I went to join the food bank line-up
at 9:45. The line was longer than I’d expected considering that the social
assistance payments had been issued. I was just behind the old man. Graham was
about five places ahead of me. He told me that he’d already been to the food
bank on Wednesday and so he was hoping no one would notice, since one is only
allowed to come once a week. I told him that I hoped he wasn’t going to wait
all that time for nothing but he shrugged and said that at least it keeps him
away from the crack house that he lives in. I asked if it was really a crack
house and he confirmed it was. He said a dealer lives across the hall from him
and so there is traffic at all hours. I asked if the cops ever visit but he
said they don’t care. I said in my day the police would have been all over any
place with drugs.
A lot of the people that usually
wait inside the entryway were out on the sidewalk.
I pulled out my book dual language
book of stories by famous French authors and continued from where I left off in
Flaubert’s story of St Julian the Hospitaler. After having fulfilled the
prophecy of murdering his parents Julian became a wandering beggar. He felt
compelled to tell the story of his horrible act and so he was shunned by many
and eventually avoided people altogether and lived off what he could find in
the woods. His sorrow never decreased and one day he decided to drown himself
but he saw in the water the image of an old man that he thought was his father
and so he couldn’t bring himself to commit suicide. After many years he came
upon a river with a muddy shore that made crossing difficult. He found a
wrecked boat, fixed it and decided that he had found his calling. He became a
ferryman and offered his services for free to the many people that needed to
cross. There are three pages left for him to become a saint.
A young woman came by that knew the
old man and offered to get him a coffee at Tim Hortens. He asked for a
double-double and after she left he told me that he would be marrying her in
two days at city hall. He added that she would be marrying a couple of other
guys too. I asked how many husbands she was going to have and he said, “As many
as she wants!”
An elderly woman of East Asian
descent whom he seemed to know came and sat down with him. She wasn’t in the
line-up and so she must have been waiting for breakfast at PARC. She sat
smoking and smiling pleasantly at everyone.
The old man took out a sharpie and
began drawing on his light grey pants just above the knee. On each side he drew
a circle with a cross and then above each of those he drew another circle
containing a peace symbol. Then he printed on the right knee “Paul Ringo” and
on the other John Starr”. I found it curious that George Harrison had been excluded.
Just before opening time Valdene the
manager came out and bellowed that anyone that wasn't beside their carts would
not get a number. So we were back to the number system. A few minutes later
Martina the doorkeeper came down the line with a jumble of laminated cards with
wrist strings but she was having difficulty sorting them out in order. When she
got to me she was missing the number 22 and had to go back inside. She came
back and gave me the number and then continued down the line.
Martina called out several times for
anyone smoking to go to the outer edge of the sidewalk. This week it included
for the first time everyone that smokes around the doorway or anywhere else
along the building. She didn’t say anything to anyone that was smoking east of
the doorway towards PARC though. The smokers being only on the other side of
the sidewalk doesn’t really keep second hand smoke from anyone in line though.
The young woman returned after a
long time with the coffee for the old man. She was carrying a dishwashing
liquid bottle that looked like it was half full of booze and she did look
drunk. She told the old man she was going to buy him a pack of cigarettes.
I was glad we were back with the
number system because it’s a hassle to have to stay in line and keep shuffling
forward after they start letting people in. Once I’m closer to the front in
that situation I don’t feel as secure in stepping out of line to avoid the
second hand smoke. With a number I could move around and be a little freer of
the smoke.
Downstairs the old man was being
served and Valdene once again complained that he had been there earlier in the
week. She didn’t directly address him this time but chastised the receptionist,
who told her that he wasn’t on the system and he hadn’t seen him there before.
Steve, who is usually either working
reception or doing some managerial job, was my volunteer at the shelves. They
had gotten a windfall of bags of a brand of Indian spices by a British company
called East End. There were about fifteen kinds of spices and I was told that I
could take one of each. My spice rack is pretty crowded and so I thought it
would be overkill to take one of everything and so I just grabbed a few. I took
a 100 gram bag of black pepper, on the back of which was a recipe for black
pepper alu. I got a bag of black salt powder or kala namak, which is kiln-fired
rock salt mined from around the Himalayas. According to Wikipedia it has a
sulphurous, pungent smell but when I sniffed it I didn’t pick that up. However,
when I tasted it that described the odour exactly. It smells like rotten eggs.
Apparently it’s used by vegans to give tasteless tofu the flavour of eggs they
are craving. The back of my bag has a recipe for chaat masala.
I also picked a big 250-gram bag of
crushed chillis, on the back of which was a recipe for Karahi Murgh chicken.
Further to the left were some bags from the same company but Steve couldn’t
figure out what the item was. I explained to him that sultanas are raisins. I
took the golden sultanas and the green sultanas. On the back of the green ones
was a recipe for carrot halwa. I remember eating halwa a lot during the six
months I lived at the Sivananda Yoga Ashram, north of Montreal where I turned
twenty.
