A Prayer
Pantries are secular places, in New York State, anyway. We cannot discriminate against a person/family/household because of religious beliefs.
We “cannot engage in the promotion of a particular religion or political party as part of our feeding programs nor require clients to attend religious or political services or instruction in order to receive food.”
That being said, I read a prayer at the beginning of every board meeting. I felt then, and feel now, that it grounded the board members for the meetings. There was always spoken and unspoken push back from several board members about my pantry activities.
The pantry prayer that I read is repeated below. It is two sections. The top section was written by myself. The second part, beginning with the words “O God of abundance…” I got from Sara Miles’ book “Take This Bread.”
PANTRY BOARD MEETING PRAYER
To the God to whom we all pray –
We ask that our hands, hearts, minds, and souls be illuminated by the light of your compassion and unconditional love.
We ask that this meeting proceed for the highest good of all connected to our pantry:
The volunteers
The board
The customers who shop in the pantry
The people who donate the food
The workers at the food bank
And those who are seeking, but have not yet found, the pantry.
We ask for the protection and continued improvement of the health of our volunteers and shoppers in the pantry.
Please send Bodisaphas and Angels to guide and protect us as we strive to feed the people.
O God of Abundance, you feed us everyday. Rise in us now, make us into your bread, that we may share your gifts with a hungry world, and join in love and healing with all people.
Thank you.
Amen
Stealing?
“There’s a difference between criminals and crooks. Crooks steal. Criminals blow some guy’s brains out. I’m a crook.” – Ronald Biggs
“If a day comes when we don’t have any volunteers, all we have to do is put a nail in the wall and hang up the key. The shoppers will let themselves in the pantry, shop, and lock the door behind them.”
I always take pride in saying the Good Neighbor Food Pantry didn’t even need volunteers.
Of course, this was an exaggeration. But it applied to many of our regular shoppers who knew the rules, knew how much food they were allowed to take, and respected the system. It did not, however, apply to all of the shoppers nor did it apply to all the volunteers. We had several shoppers and volunteers who simply could not live with the three-day supply of food rule.
Pantries, by their nature, are overrun with rules. They are layered with rules. The rules have rules. There are more rules than cans of food in food pantries.
First, the Food Bank has rules: what kind of food we can serve and to whom, what the pantry should look like and how clean it should be, who gets the food.
Shelving is to be six inches away from the walls.
The bottom shelf of each unit is to be six inches off the floor.
The USDA food must be displayed.
Pantry volunteers receive safe food handling training at least once every five years.
The pantry has to comply with food safety standards.
Pantries are not allowed to barter food with other agencies.
Pantries are not allowed to give food to other agencies.
All the food is to be distributed to specifically designated needy persons.
The Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program has a whole other selection of rules, guidelines focusing on how much food we should serve and what its nutritional value should be.
Pantries are expected to offer fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grain breads, and proteins.
Pantries are expected to support the MyPlate guideline on food selection.
Pantries are expected to serve the shoppers with dignity.
Pantries are required to serve a minimum of a three-day supply of food to recipients.
Pantries may never discriminate against anyone in the provision of service to the hungry.
And, of course, in the Good Neighbor Food Pantry, the building committee was not to be outdone by anyone else. The building committee had its own list of rules:
The building committee was concerned with the hours we could be in the building.
The building committee was concerned with which days of the week we could be in the building.
The building committee was concerned with how many chairs could be in the hallway.
The building committee was concerned about what products we could have in the hallway.
The building committee was concerned with when and where we could be in the parking lot.
The building committee was concerned with when the produce could come into the building and how long it could stay.
The building committee was concerned with the cardboard.
Finally, the rabbis, pastors, and priests of the Woodstock Interfaith Council liked to chime in when I got too enthusiastic and raised to much money or fed too many people.
The important thing was to refrain from serving the unworthy hungry.
I divided the whole crowd into four groups. The first group I jokingly referred to as the Hot Doggers. These people liked to make the rules whether or not they had the authority. And, if they didn’t have the authority to make the rules, who cared? “Scream loud enough and you’ll be heard” seemed to be the motto.
