McCallum: Feeding The Hungry

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(Host) Local food shelves are an important resource for hungry
Vermonters year round. Recently, educator, writer and commentator Mary
McCallum saw firsthand where some of that assistance lands in her own
town.

(McCallum) It was a cold wet day with pelting rain and
sleet. Undeterred, a friend and I joined other volunteers who drive back
roads and village side streets for a local food shelf. Black River Good
Neighbors in Ludlow has been delivering food to people in five
surrounding towns who are struggling to make ends meet for more than
thirty years, and this season a squadron of energetic volunteers packed
and delivered 321 boxes of donated food and scores of large plastic bags
stuffed with holiday items. The days of delivering wicker baskets are
over, but cardboard boxes filled with food are just as welcome.

Our
assignment was small, a mere three homes spread along ten miles of town
roads, yet the diversity of households was striking: a young mother of
two in an apartment in the center of town, a couple with small children
living in a mobile home off a steep dirt road with an unplowed driveway,
and a frail elderly widower who crept to the door with his walker.

Doing
deliveries, I felt that I was entering intimate personal spaces, all
different but every one marked by need. As each door swung open, I saw,
felt and heard the background of their daily lives: a barking dog,
arguing children, cats skittering for cover off a snowy porch, the smell
of cooking food and cigarette smoke, a radio playing. Or sometimes no
sound at all, save for a television turned on to keep the person
company. I remember that the aged widower’s lights were dim and the
young mother’s children were eager to help us carry boxes.

My
stint took just three hours away from my morning, but the experience
stayed with me for days afterward. I found it both uplifting and sad. I
already knew that there are unfortunate neighbors in my town who suffer
from hard times that include job loss, failing health, scarce resources
and loneliness. But as I drove by their homes daily, ticking off my list
of errands, I simply assumed that life was normal in the tidy bungalow,
the trailer and the old house converted into apartments. Now, I know
better.

According to the Vermont Food Bank, hunger is a problem
for more than 50 million Americans, and as many as 86,000 Vermonters
rely on the state’s charitable food system to feed themselves or their
families. While many of them find help at their local food shelf, there
are others who are unwilling to ask for assistance, especially among the
elderly who often must choose between eating – or heating.

Tough
choices like these are faced all the time by those we visited that
stormy day, and those neighbors gave a human face to the need in my own
town. We brought enough food to each of them to last for a while, but
hunger knows no season and the work of food shelves in Vermont – and
across the country – goes on.

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