When I went back
two hours later it was hard to find a spot in the driveway that wasn’t being
touched by second hand smoke. The smokers were well distributed as if they’d
heard that second hand smoke is dangerous and so they wanted to play it safe by
only inhaling it first hand.
The grey hexagonal
picnic table was back in its original spot but pieces of it were scattered
around. One broken two by four that used to be one of its bones was lying
forlornly on the snow covered dead grass next to a brick wall, while another
piece of it was an unoccupied wooden cross propped against the wall at the far
end of the driveway.
A man was saying to
a woman, “I don’t know how homeless people do it with just a sleeping bag and a
bottle of water beside them!”
“It’s our
government” she responded, “They don’t provide affordable housing or put money
into shelters. They take our taxes but they don’t want to give anything back!”
Joe, the manager
was taking a smoke break in the food bank van and blasting a modern version of
Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” while a big woman danced near the back door of
the food bank. When he suddenly turned it off and walked back towards the door,
she said “Awww! I was just getting into the jam!” Joe told her, “Yeah, but the
jam’s no good without the peanut butter!” After he went inside, she said to
someone, “Did you hear what he said? He said the jam’s no good without peanut
butter! He’s so funny!”
Once I was inside,
Bruce called my number. I’d discovered a few days before while getting ready
for a cockroach treatment that the hand bagged pasta I’d gotten previously from
the food bank hadn’t been properly tied and so the roaches had gotten in. I’d
thrown those out, so this time I took a couple of commercially sealed packages
of spiral pasta. I selected some gourmet soups that were hidden behind the
other soups. Bruce decided it would be a good idea to follow my lead and to
bring all the gourmet soups to the front. There was also a can of hummus. In
the cold section, Sue gave me a package of sliced smoked honey and maple
flavoured ham (although, I don’t think it was actually smoked, but Compliments
rather just added liquid smoke along with the powdered honey and maple
flavouring) and a package of frozen chicken wieners. From the vegetable lady I
took a squash off her hands that had been sitting all by itself with nothing to
do.
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