Lois Biniek cradles a plastic tub full of food in her right arm. With her left hand, she clasps her cane.

She marches through a gate and into the side yard of a Vallejo Street home, past the electric wheelchair parked on the porch and through the open door of a downstairs flat.

“Meals!” she shouts. “I’m in your home!”

It is a typical Wednesday morning for Biniek, 88, and her husband Bob, 90. Every Wednesday, Bob gets behind the wheel of their clean, white 2002 Buick Century and the two head for the Napa Senior Center to pick up meals for the 30 or so seniors and shut-ins on their delivery route. They’ve been driving the route for about seven years.

At the center, other Meals on Wheels workers load insulated containers full of food into the trunk of the Buick, and the Binieks are off: The alphabet streets, then Old Town, off Main Street north of downtown and then onto Old Sonoma Road to parts west, delivering meals and salutations to people who otherwise might not get either.

Minnesota to Mare Island

The Binieks moved to Napa in 1951, but their life together goes back years before and to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Minneapolis.

He was a janitor. She worked in the supply room and befriended one or more of Bob’s sisters, who also worked at the hospital.

Then came World War II, and Bob Biniek became, he recalls, a “handcuff volunteer,” drafted into the Army and headed for basic training at Fort Sill, Okla.

The next three years would prove unforgettable, as Biniek spent 34 months in the thick of the War of the Pacific: On the Marshall Islands, Saipan, in Manila, Okinawa, and with the occupying force in North Korea.

Bob said he still dreams of those days, still wakes with a start when he hears a sharp sound.

While Biniek was on the other side of the planet, a sign went up on a St. Joseph’s message board: Bob Biniek was lonely and looking for a correspondent. Lois answered the call.

“I wrote to him,” said Lois. “We had our courtship by mail.”

By the time Bob was back home and visiting the nothing-to-do farm town where his parents lived in Wisconsin, Lois was in California, working at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. He followed Horace Greeley’s advice, made it to Vallejo and caught on as a supply officer.

“We had to supply spare parts,” said Biniek, “like the lights the ships sailors would use at sea.”

She was a Mare Island file clerk.

The were married at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Vallejo. They raised four boys, George, Tom, Dick and “one we had to give back,” said Lois, referring to her late son Bill.

After leaving Mare Island, Lois spent 15 years as a teacher at Mt. George Elementary School. For more than 20 years she has volunteered at St. Apollinaris Catholic Church, teaching catechism, cleaning up the premises, doing whatever it takes.

When he left Mare Island, Bob Biniek ran his own gardening business for several years.

Earlier this month the Binieks celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary, taking in the July 6 concert of the 59th Army Band at the Veterans Home of California in Yountville.

They started helping at Meals on Wheels because, they say, they were blessed to have the good health to do so and are driven to help others. There’s one other factor, said Bob Biniek. “We decided we would do something together.”

Tough times for program

Every working day, volunteers like the Binieks deliver meals all over Napa County. Nearly 50 volunteers ply the streets of the city of Napa alone, covering 11 city routes.

Senior Nutrition Program Director Leslie Moore said some volunteers, including Pat Wartenweiler, have been with the organization for 20 years or longer.

Yet Moore said she could use a few others. “We probably need about 10 more drivers” in Napa, she said.

More significantly, the program is facing hard financial times.

The largest chunk of the roughly $575,000 annual budget for the Senior Nutrition Meals on Wheels program, operated by Community Action Napa Valley, comes from the California Department on Aging, which supplies about 37 percent of the budget.

Seniors are asked to pay $2.50 a meal, though they are not required to make a donation. About half do.

The rest of the budget comes from fundraisers, grants and donations, and is modestly offset when volunteers like the Binieks decide not to seek reimbursement for gas. (“When you do something for others, you don’t look at the cost,” said Lois.)

The state has reduced its funding, said Moore, and one major private donor pulled out this year. For the first time in Moore’s 32 years with the program, it is facing a deficit of about $20,000.

