I Need a Gun – “Ketchup Sandwich Chronicles” – Hunger is not a Disease
“How much is an application for a gun permit?” I was the only cotton topped little old lady in the line at the Golden Hill government office in Kingston.
The counter person, an overweight man in his fifties, could hardly contain his laughter as he handed me the gun permit application. “That’ll be $5.00 please, miss.”
After handing him the money, I started to walk away. Then, turning back to him, I said pleasantly, “Will you sell me three more applications, please? A couple of the girls in my senior yoga class asked me to get applications for them, too.”
Pulling out $15.00 more, I put the money on the counter. The man gave me three more gun applications and I walked away. I had no idea who was going to receive them and I didn’t attend any senior yoga class but I remembered the old “Alice’s Restaurant” song about three people doing something and being part of a movement.
Things in the pantry were negative and confrontational since the first day I drove up with fresh produce for the hungry people shopping in the pantry. In the beginning, I tried to hide things and overlook the situation. Frankly, I hoped the negativity would just go away. And, of course, I was mistaken. Situations like that don’t just evaporate. People don’t just change. And now, I was beginning to tire of the whole situation. I’d been living with fear for years and was feeling like it was time to try to fix things.
Maybe a gun will help, I thought.
When I got home, Barry was sitting on the sofa, surrounded by his cats, Fizzle and Carrots, as he read his latest thriller.
“Hi, honey. How’s your day going?” Without looking up, he took a few grapes from a large fruit filled bowl on a table by the sofa.
“Here’s the application for the gun permit I just got. I want you to teach me to shoot a gun.”
“What!?”
“You can do it. You didn’t spend all those years sneaking off to the CIA without knowing how to use a gun. They even gave you a medal or something. For all I know, you’re a damn bazooka expert. Maybe I want to learn that, too!”
“You can’t do that! You might shoot one of the Chihuahuas.”
“Well, I’m tired of asking pantry volunteers to be bodyguards. It’s not safe when I’m working after hours at the pantry. And, I’m not one bit afraid of the shoppers.”
“Listen, I know your job is difficult. Not even a Marine drill sergeant would do what you’re doing. But, I don’t know about a gun.”
“That Mag-Lite I bought a while back just isn’t what I need. A gun is more powerful and I’ve lived with them my whole life. My grandmother kept a rifle in her bathroom.”
“T.G. you’re just not the gun type. I’ll teach you to use a knife. A good knife won’t cost as much as a gun and you won’t need a permit. You won’t need to buy bullets. There’s nothing to clean unless you stab someone. It’ll be easier to use and carry. I’ll give you some lessons. Nobody will ever know. It’ll be our secret. Leash up the Chihuahuas. We’re going to Warren Cutlery in Rhineback.”
And so he did. He took me to Warren Cutlery where there was a generous selection of knives. We went into the knife room which included stock for kitchens as well as other knives not designed to slice and chop onions. I stood in front of the case. “Which knife are you interested in?” The clerk spoke to me as though showing weapons to a cotton topped old lady was the most boring thing he did all day. And, maybe it was.
“I’d like to see the one over there with the four-inch blade, please.” I held it in my hand and then asked to see several more on display in the case. Barry walked over to the case, stood beside me, and saw the knife I held in my hand.
“That knife is too big and too heavy.” he said, pointing to a smaller model. “You need something you can carry in your purse and you need something you can open rapidly. If you’re too slow, your attacker will have you down before you get it open.”
So, I chose a smaller, lighter model that happened to be on sale.
Barry paid the bill, and off we went.
He did just what he said he would. He taught me how to open a knife quickly but never bothered teaching me to close it.
And, he was correct. A knife is quiet. It weighs less than a gun. There’s no need for a permit. The Chihuahuas won’t get shot. And, unless I go through a metal detector before I take it out of my purse, no one has a clue.
Before it was over, he bought me a second knife which I kept open on the pantry counter next to the large Mag-Lite, ostensibly to open the cardboard boxes.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, New York
Thank you for reading this story. It is, for now, the first chapter in “The Ketchup Sandwich Chronicles.”
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Serving the Hungry with an Understanding Heart
O Lord, You are a God of Abundance.
Allow me to serve the hungry with an open heart.
Give me the courage to distribute food without strings attached when volunteers are serving the hungry.
May I never need to keep score.
Give me the physical strength to keep the shelves of the pantry stocked with as much food as we can pack on them.
Grant me the emotional stamina to understand the many needs of the shoppers.
Never let me get so tired that I forget we are all one group: Yours
At the food pantry, hunger is hunger. It doesn’t matter what size the household is, what size the car is, or what or where the family calls home. At the food pantry, no one has to complete an application shop. What’s important is that the person is in the line and there is food for that person and his/her household.
