Once a year my mother organizes a dinner for a couple of hundred homeless people. There's a homeless shelter in Hamilton, which is nearby, and every year she puts up a poster at her church, and people sign up for various things. They serve meatloaf, mashed potatoes, veggies, among other things, and cake for dessert. It's not my favourite meal, but then, I'm not homeless, nor do I depend upon the kindess of strangers for my next meal.
Every year the number of people who come and eat grows. I don't really know how it works, I doubt that they've got to pay something to get in, but they do need to have a ticket, else they don't get fed. This year, I decided I'd go and help. I asked for the day off work (which I'm sure I'll never hear the end of), and I steeled myself, and off we went.
It's amazing how quickly things can get done when you've got enough people helping. There were 5 or 6 people working on getting the 100 pounds of potatoes ready. Thankfully the potatoes were all pre-peeled, however there were still eyes to be cut out, and they had to be cut smaller so that they'd cook in the limited amount of time we had. There were 3 of us working on cutting up the meatloaves and putting them in warming ovens, I was commissioned to butter the bread. Which in itself was an interesting experience, margarine sandwiches are not my idea of a delicious snack, but that's what I was making. Once the cakes finally showed up, there were 3 of us cutting them up.
Halfway through our preparations half of the people decided to go up to the church service so they could sing (most of them are choir members), so the help was cut down slightly, but we did manage to get everything done on time. Once it was time to serve, we gathered all the trays together (they eat off sectioned trays which are scarily reminiscent of baby dishes), and formed an assembly line and sent the trays out the window to the people who had volunteered to pass them around. I know it's probably terrible of me, but I did make my mother promise me that she wouldn't make me do that.
We served 216 people dinner tonight, we ran out of bread, we ran out of gravy, we ran out of vegetables, but we did have enough potatoes, meatloaf and cake to serve more. But, for some reason, they close the door at 5pm and it's just too damn bad if you show up at 5:05 pm. To me, 216 people is absolutely horrendous. It breaks my heart that there are that many people around that have nowhere to sleep and but for people like my mom who organize these dinners, would also have nothing to eat.