My tales about people I meet at the Fort Bragg Food Bank could consist only of loving great-grandmothers, small business people who can”t quite make ends meet and wholesome families struggling with low wages, unemployment and foreclosure.
Sad and inspiring stories are abundant.
Or, the portrait could be of lifelong homeless, the occasional free loader and the groups of traveling youngsters who sometimes party in the parking lot next to the Food Bank. Both accounts would depict real people.
My perceptions about poverty and about people have changed over the course of three years of interviewing and observing the wide range of clients I meet at the Food Bank.
But telling their stories requires me to create a narrative readers can relate to. So often, I realize how little most people of my acquaintance understand about the lives of the many people who need free food. People often express disdain for those they don”t understand.
Negative perceptions of others seem to have only gotten worse as the recession has deepened, as the line that divides “us” from “them” has gotten harder to see. So it is with some trepidation and hopes for clarification that I talk about the type of Food Bank clients I meet most often — people with disabilities.
Many clients of the Food Bank can”t work, or can only work part-time, because of a disability. Lots of these individuals will describe their disability in conversation but make it clear they don”t want to be in the newspaper: People will misunderstand, they fear.
Maybe I can help.
John Hanchett was one of the few willing to say he is on disability and that many people need to supplement their monthly checks, which usually amount to less than $1,000.
“People can see my disability because I walk with a limp,” said Hanchett, 42, whose injury stems from a teenage diving accident in the Noyo River.
“And if someone comes up in a wheelchair, [folks] will part the Red Sea for them,” he said.
“But there are many others with diabetes and serious health problems who also very much need this Food Bank — it”s a terrific service” he said.
Many disabled people who use the Food Bank also volunteer there and at many other nonprofits in the area.
“This is more than just a place where you come to get food,” Hanchett said. “This is a community we can build upon.”
Many disabled people live lifestyles of frugality and a communal mindset hard to imagine by those working 9 to 5. Debra Kerr, who recently had her disability payments cut to $470 per month, came with her ex-husband, Christopher Kerr, who is also disabled and is now her caregiver and still her friend.
Debra returned to the area when she became disabled so she could be closer to family; she says the Food Bank is a wonderful and non-judgmental resource.
“The food provided is excellent,” said Christopher Kerr. “And I hate to think where a lot of people would be without it.”
Many disabled people I meet at the Food Bank live in leak-prone travel trailers in three area “campgrounds” — actually our rural area”s large de facto housing projects. The accommodations there are far from luxurious.
In one 24-foot trailer (a little larger than a pickup truck) a couple lived for more than a year with a woman roommate. They managed to shower, eat and sleep in those quarters. Only TV quarrels brought an end to it.
Sadly, they are more the rule than exception when I explore and hear more and more about lives of the clean, average-looking people I meet at the Food Bank.
Very important to the Food Bank is ABC No-Barriers which has brought numerous developmentally-disabled people to work at the Food Bank, providing a key volunteer cadre and a priceless social opportunity to people who otherwise would be isolated.
“ABC does good work and are an important part of the Food Bank family,” said Executive Director Nancy Severy. “My admiration for the spirit of these dedicated, lovely volunteers has grown steadily over my tenure at the Food Bank.”
Recently, another local nonprofit, Parents and Friends, also began placing volunteers at the Food Bank.
Mental health disabilities are among the most common, the most misunderstood and the most often scorned.
Many people disabled by voices, depression and other mental illness self-medicate with alcohol and street and prescription drugs, quickly becoming among the scorned.
Having worked for a couple years as extra help for the county mental health department, I have witnessed with sadness the decline in funding and programs from bad to worse.
Hanchett said the disabled aren”t the only ones struggling. He has friends who use the Food Bank because they are suffering from the downturn in real estate or unemployment.
“Almost everybody around here has to do a lot of different things to get by,” Hanchett said. “There is no real industry around here anymore, with the fishing and lumber industries pretty much dead.”
The temptation for those more fortunate among us is to look away, to think our lives could never end up like this. But when I look close, I see something different, especially in a declining America and a changing world.
A new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture says 14.6 percent of U.S. households — or about 49 million Americans — are low on food, the highest number since 1995 when the government began its “food security” report.
A charity so crucial as the Food Bank can truly bring people together and help create a more communal world, Hanchett said.
“I do know people who live out in the woods and say, This is my property, my truck, my dog and there is my fence, good fences make good neighbors,”” Hanchett said.
“But we can all do better than that. We have to.”
Season of Sharing
The purpose of the Advocate-News and The Mendocino Beacon”s annual Season of Sharing fund drive is to raise money the Food Bank can use year-round.
This year”s target is an ambitious $36,000, which would bring the total raised since our first fund drive in 1995 to just over $200,000.
The Community Foundation of Mendocino County administers the Season of Sharing free of charge as a courtesy to the newspapers. Every cent received 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 by our office, located at 450 N. Franklin St., Fort Bragg.
If you have any questions about the fund drive, call us at 964-5642. The fund drive began Nov. 12 and will end Dec. 31.
We acknowledge each week”s donors by printing their names in the newspapers, unless they ask to remain anonymous.
Food Bank hours
The Food Bank, 910 N. Franklin, Fort Bragg, is open every weekday but Tuesday. Special senior hours are from 10:45 a.m. to 11:15 a.m., Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The Food Bank is open from 4 to 6 p.m. on Thursdays, a time designed for working people. For information, call 964-9404.
