Volunteer Shirley Harbour was spending the first of three busy days at the Fort Bragg Food Bank on Monday making fruit cups for the workers with her pal, Nina Pivirotto.
Outside, the line extended down South Franklin Street.
After a wild and busy Thanksgiving week, the Food Bank still needs more turkeys or hams for Christmas dinners. The truly spectacular meals served by the Food Bank on Thanksgiving and Christmas requires two solid, long workdays beforehand.
The collection of people and cars make old, industrial South Franklin into a party scene; there are many laughs and lots and lots of work.
“I usually come only on Wednesday, but on the two holidays weeks, I”ll be here every day and will go home with a smile,” Harbour said.
“Being here at the holidays is a great feeling,” said Pivirotto. “Everyone, especially in this economy, should come down here and spend a day at the Food Bank. They will leave feeling better about everything.”
In 2010, the volunteers and three staff members gave away 780 turkey dinners. Figuring a modest 12 pounds per turkey, that would be 9,400 pounds of just turkey. The grocery bag given at both holidays is packed with more fixings than any family can carry.
That”s three times the amount of salmon consumed at the World”s Largest Salmon Barbecue every summer in South Noyo Harbor. It”s mighty weight lifting for staff and volunteers, who work very long days, some delivering the monster meals to shut-in seniors.
“When people in need are able to receive food to prepare their own Thanksgiving and Christmas meals, it allows them to celebrate fully, to gather their friends and families just like we all do, and to live in dignity,” said “Turkey Dan Fowler, who dressed up in a turkey suit outside Safeway and Harvest Market this week.
Thanksgiving is a true North American holiday and the vision of that melting pot of equality is quite real. There are even a few Tofurkeys for the dedicated vegetarian.
Harbour, a volunteer for the past 10 years, is Native American and chair of the Shebelna band of Pomo Indians. Native Americans are the one ethnic group that often doesn”t celebrate Thanksgiving, because of the terrible things done to Indians in the centuries after they helped feed pilgrims that first Thanksgiving dinner in 1621.
“I love Thanksgiving and have always celebrated it. My whole family celebrates Thanksgiving, as does my bigger family,” she said. “Thanksgiving is all about being with family to me and giving thanks, both which we need more of today.”
“I”m more concerned with the people who want me to say Happy Holidays, not Merry Christmas. I like Merry Christmas,” said Harbour.
Fowler is president of the Food Bank board and also pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Fort Bragg.
“My vision is to help those in need, as Christ commanded. The Food Bank does such a wonderful job in helping so many. My hope is that we can find a way to purchase a new refrigerated haul truck next year, despite whatever cutbacks, etc. that come our way, and continue to provide a place where anyone in need can be treated justly and be given a selection of wonderful foods,” Fowler said.
The holiday meals are impressive. Each client starts off with a bag of canned and dried foods, including stuffing, gravy, green beans or peas, yams, corn and cranberry sauce. Next comes cranberry juice, loaves of bread, big sweet potatoes, a bunch of celery, a bag of apples, a big bag of potatoes and then, a large turkey. Nothing given on these special days is beyond fresh or requiring much imagination to make a fantastic meal.
Charles Unser, who just lost his job due to the cutbacks at the C.V. Starr Center, always seems to have a joke and a friendly taunt for me, which causes others to join in the joviality. I apparently started the laughs rolling in when I took a picture of him holding two pumpkins on his chest last year.
A man in line joins in the game of back and forth joking.
“Frank Hartzell? Why don”t we get the real reporter, Tony Reed. I saw him; that guy is really Clark Kent.”
“Come on now, Frank is Stupor Man,” retorted Unser, in my “defense.”
We had a similar pile of laughs with Turkey Dan at Safeway on Saturday. Some kids were scared, others wanted to play with him. Since he has no TV or Internet presence, some were simply baffled.
Adults, like new counter staffer Holly Hawkins and volunteer Mark Jepson, laughed and mugged for the camera with Turkey Dan.
“Yikes! Put it back on!” said Jepson when Fowler took off the mask and revealed a very hot and frumpled self underneath.
Many developmentally delayed people are among the Food Bank volunteers. For that population, most don”t cook and Thanksgiving is a time when all of them that I checked with had a place to go, so none were taking any turkey dinners home, but they were working hard anyway.
When I come, lots of people hide from the camera. Later most want to know when their picture is going to be in.
“How did I turn out? Am I going to make the paper?” asked volunteer Jerry Turner.
Meals go far beyond the Food Bank at the holidays and indeed the rest of the year. Local soup kitchens and providers of hot meals all utilize the Food Bank. They buy food at wholesale for Hospitality House and are crucial to most of the approximately 15,000 free meals that residents prepare and eat every year there. Hospitality House is the place where people who have slipped through the safety net land.
“We supply Hospitality House with USDA commodities, we bring them deli food from Harvest Market,” said Food Bank Executive Director Nancy Severy.
“We love working with Hospitality House. They are a great organization working alongside us to serve the same community need,” Severy said.
Pivirotto spent 12 years on the Food Bank board of directors. She remembers when there was no big communal lunch and the clients had to stand out in the rain when they waited in line. There was no Food Bank at all prior to 1979, which would be unthinkable in today”s world that has seen the division between rich and poor widen dramatically over those years.
“The Food Bank accomplished a lot in those years I was on the board, and for the better; it was very rewarding, said Pivirotto.
This time of year, everything seems fun at the Food Bank, but there are a few people who don”t get in the spirit. Harbour has occasionally encountered people who aren”t thankful, and says she tries not to let that sort of thing irk her.
“But that”s why they keep me in the back,” she smiles. “One time a man came in with a long grocery list from his wife, detergent, eggs, the whole list. I said, You”re looking for Safeway, it”s down the street.” Poor man, he probably couldn”t go home after that.”
Turkey Dan left me with a 1,700-year-old quote that seems very apt for what I see at the Food Bank.
St. Augustine said, “Poverty is the load of some, and wealth is the load of others, perhaps the great load of the two. Bear the load of your neighbor”s poverty, and let him bear with you the load of your wealth. You lighten your load by lightening his.”
Season of Sharing
This series goes hand in glove with the Advocate-News” and The Mendocino Beacon”s annual Season of Sharing fund drive for the Food Bank. The goal is to give the Food Bank money it can use year-round, not just during the holidays.
The nonprofit Community Foundation of Mendocino County administers the Season of Sharing free of charge as a courtesy to the newspapers.
Every cent taken in by the newspapers goes to the Food Bank.
Checks should be addressed to the Community Foundation of Mendocino County (CFMC), and mailed to newspaper at P.O. Box 1188, Fort Bragg, 95437, or dropped off at 450 N. Franklin St.
If you have any questions, call us at 964-5642. The fund-raiser runs through Dec. 31.
Donors” names are printed each week, unless you ask to remain anonymous. This week”s donors are Myra and Joseph Figuerido, Susan Larkin and James Ehlers, Janice and Stephen Walker, Deborah Smith, Connie Korbel and Joe Mickey and one anonymous donation.
The total amount raised so far comes to $400.
