Waiting to get into the Pantry Room, the Shoppers at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry in Woodstock Stand in the Hallway for as Much as an Hour Sometimes
The hallway was about fifty feet long and eight feet wide. It was lighted with neon lights installed in the ceiling. About six feet in on the left wall, before the Meals on Wheels entrance, was the Items of Dignity closet. About halfway down the hallway on the left was the entrance to the Meals on Wheels kitchen.
To make sure the Meals on Wheels volunteers could get in and out of the building, the sign in table was on the right side of the hallway across from the Meals on Wheels entrance.
The shoppers stood in a single line behind the sign in table on the right side of the hallway. They weren’t allowed to touch the walls or sit on the floor. They just stood there, for as much as an hour sometimes, waiting for their turn to go into the small pantry room.
“I hope they have yogurt today. Bobby really likes to have a cup of yogurt when he comes home from school.”
“Those green beans we got last week were sooo delicious!”
“Does anybody know someone who can fix my car?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
At the end of the 50-foot hallway was the storeroom and the famous left turn. The hallway turned left here leading to the rest of the church. Forbidden territory. We weren’t allowed to go down the hall beyond that point. Unfortunately, that’s where the bathrooms were.
If someone needed to use the men’s room or women’s room, they walked to the end of the hallway, turned left into the forbidden territory, and then chose the appropriate room. After the person left the restroom, a volunteer went into the room and inspected it for cleanliness and to be sure the toilet paper wasn’t stolen.
“Next 2 please.”
“Tony, here’s some more cardboard for you.”
Thanks for reading this blog/book. Tomorrow’s post focuses on a new family visiting the pantry for the first time.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – In the Pantry Room on Wednesday Afternoons
We want to prevent waste and build community. Why throw away perfectly good food? There are hungry people who could really use it right now.” – Nancy Hahn
Rich Allen walked to the door of the Woodstock Reformed Church. “Will the first five people in line please come in now?”
For me, this was always a sacramental moment.
I stood at the door to the pantry room. “Is anyone signed in?”
As soon as a person was signed in s/he was invited into the pantry. Shoppers continued to enter the pantry as soon as they were signed in until the room’s total was four shoppers. When this happened, the persons waited in the hallway until a person finished and left the pantry. Then the next person in line was called in. This pace continued nonstop until the pantry closed at 7:00. We kept the room at a maximum of four shoppers all afternoon because there was always a line.
People shopped for the two to three minutes it took to go around the room and then left. In that short time they chose from about thirty different kinds of canned goods and whatever fresh foods were available. We rarely ran out of the fresh foods because we brought as much back from Latham as we could carry.
With four shoppers and one to two volunteers in this small room, there was no room to turn around, back up, or retrace one’s steps. The produce boxes were piled high along the four walls in front of the shelves. They held the bounty from the drive to the Food Banks. The shoppers filed through the pantry very quickly. A slow shopper might even stop the line for a few moments. As the people edged around the room with not even an inch of free space, empty boxes were sailing out of the room to be caught by Tony Cannistra, Bob Otto, or Richard and Robert Allen.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman
Wednesday Afternoon Pantry Opening Ceremonies
Every Wednesday, when the barn shopping was happening, I walked up to the pantry entrance. The shoppers always parted and allowed me space to get to the door.
“Hello.”
“How are you doing?”
“I haven’t seen you in awhile. How are you doing today?”
“How is your neck doing? Have you got that operation scheduled yet?”
Every Wednesday afternoon, at exactly 3:00 p.m., I unlocked the small basement door in the side of the Woodstock Reformed Church. There was a ceremony to this. I entered the building accompanied by two volunteers. We then worked rapidly to get things ready for the shoppers. I turned the lights in the pantry room and the hallway on. The doors to the Items of Dignity closet were opened.
The outside building door of the Woodstock Reformed Church opened into a small foyer area with a stairway to the second floor and another door leading into the hallway itself.
No one connected with the pantry was allowed to linger in the foyer.
No one connected to the pantry was allowed to stand, sit, or walk up and down the stairs.
No one connected with the pantry was allowed to leave packages in the foyer.
