Contributed by Mike Feazel
The driveway was maybe just a tiny bit challenging for this Meals on Wheels delivery, but it was well worth it to drive past a lovely little lake that just demanded a fishing pole, and that I would never have seen without Meals on Wheels.
Better yet was the lady at the end of the driveway – smiling and happy and welcoming. The Meals on Wheels delivery may well have been her one human contact for the day, and she seemed to enjoy that as much as the food.
More importantly, Meals on Wheels deliveries function as wellness checks for many people in Fluvanna County who might not otherwise get one. We MoW drivers always have at least a little chat with the clients, asking them how they are, wishing them a good weekend, etc. If a client doesn’t answer the door, there are procedures to make sure a more-careful check is launched if needed. People have been saved as a result.
Meals on Wheels routes vary a lot. Two of the 10 routes are in Lake Monticello, and they’re a piece of cake to cover. Most people would consider three of the others outside the Lake pretty easy too. The other five can be a little bit harder – a lot of blacktop roads, gravel driveways, strange street names (Polecat Lane), a very few places where cellphones don’t work.
But even the challenging routes are very doable, I’ve found after driving all 10 of the routes at some point in the last two years. The rural driving is generally easy – many 45 mph speed limits, none more than 55. You don’t hear any banjos, and I’ve met no bear-eating dogs, though there are some herds of cats that might purr you to death. The roads are drivable, if sometimes requiring you to go slow, and I’ve never felt any danger on the pre-lunch deliveries.
I pretty much always do the Lake Monticello routes alone, and sometimes do the same for the easier routes outside the Lake. I like to have Sue go along on the more challenging routes. both because she can help speed the GPS navigation and spot the specific houses and because she’s good company on the two-hour drives. But I’ve done some of them alone too, with no problem.
Some people don’t drive, opting to volunteer for the hour-and-a-half shifts in the kitchen in Crofton Plaza, preparing the pre-cooked meals rather than driving at all.
Some drivers volunteer for a specific route one day every week or a couple of times a month, becoming totally familiar with that route and friends with the clients on it. Others, like me, prefer to fill in when regular route drivers are on vacation, have company, or whatever. I drive a couple of times a month, when it fits my schedule, and I like to do different routes so I get to see more or less all of the county, visiting places I’d otherwise never see.
The drives tend to be at least interesting, and sometimes lovely. Unless you drive all those blacktop Fluvanna roads you have no idea how rural it is, how there can be more bales of hay than people in a given mile of road, or how many hundreds of acres are devoted to pine forests destined eventually for the pulp mills, how many houses are tucked way back from the road where no one can see them, how many charming churches and ancient cemeteries there are, how many no trespassing signs there are.
Fluvanna Meals on Wheels provides all the training needed for either working in the kitchen or driving deliveries. Delivery people get good driving instructions, though I find it much easier to use GPS. You get a t-shirt and signs for your car doors and lots of thanks and good wishes. And a lot of satisfaction that you are really, directly, face-to-face helping your fellow person.
Meals on Wheels needs volunteers, both for the kitchen and for delivery drivers. More information on volunteering is available from MoW Volunteer Coordinator Amy Smedley at volunteer@fluvannamow.org.
