‘Being Americans again’: How these volunteers weigh safety, service during COVID-19.
How does someone weigh the risk of public gathering during a pandemic with a glaring community need?
“People got to eat,” said Josh Weaver.
Weaver spent his first afternoon Friday as volunteer with the food truck run by The Community Cafe. He saw a sign-up at Impact Church in Newport.
“I just know that there’s people who aren’t as fortunate as others,” Weaver said. “It’s something that God’s put on my heart to do.”
Volunteers who served at Steele Street Park on Friday afternoon include the first-timer, the organizers who’ve been with the truck since it started service last year, the college senior home from school awaiting word on whether she’ll graduate this spring. All masked and ready to serve an area that just a week prior saw record turnout.
Like the three Cafe sites, food truck meals are free. There’s no identification or proof of income status required. Anyone who wants some food can get it, as long as the food lasts. Just a day prior, food truck volunteers hit that limit at a stop in Rock Hill.
“We handed out more food than we have ever handed out since we started the food truck, and we still didn’t feed everybody,” said lead food truck volunteer Kristi Krathwohl.
She told guests in Rock Hill on Thursday she’d return with more food after the Fort Mill stops Friday. It was more a trickle than a rush of guests at Steele Street Park, where the previous week a nearby Kona Ice truck and pizza on the food truck helped draw as many people as ever visited that food truck site. Rock Hill stops had a rush of guests both weeks.
Krathwohl expects that swell of people ready for food to continue as long as the COVID-19 coronavirus has people away from work, store shelves are empty and public health recommendations are updated seemingly daily.
“It’s going to be ongoing,” she said.
The truck typically takes about 100 meals to a stop. Thursday in Rock Hill the truck took twice that many. It still ran short. The truck served 250 grilled cheese sandwiches and 200 cartons of milk, along with various double- or triple-digit servings of soup, salad, spaghetti, ham and cheese sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and more.
All while the Cafe faces similar challenges to others in need of supplies during a pandemic.
“It’s hard to get food,” Krathwohl said. “It’s hard to get resources. The bread is the worst.”
Guests at the food truck know it. Ivan Porter lives in Rock Hill. He’d never been to the food truck before he stopped by the otherwise closed Fort Mill park on Friday. He said it’s hard to find basic supplies in stores now.
“They alright,” Porter said of the food truck workers. “This is my first time. They treat us right.”
Along with food, volunteers gave out packages of toilet paper rolls — another hard-to-find item during the pandemic. Volunteers took precautions, such as masks and requests for a six-foot distance between the guests in line. Yet they wouldn’t let a pandemic stop them from serving.
“We appreciate what you do for us,” Porter said.
While nobody wants a pandemic or any other public health emergency, some volunteers choose to see the positive in it. An organizer who lives in the Springfield neighborhood talked about bread and financial fundraisers that sprung up there in the past week to help the Cafe and food truck keep stocked.
Weaver, just before the service began Friday, said there’s something special when people of varied income levels, political views and other labels that so often can divide them, don’t let them.
“Everybody’s just coming together and being Americans again,” he said.
