Saturday Kitchen, 2018
I have a soft spot in my heart for Saturday Kitchen. It was where I first got to know some of my oldest friends in St. Michael's, including Marilyn, Pale Male, Joinus, and the late Frances Harven. It was where VRaptor, Miss Honey and I carried on the sweetest of platonic relationships (I shudder at how close VRaptor and I came to becoming actual roommates. Clearly, a bullet was dodged there.)
Even so, it was always a sobering experience, a weekly reminder of the loneliness and isolation of city life and the fragility of the social compact. People come and go and thanks to the "scaling up" of the program through the generous use of non-parishioners, it probably feeds twice as many people as it did ten years ago. What hasn't changed is the sense of being "wiped" at the end of every Saturday morning
This was especially true of the the people who served the actual food and to maybe a slightly lesser exent, the people who changed the table settings and (occasionally) wiped away the spilled food. We hated the days when rice was the main starch; it was so hard to whisk up all the spilled grains (peas were a close runner-up for Least Efficient to Clean-Up Food Item.)
I don't think Crsoby was ever fully exposed to the full brunt of serving the guests. Maybe, in the beginning when he was learning the ropes. As his responsibilities grew, IIRC, the more time he spent in the kitchen, operating the stove and ovens. My recollection was that on most days he was in a pretty good mood. In fact, his gung-ho spirit was one of the reasons people tried so hard to get jobs nearby, like dishwashing.
I am reminded of all this because, ironically, his dad has been holding up his end of Crosby's legacy by appearing on the Saturday Kitchen "frontlines" pretty faithfully for close to two years now and I saw the effect for the first time today.
I had arrived for my monthly stint at Altar Guild which I started doing while Crosby was still in New York, living with Huggy and Consuelmo. I think I figured out quite early that if I arrived at church at just the right time, I could casually poke my head in the kitchen door and say, "Hello" to Crosby while he was still in captivity and before he bounded out to walk back home to East Harlem. I did this for several months, under a vague sort of "Operation Vivien Leign 2.0" and continue to do so to this very day, substituting Bing for Crosby.
The only difference was that today I arrived a little later than usual and managed to catch Bing at his most exhausted. It was while he was in the main sanctuary of the church, after all the guests had gone. Something told me to give him his space, just as it had a few months ago when I saw him waiting for Colette at the far end of the garden wall all by himself. I could rest assured that he was talking to G-d each time.
So, I listened patiently while Juanita chatted rather loudly about candlesticks that needed polishing and avoided making eye contact with Bing each time I passed him with a silver goblet or an offering plate in my hand that needed placing behind the church. I was still thinkinng about him hours later when Marilym, Juanita, C.J. and I went to Dive Bar for drinks afterward.
We have to get Bing drunk one of these days.
Even so, it was always a sobering experience, a weekly reminder of the loneliness and isolation of city life and the fragility of the social compact. People come and go and thanks to the "scaling up" of the program through the generous use of non-parishioners, it probably feeds twice as many people as it did ten years ago. What hasn't changed is the sense of being "wiped" at the end of every Saturday morning
This was especially true of the the people who served the actual food and to maybe a slightly lesser exent, the people who changed the table settings and (occasionally) wiped away the spilled food. We hated the days when rice was the main starch; it was so hard to whisk up all the spilled grains (peas were a close runner-up for Least Efficient to Clean-Up Food Item.)
I don't think Crsoby was ever fully exposed to the full brunt of serving the guests. Maybe, in the beginning when he was learning the ropes. As his responsibilities grew, IIRC, the more time he spent in the kitchen, operating the stove and ovens. My recollection was that on most days he was in a pretty good mood. In fact, his gung-ho spirit was one of the reasons people tried so hard to get jobs nearby, like dishwashing.
I am reminded of all this because, ironically, his dad has been holding up his end of Crosby's legacy by appearing on the Saturday Kitchen "frontlines" pretty faithfully for close to two years now and I saw the effect for the first time today.
I had arrived for my monthly stint at Altar Guild which I started doing while Crosby was still in New York, living with Huggy and Consuelmo. I think I figured out quite early that if I arrived at church at just the right time, I could casually poke my head in the kitchen door and say, "Hello" to Crosby while he was still in captivity and before he bounded out to walk back home to East Harlem. I did this for several months, under a vague sort of "Operation Vivien Leign 2.0" and continue to do so to this very day, substituting Bing for Crosby.
The only difference was that today I arrived a little later than usual and managed to catch Bing at his most exhausted. It was while he was in the main sanctuary of the church, after all the guests had gone. Something told me to give him his space, just as it had a few months ago when I saw him waiting for Colette at the far end of the garden wall all by himself. I could rest assured that he was talking to G-d each time.
So, I listened patiently while Juanita chatted rather loudly about candlesticks that needed polishing and avoided making eye contact with Bing each time I passed him with a silver goblet or an offering plate in my hand that needed placing behind the church. I was still thinkinng about him hours later when Marilym, Juanita, C.J. and I went to Dive Bar for drinks afterward.
We have to get Bing drunk one of these days.