Thursday, June 19, 2014

Under-the-Line Banking


I spent Monday afternoon in a church basement, deep in the belly of the town food bank.  I’ve been meaning to volunteer here for some time now, but it wasn’t until Monday that I finally got there.

That afternoon I put to bed some of my own misconceptions of food banks.  Years of experience, understanding and endless care have been put into selecting each hampers contents.  Fresh fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs, vegetables and bread (all ordered) constitute the bulk, with non-perishable (and mostly whole) foods to last for the rest of the time between pickups.  Regular hampers are received every 60 days (when’s the last time you went two months without grocery shopping?), though emergency hampers are available on request once a month.  Vegetarians, celiacs and dairy-allergies are all accommodated with great care.  Begrudgingly the volunteers have kept supplying recipients with select processed foods, including: Cheez Whiz, Kraft Dinner and canned spaghetti.  Though the nutritive contribution of these foods may be low, the comfort they provide can’t be discounted.  A warm blanket of cheese sauce could soft-sell broccoli to almost any reluctant school age kid.  When they tried to take Cheez Whiz off the shelves, there was an outright furor.

I killed hours getting orders together (I’ll be volunteering as a “Filler”, not the most glamorous title), taking great pride in supplementing each order as best I could.  The families with young kids would get a few packs of Shake-and-Bake and Jell-O, teenagers would get jars of butter chicken sauce, single adults would get little gifts of hot sauce, coffee, chocolate.  When I left, many shelves were empty and my heart was full.  I have to wait two weeks before my next training shift.  13 more sleeps.


-S

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