How Woodstock’s Food Pantry Fit Into This Beginning: Introduction – Part 2
From the start, it was fairly obvious that I was a poor match for the congregation. However, I kept going because of the pet thing. Soon I was volunteering at the local food pantry two months a year when it was St. Gregory’s turn. By 2008, the economy had tanked, the lines at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry were getting longer and Vicar Gigi was going around telling anyone who would listen that “Thurman is out of control over at the pantry” because of the number of people shopping at the pantry and the 3-day supply of food they were getting.
Good Neighbor Food Pantry opened in 1990 and served about two dozen people a week on Thursday mornings. The shoppers, mostly single homeless men, a few local colorful characters such as Jogger John, Rocky, and Grandfather Woodstock, and an occasional family would come into the pantry and pick up a box of cereal, a can of tuna fish, and a can of soup. Other things might be available but weren’t considered staples.
Only one shopper, Marie, focused on the other things. She loved to come in to the pantry and scarf up every “extra” on the shelves. She took the occasional jar of olives, cooking oil, sugar, salt…anything she could find.
Several congregations rotated the management of the pantry: St. John’s Roman Catholic Church, St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, Overlook Methodist Church, Shady Methodist Church, Christ Lutheran Church, Woodstock Jewish Congregation, Woodstock Reformed Church, and Palden Sakya.
Each congregation stocked the shelves with what their members donated and the shoppers got what they got. The congregations were content with the arrangement. They took their monthly turn twice yearly, brought in the food, found volunteers from the membership who sat in the pantry visiting with one another for two hours every Thursday morning while serving the hungry.
Thanks for visiting this blog and reading this post. I hope you found it informative and interesting. As the story unfolds in the next post, the “beginning” will move into the story itself. If you read a sentence, paragraph, or even an entire post that you feel is untrue, rest assured that this memoir/blog is very real. Everything written in every post actually happened. It’s my story.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Thurman Greco
