With increasing demand, Food Pantry needs our help
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
— Charles Dickens
It hardly seems possible, but Thanksgiving is next month and quickly beyond that is Christmas. Those of you who count shopping days, that’s just 32 days later.
It will, as the saying goes, be here before we know it.
Folks at the Libby Food Pantry are calendar-watching, too. And, for that reason, Kathy Lauer and her dedicated group of volunteers are gearing up for holiday food baskets.
Says Kathy, “the need is even greater this year.”
Meeting that need is why Larry Hebenstreit came up with the slogan for this year’s food drive, “A Bird in Every Basket.”
The effort is to provide a good protein meal for both Thanksgiving and Christmas with poultry, turkeys.
Kathy said the push is to give a whole chicken to smaller families and a turkey for the larger ones.
In addition to the “Bird,” recipients of the Libby Food Pantry “baskets” will receive yams, dressing, cranberry sauce, broth, vegetables, turkey gravy, pie filling, some kind of fruit that will include either pineapple or fruit cocktail, Jell-O and bread.
That’s quite a meal.
So, how much do you think ALL of those goodies — and don’t forget the turkey — will cost?
If you’re like me, you’ll guess too high. ... $35, $50.
Twenty-seven bucks. That’s it.
The folks at the Libby Food Pantry pull all that together for just $27.
Yep, it’s amazing, and that includes the meal with a 12- to 15-pound gobbler!
Certainly, much of the food is donated, and that’s certainly a possibility, too. Donate whatever you feel you can.
However, what happens is they receive donations of food but then realize they may need 25 more cans of yams, 37 cans of vegetables, more turkey gravy, etc., to complete the baskets, and they have to go out and buy them just to meet the need.
If knowledge is power, then it’s time to muscle-up.
Find the knowledge or discover the epiphany of Dickens’ ol’ Ebenezer Scrooge and dig down and pull out a few schillings — write a check for one “Bird in a Basket” meal for a needy person and/or this holiday season.
Donations can be sent to the Libby Food Pantry, P.O. Box 311, Libby, Mont., 59923, and they must be received by Nov. 13, as the Thanksgiving baskets go out on Friday, Nov. 16. Christmas baskets go out on Dec. 18.
It’s just $27, and besides you’ll feel a little bit like Scrooge on Chrismas morn.
I know I did.
* * *
We received a call this week from Laurie Mari at the Heritage Museum about a little piece of rusty old steel the army of catalog and reference folks at the museum just could not place.
Seems this rusted piece of steel was found in a garden near the Montana border with Idaho.
Mark Morain, one of the historians, seems to think it resembles a logdog, but he’s not quite convinced.
It’s tremendously corroded, and it seems to have a bladelike part with another piece that at one time may have swiveled.
It’s small, measuring about 4-1/2 inches long and 2-3/4 inches wide.
Here’s a photo.
Got an idea, give me a call at 293-4124 or drop me an e-mail at agerstenecker@thewesternnews.com.
(Alan Lewis Gerstenecker is editor of The Western News. His column appears weekly.)