The second group I sadly referred to as the followers. These were the shoppers and volunteers who had trouble dealing with the layers and layers of rules. At one point in the timeline of the pantry, (leading up to and during the Inquisition), people asked each other “what are today’s rules” as the building committee grappled with how many chairs we could have in the hallway for the shoppers, whether or not we could offer food in the hallway, and whether or we could offer diapers or pet food.
This group (the followers) was really in a bad place during some of the uncertain times in the pantry. They needed the food and they were voiceless. Absolutely no one cared what their needs were. It was hardest on those with mental and emotional issues.
One shopper summed it all up on several Wednesdays when she ran through the parking lot yelling “Thurman Greco is a fucking asshole!” at the top of her lungs.
And, finally, the third group was the onlookers. These were the people who lived in the community, lifted not one finger to help, and gave not one penny of support. Their claim to fame was their criticism of all the people who came to the pantry to shop or work and their criticism of everything that happened to the pantry even though they had never been to the place and knew nothing about what was going on.
It finally boiled down to respect. A fourth group was made up of shoppers and volunteers who didn’t care a whit about the rules, what was good for the pantry, what was expected of them, or anything else. All they knew was there was a lot of food finally coming through the place and they wanted it.
No matter what.
One such shopper was a beautiful young woman with two gorgeous daughters who had been coming to the pantry for years. She brought her children, as infants, with her every time she visited the pantry. The children became toddlers, then young children. The oldest daughter became ten. Gorgeous children. One day I realized she was teaching them to steal food.
She came into the crowded room with her two children who immediately scattered to different parts of the room and began to put food in the little bags. There was absolutely no way a person could follow what these three were doing. Final analysis required that an extra volunteer come into the already overcrowded room and supervise the children.
We had a cluster of shoppers who liked to come right at pantry closing time when we were distracted and under pressure with closing activities. Some came in the hope of taking extra produce home with them. Others came expecting to grab an extra can or two of some favorite product.
“You’re only allowed to take one can from that shelf, Sara.”
“Sorry. I forgot.”
One volunteer managed to squirrel away fifteen frozen pizzas.
One shopper, a young man with beautiful, shoulder length, auburn hair, tried to make off with ten bags of dried black beans.
“Put the beans back. We need to have enough bags for everyone. We won’t have enough if you guys take more than your share.”
No answer.
One volunteer brazenly went into the storeroom and carried out two large boxes of food she felt was owed to her simply because she was a volunteer.
“Dana, that food is for the take outs. You can’t take it.”
“Yes I can. I want it and you can’t stop me.”
“Dana, you can’t return here anymore.”
Then, we had one volunteer who went over to the items of dignity closet one afternoon and stuffed her pockets.
“Jean, what are you doing with all these items? We barely have enough to pass out to our shoppers.”
“These are for my friends.”
“Well, you can’t take them. Your friends aren’t signed in and we need these items for our registered shoppers. You know the rules. You’ve been working here a long time.”
One volunteer went around to area grocery stores and picked up foods for the Good Neighbor Food Pantry. Some of this food actually made it to the pantry. However, a portion of it was diverted to this volunteer’s friends and neighbors. The argument could be made that she distributed the food to people who needed it. That’s all well and good. However, she led the grocers to believe she was taking the food to the pantry to distribute to the hungry. She was being dishonest with the grocers who were entrusting the food to her. This reflected poorly on our pantry, I felt, as well as on all other pantries.
Finally, we had our mystery shoppers. Almost every week or two we came into the pantry to find that food had been removed from the shelves over the weekend. This was true in both the pantry and the storeroom.
Considering how many people went through the pantry, the thefts were very few.
As a pantry coordinator, I tried to convince everyone that the food on the shelves in a pantry is not there for the entertainment and amusement of disrespectful volunteers. Neither is it on the shelves for shoppers to take regardless of the rules.
Rather, the food belongs to the State of New York. It is only when it is put in one’s shopping bag after the person is signed in at the reception table that it becomes the property of the shopper.
The Food Bank and the Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program people had definite guidelines about how much food could be taken by both shoppers and volunteers alike. These rules were known by everyone.
Conclusion: Being a thief is a genetic trait.
