Say It Ain't So Already

Fun Day at the Food Bank

December 16, 2011 at 4:33 PM Leave a comment

Regulars to this site know I volunteer at my local food bank every Friday.  They’ve heard me moan about bare shelves and nothing much more to offer but tuna and beans.  I know it’s oxymoronic to use the words fun and food bank in the same sentence but today was such a fun day there, despite the sad fact that we need food banks to begin with and that their clientele is growing almost by the day.

But this time of year people grow a heart; they go out and volunteer and collect food and donate money.  Today we had a whole bunch of volunteers from various businesses around town who are either encouraged or required by their employees to do something for the community this time of year.

I ended up teaming with two people from a “wealth management firm” (needless to say, working at the food bank, even for four hours, was like being on another planet for them).  We loaded ourselves into one of their vehicles (a big SUV) and went to Costco and King Soopers, the local grocery chain in the Denver area.  At Costco we bought roughly 13 8-packs of refried beans; 40 43-pack cases of ramen (15c each — not bad!), and two boxes of eggs containing something like 24 dozen eggs each.

At King Soopers we bought 60 jars of baby food (49c each); 36 cans of spaghetti sauce (79c), 66 boxes of generic raisin bran (99c each), and about 70 cans of pork and beans and 20 packs of margarine (butter was too expensive) containing four sticks each.

(All the food was paid for by food bank donations.)

Every inch of the car — except where the three of us sat — was packed.  If we’d been rear-ended, those ramens and that cereal would have saved our lives!

When we got back to the food bank, we had fun putting some of the food on the shelves and storing some in the basement, to be brought up as needed.  While we were gone, a load of bread arrived.  We had plenty of milk and meat and veggies and fruit and yogurt, little cakes and cupcakes and even some candy.

Nothing is more depressing than June or July at a food bank.  People are off on vacation, the farmers haven’t yet begun to donate fruits and vegetables from their gardens and nobody’s thinking about hungry people.  It’s just awful to take clients through and have, again, not much more than tuna and beans to offer.  But today, ah, today we had plenty of food — and lots of variety — so it was a joy to welcome people in.

I mean, everyone needs a little joy in their life — even poor people.

Entry filed under: At the Food Bank. Tags: food bank donations, local food bank, wealth management firm.