was not the first time she used the word "our."

DeGarmo's changes add an extra day to the program, Monday through Friday. Liver and onions and bacon will remain the special the first Thursday of the month, so calendars can be marked, whether you lean for or against.

MORE INFORMATION

IF YOU NEED HELP: The Tippy Toe Inn on Depot Street in Chaseburg, on Highway 162 halfway between Coon Valley and Stoddard, is open daily from 7 a.m. to "however late the bartender wants to stay," and serves food through 3 p.m.; 608-483-2119.

IF YOU WANT TO HELP: Donations to help cover the cost of the meal program for the elderly can be sent to the Tippy Toe, 307 Depot St., Chaseburg, WI 54621.