Taco Bowls

            On Saturday I rode through the after snow fondue to the food bank but had to walk my bike into the driveway because I guess the backs of buildings are exempt from the city bylaw that requires the laying down of salt. On looking that up though, I see it’s not true, since all driveways are supposed to be cleared by the property owner. The driveway that the Parkdale food bank shares with the other tenants is cleared enough for vehicles but not for pedestrians. I guess someone could report whoever the landlord is in this regard and they’d have to pay a $100.00 fine. He or she might have to fork out a lot more if someone hurts their self on the ice and decides to sue.

            There were quite a few more people gathered than the week before now that all the groceries bought with the end of January social services cheques had been consumed. There was also a line-up this time consisting of people as well as shopping carts. The tall French Canadian guy was standing at the back of the line and confirmed for me that he had been the last one to arrive before me. I stepped in behind him and he immediately started complaining about the people that put their carts in line and then leave. Shortly though the conversation moved to the more pleasant subject of the food bank’s move to the basement of PARC in less than two months. He kept on saying they would be moving in March though I already knew it would be April. At first I thought he was saying that they will close down at this location in March and take a month to get set up at the new place, but I don’t think that’s what he meant. I didn’t have the confidence though to try to talk to him in my limited French in order to clarify. He said that the main reason they were moving is because they pay $3000.00 a month at this location while at PARC it was going to be free. He claimed Chinese people ran the food bank at PARC before, but I corrected him that it had been a Korean church

            A few people ahead of me was a tall and very large woman who looked like she might be from Africa. At one point she turned around and I saw that she had a strikingly beautiful face. Then she smiled at me and I smiled back, before lowering my eyes back to my book. I was reading a poem about Charley Pride by Wayde Compton that had a couple of really good lines: “There is a Funkadelic Parliament; Charley Pride is Guy Fawkes. Begot in Mississippi, upriver from the blues, born under an ambivalent sign …”

            Angie came out and was having a cigarette while sitting in one of the chairs near the door. She called down the line and said to someone that they could go in and get a coffee and some cherry pie. Then she said to someone ahead of me, “No, the guy behind you!” and she was looking in my direction I turned to look behind me and saw no one then she laughed and said, “Okay, smart guy!” and I realized she’d been speaking to me. It kind of made me feel dumb to be called a smart guy about something I wasn’t aware of.

There were quite a few people smoking this time, so I stepped out of line a few times. It was those times that I could see that the line behind me was getting very long.

When they started letting people in there was a hassle right away because of a woman who’d come early to leave her cart near the front of the line but then had gone away only to return just before the line began to move. Because of her lack of consideration she had been given a later number than her cart’s position in line and she was very angry about it. She raged very loudly in her West Indian accent for several minutes about how unfair it was. Dwayne, the door person kept telling her to look at the sign that says that if one leaves the line they will lose their spot. She retorted, “I don’t care about any sign!”

I asked Dwayne about the new space at PARC because even though I volunteered there for three years I had no idea how to get to the basement. At first I thought he was telling me that there’s a door to the basement just inside the main entrance but I think that he meant the door west of the main entrance, which also leads to the Tool Library. He informed me that it’s a much bigger space and so there would be no more lining up in the rain, snow and cold. I inquired as to whether they would eliminate the two-stage system of lining up for numbers, then leaving to come back and wait again to have them called. He imparted that they hadn’t worked out exactly how they were going to manage things at the new location but he speculated that there would just be one waiting period instead of two.

I got number 28 and went home for about 45 minutes. I ate a bowl of Raisin Bran but decided not to make any coffee because I knew I would not be able to finish it before leaving and I didn’t fancy drinking it cold later on.

When I got back to the driveway they were just calling for numbers 11 to 20, but almost immediately started calling numbers after 20 because some people hadn’t come back yet.

