Several years ago, my parents were the recipients of one of the most charitable acts of kindness ever. To me it’s the benchmark of how life should be.
On Christmas, while visiting my parents about 300 miles from my home, I had the misfortune to wreck my car. The damage was sufficient that it couldn’t be driven so I was left with no choice but to have it fixed there. My parents volunteered (insisted) that my wife-to-be and I take Mom’s car back home. It made a good excuse to visit again in a week or so when the car was fixed.
It took a little longer than expected, but by mid January the car was ready. A plan developed for Mom & Dad to drive up Friday after work. Their expectation is to arrive by about 10PM and check into the hotel right down from my apartment.
Well 10:00 rolled around and no word. Then 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00… no word, no sign of them. I’m way past worried because it just isn’t like them to be that late and they’ve always been good about letting me know of their schedule.
As it turned out, the car had broken down about 80 miles from town on a desolate stretch of road that is about 20 miles from anything resembling a public facility. Dad raises the hood, looks around, and tries to diagnose the problem by flashlight – to no avail. They finally decide that it’s going to be a long night so they get back in the car, run whatever warmth that they can out of the heater, and settle back for some sleep. The car has bucket seats, so that helps, but noone figured on camping out so there’s no pillows or blankets. Only a change of clothes and their coats to help keep them warm.
About an hour or so later a car pulls up and stops behind my parents. Apparently these people were thinking that they’d found some free parts as they tore out as soon as they saw movement in the car. This also had the chilling effect (on an already cold January morning) of eliminating any possibility of sleep.
About 2:00 an 18-wheeler drives by. He gets on his CB and tries to raise my folks and ask if they needed help. Getting no answer the driver turns around at the next break, and comes back, stopping across the road from the car. He walks across the road and has a conversation with Dad about the problem.
The two of them then try to start the car. Dad’s in the car and the driver is fiddling with the choke. Next thing you know the car backfires and there’s now a huge gasoline fire coming from the carburetor. The driver runs back to his truck, gets his fire extinguisher, slips in the mud as he’s running back to the car getting covered with mud as he lands, and finally gets back to the car and puts out the fire.
Now the driver sets about fixing the problem in earnest. He retrieves his toolbox from his truck, and by the flashlight my Dad’s holding for him, takes the carburetor apart and finds the source of the problem. (For those mechanically minded a C-clip had jumped off its intended location making regulating fuel quantity impossible.) About two and a half hours after stopping, he gets the car back together and puts my parents on their way.
The most unselfish part was revealed in the conversation he had with my parents. The guy is a professional long haul trucker. He’d been on the road for three weeks and was scheduled to pull his current load into his hometown of Houston sometime mid-afternoon the next day where he was going to have a few days off and spend time at home with his wife. When he’d last gassed up the rig he’d taken time to shower and shave, put on clean jeans and his best shirt.
In stopping to help my parents he threw his schedule completely off, delaying himself so that he couldn’t arrive before dinner, got absolutely filthy with mud and grease, and ruined the clothes he was wearing.
My parents made sure to get his name and address, and upon returning home, sent him a check to cover the cost of his ruined clothes and sufficient to express their gratitude.
I never got to meet him. But he’s surely a Saint.