A Little Walking, a Little Talking, and a Little Good Cheer Thanksgiving Morning

My wife called me at work at about 3 pm on the day before Thanksgiving. She wanted to deliver meals in the city of Albany on Thanksgiving morning, and more importantly, wanted to know if I was willing to go along with her and drive. We had done this before, and my dance card was open so I didn't object- I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to have to get up in the middle of the night. So I asked her"

"What time would we have to be there?"

"Not until 8:30"

"That's not bad - O.K. - I'll do it."

"Great! I thought you'd say that, so I already called and signed us up!"

Which is how I ended up downtown at the Concourse at 8:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning, waiting in line for two hours with several thousand other like-minded people. This was Equinox's annual Thanksgiving Day Community Dinner, and we were a small part of a huge process resulting in meals delivered to over 7,000 people in the area. Quite the undertaking.

Even though I did a lot of standing and a lot of walking, and even though I was at it for over three hours, I couldn't log it in my Fitlinxx account. And even though it wasn't an athletic event, I was still way at the back of the pack by the time I arrived.

It was a varied crowd, mostly families, ranging from couples with young children to grandparents and maybe even a great grandparent or two. So, I did what I always do - talked with the people around me - you didn't think I was going to stay quiet, did you?

Kids
Lots of kids there - some were sitting athe the tables the organizers provided, coloring. A lot of them were on the loose - the alarms around the art work lining the halls went off continually, mostly as kids got too close to the wires and tripped the sensors. There were kids zipping around on "wheelies", too,exhibiting some pretty amazing control and grace as they zipped around, turned, braked to a stop and sat down, all without missing a word in their conversations with each other. My favorite sight, though, was the parents who had their young son sitting in a stroller, with a portable DVD player balanced across the frame. It which was playing a Sponge Bob Square Pants video, and the kid wasn't making a peep.

Considering how small many of the kids were, and how long the wait was, most of those kids were remarkably well behaved. There was one, however, who was not so good - I suggested what they could do with her if they happened to run out of turkeys. Kathy chuckled at first, but then she shushed me - didn't want to alientate any of the parents around us.

On-Line, the Old-Fashioned Way
I talked to a man about my age wearing a SUNY Albany basketball sweatshirt and a SUNY hat. I asked if he was an alum or if he had a son on the team. Actually , he said, I'm a Siena grad, but I help out with the SUNY Lacrosse team. I told him I wasn't so sure about a sport where your opponents get to whack you with sticks.

"Mostly" he said, "they try to hit you on the arm, between the elbow and hand, to jar the ball loose." That didn't change my mind about trying the game.

I identified a Tufts grad by his sweatshirt. 2002 grad, he told me, the semester before Jon started. He, too, had worked at the Tufts Daily, and knew about the ancient mismatched furniture cloistered office where the newspaper staff labored. I told him about Jon's travels to Hong Kong and China and India, and about the classmate who tapped him on the shoulder while waiting in line to see the Dali Lama. As an undergrad, my new friend told me, he had not been very adventurous, had not studied abroad during his junior year. He was now doing post grad studies in physics at SUNY Albany, and most of his classmates were from abroad. He loves listening to them talk about their homelands and travels, and envies them. It's never too late, I told him. Besides, if he knows people who live around the world, as Jon does, do what Jon does - consider them the owners of very inexpensive places to stay!

There was a young couple with three small children, a boy and two girls. Dad and the children were all dressed in Scouting uniforms. The girls were brownies. The boy, a second grader, was a member of a Cub Scout Pack at his elementary school and his dad had stepped up and become the Pack Master. Because the elementary school which sponsors the pack only has an enrollment of about 160 kids - in Albany, the charter schools are really siphoning off students, especially from the elementary schools - it was hard to find kids interested in joining the pack and even harder to get their parents involved - he partnered with a nearby Montessori school. He reasoned that parents who had apply to a school to get their kids enrolled would tend to be more involved in their children's lives and activities - and he was right. He also partnered with the Boy Scout Troop from the St Andrews Episcopal Church , a very active congregation, again expanding the experiences open to the boys in the Pack. We admire the programs - Jon is an Eagle and Em earned her Silver Award, so we talked with him about scouting for quite a while.

A woman ahead of us was a third grade teacher in the Albany schools, so the dad talked with her a bit about what to do to help prepare his son for third grade. Read, she said. Later I talked with her about Em, who is an Elementary Education major at Boston College. She wanted to know if Em would go right on for her Masters - we don't know at this time. She also recommended that Em get a good grounding in special ed. We agreed.

