Food Drop

 

   I can claim to work regularly at the Roseau Food Shelf, but I do way less than Teresa who co-manages the place with Vickie Wilson. Every Tuesday afternoon Teresa, Vickie, and several faithful volunteers assist thirty to forty families to pick out needed food items from the grocery store-style shelves at the Food Shelf in the old Law Enforcement Center. 

   I help every third Thursday when a semi from the North Country Food Bank distribution center in East Grand Forks delivers several pallets loaded with frozen meat, canned goods and other non-perishables, and sometimes fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, butter, you name it. Again, another group of volunteers shows up on food truck day and puts everything away.

   Teresa and Vickie can order from a list of  items available at the Food Bank but don't always get everything they ask for and sometimes get things they didn't ask for. Sometimes they get an abundance of unique things. But it all goes, except for the dried prunes and the flax beverage. 

   Every few months the Food Bank runs out of storage space in their warehouse and asks the local food shelves to take a load of items off its hand. The food shelves also have limited storage so the Food Bank's solution is for us to advertise a food drop in the hockey rink parking lot. On the morning of the drop, the semi unloads a dozen or more pallets in a long line in the parking lot.

   The Food Drop has been well advertised and cars start lining up ninety minutes before the official start at 11:00. There are no financial guidelines to get free stuff at the food drop. You just give your name for the records.  People can also pick up for two or three other households besides their own.

   The previous food drop was in May. It was a beautiful day. This drop was the last Monday in March. Saturday and Sunday before were beautiful days. Monday's forecast said the snow would hold off till after 1:00 by which time we'd be done.  The snow ignored the forecast and started at 10:00 a.m., mostly horizontal thanks to the strong wind.  I had wisely worn my dead-of-winter gear as did most of the twenty or so volunteers.

   There were two volunteers responsible for every two pallets along the line. The stream of cars divided and came on both sides of the pallets so there were two more volunteers across the pallet from us.  I was teamed with Ralph Herseth. We had the first two pallets in the line which contained boxes of dried beans, boxes of frozen chicken breasts, two pound tubes of summer sausage, and eight-packs of fizzy orange mango drinks.

   A vehicle would pull up by our pallets with their SUV hatches or sliding van doors open and we'd load them with chicken breasts, dried beans, sausage and fizzy drinks. There were three women from the Food Bank who checked how many vehicles were in the line and told us how many boxes of each item to give out. Each car had a paper tag stuck on its windshield telling how many households the vehicle was picking up for; two to three households was the average.

   Now I would think if someone knew they'd be picking up several bulky boxes for themselves and for a couple of friends, they would have removed the baby strollers, the totes, the five gallon buckets and so forth from the cargo area of their vehicles. But many of them had neglected to do that, so by the time Ralph and I were done with them, they had to start putting stuff on their laps and piling it on top of the kids in their car seats. Kids who should have been left at mom's for the most expeditious pickup.

   There were three cars with trunks that wouldn't open. Unbelievable. A volunteer was able to bang on one trunk and pop it open. The trunk was empty because the owner had never been able to put anything in it. I hope they can pop the trunk open at home before the chicken thaws. One guy said we couldn't put anything in the covered back of his truck because his collapsible ice fishing house was in there. At least he didn't have any kids with him.

   Most people seemed able to get most of the items available into their vehicles. At first we were only giving five bags of chicken breasts to each vehicle. Each bag had three huge GMO breasts in them. The bags were slippery with snow on them. I was delighted when the Food Bank woman said to give each household a full cardboard box containing ten bags. That made things simpler. 

   Once a vehicle got past Ralph and I, there was much, much more for our guests. There were cases of canned pears, bottles of soy sauce, overnight oats, oat milk, regular milk, a large bag of no-name cocoa puffs, fresh grapefruits, apples, individual pudding packs and shower heads. Yes, shower heads. Every food drop we've done has had an endless supply of shower heads. We also have a limitless supply of them back at our Food Shelf.  I think the factory in China went out of business and the Food Bank got the inventory. I heard that the volunteers gave a single guy six shower heads. Why not give him seven so he could have a fresh one for every day of the week?

   After the last car went through the line at 12:10, the leftovers went back on the truck for transfer to our Food Shelf. When families came for food distribution the next day they got all the milk and chicken breasts they wanted. 

God bless volunteers!