“Hey, did you get lost and just stumble in here?” the general manager said as I sat at the desk near the heavy trailer door where vans backed their deliveries of bread, 20 pound bags of rice, and other commodities for the Food Bank.
It had been nearly three months since my last shift on August 31. I had chosen to return on Tuesdays for the holiday season when one of my two part-time jobs offered a hiatus as the Food Bank opened an hour early in the evening because of the holidays.
For my first day back I was told that I’d be a runner. This meant taking clients’ lottery numbers, grabbing the correct family box and packing proteins and hauling frozen turkeys from one of the six refrigerators. I was nervous to have a new duty when there were 60 to 90 families in three hours to serve, so I was relieved when the program manager had me working the line with a volunteer whom I will call G.
When I introduced myself to G, he was stuffing his face with some of the holiday treats left behind from bagging for the treat box– Fleur de Sel caramels. As he chewed two in his mouth at a time, he bragged about having a dentist friend who made molds of his teeth.
“These caramels are doing the same,” he laughed, his moustache dancing as he chewed.
When I told him we’d be working together, he walked me through the amount of items clients could take, pointing out a strict line of demarcation for better efficiency.
“I will do all the breads, cakes and veggies, you do the fruit and dairy. We have plenty of apples, so they can have three. ” “Over here, he continued, “they can have one or one,” bending his wrist and waving his hand over two boxes of strawberries, grapes or blueberries. On he went with the oranges, bananas, kiwis, persimmons.
The gusto in which he chewed his caramels was the same in which he treated his produce boxes and clients. He fanned the kale’s leaves tall to make them sell and lined cabbage heads up as systematically as shiny bowling balls shooting out of a machine. Admiring his reverence for the bounty, I hoped to impress him with my food knowledge when I asked if the tangerines – leaves withered and yellowed but proud- had been gleaned.
“Yes, these are off a donor’s tree,” he said.
In between telling me how he roasted a chicken and sautéed mushrooms last night and couldn’t wait to take his 20-year-old daughter who was afraid of driving on freeway on a lesson the next day, he engaged the clients picking their produce as if he was their link to a special holiday meal.
“Take the kale leaves, snap them off and drop them into a stir fry! And I have baby eggplants – a little cross burn on the outside, but on the inside they are fine!”
He was a dynamo, running to Spanish-speaking clients filling out English forms, and then running back to help ones who were already in the snaking line.
“Usted puede tener un gran tomate o dos o tres pequeños tomates.”
“And next, the lovely Leslie will help you with fruit!,” he’d joke, slipping me a caramel.
He winked at two boys hovering by the box of bananas, escaping their Mom’s scolding for squirming in their chairs while they waited for their turn.
“You have kids? I love kids!” I love Christmas too! I am driving my wife crazy, serenading her with Perry Como.”
G started volunteering at the Food Bank because he lives right across the street.
“I work here during the day, and then I go work my regular job. I work nights.”
“What is your job?”
“I am the supervisory night stocker at Whole Foods.”
I wasn’t surprised.
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