Saturday morning did not start auspiciously.

While I and the rest of the volunteers from our youth group stood in the parking lot, trying to figure out how many teams of drivers and knockers we would have, and visiting with a former member of our group come to assist in the church school sorting the food, the wife went inside to get cell phone numbers of all the groups covering town.

And came back to inform us the gymnasium, where the donated food items are sorted, is not available.

A wedding reception. Apparently the fellow running the food drive had neglected to coordinate our schedule with the priest. So, we all march inside past the 280+ neatly arrayed place settings in the gymnasium (I counted, of course) and haul the old, heavy wooden tables to the cafeteria. Which may actually work better for our sorters, being closer to the stairs that the food must go down.

But all our traffic will have to go through the narrow kitchen where women in matching plain, pale green dresses are preparing huge bowls and buckets of food for the recption, their hair all tied up and nestled in white caps. Young men in black pants and white shoes standing by to do their bidding.

Mennonites.

This is actually cooler than heck, like stepping back in time, but to be honest, I didn't know we had 280 Mennonites in our community.

As expected, they are politer than can be, but I couldn't help feeling guilty about barging in through their work area, on a day the Father had promised would be theirs for their celebration.

After getting the cafeteria arranged for the food bank folks, and relocating all the gym equipment the wedding party had just shoved outside, blocking their main doors (and fire exit), and getting the new female volunteers headed to their part of town, we were off. Gathering up a lad we had forgotten to pick up, clear across town, and also meeting a man from 120-some miles away who brought us four boxes of popcorn. Finally, almost an hour into the project, we finally get started.

Now, we knock on all the doors in our part of town. Some groups, to save themselves time more than anything else, just drive the streets and pick up the bags of food left on porches as per instructons in the newspaper. But many people don't see that ad in the paper, and more forget. We've kept track. You get about ten times as much food when you knock and ask for it. Yes, it takes a lot more time, especially since you're often standing there on the porch while the residents are banging through their cupboards for something they can spare.

But since the whole point of this exercise is to gather food, we knock.

Groups that don't knock miss out on so much. The woman who invited me in to wait while she rummaged her cabinets, and then gave me a complete tour of the work she and her husband have done on their 1870s house. The closed in porch, expanded bedroom, the hand-carved wood trim they gave up trying to clean down to original wood because they ran into lead-based paint. The stained front door that came from his grandparents' farmhouse in Nebraska, complete with large squares of old coloured, thick, ornately etched glass.

The friend who, surprised to see me in this uniform, just grabs a case of cereal from the family groceries he was unloading and gives it to the cause.

The horribly lonely and timid little dog tied to the front tree that is thrilled to have attention, if only for a moment. The fierce Rottweiller-type dog that is surprised to find a hand automatically reaching out to stroke its neck, and decides that isn't a bad thing, after all.

The pre-toddler little girl standing in her living room who is in awe of this stranger at her door, and then waves a friendly goodbye. The obviously stressed young mother with babe in arms who still finds time and food to think of others.

The half-naked young man gulping down pizza for breakfast who bruskly turns you away, and the young woman in the background who did not agree with his assessment.

The apartment with a three-day old eviction notice tacked on the door.

People with two shiny new SUVs in the drive who have nothing to give, the ones with an old beater on the street that fill a bag.

It is after noon before our other two teams find us, and help us wrap up our last few blocks. An hour behind schedule. Then, back at the school, the bad news.

Two groups, sponsored by the same church, had accepted the entire south side of town to cover. A mixture of apartments, small homes and trailers courts. But they all went to a funeral at ten o'clock, and it appears no one came out afterwards to gather the food. A third group, from the same church, was sent into the neighborhood to seek out the first, but they haven't returned with any food, either.

Worse, there has been no word from the unit assigned the modern, northeastern part of town. And the girls had quit, leaving a small piece of their territory uncollected. We've lost part of our teams to other commitments, but one takes off for the piece left by the Brownies. The wife and I head to the northeast.

And find bags of food sitting on porches, uncollected.

Craaap.

The other group never showed up. No more knocking now. We just start driving the streets, gathering the available offerings. Soon joined by our other teams, but still the wife and I cover half the other group's territory by ourselves.

And they were also supposed to cover our little town. It's after one o'clock before we head home, warning the food bank folks we may have even more late donations. By the second block, we know.

Bags of food. No one collected here, either. So, the wife and I continue doing the work of a half-dozen people. Presumably driving the heelers crazy as we pass by our own house not once, but twice.

It's after two o'clock before we're home. None too happy with the community spirit demonstrated by a few of our groups.

And they've asked the wife to ramrod the whole drive next year.