At midnight a box truck wound its way up the driveway and Bouncer took a flashlight out to meet the driver. We didn’t think it safe to use the front porch, so the driver was directed to back up to the side door. Seeing the truck was full, I expected the driver to be on a route to various destinations, dropping off a small part of the truck load at Our Lady’s for Julio. But as we unloaded boxes it soon became apparent that the entire contents of the truck were for us. There must have been at least a thousand cans of vegetables and another thousand of vegetarian tomato sauce, boxes and boxes of pasta, jars of peanut butter, frozen meats that filled our old freezer and a small commerical machine for making bread along with the premixed ingredients, 150 pounds of coffee, boxes of black teas and herbals …. a cornucopia of food and supplies (900 rolls of toilet paper!)
When the truck was empty, Izzy and I watched the driver inch the truck down the driveway to the main road.
“What do you think?” I asked Izzy as we stood watching the brake lights get smaller.
“Either most of the food is for us or Alfred plans to make Our Lady’s the new Guantánamo Bay.”
“Maybe we should call him and ask about what we can use,” I said.
“He said we could take what we want. I’m sure he’ll be back before we go through even a tenth of it,” said Izzy.
While I was quite pleased to have real food in the house once again, some of the Brothers asked if we could trade some of it for beans and rice. They want to remain on the diet for monastic reasons. I can understand that, but at my age I’ll eat anything. When I was a younger monk, I was used to such an abstemious diet. It does not embarrass me that Harpo, who may be twenty years older than me, is one of the monks who prefer the rice and beans.
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