Getting to the Tables
After about 90 minutes we got to the tables - the ones holding the "packets" Each table had a placard with a zip code on it. By the time we got there, all the outlying zip codes - Watervliet, Cohoes, Menands, etc, were gone. That was ok, since we wanted one in the city -12206 had a lot of packets left and that was perfect. Kathy is a case worker and has responsibility for a shared-aid building on Central Ave, and sure enough she found a packet for there - out of the 11 meals to be delivered, 10 were going to people in the same building.

Drivers Wanted
We could only pick up one packet - there were still a lot of people behind us and the organizers did not want to run out of packets before they ran out of "drivers" - interesting problem in logistics, actually. Last year they were short on drivers, so they advertised heavily - and successfully - this year. In fact, Kathy noticed that they were dividing the packets into smaller groupings, so more packets were available. I guess they were worried that if the people behind us didn't get a packet after waiting in line, the word would get out and next year there would be another shortage of drivers. Interesting problem indeed.

The Meals
After we picked up the packets, we waited in line again for about a half hour before we got to pick up the food. They let us go into the cafeteria in small groups of 5 or 6, so as to not jam up the pick-up area. When we got into the cafeteria, a volunteer gave us a large cardboard box - the experienced "drivers" had brought along their own wheeled coolers, or wagons or even hand trolleys. Then we made 11 pick ups at each "station" First, foil wrapped containers of turkey, ham, sweet and white potatoes, stuffing and vegetables - each packet had been assembled ahead of time and frozen, so the food would stay cool and safe for the delivery process. Then Kentucky Fried Chicken takeout boxes stuffed with a couple of desserts - mostly pieces of pie - a roll, celery and carrots sticks. Then small plastic containers of gravy. Next small plastic fruit cups - they were short on those, so you could only get one cup per household, no matter how many meals were going there. Finally, a loaf of bread, or a package of rolls or muffins for each household. There went into a separate smaller box to carry.

Of course, the next problem was how to carry the big box, which was a little heavy, and none too sturdy, to the car, which was at the other end of the concourse and down two levels. Fortunately, the organizers has thought of that, and there were assorted wagons, flatbed carts and other wheeled conveyances available. They also had volunteers down in the garage to bring said conveyances back up to the pickup point - pretty clever.

The Building
It was pretty amusing watching a lot of people from the suburbs try to read the little printed maps which were provided to try to figure out how to get to multiple addresses in the inner city. No such problem for us. As a case worker, Kathy knows every street alley and building in the city and in the northern part of Albany county - and most of the people who live there, too. Townsend is "her" building - she is the only caseworker assigned to it - and of the 150 people who live there, she is either the case manager or involved in the cases of 45 of them. No big surprise that when we got to the building, all the people sitting in the lobby knew her and started talking with her, and she knew almost everyone by name, regardless if they were her clients or not. She had organized the tickets in the packet by floor, to make it easier for us to deliver them. Knew right where most of the apartments were, too. We had also taken some recyclable shopping bags with us and had re-packed some of the dinners in them, especially if we were delivering two meals to one apartment. Made the deliveries easier, and it sure made the big box I was lugging lighter.

Of course, since meals had been ordered for all 150 residents, there was a steady stream of people carrying boxes, trying to get into the small lobby, and backed up in the lobby as they waited for the two very overworked elevators. Since the building has about 16 floors above ground and three below, it would have been tough to deliver all the meals without them.

The president of the building association was a big help: he asked everyone which floor they needed to go to, and then used his key to hold the elevator at each floor while the deliveries were made, making sure the elevator was there when the "drivers" got back. He had also arranged for the meals which could not be dropped off, since the residents were out, to be collected in the community room, where they could be picked up later.

The residents were very happy to see us and thankful to receive their meals. They all talked with Kathy, too, some about the meal, some about her last visit, some about their health. One woman had recently fallen and hurt her wrist, which she held up and showed Kathy. A very different world for me, and pretty amazing to watch.

We had one last delivery, to Elk Street, a street which winds and snakes its way through Albany, mostly parallel to Central Ave, but stopping and starting, turning into a street of a different name for a while, and then reappearing. But, Kathy knew the twists and turns and short cuts, and stayed on the Elks trail just like a bloodhound and we found the apartment and accomplished our mission.

By now it was after noon, breakfast had been a long time ago, and the talk and smell of all that food made me hungry. Since we were not going to have our Thanksgiving dinner until Saturday, we did the same thing after finishing this run that I do after finishing a 5K - we headed off to a Dunkin Donuts, for a toasted whole wheat bagel, salmon cream cheese, and a cup of coffee.