Somehow there was an unstated agreement that we wanted to do something together. We went on with the food talk. They really did become very animated and were pretty easily steered away from going to the mile long index of all the horrors of corporate food. They decided that we could make bread. This with almost none of them ever having done so. They liked the idea of bread. At this point my education began. There was to be no selling of bread. They were anti- money. If we made bread we would give it away.
I liked this. It was simple. (It later turned our to be very practical. We would have had to have lots of conditions imposed on us if we were to sell anything. Then the kids came up with the name of the project. Pax Panis. Who knew they knew Latin? As I said, they knew a lot. So the question of to whom to give the bread came up. One quiet kid in the corner who wouldn't say her name (some of the kids were running away from abusive families or foster parents) answered this question, "To people in need of nourishment." Wow! I liked that. It was much broader and fairer than I could have thought of. Nourishment included psychological, spiritual as well as physical.
I didn't know then how much nourishment we would all get from this project.
The next thing I learned from this band of anarchists was that we were absolutely leaderless and all equal and that no attempt at leadership was going to wash. This, even though some were clearly more organized and practical than others. OK. I was interested in the process.
Then, of course, came the practical, how do we do this? Everyone agreed to go out and see what they could come up with for resources. We would get together soon. Report back from the big world. We had not made a list of our people. We had no phone #s. Ruth knew most of these kids. Her son Tyler was one of the kids. So, out into their Ashland went this intrepid band of tattooed, dread locked, scruffy, idealistic kids.
I talked to everyone I knew. Richard and Joanne had a copy of the Tassahara Bread Book, the bible of good bread making. We found some supplies around the house that we could use. The kids went to the stores and co-op and got pledges of donations of organic whole wheat flour, oil, maple syrup, yeast...all the stuff we needed. Veege, I think, talked to a group of doctors who had bought the hot springs on the outside of town and they very hesitatingly offered that we could use the old pizza ovens in the kitchen there one time, see how it goes.
None of us had a car. We decided that we needed to have a party to announce our founding. We borrowed the church basement in the Unitarian Church. The kids begged, borrowed and ----- the stuff to make food for the party. The people at the spa where I worked almost all came, along with some wonderful clients. I had a moment of nerves when no one was around and nothing seemed to be happening an hour before the event. But, the wonder of these kids became apparent when everything pulled together and a great party happened and we collected volunteers to drive and to help and to give stuff. The kids gave amazing talks about our project. We were launched.
The kids knew a lot of homeless people including women and children living under the bridge (shame on us). People from the church gave us some names and addresses of shut-ins, we heard of some very needy people. We had our beginning list.
It was some funny day when we made our first bread. We picked the most basic recipe. We made one rule and one rule only. No one could bring drugs or booze to the bread making. We never had to enforce that rule. Total respect. I made a little rule myself. Lots and lots of hand washing. With soap. It mostly worked although one boy was busted later on when he was picking hot peppers for some spicy bread, then went to pee and then came running in with his penis aflame from the chillies. They brought every supply we needed. We used old coffee cans to bake in, our friends with cars came and drove the bread kids around to deliver the warm bread and everyone came back with heartwarming stories about the tears they brought to people's eyes when they gave them these beautiful loaves.
Little did we know that this was really only the beginning of a project that would get national attention.
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