Just off the main highway was an old school bus painted haphazardly, though vibrantly, in primary colors. The vehicle’s young inhabitants alternately sunned themselves on the roof, napped inside, or talked to curious shoppers in the parking lot.
It was as if the West Coast’s Merry Pranksters of Tom Wolfe’s classic 1968 book of New Journalism “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” had materialized 40-plus years later on the opposite side of the country.
Except that the sign on this bus says “Free Food,” which denotes the group’s mission in a nutshell. Members of the co-op call themselves “Second Chances Free Food Kitchen,” and they’ve taken to the road on a shoestring and a prayer, as volunteers to help people who are hurting in the current economic downturn.
“We all used to be hitch-hikers,” says the group’s leader Memphis (members use only first names), who was raised in Chicago. “Basically we were traveling pointlessly across the country doing what we wanted to do. Then my boyfriend Novel and I decided to buy this bus, because we had seen other people in the Rainbow Family who have school buses and are doing disaster relief. Like after Hurricane Katrina, helping by feeding the relief workers for free.
“So that’s what we’ve been doing. We panhandled up the money to buy the bus, and we got a bargain on it. We paid $500. It’s a 1988 Chevy, 454 under the hood, with 94,000 miles on it. It used to be a church bus. We took the seats out ourselves and built these bunks to sleep in. Now we go around the country feeding people for free. We’ve got huge pots and pans, and we have the capacity to feed around a thousand people at once.”
They’ve been on the road in their current incarnation since May of 2009, working solely from donations. As the economy has declined, they say, demand for their services has boomed.
“Wherever we park,” says Memphis, “all night long and all day long, people drive by and honk, or knock on the door to see what’s going on. They take pictures.” While the reception from strangers has been mostly positive, she says, “Occasionally people come in and start acting ridiculous, acting crazy, and we have to kick them out. But our biggest problem is that cops come around and start messing with us.
“They don’t believe we’re really doing what we say we’re doing. I just got out of jail yesterday in Mississippi, up around Tupelo. I’ve still got bruises on my arms from a cop pulling me out of the bus.”
When asked why they decided to go on a free-feeding mission, Memphis doesn’t hesitate: “We’ve all been homeless ourselves. We’ve been hungry. It’s not a lot of fun going to sleep hungry at night. I’ve been an activist my whole life, going to marches and protests. But any change that comes from those methods is long-term, and way less visible. So I started doing this in addition to my other activism, because at the end of a day I can actually see the people we’ve helped.
“We were recently in Denver, and there was a line a block long of people waiting to get food. One man had his hands up in the air, praising God because food had come from nowhere. People are very appreciative. They see the bus and it’s like, ‘Wow! We get to eat today!’”
The current crew totals seven, and home states range from California to Indiana, to Kentucky and Massachusetts.
Novel hails from Arizona. He says the group is on its way to the Gulf this weekend to help feed volunteers who are cleaning up the oil spill.
“We originally planned to volunteer for the cleanup,” he says, “but we keep hearing varying stories about who’s eligible. And apparently a lot of it’s being done through private contractors. So instead we’re going to cook for people. They’re not homeless, but they’ve been displaced enough that they’re putting a strain on the local infrastructure, including the food service industry. So we figured some free food would help.”
In addition to the bus’s human passengers, there are two dogs — an American Staffordshire pit bull mix, Collateral Damage, and a Colby pit named Mario—as well as Havoc the cat and Mustafa the rat.
Though there’s a level of freedom in not having a permanent home, Memphis says, it’s not a joyride; there’s a lot of grinding work involved. Members often burn out and move on to other pursuits, but replacements seem to show up at the right time.
Not many vagabonds have a detailed business plan, but Memphis does. “We’re trying to raise the money to pay a paralegal to help us file for nonprofit status as a 501(c). That way we could actually get grants and not have to panhandle. It would be a lot less punishing for everybody, and I could even start paying the crew some, because these kids do a ton of work for zero money.
“I’d also like to gain some respect from the police. And eventually I’d like to have a small piece of land somewhere that we could go for a short break after being on the road all year. It’s tiring. But it’s a good life, to know you’re helping people who need it.”