Silver Smoking Jacket

            When I turned on Radio Canada on Saturday morning there was just dead air for the first time in years. I assumed it was a technical glitch from their end since hours later when I checked, everything was fine. I really felt its absence during yoga though. On early weekend mornings there is just classical music with no announcer. I’m not even that big a fan of classical or any instrumental music for that matter, but music with lyrics would be too distracting during exercises that require relaxation and concentration.

While playing guitar that morning I looked across the Dollarama parking lot and saw at the far end a beautiful little badger shaped beast with a black body, a long tail and a snow white back make its way east along the alley, perhaps on its way to a delicious dumpster dive either behind the dollar store or the community centre.

The food bank line-up on Saturday was surprisingly long considering that everyone had recently gotten their various cheques from social services. From the amount of second hand smoke I had to try to avoid I could have been convinced that most of them needed food because they’d spent their entire allowances on rent and cigarettes. It probably only seemed that way to me though because this time the wind was blowing from the east. Because there are usually people smoking in front of the entrance to PARC and in front of the door to the food bank, that meant that all of that second hand smoke was blowing towards the line-up.

After establishing my place in line I moved around a lot, most of the time so far to the east that the line-up was almost out of sight.

            It was a chilly morning and my index finger got numb sometimes while I was trying to read “The Atheist’s Mass” by Balzac.

            I went downstairs to use the washroom and the elderly gentleman that’s always near the front in line was there as well. While we were both washing our hands I asked him if he was number one this time. He said he was about number four and told me that there had been an argument early on because of someone that had marked their place and left. I asked him what time he gets there to be number four and he told me about 7:15. I asked what the point of getting there that early was considering that I get there at 9:45 and I’ve rarely noticed that I get less groceries than the people at the front. He argued that sometimes they run out of milk but I’ve rarely seen that to be the case.

            Wayne was there and as loud and exuberant as usual. At one point he was banging out a rhythm on the mailbox across from 1501 Queen and the older man that was sitting on the steps called out with a smile, “Quiet! People are still sleeping upstairs!” Wayne responded that if they were still sleeping they must be crackheads that have just gotten to bed.

            Wayne shakes his booty to a cassette player about the size of a thick paperback novel that he has strapped to his belt, which is very anachro-futuristic if one thinks in terms of the Guardians of the Galaxy film series. Later he tied a black scarf to his head like a blindfold and began dancing with that big cigar in his mouth, sometimes doing 360 degree spinning jumps. Further along in the morning he had somehow acquired a silver lamé smoking jacket.

            The man from the St Francis Table arrived to make the usual bread delivery and announced that The St Francis Table would reopen after its August vacation this coming Tuesday to continue providing full meals for a dollar.

            At around 11:10, Angie, Samantha and Lana came out for a smoke, which usually means they’ve made all their preparations to start distributing food and are just taking a break before the rush. When they were going back inside Angie called to everyone that they’d be starting in five minutes.

            The food bank opened 45 minutes late this time. They took in the first ten clients and then it took several minutes before the next five were let in. When I got near the front there was some shifting around. The old guy that had been sitting on the sidewalk when I’d arrived was standing behind me, as had been Wayne. When I’d gotten there and asked who the last person was, the big woman on the steps had told me I was behind the Asian guy with the pony tail, but it turned out that the old guy was behind him. I asked him why he hadn’t spoken up when I’d first asked who the last person was. He said it was because it’s hard to get a word in edgewise when that woman is talking. Then he said, “You know how she is!” I shrugged. I let both him and the dancing man in front of me.

            At almost 11:45 Wayne and I were at the front of the line. Moe came by and stood chatting. He was surprised that Wayne was there to get food. Wayne said something about living upstairs. I was surprised by that because I had no idea that there were people that actually lived at PARC. I looked it up later though and saw that PARC does indeed provide ten units of supportive housing upstairs at 1499 Queen Street West with a full time community mental health worker dedicated specifically to the care of the tenants.

