Feed My Children

Growing up in a big city like Columbus Ohio, you just about see everything. I was about 12 when the family moved in down the street. They just came walking up the street one day, each one carring a garbage bag and moved into the condemned house on the corner. The Mom and Dad weighted about 400 pounds each, the 5 kids looked like walking tooth picks. All of them together wouldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds wet.

They didn’t have any money to turn the water or electric on, so the kids bummed water for a while and it took two of them to carry it home in a five gallon bucket. But people got tied of that and one by one they stopped. I over heard my Dad telling them “OK, but this is the last 5 gallons you get, I have to pay for this water you know.” Then he, like everyone else in the neighborhood- took the handle off the outside faucet.

They had to catch water from a broken gutter when it rained and save it in the bath tub or anything else they had to save it in. One neighbor drained her swimming pool because she thought they were getting water out of it. I wasn’t suppose to have anything to do with any of those kids, so people wouldn’t talk bad about us too. But I didn’t listen very good. Besides it didn’t matter, they talked bad about everybody anyway.

The parents ate pork chops and stuff like that, while the kids only got a free lunch at school and a peanut butter sandwich before going to bed at night. When school was out, they only got the peanut butter sandwich. I liked one of the kids, her name was Sheila. One day at school, I gave Sheila the piece of pizza off my lunch tray. The woman that monitored the school cafeteria was very strict.

She came running over and grabbed the piece of pizza away and threw it back on my tray. Then went on and on about how it was her money paying for all this FREE food and her speech ended with something about how TRASH ate better than she did. She weighed about 300 too. When she turned to walk away, I picked up the piece of pizza. I figured if she wanted it so bad, I’d give it to her in the back of her head.

But Sheila grabbed my hand, she was afraid if I did that- they would take both our free lunches away. I knew these lunches was the only decent meals she got to eat, so I didn’t..... but I really wanted too bad.

Halloween came, but my Dad never let us kids go trick or treating- “It was devil worshipping” he said. But I knew the real reason was because he didn’t want to take us and miss a night at the bar. I watched the 5 kids go door to door in the costumes they made themselves. They didn’t have any masks, so everyone knew who they were. Most people didn’t drop much in their bags, some even said “Sorry, just ran out.” But what little candy and stuff they did get, they hid instead of taking it home. I think they got a good beating over that.

Christmas came and went almost without notice at their house. It was hard knowing they got nothing at all. I didn’t know what Christmas was really about, all I knew was you got stuff. Some people from a church across town dropped by their house with a little sack of food. Their Dad said ‘That sometimes there wasn’t enough food for all of them to eat- so he went without, so the kids could eat.’ Not even a little kid like me was dumb enough to believe that, you could tell by looking who ate and who didn’t.

I don’t think the people from that church believed it either, because they never did came back. They should have at least stayed a while, long enough so the kids could have gotten some of the food they had brought. Those kids went to bed that night the same as always, with only a peanut butter sandwich. Both the parents ate well that night.

Some people always put their Christmas trees up before Thanksgiving and quickly take them down before Christmas day is half over, and throw them outside in the alley for the trash man. This was a good thing for those kids. They had a little hatchet, and the kids went out and gathered up the boxes and Christmas trees to burn. It was one of the few days they were able to keep warm. The trash man never hurt his back lifting on trash cans around our neighborhood in the winter time after they moved in.

That Spring the family moved out the same way they had come in. Everything they had in a garbage bag on their backs. People said; “Well there goes the trash- carrying trash.” I guess the saddest part of the story was, that there was two great big churches on our block. Some of their members even parked in front of that house every Sunday or walked right by there on their way to church. Jesus spoke of such things -

“I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.' Then they also will answer Him, saying, Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You? Then He will answer them, saying, Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”

Written By: Johnny Lee Hall