Food Bank Adventures: Thin Christmas

            On Saturday morning I tried again to find the lyrics to “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg but no one has posted them and I can’t fully make them out from listening to the video.

            I moved on to the Gainsbourg song "Soixante treize" but there's not even a recording for that one. It’s probably something he threw together for a TV show.

            I found a video for “Les filles c'est un flipper" but not the lyrics. Again, I will make an effort to write them down by listening but chances are I won't be able to grab enough to make a proper song translation. The song compares love to a pinball game in which men are the balls and women are the flippers. It’s funny that I have a poem that makes the same comparison.

            I worked on my poem series "My Blood in a Bug" but I tend to get sleepy in front of the computer at that time of the morning.

I got ready to go to the foodbank, which takes so much longer in the winter.

I got behind Veronica and said, “Happy Hanukkah Veronica!”

It was a much nicer day than the cold, rainy mess we all stood in last week. Veronica had been particularly affected by the rain and seemed actually in pain.

She noticed that I’d gotten a haircut and asked why I would do it at the beginning of winter. I said that I usually have a little more money from work this time of year. She was surprised because she didn’t think I had a job. I told her that I’ve been working part time as a model for art classes for many years. I said it’s very hard on the body, especially when one gets older because the poses usually have to be asymmetrical in order to be interesting to draw and so the body is thrown off balance from holding those positions for extended periods of time. I told her I worked as a furniture mover for a few years but that screwed up my back. She said, “I don’t suppose you’ve ever worked in an office.” I assured her I would fall asleep if I had to sit at a desk. She said I don’t seem to be a sedentary type. I said being a writer is pretty sedentary but I definitely need to refresh my brain with naps in order to keep from dozing off.

I asked Veronica if she remembered a couple of weeks ago when the woman claimed she was drinking coffee for her asthma. I said it’s sort of true that caffeine works like an asthma medication but only to a very small degree. It would take 150 cups of coffee to match a dose of theophylline but then drinking that much coffee would have its own uncomfortable side effects. Veronica said there’s too much false information going around. She might have easily believed that coffee could treat asthma. I said that the media doesn’t always help. I gave the example of the Mozart effect. A study done a few decades ago concluded that listening to Mozart raises the IQ. The media ran with it because it was interesting and people came to believe it even though no subsequent studies came up with the same results.

Veronica was worried that her turkey would thaw out because she would be going to the knitting workshop at PARC right after the food bank. I suggested that she ask the people in the kitchen to put her turkey in the fridge while she’s there. She said she’d ask.

Across the street a young woman was walking in a tank top and later a man crossed the street in shorts, even though it was freezing out. I told Veronica that when I was young I used to walk around in winter with a lot less on as well, because I thought it looked cool.

Veronica wanted to know if the line-up was getting long behind us. I told her not to think of it as a line-up but rather as a beautiful garland strung on the branches of the magical Christmas tree that is the Parkdale food bank. The line wasn’t much larger than average but I think that if people had a ticket for a turkey they could have come any day this week from Wednesday on.

It was about 11:00 by the time the line started moving.

Downstairs I gave back a couple of energy bars that had been given to me before I’d had a chance to read the labels. They contained sucralose, which I prefer not to eat.

They handed out the frozen turkeys right after we checked in and before the shelves. That’s the first time they’ve done that but I think it’s a good idea because the turkey is the heaviest item and so it should be on the bottom. Mine was a young turkey with giblets and when I got it home my digital scale said it weighed 5.2 kg, which means I’ll have to start thawing it on Monday if I want to roast it on Christmas day. The person that was giving out the turkeys also handed me a bag of Kerr’s caramels. I still have a bag of those from a few months ago and it will take me years to go through them.

There were boxes of stovetop stuffing on the top of the first set of shelves. My volunteer seemed disappointed that I didn’t want any. I told her that I make my own but I don’t think she heard me because she moaned, “Ohhh, but that’s the best part!”  Instead I took a container of Dijon and another of garlic pizza sauce. She called out “Great choice!” in response to almost everything I picked.

From the shelf below I took two cartons of multigrain crackers. On the bottom shelf there was some fancy granola, but I prefer a lighter cereal.

I got two cans of chickpeas and a can of tuna. There were some bags of jerky on the same shelf as the tuna. I asked for one but my volunteer said I’d have to sacrifice the tuna.

From the soup section I took a carton of chicken broth and can of Amy’s organic split pea soup. Amy’s Kitchen is an organic food business started by Rachel and Andy Berliner in 1987 and named after their newborn daughter. The company also opened a drive-through vegetarian restaurant in 2015.

My volunteer gave me three juice boxes, two grape and one orange.

From the pasta section I got a jar of Bolognaise sauce. It’s usually spelled “Bolognese” and it’s traditionally used with flat pasta. The first meat based Italian pasta sauce was born in Bologna centuries ago, but the meat was veal. The meat of Bolognese is ground beef and ground pork and of course it also has tomatoes, red wine and other ingredients.

Angie was at her station but she was sitting and eating some of that jerky I couldn’t have, so my volunteer walked around her to give me milk, yogourt and three eggs. I just took the eggs. Angie was sitting beside a meat bin and offered me more burger shaped sausages but I already had two bags of those in my freezer and so I declined.

There was a much wider variety of bread in the baked goods section. In a big bag higher than most clients could reach there was a big bag full of mostly bagels but the plastic was tied in a knot. I asked Angie if I could access the bag and she requested that I left it down for her and open it up. I took three bagels, a triangular bun and a round raisin bread loaf.

Sylvia offered me potatoes but I still had plenty of the bag she’d given me a couple of weeks before. Besides the individual spuds she was offering were in pretty bad shape. There were bags of rainbow carrots but I didn’t feel like cooking or eating carrots. I also didn’t bother with the cauliflower. She gave me four apples, three oranges and three plums but when I got home I had to throw the plums out because they were way too soft. From a box by the door I got three tomatoes.

Compared with last year this was a miniscule pre-Christmas haul. Last time in addition to the turkey or ham everyone got a nice red reusable bag full of nice food items such as a container of mini tomatoes, a bag of fresh spinach, a bag of rainbow carrots, five clementines with the leaves attached, a bag of russet potatoes, two yams, a small turnip, two mangoes and an avocado. But last year was exceptional and I wouldn’t want to have a great gift I gave to someone once become the standard by which all my other gifts are judged. However, when I look back in my journals at what I’ve gotten at other more ordinary pre-Christmas food banks, what we got this time was definitely below par.

As I was unlocking my bike a double amputee in an electric wheelchair was shouting angrily at the top of his lungs about someone having hit him from behind. I don’t think the person he was screaming at was within earshot but he was nonetheless angrily challenging him now as he jerked his wheelchair back and forth up and down the black and across the street and back. Martina, the food bank door keeper tried to tell him to calm down but it just made him swear more and shout louder as in, “Don’t fuckin tell me to fuckin calm down!” and he repeated his complaint about having been hit from behind. I hear the same man shouting under my window as he smokes, coughs violently, shouts and drinks beer in the morning in front of the Coffeetime. He’s quite often in a rage about something and frequently storms away in his machine at top speed, yelling all the way down the street.