No one connected with the pantry was allowed to place cardboard in the foyer.
In short, the foyer was kept open, free of anything or anyone at all times.
The door in the foyer opened into the hallway which was about fifty feet long and about eight feet wide. This is where all the action was.
As we walked through the foyer to the hallway, we worked rapidly to prepare for the crowd of hopeful people outside the door.
The door to the pantry was immediately to the right at the beginning of the hallway. Three feet beyond the pantry entrance was another door…to a room no one was allowed to enter: the handicap bathroom.
Two volunteers, usually Rich Allen and Prasida Kay, would fire upn the computer and make sure the sign in table was ready while I ran into the pantry and quickly checked everything one last time.
Maritza broke out of the line, entered the hallway and stood at the Items of Dignity closet. She speaks no English but she has a beautiful smile and definitely knows how to distribute toilet paper and razors.
“Okay out there?”
“I’m fine”. Rich
“Wait Thurman. We need another couple of minutes.” Prasida
“Okay guys. It’s a go…GO.” I stood at the entrance to the pantry room.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Meet 7 Wednesday Shoppers in the Good Neighbor Food Pantry
The local bicycle shop owner visited regularly. If I were going to give a title of “mayor” to a member of the pantry shopping community, I would give it to him. Everyone loved visiting with him, chatting with him for a moment. His energy was calm, grounding. He knew everyone’s name, shared his energy with everyone he came in contact with. He embodied a real respect for the earth and its resources as he rebuilt used or discarded bicycles into beautiful, functional, desirable pieces of equipment to be used again, in another incarnation. One Christmas, for example, Jo Schwartz bought a bicycle for Robert Allen from him.
Some afternoons we saw as many as four or five of the more famous local poets lined up in the hallway together. I always felt honored to be in their presence. And, I was honored that they came to our pantry for food. I was, however, saddened by the fact that we live in a society with absolutely no consideration for writers, poets, artists, sculptors, musicians.
One angry man showed up at our pantry the day after he was fired. After that day, he shopped at our pantry regularly. And, of course, it was a situation where we all knew he wasn’t ever going to work again. It took him way over a year to calm down from the injustice of it all. He was quiet about his anger but anybody with a brain and an eye could see the emotions. He simply could not get his feelings off his face.
One famous artist came regularly for many months. He home was being foreclosed on. He maintained a positive mental attitude about the whole experience. But sorrow was unavoidable. After the foreclosure process was complete, he ended up in a shelter in Kingston. He still shopped at our pantry whenever he could get over to Woodstock for about a year afterward. Here was a man with an international following who could not make payments on a very modest dwelling in Woodstock.
Thank you for reading this blog/book. Tomorrow’s post focuses on the actual Wednesday afternoon opening ceremony of the pantry.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Hungry People Waited Outside the Building in Rain, Snow, Freezing Cold, or Boiling Heat to Shop
Everyone waiting up by the church door would have established his/her place in line. And, most of the people who came down to the barn to get food stayed mindful of that place. Some people wouldn’t come down for fear of losing their place in line. That wasn’t a frivolous decision because the wait could sometimes be more than an hour with no chairs to sit on. Leaning on the wall was not permitted by the building committee. Sitting on the stairs wasn’t permitted either. People stood outside the building in rain, snow, freezing cold, boiling heat, etc., until called to come into the building to sign their names in the shopper ledger book. They entered the hallway in groups of five. Once they signed in, they stood in the hallway and waited their turn.
Most of the people waiting outside the building did make it down to the barn though.
There was one group of hearing impaired people, five in total.
There were two women who always carpooled. Together, dripping wet, they weighed about 110 pounds.
One young woman came over from Motel 19 on most weeks. She had two daughters in their early teens. She volunteered at a pantry in Kingston regularly and visited our pantry for the produce.
Two sisters came weekly. They were both married, had 9 children between them. They carpooled to save on gas. Husbands and pets came along for the ride.
An older couple came weekly. She was ill with congestive heart failure. He was large and walked with a cane. Often he came alone because she was in the hospital or at the doctor’s. They were in a situation where they had simply not made enough money in their lives to be able to live on social security.