From the other shelves I got two
cans of chickpeas, a carton of green lentil and curry soup, two small bottles
of Simply lemonade and a 1.75 litre jar of pasta sauce.
Valdene was minding Angie’s section.
When I got there she already laid out my items, which were a tube of frozen
generic ground chicken, three eggs, a bag of cheese strings, two single
servings of yogourt, a small frozen cheese pizza and a bag of organic tortilla
chips. The bag makes a big deal about the fact that the corn is ground with
volcanic stones. I couldn’t see what difference what kind of stones they were
ground with and wondered why not just run over the corn with a steamroller or
stomp on it? According to one website a slower process of grinding retains the
grain germ but since the bag doesn’t say “hand ground” I assume they use a
machine with volcanic stones attached. I guess maybe the imperfections keep it
from being ground to the point where the germ is lost, but I don’t fully
understand the process. I just took the pizza, the eggs and the tortilla chips.
From the bread section I took a
package of salted caramel brownies.
Sylvia offered me potatoes but the
ones in the box were big and unhealthy looking with black spots. I told her
that by the time I cut out all the bad parts I’d have a tiny potato for each
one. She agreed and we moved on. She gave me eight small cucumbers, three
zucchini, a sizeable bag of chopped green peppers and another of chopped
jalapenos. In the “take what you want” section near the door there was a bag of
chopped tomatoes, a bunch of organic celery, a seedless cucumber and a bag of
three avocadoes.
Later at lunch I discovered that every one of the avocadoes were
greyish-brown inside and so they had to be trashed. But overall I was impressed with the variety and amount of
vegetables they were offering for a time of year that’s usually pretty sparse
in that respect. The spices were a pretty big score too, especially for someone
that has room on their spice rack for all of them.
After the food bank I headed home to
put my stuff away and then went back out to get fruit at the supermarket. As I
was locking my bike in front of No Frills an elderly woman was passing and
stopped ask rhetorically why there was so much traffic on King Street for a
Saturday.
I bought a few bags of grapes, a pack of lean ground beef that was on
sale, some kitchen bags, some yogourt and some frozen potato wedges that were
on sale for almost half price.
I had a toasted cheese, tomato, cucumber and lettuce sandwich for lunch.
I worked on my journal.
That night I added extra, sauce, cheddar cheese and jalapenos to the
small pizza that I got at the food bank and had it with a beer while watching
two episodes of Stories of the Century.
The first was about Cattle Kate, whose real name was Ella Watson. She
owned a ranch and a bar in Sweetwater, Wyoming but also rustled other people’s
cattle along with her boyfriend Jim Averell. The fictional railroad detectives
Matt Clark and Frankie Adams come to stop her and Kate hires Matt as a trail
boss. They go on the drive and Kate sells the herd just when the posse arrives.
She and Jim are arrested after the gratuitous gunfight. But while they are in
jail a lynch mob comes, overpowers the sheriff and takes them out of town where
they hang them.
Cattle Kate was played by Jean Parker. She was discovered while posing
as a flower girl on a float in the Tournament of Roses Parade. She made over
seventy films, many of which were box office successes, such as Little Women
with Katherine Hepburn. She also had successful roles on Broadway. In 1951 she was
escorted off Bondi Beach in Australia after a swimsuit inspector measured her
bikini and found that it was too skimpy.
The real Ella Watson was a Wyoming pioneer. She was non-violent and
never charged with a crime in her life but she was accused of cattle rustling
by powerful ranchers and hanged by their men. She bought cattle from emigrants
on the trails. She and boyfriend or husband Jim Averell owned land side by side
and they controlled 1.6 kilometres of Horse Creek, which surrounding ranchers
collectively wanted to buy to water their cattle. She and Jim refused to sell.
The cattlemen’s association controlled the approval of brands and charged large
fees for the rights, which often left small ranchers like Ella and Jim without
a brand. They had applied five times for brands and were refused. They wanted
to use their water supply for irrigation which would have shrunk Horse Creek
and so there were more reasons for the ranchers to conspire against them. When
Ella and Jim finally got a brand they were accused of branding other ranchers’
cattle. The ranchers had them dragged off and hanged. Ella Watson was the only
woman to be hanged in Wyoming.
The second story was about Sam Bass, who was the leader of the gang of
train robbers. While stopping a train they accidentally found that it was
carrying $60,000 in gold coins. They divided it six ways. The men are tracked
to the swamps with bloodhounds. Some of the men are caught. Sam and one of his
partners escape after hiding their gold because it would drag them down in the
swamp. Sam is injured while escaping after a failed bank heist. He never
reveals where he buried the money and it becomes an obsession with people for
the next few years to try to find it.
In the real story Sam evaded capture until the Texas Rangers took the
father of one of Sam’s men into custody for questioning. Mr Murphy was very ill
at the time and the Rangers threatened Jim Murphy that they would not allow a
doctor to see his father unless he turned informant against Bass. They learned
that Bass was going to rob the Williamson County Bank and they set an ambush.
Bass was wounded in the shootout and found outside of town. He died the next
day.
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