            Moe asked about Wayne’s background. He said that his father was Black and his mother was White and that when they had sex while his mother was pregnant his father poked him in the brain. I assume that last part was a joke. I don’t think a mix of Black and White is the entire story behind Wayne, because to me he looks Native. Moe thought he looked Hawaiian and then he started trying to recall the name of the Hawaiian singer that sang in the style of Frank Sinatra. Several times I suggested he was talking about Don Ho but he kept saying, “No! It was a Hawaiian guy!” I told him Don Ho was Hawaiian. After a while he concluded that it was Tony Bennett. I told him that Bennett is Italian. Finally I reminded him of the song, “Tiny Bubbles” and he nodded and admitted that was the song the guy he’d been thinking of sang. I informed him one last time that the song was sung by Don Ho and he didn’t argue with me anymore.

            When Lana let the next three people in she warned Wayne to stifle the nasty language while he was inside.

I presented my Parkdale Food Bank identification card at the desk for the first time and it was slightly faster getting processed that way than by looking up my birth date, but not by much. I got number 32.

            There was a young woman serving at the meat and dairy counter and she had just given Wayne his bag of eggs and a couple of yogourt drinks when Angie told her to stop serving for a while. The young woman apologized to Wayne and then she went out onto the floor to serve people at the shelves. Angie took over at the meat and dairy counter but started from scratch with Wayne and so he ended up getting an extra bag of eggs and a few extra yogourt drinks. I probably would have said something, since Angie is pretty generous with me.

            I got two half-litre cartons of milk, four 93 ml bottles of DanActive strawberry yogourt drink, three packs of almond Glossettes and a six-pack of small fruit bottom yogourt cups. There was a choice between a 340-gram tub of cream cheese and a slightly smaller tub f cream cheese with salmon. If they’d been the same size I would have taken the salmon. Another choice was between bacon bits, frozen ground chicken or chicken hot dogs. I picked the ground chicken because it’s closer to actual meat, but Angie asked if I’d also like some bacon bits, so I took them. They were hand packed in a plastic bag and looked like they had been made from real bacon. Finally she gave me a ten-slice pepperoni, green pepper and olive pizza.

            Sylvia’s vegetable section provided a cauliflower, a red pepper, an onion, a sprig of rosemary, ten small carrots, a bag of ragged brown lettuce and a long, pale green squash that didn’t look like a zucchini. She asked if I could carry a whole bag of potatoes and I confirmed that I could so she gave me an unopened 5-kilogram bag of spuds. Finally she gave me a plastic bag containing the odd selection of one small cucumber that looked like it was more for pickling, a green tomato and one tiny cherry tomato. I assume that these last items were donated in bags in that combination and given out the same way.

            At the shelves I had the same older volunteer with the Polish accent as last time.

            I first of all took a large box of Cheerios. I didn’t want pasta or rice, though I would have taken some sauce from that section if they’d had any. The canned beans were back and so I picked some chickpeas. On the soup shelf there were only cartons of chicken broth. It’s been more than a month since they’ve had cans of tuna.

            On one shelf there was a choice between a bag of pretzels and one of pub style Buffalo wing flavoured popcorn of all things. Although I’m not a big fan of popcorn anymore, the strange flavour piqued my curiosity.

            They had restaurant size servings of orange marmalade and tartar sauce. I have no use for tartar sauce right now so she gave me a couple of handfuls of marmalade.

            She seemed in a hurry and so I had to remind her of the bars at the bottom of the last shelf. She gave me two chocolate pastry crisps and two strawberry crumble bars.

            Then she directed me to the bread. I bent down to check out a bagged loaf of rosemary focaccia. She told me it was yummy but I was going to take it anyway.

            Unfortunately I had to throw out the lettuce as soon as I got home because it was just too far-gone. Of the pizza, since I had to put it on its side in my bag, when I got home and tried to remove it, only the box came out while the whole pie stayed behind. After recovering the pizza slices I had to pick several olive pieces from the bottom of my bag. The popcorn turned out to have a hole in the bottom of the bag and so I also had to fish for a few spicy brown kernels before transferring the contents of the bag to a Tupperware container.

                   But there was a fair amount of dairy and in addition to the ground chicken the pepperoni on the pizza and the bag of bacon bits are a lot more meat than we’ve been getting lately. The bag of potatoes will come in handy and last quite a while. So after several weeks of very lean pickings the food bank came through this time with a relatively substantial offering.