Thanks for reading this blog/book. We’ll talk about more people who visited the pantry and waited in the line on Wednesdays in the next post.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – Part 1 of 4 – Wednesdays in the Pantry
Many of the people who come to our pantry receive a moment: a smile, a touch, a recognition that they are important. Our shoppers are positive in the pantry because we offer them love, positive attitude, respect.” – Mary R. Rainey
The pantry line formed on Wednesdays at the side entrance of the Woodstock Reformed Church, beginning a couple of hours before the Good Neighbor Food Pantry opened. We were allowed to enter the building on Wednesdays for food distribution between 3:00 and 7:00 pm. Prasida Kaye, Rich Allen, and I gathered in the rear of the parking lot about 2:30. We couldn’t get into the building but we could open the barn where the frozen food was stored in donated freezers and refrigerators.
As we opened the barn, I signaled to the shoppers to “come on down” and select an item of frozen or refrigerated food. Depending on what we had available, every household chose from a package of frozen meat, an occasional pound of butter, a package of Bella Pasta donated by Maria’s, or a package of frozen macaroni and cheese (from Land O Lakes). Bob Otto and Tony Cannistra stood at the entrance to the barn and offered selections to each shopper coming by.
Barn duty was, in my opinion, feeding the hungry under the worst conditions. Bob and Tony took standing in front of the barn distributing the frozen food to people in all kinds of weather because the pantry always opened…no matter what. In the cold, they would trade off so they could come in the pantry occasionally and get warm – imagine that: getting warm in a building that was warmed only with body heat.
Thanks for reading this blog/book. Tomorrow’s post will focus on the people who came each week to shop.
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Thurman Greco
The Refrigerator…and the Storeroom!
I went upstairs to Pastor Bode’s secretary. “We’re sooo happy to be able to store our food in the room at the end of the hall. I’m wondering one other thing, though. Do you think it would be okay to bring the refrigerator in as well. There are several electrical outlets. This would be great because then we could keep eggs in the storeroom.”
“Sure thing, Thurman, bring it in.” she said as she looked at me smiling.
I went downstairs and spoke with two of the volunteers from Hudson Correctional. “Can you guys go out to the barn and bring in the refrigerator? We need the one that is 100% refrigerator – no freezing unit – just the refrigerator.”
“Sure thing Thurman. We’ll be glad to do it.”
In less than 5 minutes, the unit given to us by Barry Motzkin was hauled into the building.
“Put it against this wall” I said, pointing to the one place in the room where the refrigerator would be the least obvious.
So, I got the room. I don’t think I ever got permission to use the room permanently. It was just a squatter’s rights thing. Once I got in there, they weren’t able to move me out.”
Same with the barn. The dirt floor (mud, when it rained) was permanently covered with broken down cardboard boxes. Everything was propped up on pallets. The big freezer was actually on two pallets which were stacked one on the other.
Was I wrong to have been so pushy?
Well, I don’t think so. I DID make one large mistake, though. I didn’t bring all the refrigerators into the storeroom. After all, Meals on Wheels down the hall had five appliances. There were enough outlets.
When Ed Jabbs and his committee members saw that room full of food and the refrigerator in there, hidden on a
back wall, filled with dozens and dozens of eggs, they were one unhappy bunch of hombres.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
There’s Always More…The Refrigerator, Cont’d
“Hunger is not an issue of charity. It’s an issue of justice.” – Jacques Diouf
The refrigerator in the barn worked fine. We brought eggs into the pantry, put them on the shelves and served the food to the shoppers.
Slowly, over the months, other refrigerators and freezers appeared. We finally ended up with four. They came from Barry Motzkin, Barry Greco, Rite Aid, and Ralph Goneau. They were filled to the max with food all the time…except right after a pantry day when they were totally empty.
More and more shoppers came to the pantry. The census kept rising and rising. FINALLY, we reached the point where we had outgrown the small storage closet in the hallway which served as our storeroom. We needed a real storeroom, couldn’t function anymore without one.
I went to Pastor Bode, “I need space Pastor Bode. If you can’t spare a room for the pantry, I’ll just have to ask the caravan guys to bring the next shipment to my home. That’s it. I have no choice. The food is coming in.”