Lord, You send over the food, You send over the people and You send over enough food for everyone with some left over. This happens every pantry day on every week. People are always welcome. Lord, You bring people together through the food pantry.
Thank You for all You do for the hungry.
Amen
Thank you for reading this blog.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco – Woodstock, New York
Food Pantry Blog: Guidelines for a Successful Pantry Visit
“But the most careful lives can be derailed – by cancer, a huge medical bill, a freak slap of weather, a massive failure of the potato crop. Virtue cannot prevent a “bad hand” from being dealt. And making the poor out to be lazy, or dependent, or stupid, does not make them less poor. It only makes the person saying such a thing feel superior.” – Timothy Egan
Try to arrive an hour or so before the pantry opens. This makes for a long wait but there’s a better selection right when the pantry opens. Also, while you’re waiting in line, you have an opportunity to make new friends and learn a few new survival skills if you’re new to the pantry experience.
Bring your own shopping bags. Some pantries don’t have enough of these necessary items.
Bring some ID. Some pantries require a lot: picture ID, proof of address, proof that other family members exist. This can be a bit of a challenge if you’re homeless. Two things you need to know: No one can ask to see your social security number. Some pantries require no identification.
Be prepared to wait in a line. Use this time to meet your line neighbors. They can be helpful if you’re trying to navigate your way through Department of Social Services, if you’re being foreclosed on, need your car repaired.
As you wait in line, try to learn how the pantry works from those around you in the line. You’ll want to know how long you’ll be in the shopping room, what foods are usually found on the shelves, what other pantries the people shop at, etc.
Don’t be afraid to let people know you’ve never been to a pantry before.
Once you find a pantry you can use, go every time you’re allowed. With luck, you’ll have a pantry in your area allowing weekly visits. Because pantry shopping takes so much time, shoppers sometimes just don’t go if they still have SNAP card money or if they have a few bucks remaining from a paycheck. Your best bet is to visit a pantry as often as you’re allowed. Most pantries have different food every week and you may miss out on some real savings by not shopping regularly.
Pantry shopping requires a totally new approach to cooking. So does cooking with only an electric skillet or microwave. Some pantries have periodic visits from nutritionists. Don’t be shy about asking him/her for any tips you might be able to use to help this adjustment easier for you. The nutritionist knows a lot about the food you are trying to cook with and s/he can answer any questions you have.
You may see fresh fruits and vegetables you don’t recognize. Be open to new taste experiences. Take the food home, find a cookbook at the library or go on the net and learn how to prepare the food. If you take one new food home each week, your kitchen skills will be vastly different in a year from what they are now.
Be open minded about this experience.
You’re going to be interacting with people you never thought in your wildest dreams that you would be around.
Know that most people in pantries, both volunteers and shoppers, are in a reconstructing and healing mode. We may not know it yet, but life is finally getting better for all of us.
Try to volunteer at your pantry. Volunteering at a pantry or soup kitchen offers you an opportunity to give of yourself. Giving away food and sharing smiles with those around you opens up opportunities you never thought possible. Your life is changing, healing. Give yourself the opportunity to go with this journey.
Sometimes people cry in the pantry. Well, it’s okay. Everyone cries at one time or another in the pantry, including me. This tells us all that the pantry is a safe place to be.
Peace and food for all.
Thank you for reading this blog/book.
Please share this post on your preferred social network.
Thurman Greco
Grocers, & Manufacturers Can Get By With A Lot Fewer Dumpsters If They Donate The Food And Let The Food Bank Truck Come By And Pick It Up.
All these donations going to food pantries, shelters, etc., are a real two-way street. Donating food is a break-even proposition for manufacturers.
To my way of thinking, it’s more advantageous for a farmer, grocer, or food manufacturer to donate the food to a Food Bank. All the food coming into the Food Bank has been diverted from a landfll. One advantage (or disadvantage, depending on how you look at it) to donating the food is that there are fewer dumpsters for people to dive in.
Some months I’d be lucky and get maybe 80% of what I needed. Other months I would get next to nothing that I needed. When that happened, I thought ahead and got what was available. Hands down, the most challenging month to get food was August because the food drives and food donations are seasonal. I finally decided that food donations are down in the late summer because nobody thinks of Food Banks and Pantries when they’re on vacation. One August, I bought 25 cases of water because I could get them and everything else was either scarce or nonexistent. That water came in very handy after Hurricane Sandy visited.
The Food Banks send out refrigerated trucks to pick up the excess. They get it to the warehouse where volunteers sort it and make it available to agencies as quickly as possible. The goal is to feed the hungry with the excess.
