Community Cupboard Stories from the Road

SULLIVAN FRESH COMMUNITY CUPBOARD: STORIES FROM THE ROAD

Submitted by Martin Colavito, Sullivan Fresh Community Cupboard Program Manager So I am in Wurtsboro with Lynn delivering food up in the hills when I realized one of the tires on the Cupboard van was going flat. I said to Lynn, “Oh shoot! Where the heck are we going to have this tire looked up here in the middle of nowhere?” I swear, the second I said that to Lynn, here comes our buddy Nick. Nick says, “What’s up?” I say, “I am toast because I have a flat!” Nick Says, “No you’re not, just pull the van into the next driveway.” I said to Nick, “You gotta be kidding me?!” To which he responded, “Just pull the darned van into the driveway!” So, I pull the van into the driveway, and Nick gets the fellow that lives there to come out and look at the tire. The fellow comes out of his house and says to me, “My name is Mike, and I heard about you guys. Let’s take a look at the tire.” Mike crawls under the van and says, “Yep, you have a nail in the tire. You want me to fix it?” Before I have a chance to respond, Mike crawls under the van again, pulls the nail out of the tire, gets up, gets an air compressor and a plug, and fixes the tire. I gotta tell you, Lynn and myself looked at each other amazed. It was kind of surreal. I said to Mike, “Can I give you something for fixing the tire?” Mike looks at me as serious as can be and says, “Do not insult me! You guys are one of us. It is the least we can do to show how much you folks mean to this community.” So we shot the breeze for about ½ an hour, and agreed that what the Sullivan Fresh Community Cupboard does is remind all we serve that we are in this together! That at any given time we all need to lean on each other, and that is why we have shoulders. So whether it is Mike fixing a flat tire, or it is Dave (another member of our Cupboard who we serve), making a call to see if we are ok when we might be late, or Pete wanting to give us his last five dollars to show thanks, we are all in this together. Every day the Cupboard van goes out, is another day that Hope is cultivated.

Check out some great shots from the last month out on the road on the next page.

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