Circle the wagons, folks: here comes another City of Lindsay sneak attack on our culture and history.
I
stopped at the Lindsay-Strathmore Coordinating Council’s thrift store last week
hoping to find some kind of large saucer to put under a pot of wildflowers. The shop was nearly empty of people and
goods, much reduced from its normal stock.
I saw Sallie McDonald sitting at her desk in the next room, so I stopped
to talk.
“We have
to be out by June 10th and I can’t find another place to rent,” she
told me. I looked at this woman I first
met during the Coordinating Council’s heroic efforts following the 1990
Freeze: feeding people, helping them
find clothes and work, keeping the children in school, keeping the lights
on. It was an emergency effort that grew
into a sustaining effort: making sure
there was some place to go for help when employment flagged, when bills toppled
family budgets, when eviction notices and red-inked shut-off letters arrived. I went there myself one year when plans
collapsed.
When I
first encountered LSCC in early 1992, they were located in two empty shops in
the 200 block of West Honolulu, one across the street from the other. It was difficult, but the spaces were donated,
a temporary arrangement in tough times.
A few years later, when Jessup Tires closed their doors and the building
was donated to the City in hope of preserving it, LSCC was offered the space.
A tire
shop is not necessarily the most hospitable environment for a food distribution
effort, but it has one necessary feature:
no steps. The food is delivered
by Food Link on pallets with fork lifts.
Storing it until it the pallets can be broken down and redistributed
into family sized bundles requires space for tables and refrigeration units,
not to mention the volunteers who man that operation. One year I dropped by with 100 bags of Fred
Smeds’ Ruby Red raisins to donate for the Christmas food baskets, and it looked
like Santa’s Workshop. Elves everywhere.
Sallie
told me that the City has offered to “let” them use the gravel parking lot
behind the current location for distributing food. That would mean the whole operation would
have to be done in one day, rain or shine, including clean-up. That idea ignores the reality of what is
needed by either LSCC or its clients and the entire community it serves. It is offensive.
When I
called Sallie two days later, I learned that the new owner wants them out in
ten days. I don’t know whether he has
legal grounds for that demand, but this entire episode needs more public airing
and input, or we will be a community without caring before May ends.
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Trudy Wischemann is a writer in Lindsay. You can send your ideas for LSCC relocation
c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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