The second most challenging month is December. The first two Decembers I was the coordinator were dismal in the pantry because I hadn’t yet learned how to stockpile the food in advance. I was unprepared for this because, for one thing, I didn’t even have a storeroom to put the food in.
When the months were lean at the pantry, I made extra trips to Latham and returned with fresh produce. Fresh fruits and vegetables covered “a lot of ills” in the pantry because the shoppers didn’t have the money to buy fresh foods and they were always hungry for something fresh.
Thanks so much for reading about the food pantry.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
In The Food Pantry Blog, It’s All About Respect
“In the new millennium, our world requires us more than ever to accept the oneness of humanity.” – His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Different religions approach hunger and feeding the hungry in different ways. Christians cannot have pantries without invoking the name of Jesus.
For the Jewish pantry worker, feeding the hungry is more about doing good works…doing good for its own sake. Jews, of course, aren’t concerned with communion. There’s no reward or paying back.
The Woodstock Jewish Congregation took its turn in the pantry twice yearly. At first, when we were struggling with getting cars to caravan the monthly shipment over from Kingston, congregation members formed a caravan of cars and SUVs to bring the food over. Congregation members volunteered to work in the pantry during the month.
One month, Richard Spool simply showed up with lumber and all the tools needed to build foundation platforms for our shelving in the storeroom. He came into the storeroom, did all the work necessary to build absolutely perfect platforms and then left, personifying the feeling I got from the congregation members that their job at the pantry was to do what needed to be done and then, at the end of the month, melt away into the community and remain anonymous until their next turn. There was no quibbling about the pantry serving the unworthy hungry. None of the volunteers even seemed to be on the lookout for the unworthy hungry.
Richard must have liked being in the pantry because, several months later, he joined our board and became the treasurer.
Many of the volunteers left checks in my hand as they went out the door for the last time at the end of their “tour”. They were gracious, cheerful, smart, capable, wonderful. I could not have asked for a better group of volunteers. As a group, I adore Jewish Women. I’m convinced that, as a group, there’s nothing they cannot do.
Thank you for reading this post.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Meet a Few of Your Woodstock Neighbors
One shopper always visits the pantry without shoes. “Take these bags and wrap them around your feet.” instructs Guy Oddo each time he comes by.
At first, we were made uncomfortable by this situation. However, over time, most of us adjusted to Shoeless Joe’s situation and realized this is just (ho hum), another pantry event. Once we became more comfortable with the situation, he did too.
The female homeless shopper is in a special category because most of them take such care with their skin and hair. Where do they shampoo their hair?
And, of course, the homeless family is, for me, so tragic. It’s hard enough for a homeless man or woman to keep clean but what about the kids, the baby? How do they do it? And, yet, the families come into the pantry looking the best they possibly can to shop for their three-day supply of food.
We had one family, a mother, father, 3 children, who lived in a small camper throughout one summer. They were living at a campground and doing their weekly shopping at the pantry.
One week the mother related: “I’m really stressed out today. I don’t know where we’re going to go. We got evicted because I don’t have the money to pay the camping fee. The lady next to us gave me $5 for gas because we had to leave.”
I don’t know what happened to them. I never saw them again.
Thanks for reading this blog. There are many, many stories to share here.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
Everyone is Different – at Least in Woodstock, Anyway: 26 Reasons For Homelessness
For a time, our trusted Gene Huckle was even homeless. His partner, Nancy died and her children didn’t want him in the house he and Nancy had lived in together for many years. He fought them for over a year with a lawyer, several trips to court and the whole enchilada. He finally moved out and ended up homeless for a time. Gene eventually got housing through a homeless veterans program. I helped him move his clothes and things over to his new apartment in Saugerties.
Homelessness cannot be generalized. Each homeless person is a special personality and has a special situation which s/he deals with. So here’s my rule about homeless people:
if you’ve seen one homeless person, you’ve seen one homeless person.
They come to be homeless for many reasons:
abusive relationship
addiction
being kicked out of home or feeling unwanted at home
decline in available public assistance
domestic violence
eviction
family breakdown
gambling
home foreclosure
lack of affordable child care for low income families
lack of affordable health care
lack of availability of suitable housing
lack of employment opportunities
lack of ongoing support services
loss of benefits
mental illness
overcrowding
poor or no communication tools to include cell phone, computer access, physical address for receiving mail
poor credit
poor or no transportation
release from jail/prison
release from military service
sexual abuse
significant illness in the family
substance or drug abuse
lack of affordable childcare for poor working families
Thank you for reading this post. In the next post, we will learn about yet another homeless person and a homeless family.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
Volunteers Make Our Pantry Special
Arlen arrived the next day and proceeded to prepare a carload of fresh veggies and fruits for the shoppers. That day was such a gift! Our shoppers went home with perfect produce: no yellow leaves, no soft spots, no carrot tops. Everything was ready to prepare…just as if it had been bought at Gracie Balducci’s, Whole Foods, or Trader Joe’s. WOW!
