Charity Work

During the early years of living on California Avenue, it seemed that every month we went to the St. Vincent De Paul Society. They would give us food and toilet paper. They would also give Mom a check to help pay the bills. She hated asking for help. It was just one of those odd parts of life for us. Every Sunday we'd drop a dollar into the Vincent De Paul poor box, then once a month we'd go ask them for food and money. I know that my Mom's hope was that she wouldn't have to ask, and our meager offering was her way of trying to pay them back. To this day I still drop whatever spare cash I have into any charity box I come across.
Those wonderful men at Vincent De Paul never judged us, they never looked down on us, they just helped.
A few years later, the De Guire family opened Hosea House and started giving away clothing to the neighborhood kids. It started off in their home, but it quickly moved to the nearby church. St. Francis De Sales had a highschool on their grounds. The highschool had long since closed, so they turned it into Hosea House. You could go to them for food, toiletries and assistance with your bills.
I remember the winter they were selling shoes for dirt cheap. It was late in the day when we got there, so the shoes had been pretty thoroughly picked over. We each had fifty cents to buy shoes with, but nothing really fit. Mom spotted some boxes with our sizes marked on them. Size 8 for me, size 7 for J... perfect! She pulled down the boxes and said, "Oh, these are heavy," so we resigned ourselves to wearing hiking boots to school. She opened the top box and inside were a brand new pair of snow white ice skates. The other box held new skates too. I held my breath, wishing that I could have those beautiful skates. I wanted them so badly, and I was so very afraid to ask.
We used to take several busses to get to Stienberg rink in Forest Park, just to go skating. Ice skating was one of my freedoms. I'd go around and around the edge, trying to gain the confidence to do a spin. I never got up the courage to try a jump, so I settled on speed skating. I used to do my best to keep up with the men in their fancy snow suits, whizzing around the track on their razor blade skates. I got to where I could go just as fast, but not for very long. I'd close my eyes and think about going to the olympics and maybe, just maybe, bringing home some money for my family.
They were asking a dollar for the skates. We had fifty cents each. Our mom looked at the skates and sighed, then she put back the work shoes she had found and gave us each a quarter. She said, "It's fate that these were here in your sizes. It's late, ask them if they'll take 75 cents." I argued with my mom and told her she needed shoes, I did not need ice skates.
I was putting them back when a woman who worked there came over and said magic words, "It's after 5, everything is free."
I swear, I floated home. Heh, I never did go to the Olympics, but I got a chance to dream.

Oddly enough, that wasn't the story I was going to tell. Here's that story...
In 1982 we got hit with a blizzard of immense proportions. The California bus ran that morning, but mom had to hitch a ride home, because the busses couldn't make it through the snow. She had told us, "There's a big snow storm comming, so run to Hosea House and get some food for Mrs. P, you know she needs it, and she can't get out in this weather." We saw Mrs. P in the spring and fall, the rest of the time she laid in bed. It was always too hot or too cold for her, and we had gone with Mom to bring her food before. We had never gone alone, though. We fretted about what we would do if they didn't believe us, but mom had asked, so we had to go.
We got out the sled and bundled up... and walked out the door into a wall of white. I don't really remember how we made the 3 block walk to Hosea House. I remember seeing a guy on skis, and I remember being so cold my knees didn't want to bend. The sled kept getting bogged down in the snow, and we would stop to clear it, then lift it atop the snow again. It would be all covered again in 5 minutes, but we kept trying, and eventually we made it to Hosea House.
Ah, the blessed warmth that awaited us! We were greeted cheerfully. Mom had called from work, and they were expecting us. They let us sit and dry our mittens while they loaded our sled with food. I was almost warm by the time they were done.
The snow wasn't nearly as heavy on the way home, but the sled sure was. It kept tipping to one side and spilling the boxes, so one of us would pull, while the other walked alongside and kept the sled steady. We took turns all the way to Mrs. P's apartment, then we carried the boxes to her door and knocked. When she opened the door and saw 2 little girls between a mountain of food, she cried -and it made the whole trip worthwhile.
I understand now that Mrs. P was a very sick old lady, with chronic pain and a lot of depression. I know now that she was all alone in the world, and the blizzard had terrified her. But all I could think at the time was, "Please God, don't make me have to carry this stuff to her kitchen, I can't fit the boxes through."
She was a serious pack rat, and there were little 6 inch pathways through her heaping stacks of old clothes and older newspapers. Her house always scared me a little. I was always afraid something would move, and I'd have to face down the biggest cockroach in the world. Or worse yet- be covered in lots of little roaches. Ew.
We did not have to carry the food to the kitchen. She had set up a hot plate on the windowsill, so we made some room near her bed and left the boxes of food there. She tried to pay us, but we wouldn't take it. We knew she didn't work, and in our world work=money. If someone didn't have a job, you never, never take money from them. We told her thank you for the offer, but our mom had asked us to do this, and her smile was reward enough, thank you.