Salt in the Food Pantry World
If what the historians tell us is correct, people have been eating salt for over 6000 years. They’ve also been using salt in all kinds of industries. And, in fact, only 6% of the salt manufactured in the world today is used for food according to the Maldon Salt Company.
Salt has, throughout time, played a significant part in wars, commerceand religion throughout the world.
In 1930, Gandhi led a march of 100,000 people protesting a salt tax levied by the British.
It is believed by some historians that ancient trading routes throughout the world began when different cultures bought and sold salt.
Salt is used in religious ceremonies in all the major world religions.
Salt is still an important commodity for all of us.
Before the Good Neighbor Food Pantry got sooo crowded and before our time was sooo limited in the pantry, the shoppers got to read the labels on the cans.
This was important for our shoppers. After all, most of them had no health care to speak of. Their only means of caring for themselves was eating properly.
What a challenge in a pantry!
A typical pantry shift included many people reading canned good labels trying to figure out which items had safe levels of salt, sugar, added chemicals, preservatives, hydrogenated fats, artificial colors, flavors, high fructose corn syrup.
One of the basic problems with pantry canned goods was the prevalence of products with outrageous amounts of salt.
We had a number of seniors suffering with hypertension and a low salt food product was important to them.
This issue still exists in pantries to a certain extent even though the Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program people began limiting the availability of many high salt products on our food order inventory.
Everyone, pantry shopper or not, is encouraged to reduce sodium intake to less than 2300 milligrams a day. That’s about 1 teaspoon. Adults over 50, and people with high blood pressure, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease should reduce the sodium intake to 1500 per day.
So, how can this be done most easily?
EAT FRESH FOODS. THEY ARE LOWER IN SODIUM THAN PROCESSED FOODS. Stay away from cheesy foods (pizza), bacon, sausage, hot dogs, deli meats, canned chili, canned ravioli, and canned soups.
EAT AT HOME. The meals you prepare at home are more nutritious because you’re in control of the ingredients.
EAT PLENTY OF VEGGIES AND FRUITS. Fresh/frozen vegetables and fruits have much less sodium. Try to eat them at every meal.
CHOOSE PRODUCTS THAT ARE LOWER IN SALT. This means choosing fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt.
Choose fresh meats rather than eating deli meats which have much more salt. Choose unsalted nuts.
FORGET THE SALT. Remove the salt shaker from the kitchen counter and the dining table. Choose spices, herbs, vinegar, lemon juice, pepper instead.
READ THE LABELS ON THE FOOD. Choose foods which are labeled “low sodium”, “reduced sodium” and “no salt added.”
CHOOSE LOW SODIUM CONDIMENTS. Some condiments such as soy sauce, pickles, olives, salad dressings are high in salt. Choose the low sodium variety.
And, of course, it’s all about choice. Choice is a rare commodity if you are shopping in a food pantry because you have no money. (And, why else does one shop in a food pantry?)
Food pantry shoppers have very little control over what they eat because they can’t afford to shop in the grocery store with thousands of choices. Neither can they afford to shop in the farmer’s market.
One way people can help the situation is by donating healthy foods to a pantry. As a donor of food to a pantry, you are the one making the choice. When you choose, for example, to give a low sodium soy sauce to a food drive, you are responsibly choosing a healthier product for someone who has absolutely no money to make such a choice.
Thank you for shopping and donating healthy foods to your food pantry and soup kitchen.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman
Food Pantry Blog – Sue, Mary, and the Seniors Apartment Complex
Sue was a slender, older woman with long gray hair which she wore in an attractive up-do. Sue was a Wednesday afternoon regular. She lived in the Shady area about two miles off 212 on a side road.
So, every Wednesday she walked the two miles to 212 and then hitch hiked the remainder of the way into Woodstock. She left her home in the morning on Wednesdays to get to the pantry on time.
Her shopping selections were always careful because she could only carry so much going home. This translated to small, light weight items: protein bars, one or 2 canned items, packaged dates, Ramen soup, dried milk, pasta.
Then, as dark approached in the winter, she would take her few packages and head back home – hoping, praying for a ride.
