"This is terrific!", exclaimed Dorothy Dawson.

"When can we set the date for next year?"

Dawson, from Marble Falls, is the Texas Department of State Health Services" Public Health Nurse for Blanco County. She and her team of healthcare pros had just finished the flu shot clinic in Johnson City, where the turnout doubled the usual number.

More than 150 people of all ages (from four to 91) had come to the Activity Building at the First United Methodist Church to be vaccinated against flu, and in some cases, also against pneumonia and tetanus.

The clinic was a team effort involving the church, which provided the building; the DSHS, which brought the vaccines and the professionals to administer them; and the Blanco County Disaster Response Group, whose volunteers helped guide people through the paperwork and process.

"It was more than just helping on a worthy project," said volunteer coordinator George Cofran.

"If we have a real health emergency in Blanco County, like a pandemic disease, the DSHS will need volunteers who know how to work in a shot clinic and move thousands of people through it in a hurry. For us, this was a rehearsal for that."

That's why the BCDRG had a half-day training session last summer in how such PODs -- Points of Dispensing -- work, and how to work effectively in them. For volunteers who needed a refresher, the day began with a one-hour short-course to remind them of what they already knew.

Those who sat at the pointy-end of the needle said they came for the convenience and for the cost -- $10 for a flu shot, free to Medicare participants. But the highest praise was for the painless injections from the veteran nurses at the shot tables.

"Oh, it's easy," said nurse Glenna Tucker of Llano, "all it takes is 30 years' experience."