The Liberty Street Market located in an impoverished area of downtown Cincinnati is a choice
pantry. It is laid out much like a grocery store. It is dependent on volunteers to keep shelves stocked, to bag food, and to help customers.
 
When I last volunteered at the Liberty Street Market, I was a runner. My job as a runner was to load groceries into people’s cars or to help people gather their bagged groceries for their walk home or to the bus stop.
 

Burnt orange rays flatline on the horizon. Like the setting sun, I’m tired and ready to rest. We wait, standing on the sidewalk at an intersection for the crosswalk light to change. Traffic passes by on this balmy evening in April 1993, somewhere deep in Midwest America. Makes no difference where exactly we are. As usual, we’ll be back out here, on the interstate on-ramp pushing us farther from the place we once called home.
 

I opened the shop at 10:30. The first thing of course is building a fire in a wood heater. The wood is rather wet, no kindling and no axe. But we always get it started. By this time, we have quite a group of people in the shop. They are there for various reasons. Saturday, 89 people came to the shop. Some came for help, some out of curiosity, and some to buy. Today the first thing I must do is drive nearly to Berlin to aid a lovely old couple. It is nearly 1 p.m. when I arrive back in Lebanon.

Marie stood poised and sported a houndstooth dress with an ascot scarf that flowed and dropped perfectly just below her neckline. Her polite smile, accentuated by red lipstick with rounded corners, conveyed a benevolent charm as she welcomed guests to a teacher’s reception on Thursday evening, September 16. Parents and PTA members showed up in a record-breaking attendance to meet sixty-three teachers in the south wing of Lebanon High School. Parents were handed name tags to pin on their suit jackets, and teachers wore corsages.