SALISBURY — Anyone in the North Fulton Street area last week likely caught the aroma of Brunswick stew in the air.

The smell was coming from the Andrew Jackson Masonic Lodge’s annual Brunswick stew fundraiser. It’s the lodge’s largest fundraiser of the year and aids in many of the organization’s community outreach efforts.

“We would like to do $20,000 in sales,” lodge member Tim Hopper said. “We figure we are going to sell probably between 3,000-3,500 individual servings.”

Outside the lodge, a couple of Masons, including Tony Hager and Frank Mazzaro, were standing watch over massive cast iron cauldrons of the stew while lines of cars and hungry visitors awaited what was in store.

The Masonic Lodge used to host the Brunswick stew dinner inside, but when COVID-19 hit, like a lot of things, the dinner had to adapt, so it became a drive-through line.

“It did not impact (our fundraising),” Hopper said. “When we served outside, we made the same amount of money with less pots. When people come in and sit down, they eat more. We may ask them to only have two servings, but we are not going to cut them off.”

Serving inside also requires more hands on deck.

There were plenty of hands at the lodge last Thursday, though, running an assembly line of sorts to send out prepared serving bags. Inside the bag were a couple of packs of saltine crackers, an oatmeal cookie and an individual serving container of Brunswick stew.

The money that they raised will go to several extensions of the Masons’ operation.

“We give to an orphanage in Oxford,” Hopper said. “We also have a retirement center in Greensboro called White Stone. Then, we have another one that is investing in ourselves, a savings account, but that is only about 5 percent of what we make.

“The rest we give out five $2,000 scholarships for high school, college, it could be a spouse. They don’t have to be masonic. It’s anybody who applies for it.”

Hopper said that there are 14 charities within Rowan County that we give to, and that is where about a third of the proceeds go.

Those organizations include Meals on Wheels, Little League baseball, Boy Scouts of America, the Salvation Army, United Way, Family Crisis Council, ARC of Rowan, Toys for Tots and the Rowan Public Library.

The fundraiser has come a long way since its inception in 1958, when two pots of stew were made, resulting in $790 being raised for charity.

Since 1985, proceeds from the event have contributed more than $600,000 to Masonic and local charities.

The stew’s ingredients feature pork, chicken and beef, along with several vegetables like corn, peas, onions, celery and lima beans.