Replies

*Paisley and his wife, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, got the idea after volunteering with their children at a similar store in California.*

I’m going to take a guess that this will only work with an all-volunteer crew. Otherwise, the costs are overrun. The food must be donated as well. It’s pretty much a food bank.

I disagree with his idea that kids shouldn’t know that their parents are having a hard time making ends meet. That knowledge can be helpful to both parents and children. For parents, embarrassment can provide an incentive to work harder to improve their lives. For the kids, it can be an incentive to work hard to overcome similar circumstances in the future.

There was a time when my father worked four jobs to keep food on the table (one full-time, and three part-time jobs). We children (six of us) had to pitch in helping out where we could, until we could work our way out of the problem. It took about three years before my Dad could start his own business, and it was in part, due to others in the community seeing his hard work, and wanting to take a chance on giving him a small business loan. That family business is still going strong some 46 years later. Those years were hard, very hard, but that adversity helped my family pull together, and there were many valuable life lessons learned. I wouldn’t trade those lessons for anything.