Turkeys to the People

I'm a white meat eater. You?

As you read, note that a lot of people in our world are eating none of the items pictured here on this Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 2012. And note that the foods are in order leading off with my favorite and working my way down (through the heaped plate).

The car pulled up to the yellow line, engine rattling, blue exhaust puffing out of the tailpipe. The trunk is open, grubby but empty. In the driver's seat is an unshaven man with a cigarette in the hand that holds the steering wheel, belly peaking out of his 'Dew t-shirt. An old woman, at least 80, sits in the passenger seat. From her eyes you can tell that she cannot see. She is slouched in every regard--sagging shoulders, vacant face, uncombed gray hair, misbuttoned shirt--except for the hand that tensely holds her cigarette. Life for them has been tougher than I can imagine. Behind them, a line of cars stretches beyond my field of vision, snaking around many block of our tiny village.

Don't give me that jello-type stuff--I want
some crunch and snap in my cranberry
relish. And, Craig Graybill makes the
best relish--please UPS me some.

They (mother and son? neighbors?) are actually in a pretty good mood. They are in line for the drive-through food distribution at the local food pantry. They are about to get food, including their very own turkey. And they are in a good mood because the food pantry has a policy of treating each client as a valued customer, a welcome visitor, someone special. This is a special place on a special day; the food pantry on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Their yawning trunk will runneth over.


I worked the Thanksgiving distribution this year. I was passing out flyers for a jobs and education program for young adults in the community. I was going to stay for an hour...but it stretched into two and then two and a half hours. It became my privilege to greet and talk with the people in every car. As the director of an agency that invests in this food pantry (United Way of Vinton County), I was especially interested in meeting the recipients of the food. Who were these people? Were they gaming the system? Did they look needy enough?

I like the classic chunks of sweet potato with
brown sugar--marshmallows optional.

I opened this blog post with a description of the people you expect to see in a food pantry line...people who are ugly, disabled, smoking, in need of a handout. But I hope you see the pain that was in that car, too, and in every car that came through that day--about 400 cars in all in our impoverished community. Don't ever say to me that it's well-off moochers coming to the food pantry until you have spoken to the people in every car through the line.

I was especially interested in the food recipients because in the past year I heard comments from many people about the food "handouts" and about people who have "too nice of cars" to need food assistance; and fielded questions about how the recipients are screened to weed out "people who are just looking for a handout"; and heard one too many "why don't they get a job" statements.

Yum. Judy Graybill--are you eating them right now?

First, let me back up. Under hero-director David Graham and his hero-volunteers, our largest local pantry (Methodist CARE Outreach) has, yes, gone to a drive-thru system. The young people I work with at my day job (and the program for which I was handing out flyers) actually helped convert a large aluminum carport into a drive through lane (they helped install a giant ventilation fan). No one has to park, get out of his car, take a cart around to gather food items, then return to her car to unpack it all into the trunk or back end of a vehicle.The drive through line has speeded up the distribution of food, but it also means that "regular" citizens (of course getting no public assistance--medicare anyone? home mortgage tax deductions anyone? Pell grants anyone?) driving along the streets can see exactly what each car in the food distribution line looks like.

I always think of my Grandma Bessie
Dickerson when I eat yeast rolls. Thanks,
Robin, for carrying on the tradition.

Second, let me back up. Probably some people are scamming the system for food. So what? So we don't feed hungry people? I would rather feed 20 undeserving people than for even one needy person to miss getting food. It's food. It's not gold. I can't judge someone who is cadging food. I know from my upbringing that free food is very hard to resist. Even when I am not needy and not hungry, I feel like I should grab some and stash it somewhere. My brain overrides this impulse most of the time, but it comes out in weird ways, such as the monstrous-huge collection of free pens I have from trade shows and such. When I die, they'll find 3,000 pens stashed in coffee mugs all over my house. Just saying, I am not in a position to critique anyone's behavior.

Plus, it's not gourmet. Canned vegetables. The apples a bit too ugly for Giant Eagle's beauty contest. Off-brand cereal that was left on the shelves for good reason. Sometimes something odd, like a 12-pack of spearmint gum or a 20-ounce bottle of artificially flavored maple syrup. That's the high reward of stealing from the food system. Better to stake out cars at Krogers!

