Soup Is Love : Salvation Army Rolling Kitchen Helps Homeless Battle the Cold
It was a dark and stormy night--and there was nothing funny about it, no whimsical punch line in the balloon over Snoopy’s head in a Peanut’s cartoon strip.
The cold rain slanting into Towne Avenue lashed the faces of the homeless citizens of the street commune they called “Love” as they formed up for the free soup and blankets that Salvation Army volunteers were handing out from the van and mobile soup kitchen.
“It’s a bitch bein’ on the street on a night like this,” says Willie James to no one in particular. He squints into the rain, hugging himself against Tuesday night’s 38-degree cold. He says he’s been out of work two years now, living on the streets for a month. And this night is the worst. He’s soaked to the skin.
James moves ahead as the ragged formation goes through the soup-line drill like a well-disciplined infantry platoon.
At the front of the line, rain streaming from his face, the young man accepts a Styrofoam cup of hot chicken noodle soup. “Thank you,” he says. He goes to the van that tows the soup kitchen and carries the blankets.
Angelino Mambrino, a streetwise recovering alcoholic working as a volunteer, is handing out the blankets. James takes one, folds it carefully, and hugs it to his chest in a futile attempt to keep it dry until he can get to his plastic-covered shelter across the street.
“I think it’s beautiful,” he says. “It’s beautiful what they doin’ down here.”
Towne Avenue is the first stop of the night for the Salvation Army’s Emergency Disaster Canteen, one of two that make the soup run on Skid Row.
Garvel Wikes, emergency disaster coordinator for the Salvation Army, explains that since mid-January when Mayor Tom Bradley asked for citizens to donate extra blankets and sleeping bags for the homeless, the Salvation Army has given out 25,000 assorted coverings--some of them old, some new.
“This is the coldest I’ve seen it in the six years I’ve been here,” Wikes says. “This is the first and worst rain we’ve had since we’ve been distributing the blankets.”
Before the night is done, the two soup kitchens, staffed by 15 volunteers, will have handed out more than 1,000 cups of chicken and beef noodle soup to street people like Willie James. The blankets and sleeping bags are given away only when the temperature drops to 45 degrees or less. By 10:30 p.m. Mambrino has handed out 430 blankets.
Terry and Mary Pauley are shivering as they slip up to the canteen’s serving counter. Mary is 18, Terry is 23. “We come looking for work--we’re from Oklahoma,” he explains. “But there’s no jobs. Now we’re livin’ over there.” He motions toward a wind-whipped collection of lean-tos across the wet street. “We’re just waiting for the county relief money to come through.”
Mary and Terry take their big cups of soup, politely thanking the volunteer at the counter. Mary holds the hot cup close to her face, luxuriating in the steamy warmth for a moment before forking up thick, hot tangles of noodles.
She admits she’s a little shy about taking free food from strangers. “I do feel just a little bit shamed,” she says. “It’s just the way I was raised up I guess. But . . . I’m going to take it.”
She and Terry--who has gotten a blanket and a child’s sleeping bag from Mambrino--move quickly to their cardboard condo 50 feet away.
Then comes Laurie. She doesn’t want to talk, she wants to get her soup and her blanket and get back to her home. “Just say I live here, in that tent over there. We call our community Love--that’s L-o-v-e.”
Laurie smiles at the volunteers working behind the counter. “They come every night with hot soup,” she says. “It’s greatly appreciated.”
The downpour slackens, just as the volunteers have handed out the last steaming cups to the soaked end-of-the-line Towne Avenue street people. “This was our primary target tonight,” Wikes said. “The city wiped out this whole community, confiscated all the blankets they had there, so we had to provide them with some more blankets tonight.”
The Towne Avenue street commune was one of five raided since Feb. 17 by police and sanitation crews in an attempt to discourage street people from building makeshift sidewalk villages. Like the others, “Love” was re-established within hours after the first sweep.
The next stop for Wikes and company is at the site of the former Tent City at 1st and Spring streets, where at least a dozen men and women are trying to sleep under makeshift plastic tents and tarps.
“Soup! Soup’s here!” shouts Mambrino. “Blankets! Anybody need blankets?” A half-dozen rouse themselves to move to the canteen and take soup.
Wikes drives around the block and parks across from City Hall. Mambrino, carrying a half-dozen cups of soup and an equal number of blankets, scrambles up the front steps and finds four men huddled in the shelter of the West Portico. Two are young men just in from Mexico, another is a 50-year-old disabled veteran who admits that he drinks too much, and the last is an 85-year-old black man who doesn’t want to give his name.
All four gratefully accept the soup and the blankets. The old man tells his story to a stranger in a dry, emotionless voice.
“Yeah, well, I am 85, and I’m all right,” he says. “I was stayin’ at a hotel, but the Social Security didn’t come through, or it got lost--$266--so they put me out. I tried (to get in the city-sponsored shelter) down at 411 1st Street, but they was all filled up. They’re nice down there, but they got 200-300 ahead of me.”
The old man shrugs into the new blanket, forks some noodles into his mouth, chews and swallows before he speaks again.
“It don’t hurt me to stay out here in the air. I’m all right.”