The prematurely white haired volunteer who drives the food bank van went out to the vehicle, started it and was idling it in the driveway. It smelled like the machine runs on propane and after a while the fumes were getting pretty noxious. A guy that was sitting by the door started shouting for him to either go or turn it off. He finally did shut it down, got out and walked back to the food bank but when he was opening the door the guy that had been shouting asked, “Whada they call you, ‘Meathead’?” He turned to give him a dirty look as he was stepping inside. Just after he’d turned away, the guy in the chair suddenly lurched up halfway to a standing position to indicate that he was ready to scrap and then sat back down.

Once I was inside and seated, Betina, one of my former yoga students at PARC, arrived. I know that she used to work at the food bank before I started going there but she still comes around there from time to time. I got the impression though that she might be still involved with the food bank on some organizational level since, when she started chatting with me about the move she told me, “We haven’t worked out whether we’ll have to close for a while during the move.”

It looked like they had at least three more volunteers than usual guiding clients from shelf to shelf. A guy that I’d never seen there before called my number.

The only thing at the top of the first set of shelves was cake mix. I guess if my daughter were still living with me I’d feel motivated to bake a cake but I certainly wouldn’t do it for myself anymore.

Below that were some packages of gourmet biscuits and some boxes of Goldfish crackers, but then someone from behind tossed in several bags of gourmet potato chips cut in the shape of French fries. I took a bag but then heard a conversation between volunteers, as one guy asked what they were and the reception guy answered that they were just stale potato chips. Well wouldn’t that make you feel just dandy about picking them?

From the bottom he gave me four Fibre-1 oats and chocolate bars.

I skipped the rice, pasta and sauce shelves and the canned beans and vegetables shelves.

I took a carton of organic creamy broccoli soup and then he asked me if I wanted some taco bowls. There were packages of five. I suddenly thought of that pre-election photo op on cinco de mayo of Donald Trump trying to placate all the Mexicans he’d insulted by eating a meal in a taco bowl, but I was intrigued anyway and took one package. He gave me another because I hadn’t taken much from the other shelves.

There was still conditioner left at the bottom of the second to last shelf, but all of the Aveeno was for colour treated hair. He gave me a bottle of Live Clean clear water hydrating conditioner. I think I’ve got enough hair stuff now to last me through the sticky summer.

From the cereal section I was glad to see that Shreddies were back. They were sans cartons but just as welcome or more so.

Across the aisle in Angie’s section there was a half-liter of 2% milk as usual. She also gave me eight cheese sticks and a choice between a pack frozen hot dogs and a bag of frozen breakfast sausages. I picked the sausages; she hesitated, and then gave me two bags, explaining that they had lots.

I feel almost guilty every time I pass by the bread section. I hope the bread lady doesn’t take it personally.

The vegetable lady gave me some potatoes, a few carrots, an onion or two and half of a rubbery bunch of broccoli.

As I was leaving, the guy who’d been two places ahead of me in line was on his way back in, but he stopped to ask me if I had two loonies for a toonie because he needed the change for the streetcar. I checked but didn’t have it so he went back into the food bank to see if anyone else could split two dollars for him. I was still unlocking my bike when he came back out and suggested to him that he could save a lot of money by getting a bicycle. He clarified that he was not allowed to ride a bike and many other types of exercise because he has a spinal chord injury.

I headed straight to the supermarket because a person needs to have fruit. I got strawberries and grapes, though quite a few of the grapes were too soft. I bought raisin bread, canned peaches and yogourt. On the way home I picked up two cans of beer.

That night I grilled the Italian sausages that I’d gotten a couple of days before, and had them with eggs and toasted bagels.

I watched a couple of episodes of Leave It To Beaver. In one, the perfect mother, June Cleaver showed some mean spiritedness towards Eddie Haskell. The boys were playing basketball with the hoop that Ward had put up above the garage door, so she was making them sandwiches for them, keeping in mind that Eddie had told her that he was allergic to mayonnaise. When Eddie measured the hoop and found that it was shorter than regulation, she decided to put mayonnaise on his sandwich anyway.

There was a white stretch SUV the length of a city bus parked across the street for several minutes. Music was blasting from inside but I don’t know why it was sitting there unless the kids inside had decided to go into the Coffee Time.