Pastor Bode, God bless him, went to his Consistory, and the building committee. Many meetings followed and I finally got, somehow, permission, maybe, to use the room at the end of the hall for the storeroom. I got provisional permission for this room because a large monthly shipment was coming in. This was our biggest shipment yet: 3,000 pounds.
Everything coming into the pantry up to this point had totaled less than 2000 pounds per shipment.
The monthly shipment arrived and the men put the food in the room at the end of the hall.
While they were bringing the food into the storeroom, I looked around. There was no one else in the building. “The universe is on my side”, I thought.
This event will be concluded in tomorrow’s blog post.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
The Woodstock B&B on the Green to the Rescue!
Finally, I realized there might be hope at the end of the parking lot. There was a barn down there with a dirt floor, a long, unpainted rattlety trap building that nobody paid attention to. Several times I’d observed that this old, unnoticed structure was filled with treasures. The guys at the Woodstock B & B on the Green stored seasonal decorations they hauled out at appropriate times of the year to dress up their B & B: wreaths, lights, statues, furniture. Occasionally, I’d gotten a peek at what appeared to be antique furniture: chairs, tables, accent pieces. If I could get a corner of that place, I could put a refrigerator on a pallet and we could use it there. Dare I hope?
Dare I hope!
I didn’t know those two guys from Adam, as my grandmother used to say but there just weren’t any other options left. I’ll call them!
“Hello. This is Thurman Greco from the Good Neighbor Food Pantry. How are you and Larry doing today? I’m wondering if we can rent a little corner of your barn for a refrigerator. I’m desperate for a place to store eggs. I’ve asked everywhere and no one in this town has space to spare. You are my absolute last hope.”
“I’ll ask Larry and get back with you. But we can do this. And, there won’t be any charge.”
“Thanks. You guys are going to go to heaven for this.”
I might be able to pull this one off, I thought. When the inspectors come, I just won’t mention the barn. If they see the refrigerator out there sitting in the mud, it’s all over. They won’t have a choice…What the hell.
I took a real chance on this one. However, the inspectors all knew how the town was treating the pantry. The people in Latham were getting tired of the phone calls from the Woodstock pantry deniers. I just had to trust the Food Bank people to look the other way…and not ask about the eggs that I’m buying from the Food Bank.
It worked!
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In the next post, we get a storeroom for the refrigerator!
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
I Ask 3 People to Help me Find a Place to Put the Refrigerator.
I started at the top with Jeff Moran. He was a very nice young man I had strongly supported in the previous election. I’d interviewed him on my local TV show. I was on his election committee along with Sasha Gillman.
“Hi Jeff, I’m calling you because you’re the Town Supervisor and I’m looking for refrigerator space for the pantry. I’m wondering if I can put a refrigerator in the Community Center kitchen. I’ll donate the appliance to the town. Everyone can use it during the week. I just want to have it one day each week for eggs. The rest of the time, it’ll be available for the whole town to use.”
“No.”
So much for getting someone elected.
Next, I went to the pastor of the Woodstock Reformed Church.
“Pastor Bode, I really need a refrigerator for the pantry. We need it to store eggs.”
“The pantry room is too small. Where are you going to put it? I don’t think the building committee will allow it.”
Well, at least he was honest about it. He admitted to me in so many words that he didn’t have the clout to even try for one for the pantry.
My final card was Terrie Rosenblum. She was the one who recruited me for the Woodstock Democratic Committee. She was on the Woodstock Town Board.
“Hi Terrie. I’m calling you because I need a place to put a refrigerator for the pantry. You’re on the Town Board. Do you know of any place in town where I can have a refrigerator?”
“No, I don’t Thurman. Fran and I’ll ask around and see what we can turn up. Maybe Houst has a little space somewhere.”
“How about Town Hall? There’s a large empty room there.”
“That won’t work. We’re getting ready to renovate that building.”
If anybody can find a place for a refrigerator, they can. They’ve lived here in Woodstock over 40 years and they know every nook and cranny of the place.
We’ll find out what happened in the next post.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman
