Barb Fulton clambered down the steps of her 22-foot mobile home and ambled toward an apple tree barren of fruit. She ignored the overripe apples decaying in the grass, angling toward a nearby row of card tables laden with fresh oranges, zucchinis, carrots and spinach in wicker baskets and plastic bags. Closer to the tree trunk, a double-decker shopping cart held re-sealable storage bags packed with day-old rolls and bread loaves. Fulton fussed over the cornucopia, perfecting the display.
Some 25 yards behind her, further down Lindvog Road Northeast in Kingston, a working-class community in Kitsap County, sat a sandwich board sign: “Kingston Food Bank.”
It was just around noon on a Wednesday. Mid-September clouds lent the sky a pewter glow.
A woman pulled a blue car into a gravel driveway not far from the food tables and cut the engine. A child’s face peered out of a rear window. As the girl ignored the vegetables and set her gaze on a table covered with school notebooks, the woman stopped at the mobile home. Her shoulders sagged. Fulton greeted her with a smile.
She asked the woman her name, then flicked through cards in a small plastic card file. Each card holds the name of a food bank regular, with a date indicating the last time the
person or family received staples like sugar and milk. Visitors get one bag of staples a month. Fresh fruit and vegetables are available anytime.
“Oh, it’s time for your bag,” Fulton said. She stood on the bottom stair of the mobile home. “Do you need sugar? Flour?”
“Flour,” the woman said.
“Cooking oil?”
“Yes, please.”
The woman and child selected fruits and vegetables from the tables, while Fulton kept tabs on the family as she procured staples. She repeatedly hoisted herself up and eased herself down the mobile home steps.
The woman, who asked not to be identified, said recent hardships brought her to the food bank. She had another daughter, 9, who needed school supplies. As the younger daughter, age 4, carried a bag weighted with fruits and vegetables to the car, Fulton gave the woman’s hand a squeeze. The woman took a backpack filled with notebooks and pencils to her car and drove off. Fulton waved and smiled.
Fulton entered the mobile home, her gait slowing as she climbed the stairs. About six years ago, an ache set into both of Fulton’s legs. Navigating stairs became painful. Even mounting a curb caused her to wince. She was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, the collective name for a group of degenerative muscle diseases that impede movement and weaken the musculoskeletal system. Muscular dystrophy has no known cure.
Fulton, 64, said she can’t let it stop her from running the food bank. Helping people is her life. So she smiles, an antidote to the pain. But she concedes the discomfort she feels in her legs can’t compete with the pain in her heart.
That’s because the Kingston Food Bank is homeless.
Fulton’s parents started it almost 58 years ago in the family home. After more than a decade there, it moved to a building her father helped build near the Kingston Ferry Terminal. It stayed put, with only a minor displacement, for more than 40 years.
In December 2012, water damage from a leak forced the food bank, and two other businesses, to relocate. Fulton scrambled to find a new place. Officials with a local real estate office offered her a temporary haven. Two and a half months later, she had to move again.
“That was all I had,” Fulton said. “That place was the last resort.”
Or second to last. Sitting in her yard was the trusty Tioga mobile home she used for camping trips. She filled the vehicle’s shelves with packaged food and stashed frozen meats in a cooler tucked in the bathroom. The Kingston Food Bank went mobile.
Every Wednesday and Friday since late April, Fulton has parked her mobile home on the side of this not-too-busy road and set up shop. Friends and neighbors come by to drop off breads and vegetables; other friends and neighbors come looking for food and other items to stock the fridge and pantry.
Even though she’s grateful a crew of people help her help others, Fulton admits she feels abandoned by some in the community. She wonders why no one has stepped in to give her food bank a permanent home. She worries she’ll have nowhere to go when the weather turns wet and cold.
“I cry, I cry. I probably got the cleanest tear ducts in town,” Fulton said. “But then I pull up my big-girl panties and carry on.”
She said she still holds out hope an act of generosity will turn things around. After all, someone else’s kindness kick-started the Kingston Food Bank. And it all began with a fish.
Generosity begins at home
Fulton’s father, Ray Weaver, was a Navy man, but his maritime career was cut short when he received an early discharge: He’d developed polio. When he returned to the family, who were living in a housing project in Bremerton, he couldn’t get out of bed.
“He was down for a while,” Fulton said.
But having polio, along with arthritis, didn’t derail his desire to work. The family moved to another location, and on the days when her father was mobile, he built a small house in Hansville, 10 miles north of Kingston. Fulton said she remembered that sometimes her mother, Vi, would tape a hammer to his hand so he could strike nails.
Times were tight, and meals were lean. But even if they endured a lack of food, Fulton remembered they benefitted from a wealth of compassion.
Southwest of their new home was the Port Gamble S’Klallam Reservation, which occupies more than 1,200 acres in North Kitsap County. Some Port Gamble S’Klallams had befriended Fulton’s family, and one day, Fulton’s father opened the back door. Outside was a fresh-caught salmon. Fulton recalled they received other food, deer and clams, left by their Native American friends.
When Fulton’s father regained his health and the family’s finances improved, Fulton said her parents wanted to return the favor. Her family invited people to bring food donations to their Hansville home; those who needed the food could pick up what was there.
It was 1957, and the Kingston Food Bank was born.
Surrounded by people who assisted others, Fulton absorbed their altruistic inclinations. She dreamed of helping people by being a Navy nurse, but then the unexpected altered her plan: “I ‘accidentally’ decided to become a mother,” Fulton said.
With children to support, Fulton undertook multiple careers: house cleaner, dental assistant, waitress, bartender and ambulance EMT. Her favorite job, which she held for 32 years, was driving a school bus. Earlier in her tenure, Fulton’s father Ray had died, so in between bus routes, Fulton helped her mother at the food bank.
Then in 2007, Fulton’s legs began to give her trouble. She had to pull herself up the bus stairs. She realized that eventually, she wouldn’t be helping the kids off the bus: They’d be hauling her off the bus. So she quit. She supports herself on Social Security disability and retirement. “I am grateful for what I have had,” she said.
She assisted at the food bank, located by then near the ferry terminal, which kept Fulton tied to the community. But she noticed that her mother was becoming less ambulatory. She needed a walker to get around. In 2010, Vi Weaver died. Fulton took over. She cleared a space for her mother’s walker in the food bank — to keep a momento of her.
But the building’s pipes leaked, causing water damage and the need for $90,000 in renovations. The Kitsap Sun reported that the Kitsap Parks and Recreation Department owns the building. The department plans to demolish the building due to the damage. The food bank had to move. Department officials failed to respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.
Fulton said she’s glad her mother wasn’t alive when the news came. “It would’ve broken her heart,” she said. As a goodbye, Fulton strolled her mother’s walker around the space.
The news of the closure reverberated through the small community. Carter Dotson, co-owner of Windermere Real Estate, said an employee knew Fulton and told him the food bank had lost its long-time home. There was an unused space in the Windermere building on Lindvog Road Northeast, Dotson said, so the agency donated the space.
The agreement was for temporary residency, at no cost.
“We were paying for the utilities, and it wasn’t sustainable for us,” Dotson said.
Since Fulton’s departure in early April, the space once occupied by the food bank is still empty, Dotson said, though Windermere is considering expanding its business.
Even though Fulton left, he described Windermere’s relationship with Fulton as good and said the office still provides some financial support. “She’s doing really good work,” Dotson said.
Marlene Dixon agreed. Her mother owns 1.5 acres just up the road from Windermere, so when Fulton needed somewhere to park the mobile home, the senior Dixon offered part of her property — for free.
“They had no place else,” the younger Dixon said.
She said it was sad to see Fulton struggle to find a new location. Dixon said that over the years, it seemed people in Kingston had become less generous. “In the old days, there would never be an issue of ‘Where will I go?’” said Dixon.
In one sense, the free accommodations Fulton has received are a necessity: Fulton doesn’t earn a salary running the food bank, and she and her crew of assistants — two on-site helpers, her brother, her husband, her nephew, her neighbors — all volunteer their time.
But Fulton doesn’t run the only food bank in town. ShareNet Food Bank serves the greater Kingston area, and according to its website, distributed more than 315,000 pounds of food last year.
Fulton said someone once told her Kingston didn’t need two food banks. Fulton disagreed. Besides keeping people from going hungry, she has another goal.