There was a seniors’ apartment complex in the forest off Route 28 which we visited weekly. It was a beautiful facility but, boy…what a location. These people, all nineteen households of them, were really isolated from a community. There was no sidewalk to anywhere. And, not everyone had a car (or could even drive anymore, for that matter.) There was a post office about a mile down the road on Route 213. There was also a small Methodist Church near the post office. Boiceville, the nearest town sported an IGA and a pharmacy. These two stores were several miles from the apartments, clear on the other side of the reservoir.
We drove out to the apartments every Thursday afternoon after the pantry closed with fresh produce, canned goods, and some kind of something that we could label “special treat” (although, many times that label was a real stretch.)
I received a call one December 26th from a resident. Judith, one of the residents realized late on the 24th that Mary, her neighbor who no longer drives, was completely out of food. So, Mary went around to her neighbors and also dug in her cabinets for food. She put together a food package for Mary composed entirely of canned and boxed goods which had been brought to the complex and distributed in the weeks before Christmas.
“Thurman, I’m calling to thank you and your team for coming every week to bring food to us out here. It was such a relief to be able to get food together on Christmas Eve to give to Mary. Imagine being out of food at Christmas! Your trips out here mean so much to us. Our nutrition has improved so much in this last year..”
This story on the surface, has a profound meaning. But, the spiritual aspect goes even deeper when we realize that the lady calling me is wheel chair bound. Getting that food for Mary was a real challenge for her, I feel.
And, actually, Mary’s story is not unusual. As people age, they sometimes have difficulty carrying on daily life tasks that younger people take for granted. And, the older person is afraid to reveal the problems to others because s/he is afraid that a move to a nursing home is eminent.
So, the person suffers in silence.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – Peggy’s Take Outs – Guy, Rich, Jamie, Prasida, Father Nicholas, the Anderson Crew
Peggy organized delivery teams. Guy Oddo delivered food to four clients. Rich and Jamie Allen had a delivery. Prasida Kay had three deliveries. Laura Rose had two deliveries. Father Nicholas had three deliveries. The Anderson Crew had six deliveries.
Andrea from the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley came out one day and spent over two hours conferring with Peggy and answering all her questions.
Peggy had special food sources for her take out clients. Anyone who donated food to the pantry was donating to Peggy’s Take Outs. (So many people were using the pantry that only case lots were used in the pantry room itself.)
Peggy had absolutely no problem calling up a church and asking for food.
“Hello, this is Peggy Johnson. Can I talk with your pantry representative?”
“Hello, this is Peggy Johnson. We’re really short of toilet paper for our shoppers this month. Can your congregation get some toilet paper for our take outs?”
“Hello, this is Peggy Johnson. It’s your congregation’s month at the food pantry. Can you organize an Items of Dignity drive for the pantry? We really need toilet paper, tooth paste, and razors.”
Nothing stopped Peggy.
Not rain
Not sleet
Not snow
Not 100 degree afternoons
Not power outages.
On a couple of occasions when there wasn’t light in the storeroom, Peggy used a spelunker’s flashlight hooked to her head.
Every Tuesday morning, promptly at 9:01 a.m., Peggy walked into the Woodstock Reformed Church hallway and set up long tables along the wall on which would be placed donated food from the Hurley Ridge Market.
By 9:15 a.m., Barry Greco brought the food from Hurley Ridge Market over. There were usually six to ten boxes in his Jeep: fresh vegetables, fruit, bread, and baked goods.
Peggy, Jamie, Prasida, Laura, Amy, Marvalene, and Leticia went to work immediately, working as fast and furiously as possible. By 11:00, every bit of this food would be sorted in bags for delivery to homebound households. The bags had to all be packed and loaded in cars by 11:30 for delivery because the fresh produce had to be removed from the building by noon.
Hallway tables were total chaos on Tuesday mornings. The Take Out team was stationed in front of the tables packing bags with produce, bread, while the Anderson Crew, along with other volunteers, were moving up and down the halls with carts filled with cases of canned beans, cooking oil, mayonnaise, canned fruits, canned vegetables, crackers, cereal, pasta, etc. Leticia worked quickly to get as much food into the pantry room as possible before the Anderson Team arrived but there was always food which still needed to be brought out by the team.
“Look out behind you Prasida!”
