And The Breadline Marches On...
By Chris Carbone
February’s been the coldest month in Connecticut these past couple of years. In Bridgeport, it’s something more fierce. Tonight especially. When that iron wind claws its way in from Long Island Sound and droops over and below the buildings of this city, it feels as though the universe has reserved its outraged elements for our corner of the City.
Outside of the Harrison Apartments on State Street, a line is forming. The people making up this line are oblivious to the wind's lashings (or at least they’ve trained themselves to be). Some are born here; others transplanted with different native tongues and driven by no two same circumstances to this place every Thursday evening for one reason: to feel the warmth. Not only the warmth of a few minutes inside and a hot, home-cooked meal, but that of the eponymous program these weekly offerings are named after.
nOURish BRIDGEPORT’s (capitalization intentional) Feel The Warmth mobile community hot supper is one of a number of soup kitchens in the Greater Bridgeport Area. A core group of volunteers come from all over Fairfield County and beyond to cook a meal at the nOURish CENTER, transport it down to the Harrison Apartments, and serve upwards of three hundred meals to Bridgeport’s unhoused and transitionally housed neighbors. Sometimes, there’s too much food, and we give the surplus to other non-profits who feed the hungry. Other times, however, the line is too long, and there simply isn’t enough. Yet, however small a dent in hunger in this city, FEEL THE WARMTH makes a dent nonetheless. It may be only for tonight. But for the people who struggle daily with food scarcity, it takes the edge and stress off for today. It may be only in this one city in the one state, but the work is being done, and we have been doing it for a very long time.
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Societies have always recognized the need to feed the hungry. The current exercises in tribalism and xenophobia may render this fact hard on our collective memory; leading to many a raised eyebrow when the gaze is shifted down and into the history books. One only need look to the Imarets, or public soup kitchens, that were a staple in the Ottoman Empire from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. They were often part of larger complexes known as külliyes, which included hospices, mosques, inns or caravanserais, and colleges. These establishments were erected for nothing else but to serve those who could not serve themselves.
Benjamin Thompson, the American-born British nobleman, military officer, and scientist, invented what is now known as Rumford soup. This hearty concoction, originally consisting of only pearl barley, peas, potatoes, and beer was designed to be dirt cheap to make, but without sacrificing nutritional quality. It was then schlepped to Bavarian workhouses and to those in the military, and many philanthropic-minded Germans at the time set up soup kitchens with Rumford soup as its center course.
Fast forwarding a century or two, soup kitchens really came to the forefront in America during the Great Depression. These ‘breadlines,’ as they were known under FDR, began popping up all over right when the stock market crashed in 1929, and were usually run by private charities and churches (as many still are today). Over twelve million out-of-work Americans frequented these lines daily, and none other than Al Capone is credited with starting one of the first soup kitchens in Chicago at this time.
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Back here in Bridgeport in 2025, looking at the line out the door and the rate at which these meals are being handed out, it may feel like nothing much has changed since the dawn of the American soup kitchen. The question may arise: is all of this worth it? It’s only one or two meals a week. Assuming everyone should have three square a day, what is the point? The rebuttal is that this one meal, with the possibility of a sandwich being given out for the next day, could mean the difference between someone giving up or not. This one meal tonight could fuel the neighbor who has been running on fumes and give them enough courage to face the day anew.
For many, it is a more drastic situation: the one meal could be a matter of life or death.
The other rebuttal is that the steam rising from the trays of food is not the only warmth felt here. Many of the folks tonight are regulars. One woman, who attends every night that I have been here, dances in the door and does not let up until she finds her way out. On occasion, a fellow neighbor will bring a speaker and blast music, and tonight is no exception. Whether this accompaniment, or her excitement over the dinner tonight, (Chef Chris, director of FTW’s special pasta bolognese), is her cause for celebration is neither here nor there. As she waves her hands and moves her hips, she infects the whole room; volunteer and neighbor alike, with her joviality. Stan, another regular, always comes with a friendly loquaciousness, as well as a whole spiel about whatever book or record he has in his tote bag today.
Reverend Sara Smith, President, CEO, and founder of nOURish BRIDGEPORT, has a little mantra, “Food is a bridge that builds community.” This giddy comingling of volunteer and neighbor could very well not happen anywhere else, and helps us to fulfill our mission of nourishing bodies and spirits one meal at a time. Programs like Feel The Warmth are not only the most immediate calls to action on the front lines of the war against hunger, but their dynamics exemplify the nature of what it means to be human. We want to help each other, we long for connection, and we need to do that now more than ever.