Wait--I want more Cool Whip!

"Well, if they can afford a Suburban, what are they doing getting a handout for food?"

Here's an answer. A lot of the people who qualify for the food distribution borrow a car. Or, a kind neighbor or family member drives them. Or, they share a car with other recipients. Or, a case worker, home health aid, or caregiver brings them. Regardless, each recipient has to show his or her card, which is verified by a volunteer. A colored strip is placed under the windshield wiper of each car to indicate how many allotments that car gets (a family of five gets more food than a person living alone, for example). Then the car proceeds through the drive-through's tunnel of food, where volunteers put the right amount of each item into the car. It's cool to watch--and, as I mentioned above, especially cool to see the respect and good cheer handed out with the food (I'm sure that adds to the food's nutritional value). If an allotment is two cans of corn, then a family with 5 allotments will get 10 cans of corn. That's how it works. By the time the car reaches the street, it is full and can motor off home.

Moist, sticky, bready, with oysters, from a box or
hand made--love my stuffing.

In addition, the cars may look good from the outside, but they are not running that well. The smell of gasoline and exhaust fumes indicated inefficiency. The windows don't go up and down anymore. The door is wired shut. Many cars had distinctive pings, rattles, rumbles, and ka-chunks. These were not great cars. I know. I was checking on that for you. The better cars were mostly those of volunteers taking people through the line.

Listen. The faces of people who need food have a type of strain to them that I learned to recognize when my day job started providing breakfast and lunch to participants. Hunger takes the humanity out of a human. You can't sing and be hungry. You can't learn and be hungry. It's hard to be courteous and be hungry. The general cheer of the recipients in the CARE food line is a tribute to each and every volunteer who helps to bring them food. They honor and dignify the suffering of each person as the food goes into the car.

Salad? You served salad? What were you
thinking????

SIDEBAR: VOLUNTEER!

For most middle class and above people, the distribution of food to the poor happens outside our awareness. We don't see these people and sometimes we see them but invisibilize them. But, they are the least among us, as in "the least of these my brothers." Take a vacation day and volunteer at a food distribution in your community. You'll find out how it works, who gets food, who "those people" are. And I'm sure you'll be awed by the dedication of the people who serve regularly at the pantry. "Feed the hungry." It's a pretty clear message.

SIDEBAR: PLEASE COMMENT

Do you know of any other food banks who do a drive-through? I'm only familiar with the ones here in the county. Please add a comment to this posting if you know of other innovative strategies for making the food distribution respectful and expeditious.

Poverty: Easing the Pain, Part 1

NOTE: Please read my previous blog post, "Poverty Sim: Walk in My Shoes," before you read this one. It will put into perspective my motivation for continuing to brainstorm about poverty.

Admirable hours--most banks close at 5:00 most
days and are closed on Sunday, making it hard for
working people to get their banking done.

Poverty: Yuck. Poor people: Can't be punished enough for being poor. Or that is how it often looks to me. It seems like every piece of assistance comes with a value judgment attached, or with a sneer, or with a shower of condescension. Those people are poor because that's what they want. They don't want to work. All they want is a handout, all they do is suck the surplus out of the economy.

I hear these attitudes all the time, from my middle class friends, from political candidates, from the very people who serve the poor. Harsh words for the despised, the discarded.

Yes, I know I'm a bleeding heart liberal, but I do not want to end poverty. What I would like to do is restore respect for a group of people who work very hard, even when it doesn't earn money; who care deeply about their children and their children's futures; who jump over a hundred hurdles a day and never get to the finish line. I would like to find ways

(1) not to end poverty, but to ease some of its worst stresses;
(2) to remove some of the chains that bind people to poverty;
(3) to establish dignity for every person regardless of whether they get food assistance or subsidized childcare, or work in a jobs program instead of "real" job.

Many BHPH car dealers overcharge for the car,
loan at obscene rates of interest, repossess
fast, and sell the same car again.
(Rinse and repeat.)

Heather Pennington from the Ohio Association of Food Banks said she wanted to know more about the people in my county (Vinton, perennially one of the poorest in Ohio) and what might help them, in food terms and in general. Accordingly, I have been brainstorming with myself (always fun to call on my many selves), with co-workers, with the internet. Every time I came up with something, I wrote it on a little piece of paper and stuck it into an envelope. Last week I had a wonderful time hashing all the ideas out with Heather and her associate Dawn on the front porch of my ramshackle bungalow on the edge of McArthur. I think they were wondering exactly how many little pieces of paper were in that envelope.

