MISQUAH — The volunteer fire department will hold its spring pancake breakfast Sunday morning at the fire hall, a fundraiser the department runs between the opener breakfast and the Fourth, and at which, organizers cautioned, the syrup will be served hot “unless the warmer does that thing again,” a reference longtime attendees understood without elaboration.

The warmer in question — a hall fixture of uncertain vintage — has a documented tendency to deliver syrup at temperatures ranging from molten to merely room, sometimes within a single serving line, a behavior the department has learned to manage and declined to fix on the grounds that “a new warmer is hoses money, and the hoses come first.” Chief Gary Sundberg said a backup plan was in place, consisting of “a second pan and a closer eye,” and expressed cautious optimism.

Proceeds again support the department’s equipment fund, the standing priority of which remains replacement hoses, with the warmer, the chief acknowledged, “somewhere further down a list it may never reach.” Breakfast is served from seven to eleven; a free-will donation is requested; and children under five, by tradition, eat free, “though they mostly eat the whipped cream and leave the rest, which is the deal we’ve made with them.”

The department, which fields a roster of volunteers who are also the town’s farmers, mechanics, and clerks, runs the breakfast partly to raise money and partly, Sundberg said, “so people see us when nothing’s on fire, which is the better way to meet your fire department, and the way we’d all prefer.” The coffee, he promised, would be hot regardless of the warmer, “because the coffee is not the warmer’s department, thank God.”