So this morning I’m tooling along on Interstate 240 when the car began thumping.
It took me about half a mile to pull off the busy highway onto the berm. And, just as I’d suspected, there was a flat tire.
I called one of my homeschool moms, who called her daughter Caroline, who then called me. I explained the situation and asked Caroline to start classes by asking her fellow students to review terms for the AP European History test until I could make it to the classroom. (She did a splendid job).
It took me about half a mile to pull off the busy highway onto the berm. And, just as I’d suspected, there was a flat tire.
I called one of my homeschool moms, who called her daughter Caroline, who then called me. I explained the situation and asked Caroline to start classes by asking her fellow students to review terms for the AP European History test until I could make it to the classroom. (She did a splendid job).
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Next came the matter of the tire.
I rummaged through the trunk, dug out the jack and the spare, but just as I suspected, I couldn’t loosen the lug nuts with the tire iron. I got into the car and was in the process of calling AAA when there was a knock at my window.
The Asheville police officer was about my size, but forty years younger. From his accent I knew he was a local. He told me to sit tight, that he’d call the Department of Transportation vehicle that patrolled the road to help stranded motorists. He made the call, then tried himself to take off the lug nuts and failed as miserably as I had. (Which made me feel less decrepit).
The DOT driver was also polite and local. He affably told the policeman to go on his way, chatted as he changed the tire, refused the twenty dollars I tried to tip him—“Put it toward your new tire”—and sent me happily along my way.
By 3:10 that afternoon, I was at Jan Morris’s Tire Shop in Downtown Asheville. The manager, also clearly a local, promised me a quick change—I had a four o’clock obligation—and once again treated me kindly. He gave me a great price on the new tire because the ruined one was relatively new, purchased from his establishment the previous year. While he was charging my credit card, I noticed his hands. Each fingernail wore a crescent of black grit and grease, a medallion of his noble trade. The mechanic who worked to repair the tire and eventually had to replace it altogether performed his task with speed and diligence, and fetched me as soon as the tire was ready. With the manager waving me on my way, I made my four o’clock appointment.
My point here isn’t about my tire. It’s about people. Specifically, the American worker. The locals who make a community work.
In my case, the locals are what some would call rednecks.
I have an affinity for rednecks and in some ways consider myself one of them. I feel as comfortable talking to such people as I do to university professors, doctors, and other professionals. After all, I spent seven years of my childhood in Boonville, North Carolina, a town akin to Mayberry in the Andy Griffith series. That was a time and a place where people mattered one to the other, when manners counted more than money or class. Yes, there was the racial divide—it was the Old South in the late fifties and early sixties—but even then people of both colors looked at each other as fellow human beings, each with their own joys and their own troubles, each with their own stories. For better or for worse, you knew your neighbors, and they knew you.
Today made me realize once again that politeness and kindness matter in this world. They are the grease that moves the wheels—pardon the pun—of our society. Each of the people I met today, I am certain, has troubles. They surely face difficulties in their lives, as we all do. Yet all of them behaved admirably, offering their assistance, doing their duty, and working hard to help me solve a problem as simple as a tire replacement.
These are the people who keep this country running. The parents whose children I am privileged to teach are a part of this group as well. They work hard to raise their children the right way; they contribute in whatever way they can to society; they push on, even when the odds seem stacked against them.
All over America these are the people who every day get up and go to work and get things done. Much of the time, we don’t pay much attention to them. We don’t see the clerk behind the counter at the Seven-Eleven; we never think too much about the medical personnel who take x-rays of our chests or clean our teeth; we pay little attention to the police who guard our civilization from barbarism.
Yet there they are, every day, undertaking their work with aplomb and courtesy.
A toast this wintery night to all of you kind souls who so ply your trade.
Cheers!
I rummaged through the trunk, dug out the jack and the spare, but just as I suspected, I couldn’t loosen the lug nuts with the tire iron. I got into the car and was in the process of calling AAA when there was a knock at my window.
The Asheville police officer was about my size, but forty years younger. From his accent I knew he was a local. He told me to sit tight, that he’d call the Department of Transportation vehicle that patrolled the road to help stranded motorists. He made the call, then tried himself to take off the lug nuts and failed as miserably as I had. (Which made me feel less decrepit).
The DOT driver was also polite and local. He affably told the policeman to go on his way, chatted as he changed the tire, refused the twenty dollars I tried to tip him—“Put it toward your new tire”—and sent me happily along my way.
By 3:10 that afternoon, I was at Jan Morris’s Tire Shop in Downtown Asheville. The manager, also clearly a local, promised me a quick change—I had a four o’clock obligation—and once again treated me kindly. He gave me a great price on the new tire because the ruined one was relatively new, purchased from his establishment the previous year. While he was charging my credit card, I noticed his hands. Each fingernail wore a crescent of black grit and grease, a medallion of his noble trade. The mechanic who worked to repair the tire and eventually had to replace it altogether performed his task with speed and diligence, and fetched me as soon as the tire was ready. With the manager waving me on my way, I made my four o’clock appointment.
My point here isn’t about my tire. It’s about people. Specifically, the American worker. The locals who make a community work.
In my case, the locals are what some would call rednecks.
I have an affinity for rednecks and in some ways consider myself one of them. I feel as comfortable talking to such people as I do to university professors, doctors, and other professionals. After all, I spent seven years of my childhood in Boonville, North Carolina, a town akin to Mayberry in the Andy Griffith series. That was a time and a place where people mattered one to the other, when manners counted more than money or class. Yes, there was the racial divide—it was the Old South in the late fifties and early sixties—but even then people of both colors looked at each other as fellow human beings, each with their own joys and their own troubles, each with their own stories. For better or for worse, you knew your neighbors, and they knew you.
Today made me realize once again that politeness and kindness matter in this world. They are the grease that moves the wheels—pardon the pun—of our society. Each of the people I met today, I am certain, has troubles. They surely face difficulties in their lives, as we all do. Yet all of them behaved admirably, offering their assistance, doing their duty, and working hard to help me solve a problem as simple as a tire replacement.
These are the people who keep this country running. The parents whose children I am privileged to teach are a part of this group as well. They work hard to raise their children the right way; they contribute in whatever way they can to society; they push on, even when the odds seem stacked against them.
All over America these are the people who every day get up and go to work and get things done. Much of the time, we don’t pay much attention to them. We don’t see the clerk behind the counter at the Seven-Eleven; we never think too much about the medical personnel who take x-rays of our chests or clean our teeth; we pay little attention to the police who guard our civilization from barbarism.
Yet there they are, every day, undertaking their work with aplomb and courtesy.
A toast this wintery night to all of you kind souls who so ply your trade.
Cheers!
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