She said if things don’t improve, the program may have to cut delivery of weekend meals — usually dropped off frozen on Fridays — or that seniors newly seeking meals will have to go on a waiting list.

Yet Moore remains upbeat.

“It’s a little shaky right now,” she said. “But I know we will make it. The community will come through, I know they will.”

Each day cranks up at the kitchen at Napa County Jail, where the meals are prepared. The food is ready before dawn, and drivers take meals to Calistoga, St. Helena, Yountville and American Canyon, where local volunteers will deliver them door to door.

The Napa meals are dropped at the Senior Center on Jefferson Street, where the Binieks and others check in and load up before going on their routes.

In more than three decades with the program, Moore has seen many a change. The average client, she said, “is much older now” than when she started. “The average age of a Meals on Wheels client is probably 80,” she said. “Most are living alone.”

On limited incomes and with limited mobility, the clients are making some difficult daily decisions, she said.

“They have a choice. They can either afford to pay for their food or pay for their medicines,” she said. “That is a problem.”

On the road

Lois Biniek is co-pilot as Bob wheels the Century onto Jefferson Street. In the trunk are meals — a hot dog with cheese, corn on the cob, salad, milk and a banana — and, in case the client doesn’t answer, some simple flyers on thin strips of paper: “Meals and Wheels were here today to deliver your meal. You were not home.”

Bob turns left into the alphabet streets, where the Binieks are to make a series of stops.

“They look forward to seeing us,” said Lois. “Sometimes we’re the only people they see all day. If they want to talk, we take the time to talk.”

Bob takes the first home, as it is up 13 rickety steps. Lois, who does the legwork at most homes, said she finds this delivery taxing and a little dangerous.

Bob heads up the wooden stairs, pops inside for a minute, then reappears outside the screen door. He waves goodbye to the woman inside as he heads downstairs, smiling.

“That’s one of his best features,” said Lois. “His smile. He’s got dimples.”

After a few more stops, Bob noses the Buick into the intersection at California Boulevard and F Street, preparing to turn left and head towards Clay Street.

Teamwork kicks in, as Lois looks toward northbound traffic coming from the right.

“It’s OK my way,” she says. “But you gotta go soon because there’re more cars coming.”

“OK,” he says quietly, looking the other way and studying traffic from the south. “Here’s one coming, too.”

“Now you’ve got to wait,” she says. “There’s a whole slew ... now it’s OK.”

Bob enters the intersection and shortly thereafter pulls up to the curb opposite an apartment on Clay Street.

Lois is ready to get out and deliver the meal. Bob arranged things in the trunk as she went to the last house, preparing the next meal for delivery.

“OK,” he says as she opens the passenger door. “It’s loaded.”

Lois steps into the apartment of a relative, a man who many years ago was on the infamous Orphan Train, which took babies abandoned by their desperate parents in the booming Northeastern cities to homes in the heartland.

This man has been facing medical problems lately. As Lois delivers, Bob loads the next meal in the trunk.

Lois’ voice drifts across the sunny street. “Bye now,” she’s saying. “Good to see you back up.”

Bob rolls the Buick into a small alley between First and Clay. Two workers, part of the project placing electrical and cable wires underground along this corridor, are scuffling around a metal plate in the middle of the alley, near the home where the Binieks are going.

“Think we can get in?” asks Lois.

“If not, we’ll back out,” says Bob.

She lets the workers in on the secret as she steps out of the car. “We have to stop here to deliver a meal,” she declares.

One worker nods. When it is time to pull out, he and his partner step aside and let the Century pass.

Next Wednesday, the workers will be gone, but the Binieks will still edge that Buick into the alley, where Bob will pop the trunk and Lois will spring into action.

“I think they are wonderful people,” said Moore. “They are very caring people. They never miss. They never miss their day.”

Napa County’s Meals on Wheels program feeds hundreds of elderly and disabled people every day. The program is short on funds and is in need of drivers in Napa and St. Helena. To help or for more info, call Senior Nutrition Program Director Leslie Moore at 253-6111 or visit www.canv.org.