Treasured Belongings in the Food Pantry
IT HANGS ON A WALL IN MY LIVING ROOM, MY DAUGHTER’S SELF PORTRAIT. .
Larger than life, the piece shows one eye, her nose and mouth.
Just beginning her studies at the Corcoran, Jennette wasn’t comfortable painting an entire face.
A photography major, she was painting for the first time in her life.
Sometimes I sit in my chair with my three Chihuahuas and just look at the painting for several minutes when I come home from the pantry. So much of this painting is relevant to what I’m doing now, what the pantry shoppers are experiencing.
As people travel the path to a pantry, they lose things. One shopper recently gave me three paintings. He was offloading personal possessions and just didn’t want to see them go to the dumpster.
I ALSO HAVE PAINTINGS GIVEN TO ME BY OTHER SHOPPERS. If I stay in this business long enough, I’ll end up with a whole gallery. That actually happened to Dr. Wayne Longmore, the absolute best physician in the area.
THERE’S A MORAL IN THIS STORY SOMEWHERE FOR ME. I’m just not sure what it is yet.
Dr. Longmore, an Emergency Medicine specialist, was a Woodstock physician. He practiced by himself, without the help of a receptionist or nurse. He was favored by artists, writers, musicians as well as many other people from around here. Many felt he was the best physician in the area. The artists went to him with their health issues and he treated them with dignity and respect, whether or not they had money. Most of them had no money so, when he worked to make them well, they brought over paintings.
DR. LONGMORE FINALLY HAD THE BEST LOCAL ART COLLECTION IN THE AREA. Then, the paintings and sculptures, given to him over the years by artist patients with no money, disappeared from his office after he was arrested. I never learned the real story of what happened.
The public story was that he prescribed too many painkillers…too much Oxycodone. The FBI Report referred to the product as hydrocodone. Well, the public stories in the papers aren’t always the whole story or even a piece of a story. I know that from personal experience.
DR. LONGMORE AND I KNEW A LOT OF THE SAME PEOPLE. He healed them. The pantry fed them. Without even trying, I knew more or less who was on what. How could I not know? I saw them every week under fairly intimate circumstances.
I ONLY KNEW TWO PEOPLE ON OXYCODONE. And, one of those two was trying to sell the stuff. So, they can’t blame Dr. Longmore for that.
He was sentenced to six months house arrest, three years probation, two hundred hours community service, and fined $200,000.00. The real punishment went to the poor in Woodstock who now have nowhere to go for a doctor. It puts a lot of pressure on the Healthcare as a Human Right group.
HIS OFFICE, JUST DOWN FROM LORI’S CAFE, SITS EMPTY…the office at 104 Mill Hill Road. I think of Dr. Longmore every time I pass by. I remember his beautiful art collection, all the down and out people he served, all the good the man did for Woodstock.
The place has a for sale sign, a monument commemorating those in Woodstock who unfailingly give of themselves. Frankly, I don’t care if they ever sell it.
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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
