Morning Thanks--Rescue squads

I considered the thumb. I hadn't hitchhiked for a half century, but I thought of it, seriously. The woman behind the desk at the motel looked skeptical when I brought up the idea of my walking to town, but the sun was shining, it wasn't cold, and the idea of being stuck in a lousy motel--nice people but a mess in every other way--wasn't enticing. Besides, often enough, I walk two miles for exercise. Three shouldn't be too far out of the question. And I could always stick out a thumb.

The section of York, Nebraska, thousands of people see isn't really York, Nebraska. When you get off I-80, a couple dozen fast-food shops, two Chinese buffets, a Wal-mart, maybe a dozen gas stations and almost as many motels are jammed together right there at the exit. York--the town, York--is three miles north. 

Our old Buick choked out its death rattle, in a town named Beaver Crossing. Not long ago, we stuck a ton of money in that old car--it's a '98 with 160K--to keep that boat afloat, then bought a new car to replace it when it buckled again a week later. For a two weeks or so we had three cars for two people. 

I'd determined to sell it, but figured one last trip would be sweet. I'd not been to the new Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE, so, when my wife and daughter were off to Oklahoma for a baby shower, I thought this young man, like so many others, would go west. 

Maybe a half hour from York, some horror happened in the innards of that Buick, and I pulled off onto an exit where there was nothing, no business. 

Long story short--the tow-truck guy with a skinny fu manchu ("a guy can almost make a living doing this along the interstate") said he'd get it in to his garage and take a look. Told me he could take it off my hands ("3.8?--great engine") if it didn't amount to much more than junk. So he and his son-in-law, the mechanic, told me it'd be at least $650, and he couldn't get it done until Tuesday at the earliest. 

I ended up at a grubby motel in its death throes for two days, until my wife could pick up her stranded husband on her way back home from Stillwater. A day later, cabin fever was about to claim a victim. I figured out York has a museum, the museum was hosting a lecture on the Holocaust, and I was half buggy from my prison cell, so I decided to walk three miles. Besides, I'd been reading frontier memoirs of homesteaders who walked back and forth to Omaha. What kind of pansy?. .you know.

So I did. I didn't have my best walking shoes, but I didn't try to break records, just took it easy, and I made it. Feet hurt a little, but I was, as you might say, "within walking distance" when this huge dark blue pick-up rolls up beside me. A blackened passenger-side window slid down slowly, and some Hispanic guy with even less hair than I have looked at me, smiling.

"I see you walking way down the road a while ago. Still walking now." I'm sure his Spanish would have come more smoothly, but I had no trouble reading his friendliness. "Get in," he said. "I'll take you to where you are going." 

Big pickup. I had to stretch to get in.

He didn't know where the museum was, and for that he apologized, then asked Google, who didn't appear to know either. I told him I thought it was just off Main, downtown somewhere--that I was sure we'd be able to find it by looking at the old buildings. He said he'd only been in America for a dozen years, was from El Salvador, loved York--very quiet, very peaceful, very safe, better than Columbus, where, he said, the cops didn't like Hispanics.

When we finally found it, he said he didn't recognize it because it was the gym and the pool--all in one building. His not knowing is not the unforgiveable sin. In a small town like York, you don't have to be a recent immigrant not to know the way to the museum. Same thing could happen in Orange City.

The docent, great guy, by the way--old as me, aren't they all?--told me that after the lecture we'd find a ride back to the freeway because, "you're serious? you walked all that way?" Well, yes, I said, except the last couple of minutes.

Well, no announcement was made. He forgot, and I wasn't that driven to ride because the sun was still shining, and my feet weren't falling off. Legs felt like concrete, but, I figured, if worse comes to worse, I always had my thumb. Hadn't used it in fifty years, but I'm in rural Nebraska, right? People'll give you the shirt off your back.

I started out, got to the edge of town, maybe twenty minutes out, and a dark blue pick up--big one--stops in the parking lot of a farm store. Black windows slides down. I can't believe it. He's taking his wife off to work now, he says, and I should hop in because it's too darn far to walk all the way. 

If my need were more dire, I suppose I could call him my guardian angel--I mean, I wasn't bloodied and in the ditch. But it took no more than ten minutes and I was back at the dirty front door of a motel that's less than a year from death and destruction. Pool doesn't work. Neither do a couple of vending machine--oh, and no ice either. 

But nice people. Hey, I was in rural Nebraska, right? The Huskers took a beating on Saturday, so I could expect a foul mood; but these people are salt-of-the-earth. I could have hitchhiked, I'm sure, and lived to talk about it.

A couple thousand people probably drove past me as I walked, but they had no reason to stop. I wasn't in any trouble. I probably could have made it back, would have, if it weren't for shirt-off-their-backs people in rural Nebraska. 

This morning I'm thankful for the first-responder who pulled over, twice, and without even being asked. This morning, I'm thankful for a sweet Salvadorian Samaritan from rural Nebraska--York, it's just up the road a couple of miles from the interstate. People'll do you well there, all of 'em. "Red and yellow, black and white,/they are precious in his sight."