The Conical Glass: Nightmare on Park Street

Monday, December 01, 2008

Nightmare on Park Street

In an effort to be more community-focused, I decided to do some volunteer work with local aid organizations. A couple weeks ago, I signed up to work Monday mornings at Meals on Wheels, delivering food to homebound seniors. The woman I spoke to emphasized the importance of arriving at the MoW headquarters on time, and to give them plenty of notice if for some reason I couldn't make it. I made sure to set my alarm Sunday night, and went out to my car this morning confident that I would get there a few minutes early.

Now, Joe and I have had our car for six and a half years, and it's been totally reliable -- everything you expect from a Toyota. (Both of the U.S.-made cars I drove previously broke down well before the six and a half year mark.) I turned the key in the ignition and it made a rather dreadful grinding sound. Then a pictogram of a car with an exclamation point popped up on the dashboard. Oh crap. I tried starting the car again, and it did start, but the exclamation point remained.

What I probably should have done was go inside and call MoW. But I was kind of freaking out at this point and worried that I might not be able to get it started again. There's a Toyota dealership a few blocks away from my house, and I figured if I could just get it over to the service department, I could call MoW and let them know I was en route, and take one of the dealership's shuttles down to their office.

When I got to the dealership, I took out my cell phone. The battery was dead. Great. I asked the guy there if I could use his phone and borrow a phone book, since I didn't have the phone number. He gave me the book and I desperately thumbed through it. No listing. I looked at the outside of the book and saw it was the wrong phone book (it was the Fremont/Hayward book, and I needed Berkeley/Oakland). Finally, I was able to call MoW -- by this point I was about 15 minutes late and they probably thought I was a flake. A friendly Toyota guy dropped me off at MoW at 9:40 AM -- 25 minutes late.

Now, I realize that wheels are an important component of Meals on Wheels, but since this was my first time, I had been paired with an experienced volunteer who would drive the route. All I had to do was deliver the meals to people's doors. She was all set to go and we took off immediately. It only took us an hour to deliver about 20 meals -- I'm pretty fast and can run up stairs; working for MoW is great exercise. The woman in the next-to-last house on the route even commented that her meal still felt nice and hot. Mission accomplished! Of course, now I'm waiting to hear what on earth is wrong with our car. I hope I got some good karma by volunteering and it will be something quick & inexpensive. (Once I find out, I'll post it in the comments.)

Last week, Joe, Neal and I volunteered at our local food bank, which was passing out 400 turkeys right before Thanksgiving. Like many food banks, ours has seen an increased demand as the economy goes south. Luckily, their pleas for donations had paid off and they had received hundreds of turkeys. All of the food bank's regular clients would get one, as well as a few other groceries -- bread, potatoes, an onion, a box of stuffing, and some gravy mix. The big event was scheduled to start at 11 AM, but apparently, people had started lining up in front of the warehouse at 7.

At first, I didn't understand why anyone would get there four hours early, but it soon became clear. At 10:55, the tables were laden with groceries -- there were fresh oranges, pumpkin pies, rolls, muffins. Each family would get a frozen turkey plus one orange, four (small) potatoes, an onion, stuffing and gravy, plus two items of their choice from the bread table. Needless to say, the pies and cakes disappeared very quickly. As the morning wore on, we ran out of oranges, then potatoes, then onions. All of the "good" bread was gone and what remained was a huge donation from Trader Joe's: fancy stuff like rosemary baguettes, naan and poppyseed bagels. Most of the clients looked at this stuff rather suspiciously. A lot of them squeezed the loaves to see if they could find something soft. Occasionally you'd have someone whose eyes lit up when they saw the selection: they'd pick up a sunflower multigrain loaf and say, "Oh, I love these!"

Aside from the preference for soft bread, though, the food bank clients didn't have much in common. They were young and old; black, white and Asian. It was really a cross section of the community. Chances are that your local food bank is in desperate need of donations and volunteers; if you can help, please do so.

posted by 125records @ 10:51 AM

5 Comments:

At 12:59 PM, Flasshe said…

As Slylock Fox would say, this post is a hoax. I don't believe any of it. Like you, I have a Prius and it doesn't have a "key" that you "turn" for "ignition". Put the cuffs on her, Max!

Cool... the captcha is "cults"!
At 1:01 PM, 125records said…

We have a 2002 Prius -- it's not as high tech as the newer models.
At 3:58 PM, 125records said…

Bad news & good news re: the car. Bad news: the computer system failed and needs to be replaced. Good news: it's considered part of the car's hybrid system which is under an *8-year* warranty, so my charge will be $0. The dealership has ordered the part and the car will be ready tomorrow. Talk about good CARma!
At 8:50 PM, 2fs said…

Can't beat $0!

As for the Meals on Wheels thing...just start worrying if one of your fellow volunteers is a seemingly popular cheerleader type who seems to carry about dark secrets; or if one of your clients is an otherwise healthy shut-in, a young, good-looking man morbidly afraid of leaving his apartment, which is full of exotic plants; or if someone mysterious disappears to be replaced by an old lady and her grandson who has a mysterious liking for creamed corn.
At 6:26 PM, yellojkt said…

My grandfather used to do MoW once a week and helped him one time. At one place nobody answered the door and we think a neighbor stole the meal we left.