The tap water still tasted like iodine on the Saturday morning of
December 23rd but I drank it anyway during song practice, forcing
down big gulps to get it over with.
I dreaded going to
the food bank that day because of the horrible, cold wait last time. When I
arrived there were two cop cars parked in front. I established my place in line
with an orange Australian Boot Company bag and headed for the door to go
downstairs but it was locked. I asked why the cops were there and the big guy
with the baseball cap and the moustache said that the new manager (the one
who’d been swearing at people in line last time) had called the police on an
old woman that had gone downstairs to pee.
A couple of minutes later the two ossifers came up with the elderly
Jamaican woman who usually gets in line at about 7:00. She was told she
couldn’t go back down because it’s private property and they had a right to not
want her there. The old lady told us that all she’d done was gone down to pee
but the manager pushed her body and her face. I suggested that she charge her
and everybody else agreed. One of the lowpeace officers, who looked something
like Anderson Cooper, as he was getting into his car, declared, “Nobody’s
charging anyone with assault!” I wondered why the cop said she couldn’t charge
someone with assault that had pushed her. The e-cigarette guy answered,
“Because he’s an asshole!” and then advised her to call another cop and to
press charges. Downstairs they’d put a few food items in a box for the old
lady. It was now lying on the floor of the entryway. When she was asked if she
wanted it she exclaimed in her Jamaican accent, “They can stick it up where the
sun don’t shine!”
After the fuzz left
I went downstairs. When I walked into the food bank the manager called out to
me, “We’re not open yet, sweetie!” I said, “I know. I’m here to make a
donation.” The manager seemed to appreciate a donation of cat food and said,
“Not enough people think about the cats!” I explained that mine had died of old
age. She said she was sorry but I said I wasn’t and declared that 17 years is
long enough to have cats (though that was just one generation. I’d actually had
that family of felines for 20 years). I told her that I write a column on the
food bank experience and I wanted to interview someone in management. She said
I could interview her and take a tour of the facilities after the holidays. She
gave me her name, Valdene, and the number for the food bank.
It was snowing in a
steady, sleepy and somewhat lovely fall. Bart was not in line, but rather
standing against the wall between the food bank door and the entrance to the
Parkdale Activity and Recreation Centre. As usual, he was calling out absurd
and often obscene statements, as his condition compels him to do. A tough
looking, skinny young man came walking awkwardly through the snow, wearing
sandals over bare feet. As he passed Bart he heard him say something and
thought he was speaking to him. He stopped and confronted Bart, telling him
that he should show more respect. Bart told him, “You don’t understand” and
revealed himself to be quite aware of his own affliction as he tried to explain
to the guy that he hadn’t been talking to him or to anyone, but the guy just
gave Bart an angry warning to watch his mouth and then continued on. A half an
hour or so later he came back and chased Bart out into the street, even though
Bart is much taller than him, then he shouted more threats and went back the
way he’d come, almost barefoot in the winter weather.
Wayne was in line,
even more exuberant, animated and behaviourally over the top than usual while
he danced and shouted ridiculous things. I assume that in terms of uncontrolled
speech, Bart and Wayne share a similar disorder, but it’s interesting what
different characteristics their language and expression have. Bart is much more
dramatic and often takes on different voices, while Wayne’s verbal ejaculations
are often clearly intended to be funny. Wayne started singing a Christmas carol
and approached me, asking if I anted him to stop. I assured him that he could
keep on singing. He responded, “No, I want you to pay me to stop!” I informed
him that he would have to pay me to pay him to stop singing. “A man of
intelligence!” he declared and moved on to another routine.
Someone in line
compared Wayne to Gene Gene the Dancing Machine on the Gong Show.
I looked away from
Wayne for a couple of minutes and when I turned back he was dancing around with
his pants off as the snow fell on his naked legs. It looked like he had a pair
of shorts on underneath, but nonetheless it was a pretty surprising display. It
seemed his intention was to put on a show for passing traffic as he walked to
the edge of the sidewalk and did a mock stripper dance. Shortly after that he
hurriedly put his pants back on but fifteen minutes later he took his coat off
and pulled the legs of his pants up until his legs were just as exposed as
before and began another raunchy gavotte. He did this for several minutes, then
he pulled his pant legs down and pulled up the waistband to his stomach till he
looked like a tubby version of Steve Erkel and commenced prancing around like
that, and to make it even more comical, he was wearing a trilby hat backwards
that sat high on his head because it was too small. Then, with each hand he
pinched two side-by-side points on his sweatshirt and pulled the fabric out as
far as he could to imitate breasts and continued to dance that way for a while.
The people ahead of
me were a middle-aged couple from Poland, though I assume they met here in
Canada. They chatted in Polish the whole time, except when she was
affectionately leaning her head on his shoulder. It seemed to me that they got
along so well that they couldn’t possibly be married.
