to get an hour’s worth of work,” says Kainste “but it was worthwhile to help people.” SSU students started King Harvest Coop, but its member

roster also included mentors such as SSU professor Dick Johnston and his wife Mary, who Koplo calls a “perfect Earth Mother.”

There were neighborhood characters such as Mansion Howard, who died recently at age 92 and who Kainste calls “one of my heroes.” “He was a total braggart,” Kainste says. “but he could always back it up — anything from gardening to barbecue sauce.”

In the mid-80s, King Harvest began to decline. The building at 12th and Grand was falling apart. The CETA grants ended. Unsurprisingly, Kainste reached a point where he needed more income. Members disagreed about the co-op’s direction. King Harvest changed locations, straggled on for a number of years, and eventually slowly faded away.

They worked to usher in a new era by forming co-ops, owned and operated by members in order to avoid big business, big agriculture, greed, profit motives, and to provide a sense of community. “I really thought King Harvest co-op was going to save the world.”

But its spirit lives on, says Koplo, at Food Fantasies.

That’s because Kainste has been managing it for years. “Stu is still committed to selling good food as cheap as possible,” says Koplo. “He wants to democratize food and involve local producers and regular people to drive the local economy.”

Kainste’s favorite statistic is that in the 1950s, 80 percent of the food eaten in Sangamon County was produced here. He’d like to see us get back to that. Let the Sunshine In!

Contact Julianne Glatz at [email protected].