Finding joy in a bleak Thanksgiving

In the desert, view from a food bank
Turn down nearly any street in Lancaster, Calif., a former military town that entered the 21st century as one of the nation's fastest-growing suburbs, and behold: Almost-new houses with boarded-up windows, for-sale signs in the yards, and moving trucks in the driveways.

Stop at the Grace Resource Center, a couple of miles from a neighborhood called Prairie Rose, and see this: families, some of whom used to live in these houses, waiting in line for free food.

Among them this week was Randy McClure, who lost his job as a school custodian a year ago and has yet to find another. He has a wife, two kids and a home of 14 years that is in foreclosure. In better times, he used to volunteer at Grace Resource.

"I helped people who needed help — like we need help now," McClure, 48, says with a chuckle.

He gestures to the scores of people waiting patiently in line with him Tuesday for their food allotment. It will be more than enough to get them through the holidays, but some will return on Thursday for a Thanksgiving dinner.

Ric Francis / AP Steve Baker, left, executive director at the Grace Resource Center in Lancaster, Calif., is seeing more middle class people at the center's food bank.

Steve Baker, an amiable man of 56 with the girth of a small bear and a graying goatee, knows McClure, as he does many of those lined up for food. Some went to his high school, 40 years ago.

"This year more than ever it's emotionally draining, because we're seeing more middle-class folks coming in than ever before," says Baker, who has run Grace Resource since its opening in 1991. "They're broke. They're embarrassed. Some of them are mad."

He saw this cactus-and-sagebrush-studded town in the Mojave Desert, 70 miles north of Los Angeles, fill up with tile-roofed houses with swimming pools and four-car garages. He watched the population mushroom from 10,000 to 145,000.

He is now too invested in Lancaster emotionally to be anywhere but this food bank on Thanksgiving Day, particularly since a fundraiser earlier this year that was expected to bring in $25,000 cleared just $14,000.

"A lot of very generous people have been very honest with us and are saying, `You know, we just don't have it to give this year.' And we understand that," he says.

One donor, who had no money to give, knitted a hundred winter caps instead. Others who turned up for food ended up helping distribute it, embarrassed, perhaps, that they had nothing to give.

To them, Baker had a simple message: "When things turn around, I know you'll be helping us again."

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