GRIMENSTEIN: The thing that stands out the most, the thing that I will remember the most, that I will never forget, is stepping outside my yard and looking left and right and seeing 20-30 people at every single house, just about. And I know that they’re not all family, they’re not all friends. Seeing people literally walking up and down the street with masks on, those paper masks on, and gloves but they’re carrying coolers and they’re just saying, “Anybody need water? Anybody want this and this and this?” And just throwing out food and throwing out water, we ended up with like eight cases of water. Because even when we were turning them down, people were just driving by and throwing them on each house pile and yards. So we ended up with a lot of water. But people were just going to the store and buying stuff. I had a guy that lived up the street, I believe, who was just saying, “Hey man, do you need any clothes?’ And I said, “Yeah, I guess so, I don’t own any anymore.” So he opened up his trunk and literally just gave me clothes and shoes and stuff. And I said, “Shoot, is this stuff out of your, are these your clothes?” And he said, “Yeah, but I’ll buy more, don’t worry about it.” So I got a lot of clothes from a random guy who had a bunch of clothes in his trunk. But that, the compassion, I think, is what will stand out more than anything. Just walking back and still visualizing standing on my front porch, and looking left and right and across and then having to scoot over because people are, “Excuse me,” coming in and out of the house.
Excerpted from: Owen Grimenstein Oral History Interview. Born-digital recording(s) converted to mp3 format for online access in 2012 from 16bit 44.1khz WAV file archival master recording.
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