Volunteers at Just Food load boxes of Thanksgiving meals into cars lined up at the agency Monday, Nov. 24, 2014.

People line up to pick up their Just Food Thanksgiving food boxes Monday, Nov. 24, 2014.

Let’s be honest. We’re all wondering what this sweet Chrysler 300 is doing in the long line of cars here to pick up a free Thanksgiving meal.

Jeremy Farmer, executive director of the Lawrence food bank Just Food, doesn’t ask. But the driver readily volunteers. She’s upside down. Owes a lot more on the car than it’s worth at this point.

So, what are you going to do? Sell the car? How’s that work? The bank won’t let you sell it for less than what you owe on the loan, unless you’ve got the cash to make up the difference. How about you just quit paying on the loan? The bank will take care of selling the car for you. Of course, then you wouldn’t have a car, and the havoc that creates may require more assistance than a free turkey. How about not buying the car in the first place? True, but near as you can tell, Just Food is only handing out free turkeys, not time machines.

So, what are you going to do? Easy. Put the turkey in the trunk.

Farmer is not going to tell you that’s the story behind every nice car in the line at Just Food. (Most aren’t that nice, by the way.) He doesn’t know the story behind every nice car. Chances are, neither do you.

“What’s crazy is 20 years ago we were asking how we can best help people,” Farmer says. “I think now we have started asking whether we should help them at all. We basically make up lies that everybody believes — like everybody is abusing the system — because we don’t know their stories.”

In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, Just Food handed out nearly 1,400 Thanksgiving meals. As I found by talking with some of the many people waiting for a box of groceries, there were plenty of stories on the side.

•••

Story No. 1. It’s warmer in Arizona, but the economy is still a bit cool in the Valley of the Sun, says Diana Brown. But still, life was okay down there with her husband and two boys, 11 and 13.

Then her husband committed suicide.

After 17 years of building a life there, she moved back to Lawrence to be closer to her mother. That was about a month ago. She hasn’t found work here yet. The family gets some death benefits from Social Security, which come to find out are quite a bit smaller than the appetites of 11- and 13-year-old boys.

Diana remembers the time when she decided she was going to have to get in a line like this one.

“One of my boys yelled from the kitchen ‘what happened in here,'” she recalls. “He was looking in the refrigerator, and I thought he had just spilled something. But he was just wondering where the food was.

“That’s when I realized I just had to accept the help, and know in the future that I will try to help others.”

•••

Story No. 2. Rebecca Redfield has a bachelor’s degree in business administration. It likely looks very nice when framed and hanging on a wall. It doesn’t, however, attract many oohs and aahs in the job market these days.

“I have the experience and the degree, but a lot of people don’t want to pay for experience anymore,” Redfield says.

Redfield was a longtime bookkeeper before getting laid off. She says she’s given up her three-story home and is now down to a two-bedroom apartment. She’s still on unemployment. She readily admits there are some jobs out there, but the best of the batch would pay her $11 an hour, which is a nearly 30 percent cut from what she was making before.

Still, it would be a job, right?

“If I did that right now, I wouldn’t be able to pay rent for long,” Redfield says.

•••

Story No. 3. It was an odd 30th anniversary gift. The day after Carla Parris celebrated her 30th anniversary working for a company as a medical secretary, she was told she no longer had a job.

She immediately hit the job-hunting trail, and spent a full year hearing the same thing over and over again.

“I would be one of two finalists for a job, and the other one would just get it by a hair,” she says.

Then, one day there was a sign in the window of the grocery store. That was a year ago, and she has been working at the deli of a local grocery ever since. She makes half of what she made in her last job.

Working may be in her future for a good long time, too. Parris says she cashed out her retirement plan in order to keep her house.

“Lawrence is a really expensive place to live, but I don’t know any better because I was born and raised here,” Parris says. “Ten or 15 years ago, I would have told you that I never would need any of these services.”

•••

There are lots of other stories. I’m not going to tell you all of them are legitimate. I bet you there are some people getting some free food for not very good reasons. It seems like in every corner of life — whether it is the guy who turns in the bloated expense report or the CEO with a golden parachute — there is somebody gaming some system.

But after standing in a line at Just Food for parts of two days, I can tell you it’s pretty hard to pick out who is who.

“We don’t know everyone’s circumstances,” Farmer says. “And I tell people it is not our place to judge whether they have managed their money well or not.”

Just Food, however, does screen its clients. It provides assistance to people who make 185 percent or less of the poverty level. Farmer admits there are exceptions. If you convince Farmer that you are hungry, you’re likely going to leave with a bag of groceries.

“We want to try to find a way to help folks,” Farmer says.

There are lots of folks. Through donations from individuals, Hy-Vee and other sponsors, Just Food put together 1,377 baskets of Thanksgiving food. That’s up from about 700 a year ago. The people who come through the line can be almost anyone. This is still a small town, and Farmer — a Lawrence city commissioner — knows lots of people. He tells me he saw two city employees, a teacher, a worker from one of the larger manufacturing plants in town and several others who would surprise you going through the line.

Statistics say most folks will come by just a few times. Nearly half of the clients of Just Food come just one time for food. About 85 percent come less than six times per year. About 90 percent of the clients report having a job, although Farmer notes that category is self-reported. He doesn’t know if it’s accurate.

It is tough to know the full story of everyone in these lines. But Farmer has heard enough of the stories to pick up on a general theme.

“It is just that life has punched them in the mouth,” he says.

Indeed, life has been known to do that. That’s the thing about life: No matter what you are driving, its road is unpredictable.