My friend Richard Moeschl worked for the local newspaper, he had a little TV show, he had a radio show at the college. He started to get the word out. More and more people came to help with the bread making. Stuff like big cookie sheets started to turn up. So we started to make creative loaves, braided, different shapes, bread sticks. Supplies kept coming. Amazing expensive organic supplies. Like 50 pound bags of walnuts and raisins, and big things of oil. Amazing.
The hot springs kitchen was ours. The good vibes were well received by the owners. We baked on Saturdays. Our list of needy started to grow. The bread kids as they became known were starting to become social workers and ministers. When they found a hungry homeless pregnant girl under the bridge, they got her to medical and other help. People told them their stories. Old people loved them because they took time to talk and listen.
More stuff came in the autumn. Boxes of squash, bags of herbs, boxes of apples. We started making herb breads, and cinnamon rolls and got very creative. Meanwhile, since only a few of the kids were in school, I decided to offer a course. After much discussion I started a course on Latin American politics using some of the great classic movies like Romero. I never had better students. We met at O.'s house for the videos. She was a high school kid with a younger sister who's parents were in jail for selling drugs. The school didn't know this and she and her sibling were doing great on their own. (I said they were amazing kids). We had long discussions about everything on Saturdays when the bread was rising and rising again.
All sorts of people dropped by to help. Some of the people whom we gave the bread to helped us. Everyone was attracted by this tribe who judged no one and treated everyone, regardless of their abilities, equally and with respect.
One episode that was nearly fatal to the project involved us getting a grant. We applied for a little grant from the Carpenter Foundation. The kids had to pick some people to go present the project to the board of trustees. They outdid themselves with dressing up. More dreads, more nose rings, more shit hanging off their belts. I went along, although I wasn't necessary. I kind of wanted to mother hen the deal. The kids would have none of that. No leaders. All equal. The people in the boardroom hopefully didn't hear the heated conversation in the hall when the guys almost bailed because they had strong feeling about "begging for $ from people who probably made it by ripping off their customers and treating their workers like shit."
This was going to be good. We went in. The person who spoke up was an angry kid. His father had died from exposure to chemicals at a plant he worked at. Mrs. Carpenter was nice and started the ball rolling by asking what population our project was going to serve. D. stood up and said, "Mam, we all respect, we aren't racist, we aren't sexist, we aren't ageist, we aren't discriminating of anyone for any reason, so to peg it down to a group would imply that some other group wasn't such a priority. I won't answer that question."
I looked around the room and knew he had nailed the grant. The rest was small talk. The reason we suddenly needed money was that an admirer of the project had given us her husband's car when he died. A bright yellow Chrysler. We had to register it, put gas in it and so on. We had also been given an antique ambulance ,Cadillac and the kids were going to take supplies to Wounded Knee for an action there.
The money helped but it caused trouble. No one could agree on who or what deserved it more. If we bought stuff would out donors give up? So, they decided that we were happier never to apply for money again.
But our fame was spreading.
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