I'm back

Well, I’m back in Florida and more or less settled in. I’m working on a political post, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share a recent road trip story, which I found rather heartening. I drove more than 7000 miles between May 15 and September 15, all without incident until my right rear tire blew out when I was about 200 miles from my Florida base last Sunday. I was on a two lane country road. There was no real shoulder, so I pulled into the grass and called for assistance. It was late afternoon, 94 degrees and humid, with threatening thunderheads on the horizon. There wasn’t a building in site – hadn’t been for miles. I leaned against the completely packed truck of my car and waited for the service truck, hoping he would arrived before the rain. If not I’d be forced to take refuge in the Dutch oven that my car was quickly becoming.

In the 45 minutes I waited, four vehicles stopped to ask me if I needed help, and a Hollywood casting director couldn’t have picked a more interesting mix of people. The first car, a late model, upscale SUV held a 60-ish couple who looked like they were on their way to a church social. They couldn’t have been nicer and promised to stop on their way back in about an hour to see how it was going.

Next, a 10 year-old F-150 pickup driven by a young Hispanic man who spoke broken English, stopped. He offered to change the tire for me. Third came a minivan so bland it could have been any age or make, occupied by a couple who were closer to 80 than 70. The wife was driving and she actually made a U-turn to see if I needed anything.

Finally, an 80’s era Firebird (or was it a Trans Am?) pulled up, driven by young white man wearing a backwards ball cap over a Florida mullet, a sleeveless tee-shirt and grimy blue jeans. If you’d seen him I suspect the label that would have come to mind would have been either “red neck” or “white trash.” I confess, with some shame, those were my first thoughts. But he made sure a truck was coming and then pointed out a path that leading through the woods to his house where he told me I was welcome to wait for the truck if it started raining.

Sometimes the world seems like a cold place, but there are a great number of good people among us.