Tired of winning yet?

A few months ago the S.O. decided to try applying for assistance from the local Community Action Agency. He was hoping for heating assistance or maybe weatherization, but turns out the waiting list for weatherization is remarkably long unless your circumstances are dire, and heating is now processed through Michigan's state social services department. Our circumstances aren't dire and we have no interest in ever dealing with DHS. Our combined income isn't much, but we do fall above the official poverty line. We are, however, sufficiently low income to qualify for the semi-regular Community Action food bank distributions.

We debated whether or not we should do it. We're not exactly starving; we'd been managing just fine without standing in line on Donald Day (it was known as Obama Day under the previous administration, and no doubt was W. Day before that). But what the heck -- we qualified, we might as well go pick up our lifetime supplies of lentils and kidney beans. Who knows. Maybe it would turn into a trip down Nostalgia Lane and there'd be buffalo meat (aka canned beef) or a few blocks of processed cheese food. Anyone who ever lived in a household where there was commodity cheese 30 or 40 years ago tends to wax nostalgic about it. It was really good cheese. But I digress.

We have not made it to every food pantry distribution day, but we did get to one yesterday. The Baraga-Houghton-Keweenaw Community Action Agency uses an old supermarket building in Houghton as a warehouse and for the distribution they do there. Remember, you don't have to fall below the poverty line for this one. The cutoff is something like 200% of poverty using a sliding scale (the same one the government does) based on family size. Income that puts people under the poverty line if you have a family of 4, for example, is a higher cut off than for a family of 2. Not that family size matters at the actual distribution: everyone goes down the line with a container (we use a laundry basket) and gets the same stuff placed in the basket.

CAA does two other food pantry distributions. One is held once every 3 months and is also one where you can be slightly above poverty to qualify; the other is monthly and for low-income (as in really low income) senior citizens only. For that one they use a truck to go to the different senior citizen housing complexes in the 3-county area.

Every time we've gone there have been literally hundreds of people lining up to get their laundry basket of whatever. Yesterday was no exception. Temperatures were down in the teens, it was snowing like the proverbial son of a bitch, roads were treacherous (we were having second thoughts, but we also needed to go to Auto Zone to get a core charge refund), wind was blowing, and there were still hundreds of people queuing up in the parking lot, boxes and baskets in hand. Looking at the crowd, it was like a cross section of American society. Young, old, dressed extremely well and dressed in thoroughly worn and faded clothing. Relatively homogeneous ethnically because this is the U.P. (translation: close to 100% white, although not totally).

And because people are prone to chat a bit, even notoriously taciturn Yoopers will engage in some small talk to pass the time. A favorite topic, of course, was if the economy is doing so well, the stock market is booming, and everything is going as good as The Donald claims, why are we all standing in line hoping that this time we'll get some peanut butter? Somehow hundreds of people risking frostbite to wait patiently to fill a basket with random groceries doesn't look much like winning.

Because inquiring minds no doubt want to know just what type of wonderful free stuff the poors are being given, here's the inventory for yesterday. Sadly, there was no peanut butter.

1. Three 15 ounce cans Royal unsweetened applesauce
2. Four 10.75 ounce cans Prima Qualita low sodium tomato soup
3. One 15 ounce can Mission Pride unpeeled apricot halves
4. Three 22 ounce cartons Granby Farms reduced sodium Cream of Chicken soup
5. Three 15 ounce cans Hart Brand low sodium mixed vegetables
6. Three 16 ounce bags Kings unsalted roasted peanuts
7. Four 7.25 ounces boxes Pasta USA macaroni & cheese dinner
8. One 12.8 ounce bag of Mountain Maid powdered milk (makes 4 quarts)
9. One 16 ounce bag Betty Baker extra wide egg noodles
10. One 16 ounce box Lil Dutch Maid unsalted Saltines (aren't unsalted Saltines theoretically impossible? How can any cracker be a Saltine with no salt on it?)
11. One 16 ounce Basic American Foods instant mashed potato flakes
12. Two 24 ounce bags Market Street Premium beef stew 
13. One 10.5 ounce can Venice Maid vegetarian vegetable soup
14. Three 8 ounce boxes Gosner Farms liquid 1% milk 
15. One 5 pound of The Stafford County Flour Mills Co. bleached all-purpose flour
16. One 24 ounce can Crider fully cooked ground pork with juices (I am, quite frankly, a little afraid of what I'm going to find when I open this can, although I'm thinking that it might be edible as sloppy joes)
17. One 64-ounce bottle Fruit Patch apple juice
18. Two 18-ounce boxes Malto Meal corn flakes
19. One 15-ounce Del Monte lite sliced pears
20. One 64-ounce bottle tomato juice
21. Two pounds Dinner Bell Creamery salted butter
22. Two packages frozen cooked pork patties (they look like hamburger but are ground pork), no visible brand name labeling on package, 12 patties in a package 
23. Two frozen shrink-wrapped packages of mystery meat, possibly ham, each weighing about 2 pounds. 
24. One 5 pound bag of potatoes
25. One 3 pound bag of oranges

Offered and rejected: two large boxes of Kellogg's S'more flavored Pop Tarts. Made the mistake of accepting them a couple months ago. Never touching that nasty crap again. 

There is some good stuff on the list, like the butter. There's also some weird stuff, e.g., the ground pork. There is stuff we're not too enthusiastic about (unsalted peanuts?) but every thing in the basket is something we'll eventually eat. The FEMA meals (stew in bags) can't be any worse than Dinty Moore, and we used to eat that. Other than the fact the brand names are ones you're more likely to see at Dollar General than at Safeway, it wasn't a bad mix. No lifetime supply of dried beans (just what do people do with kidney beans besides use them in chili a couple times annually?), no truly strange stuff.

Now all I have to do is figure out where to stash it all in the Guppy.