Heather asked me to type up the list for her and I thought: "Bing! If I'm going to type, I might as well type right into a blog entry, then cut and paste them to her." Never waste a keystroke. So, here it is--my list of ways to make the lives of poor people in my region less stressful and more productive.

DISCLAIMER: My purpose in this blog today is not to discuss feasibility or all the problems people have had who tried to implement any of these ideas in the past. And, these ideas are not new. People know these ideas. But implementation has been sporadic and best and non-existent at worst. Keep in mind--I am not trying to end poverty, just to ease the stress and strain of it.

Enough caveat emptor. Here we go.

Barefoot and pregnant: Cheap and easy birth control.

Early pregnancies make possible
the classic 5-generation family photo
and allow for the rise of a matriarch
whose power crosses many
generations.

I know that condoms are cheap and easy, but men don't like them and often won't use them. That's why this strategy is directed toward women preventing their own accidental pregnancies through the patch, the pill, the shot, the shield. These do not prevent sexually transmitted diseases, but that's not the issue that drains the energy out of our women. The shot and the shield would help in the prevalent but under-reported instances when the man throws the birth control pills or the diaphragm in the wood stove and insists on having sex anyway; or when sex is only marginally consensual; or when the husband will not let his wife have the car to go to a doctor's appointment. My local domestic violence shelter can tell you some horror stories about how "accidental" pregnancies are often associated with family abuse. They exposed my own condescension on this issue.


Have I put your nose out of joint yet? Read on....

This is a quaint vision of the parent-teacher
conference...but I mainly selected this picture
because Bob Cousy is featured in this issue.

School conferences on Saturday and Sunday. Yes, each child's whole family may come along, and yes, teachers definitely need to be compensated in some way for doing this. But I am advocating weekend parent-teacher conferences--let's have a party. Get some pizzas cooking; get some Ski delivered from the local distributor; plan some entertainment for whoever is waiting around in the cafetorium. I do not buy the stereotype that poor parents don't care about their kids' education. They have many barriers to weekday conferences--no paid time off from work, being fired for absence from work, distance from work places, multiple users for one vehicle, no child care for the other children in the family or elder care for Grandma, no appropriate clothing for the institutional setting...are you getting the picture? I believe that, given the opportunity, poor people will demonstrate how much hope and concern for they have for the education and future chances of their children.

Stay with me now....

In Appalachia, the road to recovery is rocky and
full of detours and hairpin curves.

Community-based treatment and treatment beds. Every parole officer, social worker, and law enforcement officer, or anyone else whose life intersects with addicted people is familiar with this issue, and efforts have been made in my community to attempt to make help available locally. Too often, though, a person who desperately needs drug or alcohol addiction treatment has to wait weeks or sometimes months for a bed to open up--and the bed may be 50 to 150 miles away. These sufferers are often lost to the system by the time treatment is available.

We all know that the War on Drugs has neglected to supply funding for treatment. But in rural communities, this is especially serious. The number of counselors, therapists, psychiatrists, and mental health services in general is minuscule and services are far apart. I can't get blood work, a mammogram, and a bone density test without driving to three different towns more than 100 miles apart. Put me on drugs, give me a broken-down car and gas at $4.00 a gallon and I am not going to get to treatment.

The best painkillers are simple phrases of love and
appreciation.

The rural poor also suffer disproportionately from painkiller addiction. And it's not only the dealers who are getting rich. Drug-makers are dumping huge numbers of pain-killers into the system, and doctors are prescribing them. If you read my "Poverty Sim" blog entry, you'll remember the upstanding gentleman who ended up committing robbery to keep his family together--it wouldn't be a hard decision to sell just a couple of your pills to a neighbor. Twenty bucks could get your kid a nice outfit to start school in.

Are you getting me now? Still with me?

I apologize for dragging you through all this, but please don't tune out. I've got a lot more to share, but this blog entry is getting too long for a single-setting read (which violates my "rules of blog"). I'll try to post Part 2 on Monday.