It’s a ritual on the third Thursday of the month that goes
on rain or shine, winter or fall.
About 60 people this time took turns using a rolling grocery
cart which was filled up with zucchini, small potatoes, squash, fresh peaches, coffee
in one-pound sacks, corn-off-the-cob, pizza, beef jerky, cranberry juice and
fresh apples.
“How many can I have, two or three?” one woman said when she
got near the table where the zucchini was stacked. “Take 10, take as many as
you want,” said volunteer Sharon who spent four hours stacking the zucchini on
the table and pulling potatoes out of 50-pound sacks.
Peter LeClerc of MORC’s accounting department volunteered.
He pushed the carts for those who had a disability and needed a helping hand.
“We’ve done this in the middle of winter,” he said.
Hunger often is a constant companion of too many in Wayne, Oakland,
and Macomb counties where one-in-six people live in a perpetual state of not
having enough food to sustain a healthy body.
The 50 or 60 people who came to get the free food were
patient. Nobody took cuts. They looked at the amount of food in giant boxes to
make sure there was enough for those who were in line behind them.
“I have five children to feed,” one woman said. “Can I have
this larger bag of potatoes?”
“Of course,” said a volunteer, Theo.
When the food is gone, it is gone. At 10 a.m. when people
started pulling into the lot in vans, pickups and cars, an observer thought
there wouldn’t be enough food to go around. But the stores went quickly and
were gone with two hours.
Volunteer Barb Breen of Waterford thought “it was wonderful”
to see so many receiving food so they can get through the week.
“A lot of people don’t know about this,” she said of the
food donations or the collection of excess food from grocery stores and the
efforts of Forgotten Harvest of Oak Park whose mission is “to relieve hunger.”
“We can never do enough,” said Breen.
Drexel Lane of MORC would help control the flow of people
picking out food.
“We got two bags of taters over here,” he said. “Please give
me a case of peaches for this lady. We can’t give out one of anything, take
more.”
And as quietly and orderly as they came, those who received
food dispersed. Many had smiles and were speaking of how they were going to
bake the zucchini or make a peach pie.
They had reason to be joyful. They succeeded in beating
hunger from their door for another day or so.
Jerry Wolffe is the
Writer-in-Residence/Advocate-at-Large at the Macomb-Oakland Regional Center. He
can be reached at 586 263-8950.