“Hey Jamie, here comes a cart!”
“Where are the oranges? My client loves oranges. I know I saw some earlier!”
Empty cardboard boxes piled up. It took several volunteers working together to break them down. Tony Cannistra, Marcos and Jonah from Anderson, Richard Allen, Guy Oddo, Dr. Tom Dallow, and everyone else we could get to do it, broke down boxes and then, finally loaded them into Vanessa.
The fact that there was never an accident with all the commotion in the hallway on Tuesday mornings proves there are guardian angels and they don’t sleep on the job.
By 1:00, we all changed hats. The pantry shelf stockers in the morning became the afternoon take out crew and packed next Tuesday’s bags with cans and boxes.
Peggy supervised every item that went into these bags. It was no easy task.
It didn’t matter to this crew.
This was a very cohesive, dedicated team of people who realized that if the food didn’t go out the recipients wouldn’t eat.
The food went out.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – Peggy and the Take Outs
“New people somehow suggest to you that your world is really not as narrow as maybe you believed it was. You’re not so limited by your psychological environment as maybe you thought you were.” – Leonard Michaels
The next series of chapters focuses on a very important part of the pantry life which we have not yet touched on: our Take Out Department which served food to homebound residents.
As a pantry, we never planned to deliver food to homebound people in the Woodstock area. But, to make a really bad joke, the building committee of the Woodstock Reformed Church made us do it.
This is the story: Pantries are required to have volunteers available to serve shoppers on an emergency basis if they call and can’t make it to the pantry when it’s open. Well, Good Neighbor Food Pantry volunteers weren’t allowed in the pantry except during select hours on select days. So, we needed an alternative acceptable to the Food Bank. We created a Take Out Department to deliver food to homebound households.
Our Take Out Department became enormously successful. It was also a tremendous amount of work for the volunteers. We began with insufficient structure and a few volunteers lost sight of the guidelines and rules. One volunteer felt that the 10-mile limit included all of her friends living in an area around Route 32 north of Saugerties. She also felt her mother who lived several hours away was on the route and that a three-day supply of food for her mother included everything she could fit into her car on the way up. She was also lax with the monthly reporting.
Peggy Johnson took over the Take Out Department.
Peggy organized all the Take Outs. she called every household monthly to see how things were going. She made great lists of all the foods they would, could, should eat and great lists of all foods they would not, could not, should not eat. Peggy knew her clients better than they knew themselves.
Peggy was strict with the rules. She didn’t have even one client who lived beyond the 10-mile limit imposed by our Board of Directors. Peggy was strict with her volunteers also. She insisted everyone follow the HPNAP guidelines exactly. And…Peggy demanded proper manners in the pantry. One month Peggy dismissed a volunteer on the monthly delivery day. Whew!
We had one young volunteer who was a computer whiz. She really didn’t want to work in the take outs. What she wanted to do was completely computerize our pantry and be some kind of “Jedi” for our lists, etc. Her hope was to computerize our pantry and use this experience to launch other projects for other pantries. (I honestly don’t think she realized how poor pantries really are.)
It was a good idea but never materialized because on one monthly delivery day Peggy caught her comparing tattoos with one of the Hudson Correctional Facility volunteers. Peggy spoke with her and she never saw her again. We never saw her again either.
In our next post, we’ll focus on the volunteers who made the take out department possible.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – What This Blog is About
Recently I was asked to explain what the hungerisnotadisease.com
blog is all about.
Well, for me, this blog has several layers.
First, there is the layer of the food pantry. This is a story in itself: intrigue, expose’, scandal, denial. On some level, the story of the Good Neighbor Food Pantry might as well be a mystery novel.
But, dig deeper. This blog is about the people who visit the pantry weekly…the voiceless people who are becoming more and more in number weekly. This is an incredible story in itself also: intrigue, expose’, denial.
And, on yet a deeper level, this blog is about the spiritual journey we are all on as we experience incredible change in our society. Most of this story is still, as yet, unknown to many, many people.
Because, you see, hunger as evidenced by food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters is still a taboo subject.
So…my challenge is to best tell this story, expose the shame that is being orchestrated by many people, and reveal the denial that many people still persist in perceiving.