The line started
moving at around 11:00 but it was closer to 11:30 by the time I got downstairs.
I noticed that the windows had already been repaired since the angry guy broke
them last week.
Sue was back
handling the meat and dairy. She left the food bank almost two years ago but
she always returns to help out at Christmas time. I complimented the new colour
of her braids. She thanked me and joked that she was feeling blue.
There was the usual choice between frozen
hot dogs and the frozen ground chicken that I selected. She gave me a two half
litres of milk; six eggs (at least one of which broke before I got home); a
frozen, cooked ham, two 225 gram tubs of pro active margarine, a pack of
Pillsbury raspberry turnovers. We wished each other a merry Christmas and I
moved on to Sylvia’s vegetable section.
Sylvia gave me two small bunches of
organic collard greens; a bag of three organic romaine hearts; three small
zucchini; ten potatoes and five small bosc pears. She offered me some Granny
Smith apples and a bag of onions but I still had a bag of each from last time.
After I wished her a merry Christmas and turned towards the shelves, I was
standing and waiting for a volunteer when Sylvia offered me a turnip. A woman
nearby corrected her that it was a rutabaga. I was sceptical, but I looked it
up later and found that she was right. The fact that it was waxed apparently is
a dead giveaway. Rutabagas are said to have come about when a turnip got
crossed with a cabbage. The first official record of the rutabaga is by a Swiss
Botanist from 400 years ago. I turned Sylvia’s rutabaga down because I was just
finishing up the one that I’d gotten last time and there is only so much of
that strong, sharp rooty flavour that I can take. Just then someone gave Sylvia
some tomatoes so I asked her for one and she gave me two.
I was glad that my helper for the shelves
was the tiny, elderly Filipino woman. She is always so nice that it’s hard not
to smile at her. She asked if I was being served. I declared, “You’re serving
me!” and she confirmed with a smile, “I’m serving you!”
There was a wide variety of cereals on
offer, but I picked one that had lost its box and had a transparent bag showing
that it had flakes, raisins, dried cranberries and chopped almonds.
I took a tomato and basil sauce from the
pasta section.
At the top of the soup shelf I found a
carton of organic free range chicken broth. How could it possibly be “free
range” if it’s stuck in the same size container as all the regular chicken
broth? Shouldn’t it be allowed to flow freely along the floor of the food bank?
Below the broth were some canned soups. I
chose an organic lentil soup but my helper acted sheepishly co-conspiratorial
because I think she had been indicating ineffectively that I’d been supposed to
take from the soups to the left of where her hand had been. She seemed to be
telling me afterwards to put it quickly and deeply in my bag. One would almost
think a SWAT team was going to burst in at any minute and take me out because I
took organic lentil instead of Campbell’s tomato.
The canned protein/peanut butter shelf
had a wide variety of canned meat and fish, I assume because that’s the kind of
thing that people donate during the Christmas season at the supermarkets in the
big barrels near the exits. I selected a can of tuna that turned out to be
yellowfin in broth and oil.
From the bean shelf I got my usual can of
chickpeas and among the canned vegetables I found a tin of crushed pineapple.
Below those were a choice between cartons
of vegetable milks and organic orange juice. I picked the juice and she gave me
two.
The cracker shelf had only sleeves of
saltines and boxes of rice crackers. I grabbed the box.
Since she could reach them so easily, my
helper was good at giving me stuff from bottom shelves. She scooped up for me a
handful of small bags of gummy fruit candies, a couple of little packages of
breadsticks with cheese dip and three dark chocolate and cherry trail mix bars.
The top of the last shelf always has a
variety of snack items. I took the jar of salsa con queso.
I often skip the bread, but since I had a
turkey to stuff in a couple of days I grabbed a couple of loaves of cranberry
raisin flax bread that in terms of freshness were both way past sliceability. I
also took a bag of pre-sliced organic spelt thin sandwich buns, the kind with
multiple dock holes, because they would go well with some ground beef that I
planned to make into burgers.
Because of the Christmas season the food
bank has had much more plentiful offerings for the last couple of weeks than
usual. There have been a greater variety of vegetables as well, though the
quality has been low. The collard greens were pretty wilted, the zucchini
turned out to be partly squishy, the tomatoes had to go straight to the garbage
and I was worried about the romaine hearts because of recent news reports
advising nobody in Ontario to eat romaine right now because of the risk of e
coli. They look pretty fresh but I think I’m going to toss them just to be
safe.
After leaving the food bank I immediately
rode through the snow to the No Frills at King and Jameson. My main reason for
going there was to buy bacon but I needed some fruit as well. The grapes
weren’t looking so hot so I got a bag of oranges and a couple of packets of
raspberries, as well as the bacon and a few other things.
After bringing my groceries home I went
back out to the liquor store to get some beer. I planned to drink a little more
than usual so I decided on a small case of 8 Creemore, which might last me till
New Years.
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