My Dinner With Mel

November 18, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

Mel Greenberg invited me to have dinner with him Thursday evening. At the American Legion Hall in Sheffield. I must have been daydreaming because I drove right past it, through Sheffield and then had to double-back. I got there right on time at 5:15, and was lucky enough to grab the very last parking spot.

Because I wasn’t the only one Mel and his friends were feeding. There were seventy-nine of us.

Ever since I lost my office on Railroad Street to gentrification and transformed my small dining area into a small film editing suite, I’ve been eating simple dinners in a desk chair facing my Sony. And most often dinner is a sandwich on a paper plate. I’ve come to love the dinners me and my remote control share with TiVo.

In contrast, Mel and his friendly volunteers from the Interfaith Committee of Southern Berkshires and the Realtors of South Berkshire County served a multi-course dinner beginning with soup and salad, then featuring a main course of chicken cordon bleu, rice and vegetables, and ending with a vast variety of cakes and cookies. I had water with my dinner but others chose coffee or lemonade. More food by far than I’m used to. Most often a big part of the dinner is contributed. This time thanks go to Keith Bosquet, the Food Manager of Ski Butternut for preparing the chicken. As hearty a dinner as you could imagine all served by charming and attentive students from Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

My tablemates included Superman, or at least a friend of Superman’s because he was wearing the superhero’s shirt, Don Victor and his ever-present camera, a friend of Don’s who used to plow the roads of Barrington, and several others in search of good food and good company. Some talked and others didn’t and none of it mattered. There seemed to be no expectations whatsoever; no questions asked, and all were welcome. And everyone was treated with the greatest courtesy.

Quite frankly, I almost didn’t go. The older I’ve gotten, the less social I’ve become. And the more I enjoy my own company. But the fact is Mel Greenberg is a most persuasive man. He’s hard to say no to.

And so there I was having dinner with seventy-eight others. The last few years have taken a toll on my optimism, my sense of hope. But Mel is a man who perseveres. Who just keeps doing. Last week I accompanied him on his rounds. Driving in his truck from store to store, chatting with those who are kind enough to take the time to find things to give away, some meat, some cookies, some donuts, some bread. Mel has gotten to know everyone who works at Guidos, and behind the scenes at the Big Y, and the many folks who vounteer at People’s Pantry and the Community Center, and at the Women’s, Infants, and Children program.

The Berkshires Bounty community dinner was just another incredible, communal act of kindness. That happens off to the side. Unknown to most. For example, I’ve been shopping at the Big Y and Guidos and Mazzeos and the Marketplace for years unaware of their continuing generosity. And the same goes for the Co-op, the Meat Market, the Donut Shoppe and the Great Barrington Bagel Company. The American Legion building is a block off of Main Street, Route 7 in Sheffield. It’s easy not to know that Mel and his friends are feeding eighty people there every week.

It seems to me that dinner for eighty in times like these is a triumph of hope over despair. “Chutzpah” is a Yiddish word of several meanings. Most are reduced to one version or another of “audacity” or “gall.” I’ve known people overflowing with “chutzpah” who almost shamelessly invade the personal space of others, or take and take and take from others without shame. The author Leo Rosten, in his book “The Joys of Yiddish,” offers as an example of “chutzpah” the man who having murdered his mother and father appeals to the court to have mercy on him, because he is now an unfortunate orphan. But there’s another, more noble explanation of “chutzpah” and that’s to act without embarrassment to create something better. To ask, with a constant smile, those who have, to give some of what they have to those who don’t. In that sense, Mel seems to me a master of “chutzpah.” In the great Robin Hood tradition, because clearly Robin had “chutzpah” times ten.

I’m no Mel. I hate asking for things. And so I am enormously impressed with his ability to see the big picture, to understand that his personal comfort is so much less important than the dozens and dozens of people he helps. And so again and again, he’s asking and asking some more. So that there is more to give.