What is going to work best?
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
food pantry blog – Father Nicholas
“Praise be to God.” – Father Nicholas
I first heard about Father Nicholas when a volunteer from St. John’s Roman Catholic Catholic Church asked me, almost in a whisper, if we had any extra food for some priests. Through the grapevine, I heard Heidi Motzkin knew some people (priests?) needing food.
HMMM. Then I heard another story about a group of priests needing food. Things were kind of quiet for a week or two. I didn’t act very fast because, in this business, it really takes a shout to get my attention. Anyway, I kept hearing little whispers so I got really curious. Who are these guys? Where are they? Do we know them?
So, Peggy Johnson, our Take Out Department manager at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry, and I got in the car and off we went! Out on Coldbrook Road in Bearsville is a very special place – The Holy Ascension Monastery. We drove out there and were greeted by a tall thin man with a full beard and pony tail, wearing a black cassock, a tall black hat, and black combat boots.
The story went that the monastery had, for a long time, housed three monks. Then, one day, several monks in the Boston area loaded a U-Haul truck and drove to Bearsville. Several other monks boarded a bus in Boston and rode to Woodstock. They increased the population at the monastery to twenty. The monastery needed extra people because they’re building a large, beautiful Church building on the grounds. I went to their website and saw what a beautiful building it is going to be.
In the confusion of the expansion, everything had been taken care of except, of course, the extra food needed for these priest/construction workers and volunteers.
Food? You need food? Peggy was delighted, excited, enthusiastic. She was on this job right away. A duck on a June bug had nothing on Peggy. Within days (hours?) the Holy Ascension Monastery staff had food. Peggy learned about their dietary considerations, as well as the number of people needing food.
Like a Supply Sergeant in a Mash unit, Peggy learned that the food bank had #10 cans of food. Nothing would do until our pantry storeroom had a whole shelf filled with them for Father Nicholas.
Fresh produce? Father Nicholas came by each week and got all the produce he needed.
Well, it wasn’t long until Father Nicholas and the Holy Ascension Monastery had their food needs straightened out and no longer needed Good Neighbor Food Pantry food. So, as smoothly as greasing a cake pan, Father Nicholas and his fellow monks became part of the volunteer pantry crew. He delivered food to homebound households every week. He brought yogurt to our pantry weekly.
And, as if that weren’t enough, Father Nicholas and the Holy Ascension Monastery became a food pantry for the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley serving food to anyone dropping by: pilgrims, homeless people, hungry people living in the area. The Holy Ascension Monastery is open seven days per week. People are allowed to take what they need and return as often as they need.
And, of course, while all this was happening, every one of us fell in love with the monks. Never in a million years would any of us have met these gorgeous men of God if it hadn’t been for the pantry.
The face of God is everywhere. All you have to do is work at a pantry, open your eyes, and look around.
Is that cool or what?
Food Pantry Blog – Migliorelli’s, Hannaford’s, Walmart, Shoprite, Bread Alone, and HPNAP Leave Gifts.
During the summer, Migliorelli Farm supplemented our produce when they donated the unsold produce from the Farmer’s Market. This generosity allowed us to have extra produce on Thursdays. During the winter months the farmer’s market was closed and we brought extra produce from the Food Bank.
The goal was to allow the shoppers to take as much produce and baked goods as they could eat in three days. So, while the shoppers were rushing around the room, they were using valuable seconds, minutes choosing from the gorgeous produce which volunteers brought in only a few hours before.
The Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program people wanted everyone to have a three-day supply of food for each person in the household with food for three meals daily with each meal offering three of the five food groups. They wanted us to serve 50 percent fruits and vegetables and we proudly did so. Guidelines included low fat dairy products and whole grain breads.
We generally had much bread and people could take all they wanted. Bread Alone was extremely generous with us so our shoppers got excellent quality bread.
Baked goods (pies, cakes) were always available compliments of Hannaford’s, Walmart, Shoprite.
Many was the week when I heard “Oh boy! My son (brother, sister, mother, father), is having a birthday. Now I have something to give.”
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Tomorrow’s post will tell the story of my first visit to the Good Neighbor Food Pantry.
Peace and food for all.
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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
