Sunday 8/9/2020
Today I attended the lunch meal delivery to introduce a new set of volunteers to it. Then at 3pm I came down to see the setup for the Market Cart service. This was a little thing the kitchen staff set up back in April as a way of cheering people up during the lockdown. Every Sunday and Wednesday at 3pm some kitchen staff would load up a carts with fresh fruit and various snacks, and visit each apartment letting people take what they liked.
With the kitchen staff shorthanded and being isolated in the kitchen, not allowed to contact residents, the market carts were going to be terminated. Enter my co-coordinator Marcia, who recruited some residents to do the door-to-door schlepping. Today was the first day for this.
Here you see Head Chef Robin explaining to six volunteers (Marcia on the right) what they’ve put on the carts, and how to distribute stuff. Shortly the vols headed out and reported they had a good time doing this job, meeting neighbors and dispensing goodies.
With this and the meal delivery service we are already a roaring success. The sign-up sheet for meal delivery for this week is already fully subscribed, 3 names in each of the meals. I publicized the link to the following week’s meal delivery sign-ups today and it is already half-filled. People are really liking taking some personal involvement.
About 4:30 however, one who was signed up for dinner emailed he had to pull out. So I said I’d fill in, and went down at 5:15 and ran a couple of cart loads with two other volunteers.
Was that all I did? No, I also spent an hour preparing that following week’s signup sheet and posting it. And a little while on the model car, and oh, yeah, at 9am I went for a 3 mile walk, over to California avenue and through the Farmers Market there, and back. Halfway back I sat in a park and at the almond croissant I had bought, and chatted with Dennis on the phone.
In part we talked about the John Deere tractor on the old ranch. Laurel has found a model of such a tractor and intends to send it to me, for me to detail and paint to match her memory of that tractor. Dennis and I reminisced about the chore we most hated, helping my father saw up firewood with a buzz saw driven by a belt from the old tractor, and stack it in the woodshed.
In between Channing House emails I looked up the two pictures I have of the old tractor and sent them to Dennis and Laurel. Laurel quickly spotted that the tractors in the two pictures are not exactly the same. One has an exhaust stack, the other doesn’t, and there are other differences. Well, crap! Did my father have two decrepit, rusty 1930-era John Deeres in that 1950-60 period? I’m pretty sure I would remember, as machinery was a major fascination of my youth. There’s nobody left alive who would remember.
Codgerville 