On top of that, Arlen conversed with the shoppers in their native language: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Haitian, Creole, Esperanto.
From that day on, whenever Arlen was in Woodstock, he worked in the Good Neighbor Food Pantry. He made us all feel our pantry was special because we’re a vegetarian agency. Arlen is a vegan and absolutely will not touch anything animal based.
So how is Arlen homeless? Well, he moves around a lot and has a selection of friends who host him when he’s in their area. When Arlen arrives, there’s always a flurry of activity because he participates in every area event. When we had our first festival fundraiser, Arlen was on hand to help put up the tents, keep the grounds clean, etc. He offers the same enthusiasm to his hosts. Arlen makes himself an integral part of any place he stays.
And, Arlen truly is a part of any place he’s visiting. When Holly, his Woodstock hostess, put her house on the market to move to Rosendale, Arlen was upset. “Holly’s got her house for sale and we’re moving to Rosendale” he said with feeling. Wherever Holly goes, Arlen is going, too. I’m sure that, although Arlen will miss Woodstock, he and Rosendale will love each other.
Thanks for reading this post. Tomorrow’s post will focus on yet another homeless person we know as well as some of the causes of homelessness.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
The Homeless Shopper – Part 1: How Do You Cook Without a Kitchen?
THE HOMELESS SHOPPER
“Homeless is not a category of people. It’s just a situation that happens. It can happen to anyone.” – Salvador Altamirano-Segura
This post is the first of 8 focusing on homelessness.
Woodstock has more than its share of homeless people. One reason, I feel, is the community has a way of respecting or not respecting a person regardless of whether or not a roof is involved. Some of my absolute favorite shoppers were homeless shoppers who visited the pantry weekly.
One of the Good Neighbor Food Pantry’s regular homeless shoppers came into the pantry one day during a lull and taught me the rules of feeding the homeless. I suppose he was tired of coming to the pantry and not finding enough food to take away with him because Fancy Pants visited the pantry weekly and depended on what he found in this small room for his food. He was a very upbeat guy who saw as much positive in life as he could in spite of the fact that he spent the nights of his life on the floor of the bathroom in Town Hall. The place had no heat so he definitely was cold in the winter. However, even with the cold, hard floor, he was protected from the rain, snow, sleet.
His girlfriend came to the pantry with him each week. They made a date of it. He really loved her. This beautiful woman had a multiple personality disorder and was a different person with each pantry visit. And, of course, that was exactly what Fancy Pants loved about her.
Fancy Pants kept himself well hidden behind a lot of facial hair and baggy clothing. It was definitely hard to tell what he looked like underneath all the costumery. However, try as he might, he simply could not hide his intelligence, his outgoing attitude toward the world he lived in, and his love of life in general.
“The dietary needs of the homeless are different from those of people in all other categori
Meet Woodstock’s Food Pantry – Part 4 – Trouble Rears it’s Head in the Pantry
In the last post, I discussed Bread Alone and it’s connection to the local food pantry.
Everyone else in town goes across the street to Maria’s, a local restaurant owned by an Italian family who also has a very upscale pasta factory, Bella Pasta. Maria is a lovely lady who treats everyone as if we’re guests in her home.
Maria was a great supporter of the pantry. She donated cases of Bella Pasta to the pantry weekly. She was also an important cameo participant in the Tom Pacheco Concert, Gioia Timpanelli’s Storytelling Production, and Father’s John’s story. All of these events will be covered in future posts.
During the days after the fall of the economy in 2008, I learned to categorize the hungry in many ways: artists, crazy poor, elderly poor, employed poor, generational poor, homebound, homeless, ill poor, infant poor, messed-up poor, musicians, newly poor, poets, resource poor, situational poor, transient poor, underemployed poor, unemployed poor, veterans, writers.
I learned that different congregations had differing attitudes toward these people. They ranged from “There shouldn’t even be foot pantries” to “the hungry will be fed. But not the unworthy hungry”.
In all instances I followed the direction of the Food Bank that “the hungry will be fed”. Period. Not long after I became the coordinator, I learned of a rule handed down by the Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP). I learned that, among other duties, it was my job to see that the pantry offer a 3-day supply of food without exception to the worthy and the unworthy hungry. Whatever. It didn’t matter.
Thank you for reading this blog/book and this post. In the next post, I’ll begin a series of posts about homelessness in the pantry.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
