“White-light the drivers’ cars”, we used to say, as we all held hands around the kitchen table in the rambunctious free-for-all we called a prayer before the drivers set off. We were standing in the ramshackle kitchen above the Methodist church where we cooked and dispatched the lunches to people who were living with (and in those days dying of) AIDS.  

This was in the early days of the epidemic, long before the life-saving drug cocktail came in, when there were few services and everything was seat-of-the-pants.

I remember that the Health Department said, among many other things, that the kitchen should not have any holes in the window screens. We didn’t actually have any window screens and, in the many places where the stained glass had fallen out, we didn’t even have windows. All of which added to the raffish charm of the place and the exhilaration of the whole enterprise.

It was grass roots at its best and most dedicated. It was a miracle that so many volunteers got to cook and deliver so many meals to so many hungry clients. Our logo was a wide-winged angel presenting a tray. As I stood in the prayer circle it occurred to me that we truly did operate “On a Wing and a Prayer”.    

*       *       *

From one end to the other I got to know the streets of Los Angeles intimately.  Now, whenever I drive through the city, it’s surprising how many of its buildings stir affectionate memories of my years working for the agency that delivered “food with love”.

Every day was unique – and my clients were too. Take, for example, one blisteringly hot day in June. First I drove up Sunset Plaza Drive to visit a middle-aged gay man in his classy gleaming white house. He lived alone, was sick, and worried that his medical bills were consuming his savings. Next I drove downtown to a shabby skid-row hotel to visit a young black woman, an intravenous drug user who was upset because her boyfriend had just left her and she was afraid she’d be thrown out on the street. Two people from opposite ends of life with quite different concerns. But in reality, the tears they shed were the same. They were both dying of AIDS.

My beat was the vast, the sprawling County of Los Angeles. In nine years I visited over six thousand clients, each in his home, each with his story. A lot of driving. But city drivers usually focus on the tail light of the car ahead, with only peripheral attention to the buildings speeding past, let alone any contemplation of who or what is inside. That’s a pity. You see, the facades are always stoic and unyielding but, no matter how inscrutable the houses, behind the windows there is always a story. Always.

Yes, a lot of driving.  In a future life I would make a great cab-driver. Except that, unlike the cab that pulls up to the house and waits, I got to go inside. It’s amazing what you find.