The Dump…and Much More at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry in Woodstock
“I dread talking about politics because I don’t like politics. Never have. Never will. Don’t understand it. Don’t trust it. Politics scares me.” – Kathy Bates
Bob Otto, a volunteer, visited every car dealer in Kingston and Saugerties asking for a van or truck for our pantry. Sawyer Motors was the only dealer who even gave Bob any attention. Bob got a few minutes with Robert Siracusano and was able to appeal to his sense of community.
“I don’t have anything now, but we do get lease vehicles in. When the right vehicle comes in, I’ll call you.”
And, he was good for his word. In about three months Sawyer Motors called with a low mileage Dodge Grand Caravan in excellent condition. The price was right and Barry drove over, paid for the car with money I had in savings and picked it up. What a wonde3rful thing Bob Otto and Sawyer Motors did for us! We now had a vehicle large enough and strong enough to do all the jobs needed to be done. The car, which we named Vanessa, was on the road eight days a week from the moment she left the lot.
Vanessa could be seen at the dump at least four days a week. On Tuesdays, after we stocked the shelves and made the takeout runs, Vanessa hauled enough cardboard to fill up the cardboard receiving tub at the dump. And, Vanessa returned on Thursday morning with cardboard collected during the pantry shift on Wednesday afternoon. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, Vanessa carried yet another totally full load of cardboard on Friday morning before we drove to Latham to pick up 1,000 to 1,200 pounds of canned/boxed food.
Cardboard disposal was a huge part of our pantry routine. For starters, we had to dispose of the cardboard because if we didn’t, we would have been very quickly overrun with the boxes (within two days, at the latest.)
Secondly, cardboard was important to the building committee. Members believed the cardboard harbored “vermin” (to use the committee term.) This could not have been further from the truth. In reality, we had no insects or rodents to speak of. The reason behind this is our boxes were constantly being moved around both at the Food Bank and then, finally, at our pantry. When boxes are “on the move”, any and all self-respecting insects and mice “skedaddle”, to use a technical term used at the Food Bank.
When we first moved into the storeroom, we found a mouse. Once we caught that one mouse, we never saw another one. We set out many mouse traps, ant and roach motels, all around the storeroom in case something came around but we never really found anything.
The building committee objected to cardboard in the hallways, in the pantry, outside the building where it could be seen, and in the parking lot. We were never able to totally overcome this objection because there were no places to keep the broken down cardboard boxes. We did our best to make sure that, at the end of each shift, all the cardboard was removed.
In addition to our regular duties in the pantry, Robert Allen, Richard Allen, Tony Cannistra, Jim Hansen, Bob Oddo, Barry Greco, the Anderson team, and I were an informal committee devoted to breaking down and disposing of the cardboard.
As the shopper population increased on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, flying boxes were seen in the hallway the entire shift.
And, as if all of the above wasn’t enough, Vanessa always worked a full day on Friday. Every Friday, Barry and I drove Vanessa to Latham to pick up one thousand to fifteen hundred pounds of canned or boxed USDA foods. We had a standing appointment in the warehouse at 11:30 a.m.
I placed the order every Wednesday when I called Bonnie or Michele and asked for whatever USDA foods that had turned up on Monday and Tuesday. Our pantry was allowed sixteen cases of each different USDA item each month. In my book, USDA was worth its weight in gold bars. The food was free and, when it was in stock, there was a good variety: canned refried beans, canned vegetarian beans, canned green beans, peanut butter, juice, frozen chicken, frozen blueberries, dates, prunes, tomato sauce.
Each Friday morning at 11:30, Barry and I loaded the food into Vanessa and returned to Woodstock. At 4:00, we were allowed in the building to offload the food in the pantry. The building committee gave us a thirty-minute slot between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. on Friday to offload. We weren’t allowed to put the food on the shelves at that time but we could at least get it out of the car. Nor were we allowed in any other part of the building beyond the pantry room.
And, I never felt we were trusted in this effort. Many was the time people watched us as we unloaded the food.
The frozen food we brought back went in the freezer in the barn.
When we had a food drive at the Sunflower on a Saturday, we carried the food around in Vanessa until the following Tuesday morning at 9:00 because we weren’t in the building on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
