Tonight, I gave away my 18th hobo lunch. I call them hobo lunches (which is cute and all, but...), but they're really just packed lunches I make to hand out to people who end up asking for help on the roads in Chicago. (I say Chicago because I've never encountered someone doing that in the suburbs.) I started making them at the beginning of the summer, after reading about them on a blog. Forgive me, whoever you are that inspired me, because I can't remember now which blog it was.
Anyway, this person described how she made her "lunches". She shopped at the dollar store, for multi-packs, and included things like vienna sausages, juice boxes, and crackers with peanut butter. She spent $10 a month on this. I think she basically picked a day to distribute them during a month, gave them all out, and repeated this every month. I didn't think I wanted to go searching for people to give the food to, but I knew I wanted to do something. And so I decided to do this, and instead of handing the food out once a month, I'd just keep shelf-stable foods in bags in my car, and give them out to folks that I encountered during my commute.
(I started this whole thing by buying a box of cereal bars at the grocery store and handing those out, and I started doing that because I simply can't handle the sight of some of the people that end up begging. It has brought me to tears. The last time before I started doing the lunches, it was a woman on the ramp from 55 down to Cicero, and she thanked me so profusely that it did make me cry. It was one cereal bar. It was nothing to me in the scheme of things. I just couldn't stand not doing more. So. Lunches it was.)
I've always sort of wondered if these people actually eat the food. Or drink the liquids. Because I operate on the assumption that if someone is taking the bag, they're probably at least thirsty, if not actually hungry. And I hope beyond hope that it's making a dent in that. I think I've been teased before that of course these people don't want dollar store food; they want money. But I don't know. I guess I have to operate on the assumption that some of them are hungry. People are usually very nice about taking them. I've never not been thanked. Some people say "God Bless You". That's usually it.
Tonight, when I gave away the last of the 2nd bunch of lunches, the man I gave it to asked me if there was something to drink in the bag, and I said yes. I can't remember now what he said to me, but it made me really sad. And then that man took that bag, sat down on the side of the ramp, and started to go through it. I heard him say "It only takes a little..." and then I drove away. And then I cried, again.
What's that dollar's worth (or so) of food to me? Nothing, not really. But I think he was actually thirsty. I think he actually needed something to drink. This lunch happened to have a bottle of water in it, in addition to the juice box. I hope it helped. God, I hope it helped.
And then I thought, why the fuck are people hungry and thirsty in this goddamn country? I don't have an answer, and I know I'm not even DENTING the problem, but motherfucker. Motherfucker. It makes me sad.
It's not hard, folks. If you can, make "hobo lunches". If that's not something that'll work for you, donate $10 a month to an organization that helps the chronically homeless. Donate to an organization that feeds Americans. Hell, don't even do it monthly. I haven't been spending $10 a month on this, more like $10 every two months. But I have to believe, I HAVE TO BELIEVE that any little bit helps.