SHARE, the food-buying cooperative I work with, uses Carter Tabernacle Church's parking lot as its Orlando satellite "warehouse" location for Saturday morning once each month. A 53 feet long trailer from Tampa delivers tons and tons to this one spot where all the food is unloaded onto the parking lot lanes, then individual site orders are stripped from the pallets and loaded into volunteer's vehicles for distribution from the 15 or 20 SHARE sites.

Our SHARE Auburndale Trucking Team arrived in way-before-dawn time to help chalk the lane where the pallets would be spotted as the lift truck driver sorted the pallets coming off the trailer into pick-sheet order, further simplifying the counting and loading to come. For amusement we try to come up with innovative ways to spell each product as we chalk it onto the pavement: "Letus" "orng" "karit" "tater" and so on. We have nothing else to amuse ourselves at 6 a.m. under the sodium vapor lights. We've done this too many times, we agreed among ourselves. "Kabij," Barbara chalked at her feet.

"I've got some bad news," Cliff said. "It looks like they never dropped off the fork lift." It looked that way to me, too. Calvin and Deborah agreed. Four polled, four agreed. "No forklift this morning." A long time ago, we once had a lift truck but no key for it. We had to hand unload the entire truck, individual package by individual package. Since then five of us each bought enough keys to start half the lift trucks in west Orlando.

The big Saddle Creek truck arrived from Tampa, made the turn off John Young Parkway and drove onto the parking lot. The driver got out. Cliff spoke up, "Malcomb, we have good news and bad news. The weather is fine, no rain predicted, but we don't have a forklift."

Malcomb, ever the optimist, suggested, "We could unload all the food by hand."

The four of us. Everyone agreed Malcomb would shift the truck up and down the aisle so we could spot the products on the ground for distribution. My guess was we'd get finished by noon or perhaps 11:30 a.m. We were expected back in Auburndale by 8 or 8:15 a.m. with our site's order.

By this time, we were joined by other Trucking Teams from other sites around Central Florida. A few people were skeptical about this hand unloading bit, but Cliff pointed out, "We don't have a choice." Minutes passed as we few stacked "tater" bags at the word purple-chalked on the pavement. Soon other Trucking Teams, as they showed up, formed up in the line to move products from the rear of the trailer onto the chalked spots, "letus" adjacent to "orng", three spots east of "karit".

Despite that hand unloading, we were just half an hour late getting started with the "warehouse" distribution. Deborah either drove fast or flew low depending on whether the Federal Aviation Administration or the Florida Highway Patrol might have stopped her along Interstate 4. She was towing a trailer, so I'd presume the Florida Highway Patrol would have claimed jurisdiction if they'd been able to catch her. Deborah made the 43 miles in 7 minutes, 3 seconds. At Saint Alban's, SHARE Auburndale volunteers hand unloaded our products in minutes. We were out of the parish hall only 15 minutes late.

Enough volunteers and determination got the job done. You can unload 53 feet of groceries onto a church parking lot in the dark without a lift truck. However, Cliff vowed he'd find out why the lift truck didn't get there, and to make sure it does get there from now on. Dozens of turkeys came four in a box. A hundred hams were six in a box. There were 266 basic meat boxes. Half a ton of "tater" in mesh bags. We thanked God for the volunteers who helped. We hope to thank Him again, more enthusiastically, too, for the use of the lift truck He'll get to the "warehouse" next month. Fifty-two hands will applaud, not walk to the back of the truck to carry green beans in cans 24 to the case, 10 more times.

Stewart B. Prince lives in Auburndale. His "Oatmeal" column appears each Sunday in the Accent section of the News Chief.