“I try to heal their hearts,” she said.
Families and friends
The food bank stays open from noon to 3 p.m., and within the first hour, more than 10 people pored over the food or received bags of staples.
Sometime after 1 p.m., a couple drove up in a dark green SUV. Ramona and Kevin checked in at the mobile home. One of Fulton’s assistants loaded up a bag of staples, while the couple, who only gave their first names, stocked up on vegetables.
Kevin said they had seen a flyer that the food bank had moved, and so he showed up to get food for five people, including his parents. He said he’d been looking for a job for months. He had a lead, but didn’t know if it would pan out.
Ramona said she felt no shame in coming to the food bank because the family had to eat.
Kevin nodded. “You gotta do what you gotta do,” he said. The couple dropped their food on the back seat and drove away.
Earlier in the day, before the food bank opened, Fulton had shouted to someone in a house across the street. Not long after Kevin and Ramona left, a man who lived in the house stood on the far side of Lindvog, waiting for a break in the traffic. Deep wrinkles channeled his brow, and a graying beard shrouded his jutting chin. He said his name was Ken Price.
Price cast a glance at the vegetables, then lit a cigarette. When Fulton saw him, her face beamed with a broad smile. The two had met in high school and have been friends ever since. By chance, he happened to live across the street from the food bank.
But not for long. His landlord was renovating the house, and Price had till midnight to move out. His family planned to stay in a motel for a while, thanks to money the landlord had offered, but they still hadn’t found a permanent place.
A retired dry wall installer, Price said he relied on the food bank.
“Sometimes it’s hard to make ends meet,” he said, crushing out his cigarette.
Price and Fulton reminisced about the past. “People used to help people,” Price said. Without looking at her, he said, “You’ve been doing it for 60 years, and no one will step up and give you a place.”
He slid zucchini into a plastic bag.
“There’s people in town who still don’t believe we have homeless,” Fulton said. Price pursed his lips and took hold of his bag of vegetables. He walked back across the street to start emptying his house.
A slowdown in clients gave Fulton a chance to make lunch. At the stove in the mobile home, she opened a freezer bag of Cheesy Mac & Chicken and poured the contents over chicken breasts sizzling in a non-stick pan. On a nearly table lay a packet of Annie Chun’s Teriyaki Noodle Bowl, bags of pasta and cartons of Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa Mix.
Fulton moved with ease in the crowded space, but she admitted running a food bank out of a mobile home was tough. Still, she knew she had to be patient, that somehow she’d find a permanent place. “I just want to help people,” she said.
A car pulled up, and Fulton turned off the burner. She walked down the mobile home steps to see how she could help.
‘Freaking jazzed’
That was in mid-September. As October arrived and the daylight shortened, Fulton still hadn’t found a place. A shift in weather patterns brought cool air. She continued to run the Kingston Food Bank out of her mobile home.
On Oct. 30 she moved into a new space three miles from the apple tree on Lindvog Road Northeast: a garage on her brother’s property.
“It’s the only place we could think of to get out of the wind and rain,” Fulton said.
The garage is located on 29630 Rash Rd. N.E., in Kingston, in the same building her husband uses as a small engine repair shop. Fulton and her husband live right next door. Close to 25 families showed up the first day.
The relocation there means that, yet again, the food bank is physically connected to her home. “It’s kind of done a circle of life here,” she said.
But her life will soon move in a new direction. The day before Fulton reopened the food bank in the garage, she got a letter. Representatives with the Pam Foster and Liz Austin Fund, a charitable giving fund at the Seattle Foundation, heard the Kingston Food Bank was homeless. Fulton said the foundation wanted her to have enough money to rent an appropriate space for one or two years, so the nonprofit mailed her a check. For $16,000.
“I’m freaking jazzed,” Fulton said.
She said she hasn’t started to look for a new place yet, but she will. In the meantime, she’s thinking about getting enough turkeys for people for Thanksgiving and what gifts she’ll hand out for Christmas.
Then there are the people who still need their bags of staples. She said she’ll keep providing food, and smiles, no matter where the food bank finds a home. After all, Fulton made a deal with herself long ago: “I’m not closing that door till the last can of food goes out.”